Category Archives: Career & Jobs

The Science of Highly Effective Job and Career Searches

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Today’s job market is highly competitive market place for locating jobs and careers. It’s not uncommon, in some regions, to hear of a ratio of available job openings to actively seeking workers being in the range of 1:10. From Alabama to California, thousands of Americans are lining up in hopes of landing the ever elusive job. Jobs and careers searches have become a quest void of the once pursued goal of a dream job, replaced by the fleeting hope of a job which will enable survival.

Today’s job market is calling upon those applicants to sharpen up their game and approach job seeking in a way which is far different from jobs and careers search skills used 5 to 10 years ago. Today, each and every job applicant is a walking talking web page. Take a minute and consider the web page and it’s structure.

Every web page has a title tag. Every jobs and careers applicant should have the title of a position they are seeking. Furthermore, they should have a crisp, clear, definitive title on their resume which clearly states their purpose. Don’t confuse this with a purpose statement. A title is usually 60 characters or less including spaces.

Every web page has a description tag. Every jobs and careers seeker should have a prepared description not only of who they are; or what their experience is; but also of what they are seeking. This description should be clear, concise, and easily communicated in 2 to 3 sentences.

Every web page has a keywords tag. Every jobs and careers search applicant should walk into an interview with 6 to 8 clearly definable keywords which describes their skills, personal strengths, and the vocational direction they are pursuing. Too many keywords, as with search engines will come across as keyword stuffing-keep your list to 6 to 8 keywords, and it’s always better to have less than more.

Most web pages will have a robots tag which instructs the search engines on how best to crawl your web page. Jobs and careers applicants should always present themselves in a manner which makes it as easy as possible for a Human Resources Director to navigate your resume, and cover letter.

Finally, web pages will have a body. Jobs and careers applicants should hone and prepare a skilled 7 to 8 minute presentation on them self. Seven to eight minutes isn’t very long for even the most accomplished speaker to include an opening, 3 points (providing statements in support of each point), and a conclusion, but this…for any applicant…is the body of their overall presentation.

Establish these key factors into your jobs and careers search techniques, and you will enter into job interviews feeling more competent and relaxed-key selling points to an interviewer.

How Wise Is a Midlife Career Change?

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Around 40 is often an age when people take stock of their lives and a niggling fear starts to creep in…….”If I haven’t achieved my dreams now maybe I just have to give up on them.”

However this attitude fails to recognise just how many wonderfully transferable skills you have built up through your life, through work, through life experiences and through formal and informal learning. These skills can be used in your new career, and if you have made a good career choice for yourself your skills will undoubtedly be highly valued in your new role.

Career change for people in the midst of their career is a specialty of this practice. You deserve to have work that fulfills you and provides you with more than a salary. There is a Chinese proverb that says “If you love your work you will never work another day in your life.” That should be your goal – to find the work you love and then do everything you can to make that your work.

To help you achieve this goal, career counselling is required. If you have a deep knowledge of yourself and have some ideas about what you want to do, then we will move straight into career counselling. However if you are feeling very confused, sometimes we use CareerWorks, an amazing holistic computer based career development program which analyses your responses to many questions and provides a comprehensive report that considers all aspects of you in relation to work. This provides the basis for our ongoing deep career counselling.

Once your future direction has been decided upon, career coaching can support you as you journey towards your new career. Career Coaching often makes the biggest difference to clients who make their career decision, but then feel alone as they try to implement their action plan. By continuing the coaching relationship a little you are far more likely to really complete the move into a new career.