Re-energizing Your Career

The economy is rough nowadays, and coupled with the recent massive lay-offs and plenty of discouragement happening, it’s definitely a good idea to look for career advice to change your focus to something you can be passionate about.

I remember talking to an ex-colleague a couple of weeks ago – at the beginning of our conversation, she was all de-motivated in her current role because she felt there were nothing more she can contribute and that all her previous passion for what she’s doing is greatly diminished. She was getting frustrated at what she termed as her daily routine, which she had been doing for the last few years. She wanted to advance further in her professional development but was unsure what, how and when to do. In a nutshell, she was confused and had lost her sense of direction. There was absolutely no sign of energy in doing what she was doing at that moment

The difference between a job and a career is that the first option is labor oriented and usually does not have much advancement involved, and the second option is passion oriented, allowing you to advance and grow using skills that you have learned through some kind of formal or technical education. If you do not know what direction to go into, seeking advice is an excellent first step to organizing your goals while helping you head down a path that will encourage and motivate you to succeed. As you begin your quest for a career, you may not have an idea about what kind you should be pursuing. An easy way to determine what direction to take, and the first bit of advice to edge you forward, is to think about what you have always loved to do with your time. There are activities that you take part in because you enjoy them as hobbies, and activities that you take part in because you could see yourself doing them to make money seriously. Those activities that you could see yourself turning into a career should be your first stepping stone to paving the road to success for yourself

The second point of advice for is to consider going back to school or taking some kind of professional training to help enhance your skills. You may not be equipped with the necessary skills and education to begin your future plans right away, and finding a job without the right skills will be nearly impossible. It is best to research what institutions of higher learning you can attend that will allow you to get a degree, certification or license in the field that you are interested in. Choose a university or program that you will enjoy going to in a location that makes you excited to be there. This will help to motivate you to continue on with your studies

The final point of career advice is to learn how to negotiate your salary so that you can live a lifestyle that is enjoyable. Research the high, average and low incomes for your career so that you know what kind of base salary to expect with your experience and skill set. The skills you have obtained may be high end skills that allow you to select a salary that compliments what you have learned. Be confident when you negotiate your salary, but not arrogant or unrealistic. It is always better to be humble than to come off as obnoxious or snobby, so keep your attitude in check and enjoy making the money that reflects what you are worth

After engaging in a few “coaching” conversations with that ex-colleague of mine, she finally decided to continue pursuing her current career track, and in addition obtain additional professional certification in psychotherapy and to gain further overseas work exposure. We broke down the two major components of what she wanted to do additionally, and worked out a time-line for her to complete the sub-components and she’s now on track to meeting those targets. I spoke to her recently and she’s feeling motivated, re-energized and extremely excited about the changes she made to her career.

What Makes You Happy At Work?

Finally, I manage to log back on to my blogger… after 4 days of continuous no-success, and I had to get a few people involved before the access problem got resolved … Modern technology – you can’t live with it and you can’t live without it. Hah, what an irony!

Nonetheless, I’m back online again and this posting is to continue building upon where I left off on my previous article “What Career Is Right for Me?” As I have previously mentioned, there's nothing more challenging (or emotionally tearing) than changing careers half way through your life. Oftentimes, we find ourselves in a situation where we thought the job we chose was something we really wanted in our overall career roadmap, but as time goes by day by day, we find ourselves becoming more and more unhappy.

If we are unhappy, we know we’ve made a wrong choice. Now, the question is – how do we work out what we really want and what is that ideal job that goes with that territory? Here're some suggested ways and means to start formulating an answer to the above question (extracted in part from CareerExec International's Career Transition Program).

Ways & Means Number One: Understand why you are unhappy in your job
Good information comes out of understanding why you are currently unhappy in your job, and in my experience there tend to be six reasons why this is so. Which ones are relevant to you?

Your job is boring and unchallenging

This is often the case when people have been doing the same job for a long period of time, and colleagues and bosses can quickly forget that you have more to offer.

Dealing with difficult people

Often it’s not the specific tasks of a job that are stressful it’s the people you have to deal with that make life so difficult. Colleagues, bosses, clients and suppliers can all be difficult to get along with or be unreasonable in their demands.

Too much politics

It’s hard enough dealing with difficult people directly without having to deal with underhand politics as well. Even though it would be nice if everyone just got on with each other and did their jobs, the bad news is that politics will always happen.

You’re doing the wrong job for your personality

Imagine someone who likes working with details, such as an accountant or an engineer, suddenly being asked to take on a role in sales or a people management role with no additional training or support. You may feel that you just don’t “fit” into a role and that extra training just isn’t the answer.

A sign of other issues

If you’re unhappy in your job, it could be a sign of unhappiness or stress in other areas of life leading to a reduced ability to deal with what could be normal levels of pressure at work. Issues such as strained or failing relationships, poor health or money worries can all have a huge impact on your feelings of satisfaction with work.

Your work is just not your passion

It could be that although you are doing well in the eyes of other people, your work just isn’t what you are passionate about. Lots of people have a dream to do something that is really meaningful to them, but they are too scared to take a first small step to achieving that dream, or just don’t know how to start.

Ways & Means Number Two: Understanding yourself
To understand what work would be ideal for you, you really do have to understand yourself first, and in four key areas – your work interests, work motivators, your personality preferences and your personal and professional values.

Your work interests

These are the things that interest you in the world of work. Do you enjoy adventurous and risk taking activities or are you more interested in things like science and technology? Do your interests lie more in finance and administration or in working with words and being creative? Do you enjoy managing, organizing and getting results through others or do you have an interest in caring activities?

Your work motivators

These are the things that really drive you at work. For example how driven are you for recognition at work, or the need for responsibility, having control over your own work and being accountable for your actions? How much do you need variety and change in your work, or are you motivated more by stability and security? Are you driven by the need to excel in what you do and to find new challenges to overcome or do you prefer to have friendly colleagues at work? How motivated are you by your interest in the work that you do, or is pay and other material rewards a key motivator?

Your personality preferences

These will impact on how you prefer to work, and therefore your choice of ideal job. For example, are you good with people and do you gain energy by being with them, or are you good with ideas, precision and complexity and prefer to think carefully before acting? Do you prefer to deal with facts and reality; are you objective and analytical in your decision-making and do you find it hard to relax until your work is completed? Or are you imaginative and sensitive to the needs and motivations of other people, and flexible, adaptable, research-oriented and tolerate ambiguity and uncertainty well?

Your personal and work values

A personal value is a belief, a mission, or a philosophy that is really meaningful to you. When you are engaged in activities that support your values, you will feel most like yourself. If your job does not allow you to do this, the outcome for you will be significant stress and frustration. In addition, studies of successful individuals have found that there tends to be one or two professional values that guide their career and job choices, and make working an enjoyable and ultimately successful experience.

Ways & Means Number Three: Your ideal work/life balance
Work is of course only one aspect of your life, but there is often confusion when mentioning work/life balance. People seem to think it means there should be an equal balance between the two. This is not necessarily the case – having an effective work/life balance is about what works for you, perhaps there will be periods of time where your focus will be more on work than on your personal life, and vice versa.

This is why you need to know how your ideal job will fit in with your other priorities in life. You need to be clear on what else you want to focus on in your life, and what financial and time commitment you are prepared to give to them. Whatever is important to you, for example your health, family, friends, personal relationships or hobbies, your ideal job will need to take these factors into account.

Ways & Means Number Four: Understand your options
Knowing what you need from a job to make it ideal is only one half of the answer. The other half involves understanding what, realistically, your job options are.

Transferable skills

You must identify the skills and experiences you have that potential future employers will be prepared to pay you for. After all, they will only hire you if they have a need for the skills you can bring to them. These aren’t only the jobs that you have done, but are the activities and behaviors that you demonstrated to make you successful in your previous roles.

Strategic career choices

Rather than just look in the newspaper or online to see what jobs are available, it is useful to think strategically about your career options. Inevitably, your ideal job will entail making use of your existing or newly developed skills within existing or new industry sectors.

For example, you could continue with a career within your existing areas of knowledge and competence, stay where you are in terms of industry sector and organization and look for a shift in the type of job that you do, carry on with the job you do in a different sector or environment or throw caution to the wind and follow a long-held dream or passion!

Ways & Means Number Five: Find that Ideal Job
Once you have done all the above, you now need to distill the information into a great CV. A CV that crisply and concisely articulates your skills and experiences to your future employers in a way that demonstrates that you understand the job that needs to be done, that you fit in with their company culture and that you have the experience and the skills to succeed in the new role.

To do this you will also create a personal positioning statement. This is, in effect, a personal "elevator pitch" in which you can start to tell your friends, your network, recruiters and potential employers exactly what job you're looking for, give them a relevant overview of your skills & experiences and tell them why you want to do the job you're looking for. The secret here is to create several different CVs and personal positioning statements, each one consistent with what would be an ideal job for you, but each one subtly different in its job focus.

An Introspective Exercise – Useful For Interview Preparations

Before walking into an interview, whether you are interviewing or being interviewed, the first thing to do is to be prepared for it, especially on the type of questions asked or being asked. I have compiled from various sources the following topics that will help you develop a perspective. I’d like to call it an introspective exercise.

For those of you who are not preparing for interviews, this can be also useful in doing a quick self-analysis. Who knows? The knowledge you gained from this exercise may come in useful when you’re sitting on the “hot seat”.

Just a little explanation on how to make use of those topics …

If you are a hiring manager, HR or recruiter preparing to conduct an interview, begin with a clear definition of the roles and responsibilities for the position. Develop a list of requirements, objectives and priorities associated with the position and use this as a guide to create specific questions for the topics below.

If you are on the other side of the fence and in the midst of preparing to be interviewed, research the job description and the company profile thoroughly. This information can, more often than not, be found on the company web site. Develop a list of potential responses and also create your own questions to ask about the position role and responsibilities as associated with the topics listed below.

Even if you are not preparing to conduct an interview, or to be interviewed, you can review your current career roles and responsibilities to reflect on the following topics...

A) What have you learned from your previous success?

• Can you identify significant achievements that highlight your talents, skills and capabilities?
• How can this knowledge and experience be leveraged to develop future success?

B) What have you learned from your mistakes?

• Can you identify decisions or circumstances that you might change if given another opportunity?
• How can this knowledge be applied to mitigate future risks?

C) What have you learned from your experiences and industry knowledge?

• Can you identify personal experience and perspectives that make you unique?
• How can unique experience or industry position be used as a strategic advantage?

D) What have you learned from other people?

• Can you identify skills or knowledge that you have acquired from other experts, peers or mentors?
• How willing and able are you to learn from the expertise of others?

E) What have you taught other people?

• Can you identify specific skills, motivation or direction that you have shared for a positive influence to others?
• How do you contribute to the community and improve your environment? How willing are you to share your knowledge?

F) What behavior did you learn as a child?

• Can you identify specific characteristics that would best describe your behavior?
• How would you describe your work ethic?

Every individual is different from the next one, and carries a unique blend of talent, skills and experiences. Character traits can be acquired or learned over the course of our personal as well as professional life, e.g. our childhood, our university days, our careers etc. These traits can contribute to success, reduce risk and be used to enhance the environment around us.In some cases conflicts may arise as a result of different character traits. For example, one person may have experience shaped by previous achievements or mistakes that have not been experienced by another, creating significantly different points of view. And in some cases the differences may be related to work habits or personality traits that were learned as child and not easily changed or influenced in the work environment. These conflicts can be moderated with a better understanding of the experience that shapes another's perspective (empathizing in a manner of speaking).

During the interview process it is the obligation of the interviewer and the individual being interviewed to determine how well the personal experience, knowledge and character match between the person and the position. This increases the potential for future success. And this match is commonly known as “the FIT”.

If you reviewed the questions as a personal assessment, it can be a meaningful review to reflect on your contributions, motivation and impact to your surrounding e.g. your family, your colleagues, your business partners etc. You have the opportunity to share something of yourself with those around you. In return, you will be given a good opportunity to continually develop your personal knowledge by learning from the unique experiences of those around you. What you do with these opportunities will go a long way in helping to shape your character and your potential for the future.

Preparing For That Interview

Once more, I simply cannot stress enough about the importance of being able to interview effectively.

I was talking to a highly intelligent MBA graduate yesterday who had approached me for guidance to help him secure a job offer, and prior to our conversation he had gone for his twelfth interview in the last 6 months but yet to receive a confirmed job offer. During our session, what he said prompted me to write a little more about handling the interviews (or more specifically, the Job Interview, in case some may misunderstand it to be about doing a survey interview), and I hope that this article can somewhat provide some insights and suggestions to those of you out there who are facing similar challenges.

It really doesn’t matter how awesome and great looking your resume appears to be, how many successful stories and accomplishments you have behind you, or how much knowledge, experience and network contacts you have acquired. And I will bet my last dollar in my pockets (or for that matter in my bank account) that whether or not you are able to land a job will have a great deal to do with how you answer job interview questions effectively.

Again, it’s no great big secret that a lot of prospective employees lost the opportunity of landing their much desired job by not being prepared for their interview. As a result, they trip over all over the place with their words, say the wrong things and not answering to the question, beat around the bush, or simply resort to falsifying responses; AND hope that nobody will take notice. If you think you can get away with that, then I can tell you right now that you are DEAD WRONG. And this comes from all my years of experience as an executive recruiter, having to deal with candidates and clients on both sides of the fence, and it is a given that the interviewer can immediately see through that kind of farce, and will not give that person a second chance once the session is finished. Don’t let that person be YOU! There's no reason for anyone who is smart enough to allow this to happen to him or her, so don't try.

And this is true even for managers, professionals and executives who are usually articulate individuals with excellent careers and track records. More often than not, a significant portion of these people tend to do badly in interviews because of a lack of serious preparation, and the belief that their accomplishments will speak for themselves.

Another important note I want to highlight for those of you who are in mid level and higher positions – the interview is not only used for gathering information about your experience and qualifications, it is also a way of assessing your management and presentation skills. And every aspect of the entire interview process is evaluated. So beware of not having prepared enough for that next interview.

There are easily hundreds of job applicants competing with you for the same position. Never think you are the only candidate and never underestimate those who are competing with you. Unfortunately accomplishments don't speak for themselves and a well-prepared candidate with highly-developed interview skills often gets a position over a better qualified candidate that was poorly prepared. By putting in the time and effort, and commitment, in researching the best way to answer job interview questions, you'll give yourself a huge advantage over your competition.

Like I always say, you need to differentiate yourself from the others who are also in line for that same job opening. You can take a look at the PPT presentation I have embedded together with my previous posting “It’s all about the Interview” on April 28th for some pointers on the initial preparation to be done.

Another small little tip … there are several resources you can utilize to learn how to answer job interview questions and the very first place I would suggest that you look for that is on the net. There are seemingly an endless number of dedicated web sites on the topic of how to answer job interview questions. These are people who do (or had done) the actual hiring for organizations so they really know what they are talking about so you may want to consider listening to their advice seriously.

Another great resource would be career consultants or career coaches who will help you prepare to answer job interview questions. As I'm sure you already know, having someone out there to actually guide you through the entire interview process will enable you to put your best foot forward, be more confident and well-prepared, and ultimately placing you in the best light possible.

Regardless of whatever approach you take, by all means take the time and the effort to practice. In order to get a feel for how you would really answer job interview questions when you're sitting in the hot seat, ask a family member or friend to sit down with you and role-play the interview process. This can be incredibly helpful in preparing you for the real thing. All you have to do is write out several different things you are likely to be asked, and then come up with logical and real responses to these questions.

Nowadays, quite a number of interviewers are adopting the behavioral interviewing style. And to prepare responses for this, simply use the STAR model – that is, ST (Situation/ Task), A (Action), R(Results). I will be touching more on this in another article I am writing so stay tune.

It takes a lot of hard work, determination, effort, perseverance and self-discipline to get hired these days. By doing your homework and practicing the art of how to answer job interview questions, you will go a long way in helping yourself to land that job. Good hunting!

It's all about the Interview

All through the years in my career as an executive recruiter, and now as a professional career consultant, I have come across many individuals who gripe about not getting the job that they want even though they were invited for interviews. Why? They ask … the reason’s actually quite simple but most people, more often than not, will somehow neglect it.

Give this some thoughts …. It’s not about where you went to school, it’s not about how fantastic your grades were, it’s not about how much experience you have, it’s not about who you know. If you aren't able to interview successfully, you just don’t get the job. Period.The interview levels the playing field! You simply have to differentiate yourself from all those people going for the same position.

In my earlier days, I have coached and advised candidates on the same topic of effective techniques in interviewing. And recently, I have compiled these materials putting together a series of workshops related to job search, interviewing and negotiating for better compensation.

The PowerPoint presentation I have embedded in this posting is just Part One on the topic of “Interviewing for Success” I have prepared. The rest is on the way so watch this space …