Recently fewer Americans filed applications for unemployment benefits than at any time since before the last recession. This indicates bigger gains in hiring should follow soon. Jobless claims decreased by 32,000, the least since May 2007, a Labor Department report indicated for the first week in week of April.
Tom McNeil, President of career consulting group MDL Partners, notes that this drop in firings “signals that employers are optimistic sales will pick up following the weather-related slowdown at the beginning of the year” and adds that this should pave the way for bigger increases in employment as demand rebounds.
What does this mean for you, the job seeker?
It means that now is the time to dust off and update your resume, and sharpen your networking skills.
“The key to success in a job search today is intense networking, with a clear plan in place,” notes McNeil. “Increasing the level of intensity by a factor of 2 or 3 beyond what you might think is adequate will produce much better results” in this job market.
“I’m pretty optimistic about the labor market,” Thomas Simons, a money market economist at Jefferies LLC in New York, told Bloomberg. His forecast for 310,000 claims was the lowest in the Bloomberg survey. “Slack in the labor force should start to be absorbed more quickly, and that should put some upward on wages as well.”
But in this renewed competitive atmosphere, you’ll need to move quickly to get ahead.
MDL Partners works with clients to achieve their career goals. If you’re not excited about your work, if you’re not challenged on a day-to-day basis, if you are bored with too many repetitive tasks or are not excited about the output and results of your work, it’s hard to stay motivated and enthusiastic.
There are plenty of times in your career that you will use MDL Partner’s services – and once you are a client, you are a client throughout your entire career. Maybe there is no room for advancement. Perhaps your company is not growing. Growth usually creates more financial stability, opportunities for career movement and a positive brand image. As the saying goes, if the company isn’t growing, it’s falling behind with the potential for decreased bonuses, underwater stock options and layoffs.