| Our building products industry is moving through some challenging supply and demand headwinds. A number of corporations are resizing, letting go the middle and underperformers or cutting the high-cost incomes first as they reorganized their leadership structures. For high-performing, competitive, high-energy leaders, “unemployed” is a label they loathe. It can quickly become a real psychological obstacle.
It doesn’t have to be. Here are the practices I recommend to stay sharp, stay healthy, and land the right next career opportunity, verses just landing the next job. |
| 1. Spend 90% of your time sharpening the tools in your toolbox, not job hunting.
Only 10% of your time should go to searching for your next role. The other 90% belongs to raising your education and competency level in critical areas, doubling down on strengths or more importantly closing on competency gaps.
Reading great books aimed squarely at the gaps in your skill set. Leadership, culture building, turn around strategy, sales leadership, and adopting Ai into your business model are all rich areas. Reading does two things: It provides new solutions to current challenges in the industry, but often more importantly it gives you new ways to communicate and reach a younger team with relevant analogies they will embrace. Crystalizing your messaging is key.
Why cap the search time at 10%? Because if you spend more than that refreshing job boards and submitting resumes, anxiety and depression will soon set in fast. You can be a victim of your own success, the higher your level of title and responsibility the less of those roles are open. You can’t control when the right role appears. You can control how ready you are when it does.
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| 2. Earn the right certifications, not an MBA
Alongside your reading, contact local universities about your next certification. Notice I’m not saying an MBA. I believe the MBA is one of the biggest wastes of time and money an executive can take on.
A Six Sigma Black Belt, on the other hand, is extremely effective, particularly for professionals over 50. This might be the highest ROI investment you can make on yourself. 80 year old people don’t struggle finding career roles due their birth year, its their level low energy, adaptability and curiosity that lacking. A Black Belt is a stamp of approval that says you are not old in your mindset. It says you are curious, innovative, and constantly growing. It shows you’ve built new ways to assess problems and opportunities, and to win grassroots engagement from broader diverse teams to solve obstacles facing companies today.
The other high-value area is AI. Pursue certifications in how to leverage and implement AI across an organization, how to mitigate the broader risks, and how to get teams to increase adoption and optimize business plans. AI is the greatest technology-driven productivity lift our industry has seen in our lifetime. Your next employer will expect you to know how to use it.
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| 3. Hit the gym every day, maybe twice
If you find yourself between roles, work out at least once a day, if not twice. The reason is simple: depression and anxiety set in easily, but it’s nearly impossible to sink into a funk while you’re at the gym. Exercise releases endorphins, serotonin, and oxytocin, and that puts your body and mind in the right state to handle the adversity around career transitions.
Don’t underestimate this. Take care of yourself: eat right, hit the gym, take long walks in the woods. Keeping your mind right is key to the job search.
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| 4. Pitch your entrepreneurial impact on the P&L
When you present yourself, focus on the entrepreneurial impact you’ve had in past roles. By entrepreneurial, I mean how your ownership around decisions and actions tied directly to the P&L.
Organizations today are looking to do more with less. They don’t want corporate charlatans who tell a good story and are excellent at hiding and riding on coattails. They want leaders who take action, assess market situations swiftly, and understand strategic dynamics. Most of all, they want leaders who are excellent at execution, on both the sales and operations side of the P&L.
So frame your story in those terms. Show how your decisions and your relationship building skills moved revenue, margin, and reduced the cost for the overall organization.
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| 5. Be strategic, and avoid the rebound job
How you make your own career decisions reflects how you’ll make executive decisions in the role. Hiring leaders notice.
If you can, build a personal cash position that lets you sit on the sidelines for three to six months and cover your household expenses, that might be your most strategic action. That runway buys you the freedom to ask all the right questions in your next interview. Does this opportunity fit my personal goals? Does it match my cultural values? Will it challenge me as a professional?
The alternative is taking the first offer that comes your way because you’re so anxious about being unemployed that you just need a job. Be careful. There a rebound girlfriend analogy here somewhere. You’ll spend tens of thousands of hours in your next role, so take the time and make a plan.
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| The bottom line
Time between roles is a rare opportunity, don’t waste . Sharpen your tools, earn credentials that signal growth, take care of your body, tell your story in P&L terms, and choose your next move deliberately. Do that, and you won’t just land a job. You’ll land your next best career opportunity. Reach out to Misura Group as we actively helping the best companies build amazing teams.
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