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Article from iMail, Hong Kong, 20th September 2001
Working your network
Benedict Rogers
Finding a new job is no easy task in the current economic climate, but there are two things executives can do to boost their chances of success: “be visible”, and ”take charge of their careers early”.
This is the advice of outplacement consultant Paul Heng, founder and managing director of Singapore-based Next Career Consulting. Mr. Heng has recently published his first book, boldly titled Jump Start Your Career: The Essential Guide to Career Management and Effective Job Search. He claims to be “probably the first author in Asia to write such a job search and career management book, because most other texts in the field originate from the United States or Europe. Mr. Heng is also eager to emphasize that his book is “not a management book, it is a how-to book”.
After working as a human resources manager for Singapore Press Holdings, Mr. Heng joined a US publishing group in 1990 and set up the human resources function in the firm's Hong Kong offices. In 1995, he moved into outplacement. Business has grown by 2.5 per cent to 3 per cent this year, Mr. Heng says, a sign that the slowdown is serious. It is when times are tough, and companies are laying off executives, that outplacement comes to the fore. His consultants each handle 15 to 20 candidates at any one time during this “peak period”', he says. ”It is quite frightening for people who are in the corporate world, because you never know what is going to happen to your job,” says Mr. Heng. Outplacement is all about advising retrenched executives on their next career moves, and putting them in touch with recruiters and companies, but it does not actually involve finding jobs for them directly. “Outplacement is teaching people how to fish - we don't fish for them,” Mr. Heng explains. As such, the job search can be a lengthy process. For senior executives, it could take up to a year to find a new job; for middle managers, it could be six or eight months. “The market is very dry. Supply and demand has changed - there is more supply, and less demand.”
Mergers and acquisitions are a major source of redundancies. Mr. Heng believes AOL's acquisition of Time Warner was the beginning of a trend of “seemingly impossible mergers”, and he predicts more to come. All of this means Mr. Heng's job-hunting guide book is especially timely, but he says that is simply a “coincidence”. The book, published by Prentice Hall in Singapore and distributed around the region, had an initial print-run of 2,000 copies, and already, Mr. Heng says, 1,800 copies have been sold.
Mr. Heng's key recommendation is to network. “It's all about connections, the relationship you have established with people,” he explains. So it's not what you know, but who you know that counts? “It's not even that,” he argues. “It's who knows you [that counts].”
He advises people to nurture relationships at all times. “You'd be amazed that a lot of people do not take time to create value in their relationships,” he says. “They only talk to people they think will be useful to them now, not in the future.”
Networking, Mr. Heng adds, is not about calling up your friends and asking for a job. “It is about finding out information on potential job vacancies, and using people's contacts to help further your network,” he says. This gives you a competitive advantage.
Mr. Heng says his book is aimed primarily at executives – “senior managers, mid-level, and junior executives” - but he has written three specific chapters focused on particular groups: one for executives who want to leave the corporate world and set up on their own as entrepreneurs; one for graduates who have just started their careers; and one for people over 45 who have lost their jobs.
The answer to all these challenges, argues Mr. Heng, is to “take charge” of your career at an early age, in order to be more “marketable. It is all about employability, he says.
”How do you make sure that whatever happens to your job, you do not end up worried unduly because you know that your skills and experience are still useful to society?”
To do this, Mr. Heng advocates adopting what he calls “the one-third ideal job” concept.
”Whatever job you do, break it down into three components: one-third would be activities that you can learn from, one-third [work] you need to stretch to do well, and one-third where you can do [work] standing on your head with your eyes closed.”
If one finds that most work activities fall into the second or third category, Mr. Heng suggests, then “the onus falls on you to start looking around the company for an alternative role which will continue to allow you to learn”. If such a role cannot be found in the company, he advises, then look outside.
Mr. Heng has written a valuable guide to the job market, which includes a mixture of tips on how to build a career, and information on where to look for jobs. He has a few pages on Internet recruitment, with a list of major job websites in Asia. But, he adds, he only wrote that at the request of his publisher. “The Internet will never replace headhunters. It will be a supplement to augment the market. With the Internet, so many things can go wrong.”
Sticking to more traditional job search methods, he advises, is the best way to make your career take off.
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