Sital Ruparelia

During the last financial services downturn in 2002/03 I worked as a recruiter in London’s financial district. The market was tough and we were all feeling pretty low – not too dissimilar to the mood across the industry today. 

Then one Friday lunchtime in the summer of 2002, the UK tabloid newspaper, The Sun, brought a group of bikini clad Page 3 models into London’s Square Mile on top of an open top bus in an attempt to “cheer up the City” (and of course create a nice little story for the weekend press). Whilst many of the girls in my office were far from impressed with the whole circus going on outside, all the guys rushed outside to see the passing of the ‘parade.’ We were like excited kids running outside to see Santa’s sleigh passing the house at Christmas (..very sad, I know).

So it was with a smile on my face that I read the story of Playboy offering Wall Street bankers the opportunity to earn extra cash by stripping off for an upcoming “Women of Wall Street” feature.

“When the news gets bad, then maybe that’s a chance to make people smile by coming up with something that puts a different twist on it”, said Gary Cole, Playboy’s photo editor.

But there is a more serious point here – a career lesson to learn from this story. 

As I have said before, every tough market still has opportunities – you just need to open your mind and redefine yourself in the changing job market to find them. Am I suggesting you go off and become a stripper for Playboy? Not at all -that’s a personal choice which must sit with your own values.

What I am suggesting is that you stop letting yourself be defined by your ‘job title’ or your ‘job function.’ For some people within financial services, their job title or function no longer exists within other institutions and so you will have to reinvent yourself to get back into the market.  In the modern economy, you don’t “belong to” any one company for life, and your main affiliation isn’t to any particular “function.” So stop defining yourself by your job title and stop being   confined by your job description. Instead, start thinking more about what value you bring to past, current and future employers – and what makes you unique based on the broad base of skills, talents and values you have.

Once you do that, you suddenly open the door to a wider range of opportunities and employers that you are uniquely placed to serve.

Whether the Playboy article makes you smile or disgusts you is irrelevant. Just accept the lesson from the article: you are a multi faceted individual who has many many talents to offer the market place. In a tight job market, you need to get real smart about discovering what they are and become flexible about the way that you offer them to the market place in order to succeed.

But that’s just my take on things. What do you think?

I’d love to hear your opinions – feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments box below.