“What do you do?” It’s one of the first questions strangers ask each other. That’s because your career is you, to a large extent. It consumes the largest part of your waking hours and shapes your habits of thought. It’s part of your definition.

Your career can also bestow huge rewards, such as wealth, esteem, power, fame, satisfaction, and pleasure in the work itself. Your career is where you exercise your talents and showcase yourself. It is, or can be, a major route to fulfillment. That’s why mastering job transition skills and developing a superior resume are so important. Transition skills matter almost as much as job skills themselves. The better you become at them, the faster and higher you rise. So they greatly repay the investment of time and thought.

Yet because no college has a Job Transition Skills Department, and few even offer a course in the discipline, ambitious people tend not to study it. That’s a serious error in today’s world.

You may not realize exactly how much a successful job transition is worth to you. Most people don’t.
It’s easy to get a general idea. Let’s say you act astutely and move up from a $200,000 job to a $300,000 job at age 45. You likely have 20 more years ahead. Assuming equivalent annual pay increases and promotions, the difference between the two tracks is $100,000 x 20, or $2,000,000. That’s how much a single, well-focused job search may change your life. And note that this example takes place at the height of a career. At age 25, the benefits are much greater, because they have more time to multiply. The earlier you rise, the higher you go.

When times are tough we need to seek inspiration. I believe everyone struggling in this economy, especially those in search of a job, can be more hopeful now that President Obama is in office.
No miracles are likely. But economics is a fuzzy science sensitive to subtle and subjective changes. A new leader proclaiming hope and ushering in new policies can give us all some hope. Don’t hide from hope. It can help your job search. Why? Good cheer is contagious. Employers pick it up from you in interviews. It also changes the tone of the experience and spurs your motivation, so you make that extra effort effortlessly. It helps you see apparent failures as the achievements they are, while gaining a clear eye on areas for improvement.
Morale is the “life” in the battery of your job search. The weaker it gets, the less effective you are. So politics aside, let’s dare to hope, and let’s help make it happen.