The best to survive a recession is to depend on the public sector. You have to work really hard to get fired from the public sector. The biggest mass murderer in British history was Doctor Harold Shipman. He may have killed between 150 and 250 patients. He only got struck off by the General Medical Council, which is meant to uphold standards, after he had been convicted.

For the public sector, recession is simply a time when there are more sales in the shops, holidays are cheaper and you can get a great bargain on a new car.

But if you’ve failed to land a plum public sector contract, here are some other strategies for survival.

The goal is to make sure that when the personnel department (sorry, Strategic Human Capital Resources Division) and your boss go through all the staff, a red line is not drawn through your name. Here is how:

Performance.
Top organisations like GE and IBM annually cull the bottom 10 per cent of management. Recessions are a good way of raising standards by losing the lower performers. To make sure you are not in the bottom 10/20/30 per cent you need to:
Do all the basics of your job well. Career-limiting moves become career ending moves in a recession.

  • Have a claim to fame — be known for doing something really well, be central to an important project. Make it impossible to be fired.

Read the rest at BNET.

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