Hotter than the beach you’re dreaming of. 💭🏖
Cooler than a beer from Copenhagen’s Ice bar. 🍺
More important than phoning your Mum this week. 📞👩
Yeah, you know what I’m talking about.
Skills.
Skills are the answer to the tight recruitment market that is UK 2024.
Never has suppressing wage inflation been more important to the top brass on the C-suite than now.
Languishing in the middle between your natural desire to beat the market odds on a pay-rise and C-suite penny watching, is the jobs market…
And what a market it is.
So many jobs, all offering you similar money.
And the when the economy is choppy like this, is it even worth the hassle or the risk?
The short answer is yes.
A resounding hearty yes.
But, let’s put money to one side and talk skills again.
Skills will pay your pay-rise above market odds when the market bounces back, and it will… it always does.
Skills will insure you against the competition in your peer group pulling ahead of you.
Skills will pay for the promises you made to yourself in your 5 year plan.
So, now, right now, this minute, give yourself a skills audit.
Reverse engineer your five year plan. Where do you want to be in five years and what skills do you need to become what you promised yourself you’d be.
Struggling to know what this looks like in a granular way?
Play this game:
Who is the most successful person you know in your vertical?
What skills do they that round them off? What skills have they honed which make their ‘whole’ offering as a professional more than the sum of the parts.
Once you’ve isolated your skill gap, go go find a role that lets you develop and hone this skill.
And always, always, try and get this internally first with your employers. It’ll add great weight to your CV and lowers your exposure to market risk.
If you can’t get it, find a company that will give you this opportunity.
And here’s the great news. The lack of cash in the market right now has reduced supply of active candidates drastically.
Does that mean you can leverage a big pay rise?
– very unlikely – the market’s ceiling is hard right now.
Does that mean you can leverage development opportunities
– absolutely.
Solve someone’s existing skill gap, and they will be happy to reward you with space, training and hands-on opportunities to develop more skills.
Why wouldn’t they?
You are offering to solve another skill gap in their business and be a more efficient employee and asset to their business.
Like a great stock, skills beat the market in the mid-long term every single time.
And then when the market turns (and it will): CASH IN and nail that pay-rise alongside your 5-year plan.