None of us wants to get fired from our jobs, especially in the present economic climate where nobody is quite sure what is likely to happen in the world over the next couple of years. Besides that, if you are lucky enough to get a new job you will have to start your long climb up the corporate ladder all over again. It is always best to change jobs on your own terms, such as when you are leaving to take on a better position that is more rewarding – not when your employer decides, and you could find yourself out in the street with no salary coming in next week.

With this in mind you don’t want to run the risk of losing your job when you are unprepared. It is therefore in your own interests to make yourself as fire-proof as you possibly can.  The following eight ways of making your present job more secure can help you retain your position while those around you might not be so successful.

Firstly you must always be aware that you are employed so you can either make more money for your employer than it cost him to hire you, or that your production can make life easier for your boss. If you fail on either front your position could become precarious. In other words you must become a valuable asset in your own right, one that your employer would not want to run the risk of losing. You can do this in various ways some of them include the following:

1.     Work Hard and Keep Learning

Never be satisfied that you have done enough. Work hard always and try to improve as you go. A clock-watcher is soon noticed as is a worker who is willing to stay on to finish whatever it is that you are currently working on before clocking off and going home for the day. Read up on all aspects of your job and become an expert in whatever it is you are employed to do.

2.     Treat Your Job as a Lifestyle and not Just Work

There is a big difference in approaching your job as being a part of your life and that of simply turning up in the morning to do your bit and go home at night to start living. When you enjoy going to work you will know you are in the right job and if you sincerely like your job it will show up in the type of work you produce.

3.     Be Willing to Give and Take

If you find yourself in the position where you will be temporarily out of pocket to get your job completed don’t hesitate to pay up. Even if you can’t be reimbursed at a later date (which on most occasions you will be) still go out of your way to get your job completed, if you have to do so. Such dedication will be appreciated and will not go unnoticed even if you sometimes feel it is.

4.     Always be Punctual

It is important to all employers that their staff is on the job when they are expected to be. Sleeping in and generally being tardy in your approach to your work does not endear you to your employer, so why antagonise him or her. Always be on time and have your work finished by any deadline you might be given, even if it means working overtime.

5.     Don’t Relate Your Work Effort to Your Salary

Although it is important to make sure, when you first apply for a job, that you will be adequately compensated, from there on put it out of your mind. Once you start work it is your job to put in not to evaluate your own worth. That is your boss’ role. Once employed you should do your best to carry out any task given you, as economically as possible. When you start thinking you are worth more than you are getting paid you are on the slippery slope out. The only way to handle a situation like this is to find another employer who is willing to pay more for your services. If you are successful you can give your current employer a choice on whether he or she is willing to pay more to keep you on, or you move on.

6.     Do the Work Your Boss Wants You to do

Although all employers want their employees to show initiative, you are still an employee and you must do what your boss wants you to do, not what you want to do. If you feel your job can be done more efficiently in another way, by all means talk it over with your boss but get his or her approval before you make any changes.

7.     Be a Pleasant Workmate

It is important that all workplaces are pleasant places to work in. Do your bit to make it so. Always be pleasant to your workmates as well as to your employer. If hard financial times hit and the company you work for has to make some employees redundant, it is always the less pleasant workers who will lose their jobs first.

8.     Never Behave Inappropriately

The office bully is never appreciated. Those who try to laud it over others by acting rudely or using bad language when it is inappropriate will not obtain support when it comes to thinning out the workforce because of an economic downturn.

This article was written by Justin Toladro a writer for lifeinsurancefinder.com.au, a website that compares life insurance quotes to help find the best policies in Australia.

Quitting your job is never an easy decision, but taking time to research advice can help you take a responsible approach to the situation. Ideally, you would want to have something lined up beforehand, but realistically, your job may take so much of your time that a proper job search is impossible while you’re still employed. If your main concern is just getting out as soon as possible, there are a few considerations to make before making such a big decision.

1. Build up your nest egg

Before you quit, save as much money as you can so you can comfortably continue your job search. It is commonly recommended that you save six months’ worth of living expenses, but in this economy it is crucial that you build up about a year. You want to avoid putting yourself in a drastic situation, and it’s not uncommon these days to spend a year unemployed, even for the most diligent job hunters.

2. Further your education

Perhaps you feel unhappy in your current position because you feel you have greater potential than your company recognizes. One way you can prove yourself and open up new opportunities is by acquiring some form of higher education. These days, you can enroll in an online MBA program to further your education while still balancing other responsibilities. Doing so can help prepare you for a new profession, simultaneously improving your appeal to potential employers.

3. Take a formal approach

It might be more cathartic to just give your boss the finger and walk out, but filing a resignation letter and explaining your decision is the most effective way to quit. With this approach, you won’t burn bridges and can still use this employer as a reference for your job search.

4. Discuss your decision

Although you are certainly capable of making decisions autonomously, it’s always better to discuss your decision with family and friends, since they may also be affected by your decision and can offer helpful advice on your predicament. Let them know your reasoning so the decision doesn’t sound so abrupt. If they support your decision, they may be able to help you acquire new employment or help you out during your future unemployment.

5. Plan realistically for your alternatives

Some jobs out there are truly just bad jobs, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that your alternatives are really much better. Determine why you are leaving your current position and whether or not this can be realistically reversed by acquiring employment elsewhere. If you are generally dissatisfied with the line of work you do—for example, if you work in the legal field, but your heart is with veterinary science—you may have to plan for life changes that are more dramatic.

Making the decision to leave your job can be nerve-wracking, especially with today’s anemic job market. Still, thinking through your decision and planning for the future may be one of the best choices you can make for your career.

A few months back I wrote a post about how certain jobs have most likely disappeared in the global economic downturn and simply aren’t coming back. Today I saw a great online article on Yahoo Finance that details another list of 10 industries that have bled jobs over the past few years, why they’ve lost the jobs, and why they’re not coming back.

The article is worth reading to hopefully find that your chosen industry isn’t on that list and also just to see what is going on in the world today in terms of shifting priorities and trends.

In a nutshell the article mentions government, construction, installation, maintenance & repair, automotive, pharmaceuticals, telecom, newspapers, airlines, realtors and bank tellers as being the list of job categories that have suffered job losses that most likely not recover.

Certainly, most of us can probably see why many in this list are jobs that are ones that are no longer as popular as in the past.

Clearly the automotive sector has suffered over the past few years and as far as newspapers go, am the only one who hasn’t purchased a physical paper in years since I can get the news I need for free online?

As a recruiter I can think of numerous times when someone has turned down the opportunity to pursue a job I had available because they either didn’t like the industry or the company. In the near future, how many people will also act this way, and become more selective when choosing not only a company to work for but the industry as well, taking into consideration both the current health and the future of that industry?

How many times have you heard this phrase recently when talking about job losses in a particular industry or sector? I’ve heard it too many times to remember but it’s true. In many cases, jobs that are being lost will most likely never come back.

In some cases, companies downsize and eliminate jobs and then the remaining staff are simply expected to pick up the slack and do the work that used to be done by the person(s) whose jobs were eliminated.

As more and more jobs – particularly service-related jobs – are sent overseas by major employers, it’s difficult to say if many will ever return. As technology changes, many jobs also become obsolete and they are lost as a result, too.

Customer service jobs are interesting in that some companies such as telcos have faced a backlash and have started to bring their support function back inhouse after sending the jobs offshore years ago.

The general trend though has been for these companies to send middle-skill positions to countries that pay lower wages and most likely these jobs are not returning any time soon.

This situation has been exacerbated by the global recession so if you’re in the market for a new job you might find yourself competing with more people for a fewer number of jobs as many people have already discovered. The difference is that the jobs that were lost aren’t necessarily coming back once the economy picks up.

I have worked on a number of open jobs where the hiring manager or hiring authority has suggested that they’d prefer to hire someone who is already employed. In other words, they suggest that they’d prefer not to hire someone who is currently unemployed. In some rare cases, I’ve had hiring managers tell me to not even bother sending them the resume of anyone who isn’t currently working. It would seem that this sort of practice is increasing.

A recent news story I read discussed a recruitment firm in South Carolina searching for managers for a grocery store who specifically stated in the ad that they were only looking for people who currently held a job.

Mind you, I’ve also seen cases where the opposite has happened: I recall working on jobs where the position needed to be filled ASAP and the hiring manager told me that they’d prefer to hire someone who was currently out of work and who could start immediately!

When a company states that they want to hire someone currently employed, it’s interesting to note the reason why. Depending on your local labor laws it might not be illegal to state that you want to only consider job applicants who are currently employed but I guess my question would be what are you trying to accomplish?

In the case of the grocery store looking for managers, does that mean an unemployed grocery store manager who was recently downsized is less desirable than a person with no direct experience as a grocery store manager but who is currently employed in another job? Apparently they are since their current out-of-work job status will automatically rule them out of consideration for the job.

If you’re applying to jobs and are currently unemployed, you do need to be cognizant that this sort of treatment exists not only from hiring managers but recruiters too. Recruiters can also discriminate against those who are currently out of work thinking that it will be an uphill battle to help them get back into the workforce compared to a similar candidate who is currently working.

Having a job can give you extra leverage in your job search that you might have not otherwise considered. The longer you’re out of work, the more questions arise as to why you haven’t been able to find a new job, too.

Sometimes we can get into a position at work where we feel very comfortable and would be quite happy to stay in this role, with this company and keep things the way they are. Not everyone wants to climb the corporate ladder and some people find a position they are comfortable with an dare happy to leave it at that.

The problem these days is the same problem that has always existed when you work for someone else: there will always be decisions made that affect you that you have no control over.

Companies get sold.

Businesses go out of business.

People get laid off.

Jobs get moved to other countries.

Positions become redundant with new technology.

There are lots of reasons why getting too comfortable can cause you grief when suddenly the rug gets pulled out from underneath you and you weren’t expecting it (when is it every expected!?)

Back in 2000, I got laid off when the company I was working for went out of business. I worked in sales and should have seen it coming since we weren’t making enough money to stay afloat but I really figured things would turn around and that in the meantime the owners would have enough money and patience to keep funding us until that day came.

They didn’t.

They pulled the plug and about 30 of us lost our jobs.

I had actually thought about looking for a new job as I was getting a bit bored with the job but then my sales really picked up and suddenly I was happy again! Things were going really well for me personally for a few months and then suddenly, I was out of a job and was forced to look for a new one.

Since then I’ve become a big fan of cliches like “expect the unexpected” and “the only constant is change.”

In this case, I’d been with the company for 1.5 years and had just started getting comfortable. I know a guy who’d been with the same company for over 20 years, the only company he’d ever worked for in fact. He recently changed jobs to do something different and because his old employer had experienced a slowdown that had affected him personally since he was only working a few days a week.

I’m sure over the past 20 years he’d thought many times that this was the company he was going to retire with. At some point over the past year or so, it must have dawned on him that he needed to do something different and do something he may not have done in 20 years: search for a new job.

Getting comfortable at a job is great if you’re happy with what you do and the people you work with but as long as you’re working for someone else, your ultimate fate is always in someone else’s hands.

I’ve been laid off twice in my career. The first time was when I was working with a company that went bankrupt. I was coming into the office one morning and found our manager taping a note on the door that said “All classes are canceled today.” We were a computer training company, hence the reference to classes.

As we made eye contact, I could tell she wasn’t very happy so I just said “should I bother unpacking my lunch?” to which she replied “I’ll be making an announcement shortly.”

I didn’t bother unpacking my lunch that day. About 30 minutes after I arrived and the other staff had as well, the owner of the company appeared (he lived out of state) along with a bankruptcy agent who informed us that the company was filing for bankruptcy and that effective immediately, we were all out of work. He kindly asked us to pack up our stuff and asked that we leave the office within the next 30 minutes, so that’s what we did.

I recall the sight of us all leaving the office at about 9:45am that day, boxes and bags in hand. I remember thinking that everyone that saw me probably knew I’d been laid off since I was carrying all my stuff with me. It reminded me of the movies where you see someone losing their job and then seeing them leave the office with all their belongings in paper banking boxes.

I knew business had been slow but I figured that things would pick up and that owner would keep pumping in money until that day came.

Obviously that’s not what happened.

I got back to my condo and wondered what I was going to do next. Then I started wondering how I was going to even figure out what to do next.

The second time I got laid off, I was part of a bigger downsizing along with other staff. At the time I was working for an Internet-based company and the reality was that we were becoming a staff-heavy company competing with a lot of mom and pop shops being run out of their basement with little to no overhead.

In both cases, the circumstances were different but the result was the same.

Getting laid off can be a really demotivating, upsetting, devastating experience. That’s especially true when the economy is tough and jobs are scarce as they are these days in many industries and regions.

To read some past entries on firings, layoffs and downsizings, click here.