Work Backwards
The thing that changes everything on a job search, Is when you get that email or call saying Yes, You’re Hired or See You Monday Morning. No doubt about it, ‘that call’ is a big thing. But where does a big thing like this come from? When you work backwards, it becomes possible to see an unbroken chain. An interconnected sequence of many little things, all leading us towards the main event. The reason we get ‘the call’, May be due to the last meeting we had just before it. A meeting that could only take place because of an earlier conversation. Working back...
Read MoreLines and Lines of Questions
Immediate answers are a trick. And their cutest trick is to make us think they are instant when in reality even the most immediate answers come from long, long lines of questions. Lines, strings, chains, streams, paths, roads, cycles, flows, trains and planes and galaxies of questions. There are no immediate answers. Immediate answers are a trick. Sometimes lines of questions are very long. These long lines can reach way, way back to the past. Sometimes the question string or stream is shorter. Often the path of questions follows an offshoot, tributary, smaller road or turn we took from a...
Read MoreJob Search Nonsense
If we put aside the super-hero act for a moment, a typical day on the job searching treadmill usually goes something like this…….. You get up early, check email, check your schedule then do a quick scan of the job boards. This is followed by a visit to your favourite recruitment and networking sites. Perhaps then you’ll read the employment section in the local paper, if it’s that day of the week. After this initial flurry of activity there’s usually a moment’s pause to reflect on what you’ve just achieved. Then you wonder how to spend the remaining 7 hours and 53 minutes...
Read MoreWhat Employers Value
We undervalue and undersell ourselves every single day. Even as jobseekers we have huge capacity and huge potential but are sometimes the last to see it. I read an article yesterday about US employers hiring ex-service personnel. Companies that do this want to do it again. Here was the reason given in one instance, “they wanted to hire him for the things they couldn’t teach him. The intangibles that would make him excel.” That’s an employer’s way of saying, we’re hiring you for you. In other words, it’s not your technical skills (we can teach those)....
Read MoreImpossible Futures?
When we are out of work or on a job search, can we ever see ourselves as equal to a working person? I am just me Before I was just me I was the world’s most successful CEO Before I was the world’s most successful CEO I was a successful executive Before I was a successful executive I was a great manager Before I was a great manager I was a hard-working team member Before I was a hard-working team member I was just a newb Before I was just a newb I was a jobseeker Before I was a jobseeker I was just me I am just me “Every career has a past, every career has a future.”...
Read MoreYouth Unemployment hits 1m
What does a headline like this make you think? Did you think about the one million young people looking for work? The poor state of the country and the economy? The fact that everything was better in your day? Such thoughts are automatic responses to headlines like this. It’s not our fault, us human beings are just made that way. Newspapers should give away hot, sweet tea and a comfy sit-down with a headline like this. It would settle their readers’ jangling nerves but might would also create little moments of calm for us to see stories through the eyes of those directly involved....
Read More
Recent Comments