How to Safeguard Your Print Career

If you’ve been worrying about your print career, you’re not alone. Economic uncertainty and technology disruption will continue to affect printing companies. Safeguarding your position and preparing for unexpected career off-ramps and opportunities.

TRICKLE DOWN: HOW WORLD UPHEAVAL AFFECTS YOUR PRINT CAREER

Global economic and tech disruptors (tariffs, supply chain, industry consolidation, the pervasiveness of AI) are concerns and distrations to printing company owners. This year especially, owners will need to steer hard to keep their businesses on the road.

CEOs and board members will be pushing leadership to solidify earnings and boost cash flow. Companies may have to renegotiate lines of credit in a time of rising interest rates and tightening credit lines. Companies may need to make financial guarantees to suppliers, which impacts gain the cash they need to run the business.

Unfortunately, the path to cash flow often means cutting jobs. It’s a problematic solution because owners need employees — and yet people are the most “liquid” of the company asserts. Salaries and benefits usually account for well over 50% of a printing company’s expenses. Cutting even one employee means a 133% add back including employment expenses.

Not to worry, though. Here’s what you can do from the employee side to protect your print career.

YOUR TO-DO LIST: MAKE IT, CHECK IT, DO IT

Well before there’s a whiff of layoffs in the air, you need to be prepared.

Update your resume. Analyze the logical and desirable next steps in your print career. Figure out which positions you’d accept, if offered. If those opportunities open up, you want to be ready.

Print your resume and keep it where you can grab it quickly. I speak from experience. The new owners of the company where I worked arrived without warning on the scene and wanted to meet each of the employees like something out of the movie Office Space. I had my resume in a file and knew right where it was for my meeting with the bigwigs.

Drill deep into the ROI you bring to your job, and make a visible impact in those areas regularly. As you go through the exercise of updating your resume and analyzing your value, make notes and put dates on your calendar to remind yourself to make regular and visible financial and performance impacts in your company.

Ttwice a month your manager should notice the little and big things where you make a difference in your company. If that seems excessive, just wait until your manager’s asked who should be cut. In the heat of that moment, you want to be known as a keeper.

Practice with AI and Agentic AI. You don’t have to be a programmer to understand how to write good prompts and build personal assistants and work bots. Talk to peers and participate in groups with people who do what you do at other companies. Practice using AI to streamline work and improve output. Volunteer to help your company navigate the use of AI.

Build your network with smart, good-hearted, well-connected people. Join and serve in useful organizations. Build bridges that benefit both you and your company. Maintain relationships. Populate your own contact list. Learn to use LinkedIn effectively.

Learn, learn, learn. We’ve all been in a bubble ever since most print companies stopped providing regular on-the-job training. You’re on your own, so pick reputable classes, advance your skills, and earn certificates if you can.

Make yourself indispensable by learning one or all of these: project management, IT, financial reporting and analysis, quality control, sales, customer service, prepress file fixing and color matching, website design, coding, and logistics.

SCENARIO PLANNING: BE RELENTLESS

When print career opportunities arise, either internally or outside the company, it’s hugely helpful to have already considered what you’d do in any situation.

This is called scenario planning, and you must do it for your print career.

For example, would you change jobs or take a lesser job if the money were significantly better? Would you accept a management job? Would you take less money for fewer hours? Would you work more hours with overtime with no end date in sight?

Think through these scenarios so that, if your employer proposes something, you’ve weighed the pros and cons and can make a print career decision confidently without delay or burning bridges.

CONSIDER THE LATTICE: IT MAY BE YOUR BEST OPTION

If you’ve attended Girls Who Print presentations, you’ve heard us talk about the concept of a lattice instead of a career ladder. Sometimes you have to move laterally or backwards to move ahead.

As you visualize your career path, look at unconventional ways to get where you want to go.

Talk to your mentor about how to map a plan that gives you more places to strategically go off course without endangering your progress.

IN TIMES OF UNCERTAINTY: TAKE COMMAND

You must take the initiative to safeguard your own print career – there’s no two ways about it. No one else will do it for you.

Sit down and start planning today. You are the true guardian of your print career.