Job Security Isn’t Coming. Build Security of Employability.

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Public conversations, especially in Jordan, still speak of job security as something that can be provided on demand. I’m always surprised, not because stability isn’t a worthy goal, but because this is no longer practical. Not globally, and not in Jordan.

Industries shift, budgets tighten, AI reassigns tasks, and organizations restructure faster than policies can keep up. The only honest and feasible option left is this: security of employability, or your ability to access and secure new, decent work quickly, again and again. Though even that has limits. The altarnative to the latter, is to create new opportunities and options for yourself beyond full-time work in an organization.

There is still some form of job security, but it’s increasingly tied to skills, not a guaranteed seat for life by virtue of tenure or “First In” principle. And formal job security, to an extent, still clusters in the public sector and highly regulated industries.

What quietly erodes the rest: Informality and the “jobs gap” (people who want work but aren’t counted as unemployed).

The market rewards people who can adapt, prove value fast, and move when needed.

Let’s Name the Terms

Job security = a protected seat for life or for at least 25 years.
Security of employability = portable capability: skills, proof, reputation, and relationships strong enough that when a seat disappears from an organization, you don’t. The New Deal (Shared Responsibility)
Governments: Fair, meaninful and up-to-date rules/legislation with a thorough understanding of the current marketplace. Create a stable, transparent business climate where investment and innovation can thrive. Build modern infrastructure and align education with market needs so citizens are prepared for the jobs that exist and the ones yet to emerge. Focused and meaningful investment in human capital.
Employers: Design roles that serve the organization’s mission, select on capability not connections, honor fair and clear employment terms, and create an environment conducive to high performance.
You: learn with intention, stack portable skills, show proof of value, and build relationships before you need them. Most importantly, be someone’s solution to a problem.

Where AI Fits

AI doesn’t end this deal; it raises the bar. The winners won’t be those who fear AI or don’t understand it, but those who aim it at important problems, automating the busywork so they can focus on judgment, trust, and delivery.

What Follows

What follows is a series on the realities of employability. It reflects my perspective, shaped by twenty-five years of interviewing and hiring hundreds of people, along with observations and practical points to consider. At times I’ll refer to Jordan-specific contexts, and at others to regional pathways. Treat these as examples, not prescriptions. Take what’s useful for your situation and leave the rest.

How to Learn for Life

Learning with Purpose Given the new market realities since COVID and AI reshaping jobs and reassigning tasks, learning can’t be a phase you finish after you graduate from university. When people say, “He has a university degree,” my answer to that would be: So! A university degree doesn’t guarantee a job, I’ll explain why in future posts.

Learning, at least the way I see it, must be continuous if you want to keep pace with change, enhance your capabilities to stay employable, or maintain or increase your earning potential.

What You Can Control (And What You Can’t)

Aim for Demand-resilient Niches: Healthcare, utilities/energy, core government services, regulated finance/telecom), AI.
Max Your Formal Protections: Clear written contract (don’t let your employer get away with just verbal terms), social security enrollment, and notice/severance clarity.
Develop Skills That Can Create Value: Skills that create value either seperately or together when you stack them together. Credentials and skills recognized across MENA/GCC.
Diversify Income: For knowledge workers, this could mean consulting, online courses, or a second client in your lane.

Note: Recommended reading for new graduates and early/mid-career knowledge workers.

✦ Managing Oneself by Peter F. Drucker: Short and practical. Helps you clarify strengths, how you work, your values, and where you contribute most, so your career choices compound instead of drifting. And what you need to do early on for those later years in life where your either board or you simply need to change lanes. Yes, I know it’s ages old but it holds timeless wisdom in 99 pages.

✦ Mastery by Robert Greene: A long-term map for building depth in one’s area of expertise. Covers the apprenticeship mindset, deliberate practice, handling plateaus, and turning skills into rare, trusted capability. Note: skip any “10,000 hours” rule simplifications; for the underlying research, see psychologist K. Anders Ericsson who studied and has extensive research on expert performance.

A Few Words for Organizations (Public & Private)The Quiet Killers of Organizational Performance

Before I turn to the ambitious learners who want to make an impact, build a career, and thrive, a word to organizations, public and private, about the forces that quietly drain capability. These aren’t all the problems, but they are the ones I see most often and rank very high on my list.

Wasta and Nepotism: There is a force that quietly weakens organizations: wasta in hiring, promotions, succession planning opportunities, and/or compensation based on personal connections rather than merit or a demonstrable track record.

For the individual, wasta can feel like a shortcut. For the organization, it is a slow poison. It puts people in seats they are not prepared to fill, blocks people who are likely to succeed, and over time erodes the organization’s capability.

In a world where industries shift and AI raises the bar, wasta does not only hurt fairness; it hurts competitiveness. Technology and budgets cannot fix poor person-role fit.

Alhamdulillah, across three decades leading HR across regions and in large and mid-sized organizations, I have never, absolutely never, recruited a relative or a friend. When I saw genuine potential but a candidate could not get past our interviewers or did not fit our vacancy, I still supported them until they landed a role, if not with us, then elsewhere.

I was also fortunate to work with CEOs who modelled this discipline. When someone handed them a CV, they redirected it to HR or passed it to me with a simple request: if you see potential, please put them through the process. No pressure. No shortcuts.

When I recruit, I think like a diver for pearls, someone who searches for gems. Recruitment is how you find the capable people who will serve your organization for the next five to ten years (and longer if you are lucky). Recruitment and selection is not about getting through CVs. It is about building organizational capability that can weather change and storms.

A seat is a scarce asset. Filling it through wasta is not a recruitment problem. It is an integrity problem. Why waste a valuable seat by not choosing the best person you can recruit through a proper, capability-focused selection process?

How it Hurts: seats go to connections, not competence, which leads to poor quality of work and performance, rework, managers firefighting and an “effort does not matter” mindset. Your best people leave, and others lower their standards.

If you are keen to help a relative or a friend, do it on your time and on your dime. If they fail, you bear the consequences, not an organization that is trying to compete in the market or serve the public/citizens. You can also give them solid advice or run a mock interview.

But what if a friend or relative truly is a strong candidate and would serve your organization well? Then declare the relationship and have a panel interview them fairly without pressure. But never in an HR, finance or procurement role. Those should be completely independent of any relationships.

Once, a colleague put heavy personal pressure on me to recruit the wife of his best friend. I said no, held the line despite him turning aggressive for the next few weeks. I hired the best person for the team. They did a great job.

Poor Selection and Interviewing Processes: When evidence is thin, bias and convenience take over. You end up choosing who is likable or available, not who will perform.

How It Hurts: Bad hires keep costing time, morale, and money, again and again.

You’ll Notice: “they interviewed well, but…”, surprises after onboarding, slow time to competence, and hiring managers avoiding ownership.

Do Instead:

Write a clear, robust job description tied to outcomes.
Prepare job-relevant questions. Prepare for the interview; do not wing it.
Ask the same core questions to every candidate.
Use simple scorecards to compare answers.
Add a second independent interviewer with good judgment.
Include a practical task. A short case, small take-home, or brief job trial.
Hold a quick alignment chat after interviews to compare notes.
Train every hiring manager on your team in basic interviewing skills.

Note: Our government sector has rolled out a performance management system. Just as important, if not more, is building capability-focused recruitment and selection.

Poorly defined roles

Too many roles are written around titles, degrees, and a random number of years, not around the actual work. You end up screening for status, not performance.

Avoid:

The Education Trap: Defaulting to “BA required” or “MBA preferred” for roles that do not truly need it. Education can help, but it is not a substitute for capability.
Vague Knowledge Areas: Listing broad topics like “strong business knowledge” or “HR expertise” without naming the specific knowledge that drives results, such as payroll compliance, vendor management, or root cause analysis.
Years Of Experience Myths: Asking for 8 to 10 years for tasks that a solid three-year performer can do, or asking for 1 year for a role that really needs maturity. Years are a rough proxy. Outcomes are the truth.
Tool Creep: Stuffing the JD with tools “nice to have” and then treating them as must-haves. The result is a smaller pool and a weaker hire.

How It Hurts: mismatched hires, long ramp-up time, frustration on both sides, and probation churn. You reward keyword hunters, not problem solvers.

You Will Notice: candidates who look perfect on paper but cannot deliver, interviews that drift because no one is sure what “good” performance looks like.