With a tight employment market, most workers tell me they're trying to keep a low profile and not make waves, hoping that way, they'll get to keep their jobs. Most of the mail I get is from someone asking, "What do I do to survive the cut?" Survival is their goal.

If that describes you, you're a goner. You will be one of those people who is let go or can't find a job because you're thinking the opposite way you need to. Instead of thinking scared, you need to think about how to be exceptional.

Your company-or the new one you're trying to get hired by-is looking for fresh ways to be more efficient and competitive. They must, or they won't make it. If you can help them do that, you're somebody they want.

To stand out, make a difference and be somebody they want to keep or recruit, ask yourself: What is no one else doing that can make the company more efficient and competitive?

A recent article in The New York Times featured a woman who not only kept her job at Oracle Corporation (which has cut hundreds of jobs in the last year), she just got her third promotion in four years. She caught her bosses' attention by taking the initiative to present an "internal road show" to better explain to salespeople how pricing and licensing decisions are made to more scrutinizing customers.

Another woman, hired as a secretary at a small company, took on all types of responsibilities that weren't in her job description. As a result, she was recently promoted. But in a pinch she will still answer the phone, take an order and send it to the customer, says her boss in the article.

To keep your job, get a promotion or new position today, you must accept a fundamental reality: no one can predict the future. Change is accelerating and unpredictable. Therefore, one of the greatest qualities you can offer an employer is flexibility and responsiveness to whatever the moment is calling for.

The failure to adapt is a long-term prescription for doom, says Seth Godin, author of Survival Is Not Enough (Free Press.) "The way evolution works in nature is through frequent, nonfatal, incremental change," he says in The New York Times article.

So instead of surviving, plan on evolving. Figure out a way, he says, to "'make a tiny change to a tiny portion of the people you serve and see if it serves you better'-but not enough of a change to cost you a job if it doesn't work out."

The same goes for a California woman, Carol, who wrote me: "My new part time job has only added up to 350 hours since February. I want to work at least two days a week. What can I say to my supervisor to find out why I'm not getting more hours?"

Instead of asking that question, she needs to make small changes in her job. Show her supervisor how putting more time in to the job will make the company more efficient and competitive. She might do tasks outside her defined role. Pitch in other places where the company needs help.

Change is the new normal, says Godin. It doesn't have to be painful. It starts with letting go of the past. Then redefining what change means to you. Instead of "change equals death," make it "change equals opportunity."

© by Andrea Kay