A skill short market is a buyer’s market for candidates.  When you have the skills employers want you can work out what you want in life and demand a pleasant environment in which to do it.  Within the bounds of viable contribution and profitability you can write your job description and your remuneration package.  Want life/work balance?  Negotiate late starts or early finishes.  Why shouldn’t you watch your kids play cricket?  You know what is important.

When career progression and challenge becomes more important you cast about for the most interesting projects and put your hand up.  There is a bonus with that if it is finished on time. The company will get a contractor in to keep your old role going while you expand your knowledge and enhance your cv.

October 2008 and news of the credit crunch changed this scenario with scary effectiveness.  While the market is not awash with quality competitors for your job just yet, there is unlikely to be a contractor employed to look after your day job while you do something more interesting and anyway the project has been postponed.  If meeting deadlines is an important part of your role and you need an assistant to let you get away at 5.00 pm you might find there is some resistance.  Your company’s hiring freeze has put paid to that.

So how are you going to develop your career in an atmosphere which lends itself more to conversations about keeping your job?

The main message is to consider yourself as a business unit.  You have a cost: your salary and the related costs of having you in a desk.  What are you supposed to be contributing?  (Hint: have a look at your Contract of Employment.) If you just want to keep your job, do 10% more than that.  If you want to progress you need to look at what the company needs at the moment and start doing that as well as your current role.

This extra work might not be the most exciting project which will give you new skills or the justification to ask for new training; it may be something basic and mundane like re-rewriting the debt collection process.  Look at the work being done by people in senior positions to yours, and if those people are well regarded and obviously contributing, aim to meet or exceed their standards of work and behaviour.  Read sector magazines and research the Internet in lieu of those day-long courses.  Ask your mentors for advice and this time listen.

And you are not going to like this one.  You might have to do extra time on the job.   The good news however is that if you take all the right steps to improve your working position now, you are going to be among the 40% of people who come through a downturn far better off than you went in.

Good luck.