How portable is your career?

If you can answer YES to one of the 3 questions below, read on because you are going to need a resilient career strategy:

• Is the company or division you work for restructuring or merging?
• Are you at risk of redundancy?
• Are you very tempted to accept a voluntary redundancy deal – yet something is stopping you grabbing the cheque because you aren't confident your skills are portable?

Clearly the end of a company or a division — whether through bankruptcy, merger, restructuring, or shutdown — is often painful and traumatic for everyone involved. Most of us emotionally identify with our employer so even when our job continues with a new entity, or we get a financial payout, there is still a sense of loss.

Given the reality of work in the 21st century, it might be worth having an "insurance policy".

Consider in advance how you would handle the impending death of your company or division:

• Are there skills that you need to develop to become more portable?
• Are there experiences that will position you for an important role in a successor company or with another business in the same industry?
• Do you have a clear sense of what you would want to do if you had to exit your company? Would you want to reinvent yourself, go off on your own, or continue the same work with another organisation?

Whilst your company might not have an afterlife, the good news is that your career will.

Here are 3 actions you can take to get ready:

• Start networking before you need to so that you have a group of people ready and willing to help you when you need them.  Ensure you have an online and offline networking strategy
• Hunt down free training and skills development funds - there are some generous schemes around until December 2010.
• Take time out to consider what you are really passionate about and start exploring how feasible it might be to turn this passion into a financial venture.

For more information on Career Management Strategies, contact Katherine Wiid of Recrion at 01780 484910 or visit www.recrion.co.uk.

"It is never too late to become what you might have been – and it is never too late to start!"