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BY Joel Junker

Episode 114 – Silver Linings of 2020 and Looking Forward to 2021

Well, here we are! The beginning of 2021. What were you thinking about one year ago? I’ll share what I was thinking about: I had big goals for growing our reach with JMO candidates. Our client companies had predicted a lot of openings throughout 2020 and, together with our recruiting team, we needed to find the most talented JMOs who were making a transition and wanted to become the next generation of business leaders.

All of this looked on track by the end of February after a great January 2020 Conference. Then, within weeks, my thoughts went from record setting to reorganizing expectations. We changed our conferences from an in-person format to a virtual experience, organizing our office to support social distancing, conducting Zoom trainings, and more.

The changes brought about by the announcement of a global pandemic impacted every facet of the economy. In fact, unemployment rose to a record 14.7% within a month and GDP dropped in the second quarter to the worst since the Great Depression on an annualized basis.

However, companies continued to hire talented leaders through it all! The silver lining for those who made the transition in 2020 found themselves in critical positions with companies, gaining valuable experience. For example, we have Cameron-Brooks Alumni manufacturing the Covid vaccine at one the largest biopharmaceutical manufacturers in the world. We also have Alumni working on consulting projects to help companies develop business continuity plans that mitigate disruptions from Black Swan events like a pandemic. 2020 became a difficult time to transition, but for those who started their business career in the midst of it all were provided a valuable and maybe once in a lifetime experience.

Cameron-Brooks CEO, Chuck Alvarez, talks about the silver linings of 2020 in this special episode of our podcast (all of our episodes are special, I just consider this one special because it was Chuck’s first guest appearance). Chuck also talks about what to expect in 2021 and his answer will surprise you: nobody can really project but we all hope and believe it will be way better than 2020. Without knowing the future for certain, he provides a lot of great advice on how to manage your career and the transition. I, personally, listened to this conversation twice I found it so valuable.

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