How to handle your career in a downturn

Career management in the 21st century is going to be very different from in the 20th. Your position will be charted by your contribution ("I do telecom M&A") much more than your position ("I am a director at Deutsche Bank").

Shaped more by markets than hierarchies, careers will flourish or wither according to rules that are quite new.

This is especially true in a downturn. A collapse in transaction volume may be long-lasting and in lean times only the fittest survive. The City of London, for example, has been shedding staff for well over a year.

So, how safe is your job? Here are seven questions to ask yourself.

1. Are you learning anything? Specifically, what have you learned in the last six months and what do you expect to learn in the next six months? If there is nothing to learn, it may be time to move on before someone else asks you to. If your job has become easy, someone else will do it for less.

2. If your job were vacant, would you get it if you applied for it? Regular benchmarking is always a good idea. Read advertisements for jobs similar to you own. What skills do they ask for? Ask headhunters what kind of skills and experience an ideal candidate for your job would have, and then try to make sure you have them.

3. Are you being invested in? Or are you being milked? If you are a highly experienced and efficient corporate bond salesman, and have been doing it for ages, you might have got to the point where the company is delighted you are there, but are not doing anything to develop you for the next time there's a complete dearth of new issues.

4. What do you contribute? Try giving a two-minute summary to yourself in the mirror of what you do at work and why it matters. The chances are that if you can't manage this, your boss probably couldn't either.

5. What would you do if your job disappeared tomorrow? If you can't answer this, you probably haven't thought about what marketable skills you have. List them on a piece of paper. Does your employer or your colleagues know what they are? These days job security depends as much on internal positioning of yourself as external.

6. Do you enjoy what you do? People who are having fun at work are much more likely to be reaching for the next challenge.

7. Are you worried about your job? The chances are that if you are, you probably should be.

Few companies review performance more than once or twice a year and you might be in trouble without even knowing it. Thinking about the questions above should give you a first indication of whether you should be actively managing your career rather than sitting there and waiting for the push.