Insight

In my experience I find that tough times are also an opportunity to do an assessment of our careers and our employer. We have developed a set of hard questions which, if you answer honestly, will help you make an informed self assessment of your career situation rather than just depending on "gut". Following are the questions.

1. From a scale of 1-10 (strongest) how would you rate this crisis as a trigger to your career. Does it cause you to reflect deeply into what you are doing currently or absolutely no impact at all?

2. Are you currently succeeding on your job? Have you exceeded your quota? Have you measurably increased efficiency? Have you increased inventory turns? Have you saved for the company?

3. Do you think your current company has the capability to withstand the shock of the crisis? Do you feel that your job is getting more unstable?

4. Is the region or territory that you are managing affected by this crisis? How so? What are you doing about it?

5. Will your income be adversely affected by the crisis? If so, will you be cutting spending or increase income from other sources?

6. Are you considering picking up new skills/knowledge during this period of crisis? Are you considering doing an MBA for example? If so, how do you intend to leverage your new knowledge?

7. Is the industry that you are in affected by the crisis? Are you thinking of changing industry?

8. Are you maintaining the same level of intensity or energy for the job? If not, why? Is it really due to the crisis?

9. Are the targets and goals set by you before the crisis affected by it now? If so, what adjustments do you tend to do to achieve your goals?

10. Has the timing of this crisis come at the worst time for your career? If so, why and what can be done?