Everyday recession-proof strategies

- There are four professional rules that you can follow right now, whether the economy is strong or in a recession, that will help advance your career and make you recession-proof. Rule number one, just don't get fired or laid off. There's a very tragic phenomenon called employment scarring, which refers to the fact that being unemployed at any point your career can reduce your pay for the entire rest of your career, now and in the future. The longer you're unemployed, the deeper the scarring will be. Cristobal Young of Stanford University has said that, the gain from finding a job is significantly smaller than the initial harm from losing a job. This suggests a scar effect of job loss that lingers over time, one that even reemployment does not fully correct. So not getting fired is clearly a big deal. Rule number two, graduate into a good job market. The risk of employment scarring is similar for new graduates trying to enter the workforce, Hanan Morsy of the International Monetary Fund has said, failure to find a first job, or keep it for long can have damaging long-term consequence on career prospects. For students looking at the workforce, you're number one priority must be to graduate into a job. If you don't graduate into a job, you won't just make things harder for yourself right now, you may actually make things harder for yourself for the entire rest of your professional career. Let's see what this actually looks like. Here's a graphic illustration of the impact of employment scarring for people with jobs as well as for new graduates. You can see that earnings for people without a job at graduation could keep wages potentially lower and depressed for someone's entire career. While having a job at graduation, but losing it later, can also reduce the future path of earnings, you might otherwise have. The only solution here is to upskill yourself, which is rule number three. For example, the total number of manufacturing jobs in the United States has been falling since the late 1970s. And if you work in manufacturing, I've got bad news for you, even if your company is doing well and growing, it's still likely to cut traditional manufacturing jobs as automation advances. But don't fear the machines, understand them. Get trained to run those machines. If you become the person who maintains, controls, and installs the machines, then automation won't hurt you, it will very likely help you. If you're working on a factory line, get cross-trained in different things. You wanna be the person who knows how to run the computer that runs the machine, that runs the line. The time to upskill is now. You need to know how to build your skillset now, with in-person training, informal education, and by learning online and in classrooms. This is always a good thing to do. In addition to building your skills, you should always be building your network, and that's part of rule number four, always be ready with five to 10 names. If a recessions coming, you don't wanna be its victim. You always need to have a backup plan, and you need to know five to 10 people you could call right now to get a job. If you don't know five to 10 people, pause this video right now and get on the phone. You need those names. They should be your top professional priority. As you think about being ready for a downturn, or a potential future job loss, who are those five to 10 people you could call right now for a job that ideally would start tomorrow? And when it comes to upskilling, what are the five to 10 things you could be cross-trained on at work, or you'd be interested in learning more about through an in-person or online course?