Recession-proof strategy 4: Run

- If your coworkers are starting to take severance packages and your city's Main Street is getting boarded up, you might want to run from recession. Running can take various forms. Running to another place, running to another job title, running to another company, or running to another industry. Running's a carefully thought out strategy though, but if you're only thinking about what you're running from, you're gonna get yourself in trouble. You need to think just as much if not more about what you're running to. Leaving behind your city, and company, or even in your country, and industry might be tough, but there are always opportunities to escape recession. I have a friend who discovered that there was limited upward mobility in the consulting firm that he was working at following the 2001 recession, so he moved to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. He'd never even been there before, but he made the move and he's been very successful there. Moving physically to another city, state, or country changes everything in your life, so you need to think about where the opportunities are, where the jobs are, before you make a leap of that magnitude. Just because your company is laying off people in San Francisco, doesn't mean they're not hiring like crazy in Dubai or Denmark. If they need people elsewhere, your company will also likely pay to move your entire family. They may even give you a living allowance. They might pay for your kids to attend an English-speaking international school. There are all kinds of perks in these so-called ex-pat packages. And to get an idea of where these opportunities are, you should look at where your current company has posted jobs, and look to see where your colleagues might be transferring to. To keep your international options open, you should make sure to build a broad network at your company. And you wanna be schmoozing at international conferences, not just national and regional ones. When considering where to run think about where you're willing to relocate to, geographically. The more flexible you are, the more options you'll have in a downturn. You can physically run to another city or country, but you can also run to another profession. If you're in a dying industry or a failing company, running from these things can actually be a more radical move than running from your region. On the upside it means that you could bail from a losing proposition without changing your city, your house, or any other part of your life. But you first have to ask yourself, is it my industry that's hurting or just my company, or just my particular job within that company in that industry? If you're in autos and autos are rocking, but they're replacing factory workers with robots, your industry is fine, it's your job title that's endangered. Look for a different job in the same industry. For companies, stock prices are the most obvious signal of who's up and who's down. You also have insider knowledge of your own company's outlook. Of course, you can't use that knowledge to buy or sell stock, that's illegal. But nothing is stopping you from using that knowledge about your company to decide whether to stay aboard, or jump ship. That's not insider trading, it's just smart career planning. In 2007, I ran from investment banking just ahead of the mortgage crisis, and when the recession spread to consulting in energy in 2009, I made the run to Austin, Texas and its stable economy. I'm happy in Austin, but you never know. I may run again, and you might too.