This is not an article about new job ideas for those who simply want to dosomething different for a living. It is about changing our ideas about themeaning of employment. I was inspired to think about this by an article in TimeMagazine in March of 2009. It suggested that as a culture we are largely donewith our constant concern with real estate value and stock market investments,thanks to the current recession.

No more do people see their rising 401K value as a ticket to earlyretirement. Nor do they get to tap into their home equity (which has largelyvanished) as a way to live beyond what their income allows. According to thearticle, we are turning towards giving the same attention and nurturing to ouremployment as we used to those previous sources of wealth.

In fact, the title of the piece was “Why Your Job is Your Most ValuableAsset.” It was a bit misleading though, in that what was really pointed to asthe valuable asset was not a person’s job, but the skills that make jobs anoption. That made more sense and got me thinking.

Will people begin to invest in and develop job skills the way they carefullyinvest in their retirement accounts. Will we start to talk about the “mentalequity” we have in the form of experience and training and knowledge? Willenrollment in non-credit job-skill classes rise as workers try to bolster theirqualifications for one or more types of work?

Maybe so. Now I personally think that the future will be one with fewer andfewer jobs as more and more people begin to work in their own businesses or asindependent contractors. But there will be jobs, and some people will alwaysprefer the consistency of pay and simplicity of working for others. So what canthey do to make themselves more employable?

Specialization has its place. If you spend enough years doing computerprogramming, tax preparation or machine designing you’ll have an edge on thecompetition in those fields. You might even be the only one in town whospecializes in preparing tax returns for companies which are based locally butincorporated in other countries.

On the other hand, what if they actually simplify the tax code someday,putting half of the tax preparers in the country out of work? What if computersstart programming themselves? Things change, and whole industries die. Howwould you have liked to be starting a career as a wagon wheel maker in 1905,just as cars started to become popular?

Here’s a new job idea that solves this problem to some extent. It comes froma newspaper article I saw on a young man who was trying to work at 52 jobs in52 weeks. That’s the basic idea, by the way. Fresh out of high school orcollege, perhaps young people should work a few months at several differentjobs, just to have the experience and skills for whatever the futurebrings.

To be more systematic about this, you might choose a couple jobs that arelikely to be recession-proof, like being a cook or bar tender, and several thatare in a growing area, like retirement home administration or medical fields.With a variety of job skills and experiences you should be able to find work inalmost any kind of economy.

Of course you may have noticed that your resume alone doesn’t always get youa job. In addition to skills and experiences in specific fields, you might wantto develop the skills of getting hired. It may seem a radical suggestion, butwhat if you obtained and quit seven or eight jobs in a span of a couple monthsearly in your working life? That – in addition to using the good advice in someof the books out there – might make you much more prepared to quickly get a newjob if you should ever lose your existing one unexpectedly.

A Few More Job Ideas

- See yourself as a business, with your labor as your product. Think abouthow to make your customers happier and more likely to keep using yourservice.

- There are jobs that are meant to provide income, jobs that are meant totrain you for a related business, jobs that are actually what you want to do inlife, jobs meant to build a resume, and sometimes even jobs that are only aboutgetting to know people who can be useful. Think about what kind of job you arelooking for, or what elements each position considered has.

- The benefits that come with jobs are often possible without the job. Tallythe true costs of buying your own benefits. Don’t take a job that pays $10,000less each year just because it has health insurance and vacation pay that youcan replace yourself for $7,000. Do the math.

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