Career Planning

As we return slowly over the next eighteen months to an economy which is creating more jobs than it is shedding, and unemployment starts to fall, in the world of employment we will see two issues return to the table:

• the shortage of skills within the market place, resulting from reduced birthrate
• the need for job holders to return to career planning

This blog and website is about employment and CV’s, so let us put the first one aside: that’s for God and Mother Nature to solve!

But the evidence of the past 12months should have woken many up to the benefits of career management, and also the risks of reliance on a career based on just a few employers.

Career Balance

I read a blog post the other day, written by a Career Coach who focuses on IT professionals. The article proposed that you only needed a Professional CV Writer when you were in one of three situations:

• Career transitions
• Employment gaps
• (lack of) hands on experience

I won’t disagree with those suggestions, but the biggest problems I have seen during this ongoing recession are two fold:

• A lack of an ability to communicate skills
• A series of unbalanced careers: overly reliant on one employer, and their needs for the type of skill

Corporate Work

The worst victims or offenders – depending on your view point – are the corporate workers. Initially I had a number of similar chat over a coffee conversations, which I now undertake as a 10minute chats over the telephone, so numerous are the requests:

• Hi Ian, I have some great skills, but I am unhappy with my corporate career, and want to leave!
• “Why? Are you being threatened with redundancy?”
• Most often answered as No, I just feel it would be time for a change. When what they really mean is that their company is undertaking a review, and they are feeling the cold chill of loss of power
• “OK, what are your skills?” Which is met by a long list of corporate orientated to that specific company skills
• “Great, and what qualifications do you have in that skill?” To which I am met with a blank stare – or silence on the telephone. Then, after what for them is a cliff edge experience of all the training opportunities they turned down and now regret, is followed by an explanation that they stopped studying at school (cringe thinks I – this will be tough) or university (less of a cringe) or that they have two+ children aged X and 10, and that stopped any free time they had (less of a cringe, more of an inevitable = “love your kids” answer)

What none of these people have realised before this conversation, is that much as though their salary is great – probably over proportioned – and their total package even better, they only deserve those benefits for working with that company. If the company has a good year, their benefits go up, if the company has a bad year, their benefits go up slightly slower – they never feel the economic chill. It is only when the whole economy has been placed in the economic freezer, that they suddenly feel cold. That’s when career planning really pays off!

Skills, Qualifications, Experience

Employers don’t ask for much when seeking new employees. They want a combination of skills, qualifications and applied experience. What these corporate workers have is the skills and the experience, but not thesupporting or confirming qualifications.

Now, much as though you can sell yourself to an employer without the necessary qualifications, you will:

• Take longer to sell yourself without the necessary qualification
• Have to accept a lower salary/package, as you recognise the employer is taking a great risk

Qualifications are what are termed in the world of employment as transportable competencies. It would be true that you could go too far the other way, and just study for your entire life: in which the reverse problem of lack of experience would occur.

The only way I have seen any number of people jump successfully from academia to the corporate commercial world is on the back of a theoretical or technological development that they were involved in the research development of. Resultantly, they have a unique skills and application experience of the theory or technology, so a skill short market which needs to deploy it will accept the potential downsides.

Career Planning = SQE Balance

Any Career Planning needs to be undertaken with the view of always balancing your skills, qualifications and experiences. I always say to anyone thinking about leaping into a new job or career, is:

What could you write on your CV two years hence,

and how does that take you towards your ideal career?

If you can’t answer that question, or the supplemental of:

What combination of skills, qualifications and experiences

will you have additionally gained that an employer would want?

Then don’t take the job!

If many of the corporate career people we help on a daily basis had listened to that advice before this recession, they wouldn’t need us so much. But they do, and we are always happy to help in any way we can.

Good Luck!

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Tough Interview Questions

Bob McIntosh, a career coach, asks: Why do people lose their wits at an interview? People who otherwise appear confident and accomplished, sometimes fall down at an interview. Why?

In answer:
Often, simply because they have not accepted the situation as one where pressure will be applied, and secondly are inexperienced in interview tactics.

As a trained interviewer, I find even the most professional and experienced types can crack at any time, even in pre “I’m looking for a job” situations.

The aim of the professional interviewer is never to crack the candidate, but to extract the truthful best from them, and explore capability. Yes, that means you will go towards the edge and beyond of capability. But, cracking a candidate should be seen as failure over success: its only the amateur interviewer/professional line manager who could be happy to have an unhappy job applicant.

Interview Tips

I normally find two things brighten up candidate performance:

• Explaining that it is a pressure situation, and that feeling nervous is OK and actually quite good
• Explaining simple interviewer tactics to candidates, to give them the theory behind question variation and points of address (ie: direct v indirect)

There is also a tactic I give them, which is that in the first 15mins of an interview to turn the question around on the interviewer: why do you ask that or what are you seeking in the answer to that question? Poor interviewers will bat it straight back, but if the candidate persists with I’m just seeking clarification then almost every one will expand the reasoning. The result is that the candidate now knows it is a two-way level street, over a combat situation!

All interview candidates normally perform much better after practise, so always get some in: either with professional assistance or by asking an experienced friend.

Good Luck!

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If you need an interview winning solution, sign-up for our Professional CV service

If you want to check the suitability of your existing CV, then get a FREE CV review

===================================================================

Career Change

photo credit: Wonderlane

Ben asks: I am 32 and I started a career in recruitment about 10 years ago, the past 3 years I have moved in to inhouse recruitment and have about 3 years experience within HR. Due to the economic downturn my role has been made part-time which has given me the opportunity to retrain in a different direction. I am however in the classic trap where I am on a decent salary and if I move in to a different field I am aware that a may have to take a huge drop. I am looking for inspiration of what I could re-train in or a direction I could move in to but feel that I am just going round in circles. I am trying to figure out a different direction perhaps combining my existing experience

In answer:
The key issues when changing careers, are (a) motivation (the why), and (b) the explanation (the commitment). Both answer the third question for the employer, which is: risk.

It would seem from the way you have written your question – and asking such questions in forums is good, as you can make what others may see as mistakes – is that the change was brought about by the fact you went part time, over a long term career ambition. You also don’t state what you want to do, just that you want to do something else.

Career change is wholly possible – particularly before the age of 45 – if you bare in mind the question of what you really want to do, and ideally test that area and then show some commitment to it; and then know how you explain the change to future employers.

Your situation sounds ideal for a career advisory service or a career coach, but you can sit down with three pieces of paper and do this yourself with the help of some friends:

• Sheet1:Vision – write down where you want to be in 10years: personal life, finances, family, etc – oh, and the last thing to write on that sheet are professional life/work!
• Sheet2: Now – write down what you like/dislike about your current situation/life: use a SWOT analysis
• Sheet3: Plan – write down how you get from sheet2 to sheet1 – the plan, with some thoughts on why

Now go and chat to three friends – at least one a women, they are more perceptive and direct – and take into account their input. Then modify the three sheets of paper, and chat to them again – your friends will give you the most honest feedback.

I want to give you a thought here: if your true calling in life paid less but made you happy, would you do it? Anyone can be a millionaire these days at whatever they do: the classic slogan I always quote is the one from a Welsh drain cleaning machine, which had written on the side “We are No.1 at No.2′s!” Run by a millionaire, he was the happiest and cleanest bloke you ever met – not surprising really, as he loved his work.

If you do what you enjoy and are best at, the money will always come; if you do what you do because of the money, the money will always be eventually be flowing away, and you will be unhappy.

Good Luck!

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