It has been almost two years since I first got laid off from my job as an IT professional. Now I am stuck at the same old job, working in IT support, working graveyard shifts, and dreading my days and nights spent at the office. I dread the long commute to work each and every day, I dread going home, and I dread being away from my friends and family that have become like family to me over the past two years. Last week I found myself in tears while talking to an HR professional about how hopeless it was to survive another day at this job.
It is a cruel joke put on our backs as we grow older and enter into retirement. We are told that we can no longer do the same jobs that we did when we were younger. That we can not enjoy the same lifestyle that we used to when we were working full time and making a decent living. The truth is that we can still perform at a high level of work, we just may not be able to enjoy the lifestyle that we did when we were younger. But is this what we are being told?
So I decided to do a little soul searching after being laid off from my job two years ago. I decided to go back to school and get my master’s degree. After two years of hard work and studying, I finally completed my degree and became a Certified Information Technology Specialist (CITS) with a specialty in network engineering. I now work as a team leader for a technology firm in the fast growing area of cloud computing.
I want to tell you something amazing that has happened since I graduated. A friend of mine is going to be laid off from his job in the fall. He will be going back to working in the construction business and he has already taken a number of CITS courses to prepare for the new way he will be paid. He is also going to be working a lot longer hours because he will have the responsibility of many more projects than he did when he was working for the company as a general contractor. When I asked him how he was going to be able to handle all of this he said that he would be having meetings and planning sessions for each of the different departments that he will have to work with to do his work for the company.
What I learned from this is that you have to be willing to delegate the work you need to do to someone else. This is especially true if you have a large number of employees. For example, if you have ten employees you are going to have to delegate five hours of work to each employee and then another five hours to the department head. That means you are going to be doing a lot more work for less money! If you are not willing to do this then you may find yourself out of a lot of money.
This is a reality that we all have to deal with. What is good though is that when you work for a company you will have a chance to build up your skills and your business knowledge so that when you leave the business you will know what to do in life. This is something that you need to do if you want to have success when you leave the business. One of the best things that you can do when you leave the business is to go and get some business training! By getting some training you will be able to learn some of the new computer skills that are needed to be successful in this industry.
When I left my position, I knew that I wanted to start my own business. However, I didn’t know what business I was going to start. I thought that I could buy some tools around the house and sell them to people. After talking to some people who were in the computer business I decided that this would not be the best way for me to start. Instead I just took the time to learn some of the computer skills that I needed to have in order to be successful. While you may think that learning these things is going to take the time you will be surprised how easy they are once you start taking action.
When I was starting my business, I made the decision that I was going to spend a lot of my time on the Internet. I am so used to spending most of my time in an office that I really didn’t know what to expect. However, after I got the tools that I needed to do my job online I was amazed with what I could accomplish. Now I just had to take action and build my business! You can do the same thing, it’s just going to take a little bit of time.
