Waiting in line for hours to spend 90 seconds strapped in tight zooming up, down and around. This is a kid’s dream; riding roller coasters all day with their heart pounding and their stomach high up in their throat as they zoom down a track at 65mph turning and flipping.
Wall Street’s weeklong whiplash
The past few weeks look as though a roller coaster engineer has conducted Wall Street. When the market closed on August 12th, it had a week that only a kid on a roller coaster would have liked; Monday fell 634 points, Tuesday rose 429 points, Wednesday fell 519 points and, on the back of investors grasping to the few signs of an economic recovery, it recorded a 423 point gain, one of the biggest of all time on Thursday.
The depths of The Great Recession, which began four years ago in 2007, is hard to feel for job seekers or Americans of any kind when Wall Street, The S&P and European markets are bouncing up and down like a basketball in the final 2 minutes of the NBA finals game.
Main Street’s response
Will Main Street be able to withstand continued effects of The Great Recession? Market experts claimed The Great Recession ended in 2009 yet if you visit Main Street (take Mullen, GA for example), Americans will tell the reality of how their lives are as touch and go as the current market. The Great Recession is still alive and well.
Two tips to pull through
Tip #1: Persevere
Americans are known for perseverance and it’s this exact skill set that will allowed the country to triumph during The Great Depression. The same perseverance has seen a factory worker in Mullen, GA, who was unemployed for over 2 years, secure a community college special needs teaching certificate and, just last week, land a new job as a teaching assistant. This perseverance pulled a family through when both parents lost their jobs, and family business. After 18 months of struggle, dad has a landscape maintenance job and mom has found a new business that allows them to meet the daily bills. Perseverance pays.
Tip #2: Stay The Course
If there’s one common theme with clients that land new jobs sooner than others, it’s those who know what they want and stay focused. When you create a clear, concise and focused personal brand message, you make it easy for others to help you. They know what you do well, what type of position you will fit into at their organization (or other) and who might be a good contact for you to meet.
In today’s ever-unpredictable world I am reminded of what I was told by a colleague years ago; you can only control what you do, think, say and feel. Let that be your focus and let the rest of the world (e.g. Wall Street, S&P, Main Street, Hiring Managers) take care of their own issues.
