How to pursue your dream career I

It’s that time of year again – we get close to assessing our past year and making resolutions for the new year. Many people are in unsatisfying jobs, but because they are comfortable, or it is stable, or they have money worries – they stay stuck.

There are plenty of ‘how to’ guides out there to help you change jobs, but the biggest challenge is usually in your head! You might like to read some of our previous posts: Don’t be afraid to change jobs and Why stay at a job you hate, if you are already at the point of deciding it is time to change jobs.

Time to assess where you are at careerwise

However, the truth is for most people, we stay at the point just before the above trigger, we stay at the point where things aren’t bad enough for us to make any changes – we justify why we should stay at perfectly good job, even thought it has become mundane or it is not our dream. I often tell people to stop for 5 minutes and think if this is what you dreamt of doing when you were a child, or for those of us that changed our minds regularly, are we ‘living the dream’?

First you have to know what you want

This article is to help people who KNOW what their dream is – you already know what it is that you dream of doing for a living! If you don’t know, you need to carefully consider. The reason I say this as it that it will require some work from you to chase your dream and if it’s not a true passion or dream, you may find it difficult to keep going when you hit the inevitable difficulties.

It’s never too late!

If you find that you are not truly happy, if you have a nagging urge to follow a dream, now is the time to step up! You can do it if you have the right tools! You don’t need to settle, or feel that time has passed you by. I recently read an article by a lady who changed careers after her children left home, she quoted lots of people who had done the same. In fact statistically we now have 2 to 3 major career changes in our lifetime (as opposed to our grandparents who stayed in one role and usually one company for their entire working career).

How do you start?

The first thing that is important is that you don’t have to throw out the baby with the bath water! You don’t have to throw away everything you have spent half a lifetime building. It is very possible to make changes in easy to handle increments. Next week we’ll give you some specific tips to give you the confidence to get started on pursuing your dream – no matter what age you are!

What if mobile ads never take off?

I recently read a great post about Mary Meeker and her prediction about Mobile Advertising

Mary Meeker was once known as the ‘Queen of the Net’, her predictions are often scarily accurate – she is gifted with truly understanding how technology and the desires of the people fit together!

Meeker’s recent internet presentation on ‘Top Mobile Internet Trends’ made some very insightful predictions about mobile advertising (you can see her presentation here it is great!).

Look out – here comes mobile advertising

In short however, Meeker discusses the youth of Mobile Advertising, the efficacy of mobile ads vs other media and the imbalance of the amount of advertising there compared with the amount of time we spend online - in fact Meeker’s last slide with bar charts is a clever depiction to explain the discrepancy.

Don’t hold your breath

Those who rebut her sight the slowness in the take off of internet advertising (ie: it has been available for over 10 years, but still only small companies and spammers seem to utilise online advertising).

Who’s paving the way

Companies like Groupon & LivingSocial may indeed be paving the way and changes to Twitter and Facebook seem to be increasing momentum to online advertising starting to play in the serious league.

Information overload

One think those who predict online advertising is about to skyrocket and those who argue this happening both agree on is that we live in a world of increasing overwhelm. There is SO MUCH information now available to us that the way to get smart is to ensure that YOUR market is seeing you. That you can capture the attention of the demographics and psychographics that matter, those that want what you have to offer!

Why does all of this matter for job seekers and advertisers

That is one EASY question to answer – this all matters because:

1. the amount of time we spend online is increasing, and
2. the amount of time we spend on smart phones and tablet devices in increasing

Along with these increases the amount of information we are accessing is becoming more specific.

Simply look at the largest job board in Australia – there is just WAY too much information going on. Advertisers can have their brand new vacancy up to 12 pages in within 4 hours of the ad being placed. How many pages do jobseekers tend to go when looking?? Approximately 4, before they report overwhelm and lack of ability to discriminate clearly between different positions.

The solution?!

The solution is simple – offer your target audience a way to access exactly what they want, WITHOUT having to sift through all of the noise. JobEzy offers this by simply allowing our advertisers and job seekers to plug in their job categories and location. Then we push the job alert to the interested seeker and better still allow them to respond via their mobile to apply for the position!

Check out how simple it is to use our services! http://www.jobezy.com.au/

How to get fired at your office Christmas Party 2011

Christmas is such a great time of year! It’s time to celebrate and let your hair down and what better way to celebrate the year than at your work Christmas party?! So here’s a few tips to make sure that you don’t become fodder for office gossip and that you do indeed have a job to go to on Monday!

1. Consume too much alcohol: it’s tempting I know (because generally someone else is paying for the alcohol) but just about everything that can go wrong at your work Christmas party starts with too much alcohol!
2. Go on a rant: it is not the time to air your grievances! It is not the time to complain about the co-worker that is rubbing you up the wrong way; or the boss who uses you to inflate their own career; or how overworked and under appreciated you are.
3. Attendance: attendance is pretty much compulsory – don’t be late, don’t leave too early. Your attendance and your level of mingling will be noted by HR and management. And if you’re in management – plan on staying late!
4. Attire: Christmas parties are usually the time to get all frocked up (well for us girls anyway) – make an effort to look good, make sure your private parts are all adequately covered!
5. Humour: Be careful!! Most jokes have an offensive component to SOMEONE. Choose carefully what jokes you will tell, it’s not the time to try out your amateur comedy routine
6. Networking: yes – your Christmas party is about networking, it is not about who you can score with!!! (do I need more exclamation marks here?) don’t kiss a co-worker – you know the saying what goes on tour stays on tour, this does not apply to Christmas parties, hook-ups are definitely off limits!
7. Dancing: now I LOVE dancing but I am the first to admit that whilst I may not be particularly talented in this area, I could dance all night. The trick to dancing at your Christmas party is to ensure that you have good clean fun, it’s not the time to pretend you’re pole dancing or stripping, or guys – don’t get grabby, just get dancey!
8. Pick a fight: last but not least, DO NOT GET INTO A FIGHT! Walk away if a conversation is going in a way you don’t like, do not ask provoking questions (like asking the big boss just what she actually does all day!), do not engage in a topic that heats you up.

Christmas is a great time of year and it is a fantastic time to let your hair down and spend some enjoyable time with your colleagues! If you keep in mind that too much alcohol is the undoing of many a man (or woman!) and remember that everyone owns a phone with a camera in them these days, so your every moment could be captured for all eternity; you will be likely to have a good time and leave still have your job on Monday!

Save time increase business

Do you have a worksheet? As a busy recruiter, you are probably aware that systems and processes make your life easier, but it strikes me as funny the number of recruiters that don’t actually have a working job order, or worse still a job order that is not working effectively!

There are 2 main purposes to a job order, most recruiters think there is only one, to gain the information for the vacancy in a clear and detailed manner; but the other important part of the job order is to create rapport with the client and build trust.

What should your job order include

Your Job Order should include the regular things you need to know when accepting a placement order:

• a detailed roadmap of the position,
• the work environment,
• the manager,
• the company,
• the industry,
• the salary,
• the reporting relationships, and so on.

But if you just start asking your questions like a machine gun firing off, you are doing yourself a disservice!

How do you present your job order

Your job order is the foundation to gaining all of the information you require to successfully match a job seeker, so it is critically important that you have all of the basic information you need. But you will find that you can actually gain a LOT more knowledge when you strike up a conversation with your client!

What sort of questions should you be asking

Well before we tell you what you should be asking, it is important that you know what it is you are doing for your client. You want your client to quickly feel comfortable and connect with you (create rapport). The simplest way to do this is to ‘fix’ their problem. So your questions should be coming from this angle!

• Why is this job open?
• What problem do you want the person to solve?
• Is there someone internally that could fill the role? What is it about them that you like?Why would someone quit a job to come and work for you?
• If I had the perfect candidate you could make a competitive offer and have them start
• in a few weeks?

These sorts of questions get your client talking. Once you have a picture of what it is they REALLY need, then you can fill in the blanks and ensure you know all the ‘details’, eg: qualifications, experience, salary and your fees!

Just remember, start with the purpose of creating rapport and finding out what need you are there to fill, the rest will flow from there!

Do you have a specialist mentality

Recently I read an interesting post entitled ‘No thanks – I’m just not that nice…’ and it got me to thinking. All too often we devalue ourselves and what we offer – it’s not something that is unique to recruiters, lots of people who are passionate about their job or experts in their fields are naturally drawn to help others in their chosen career specialties.

Think about it – do you have family, friends and maybe friends of friends all asking you for tips and advice when they are looking for a new job or wanting to update their resume? If you’re like us, you are probably happy to have a look and offer some advice! And there is nothing wrong with this – it is a compliment that others look to us for advice and respect our professional advice.

The problems start when either a. your advice isn’t implemented and somehow you’re made responsible for any jobs not secured, or b. they don’t listen or understand and keep coming back to you. This is where is starts to get difficult to draw the line in the sand. But it is important that you know when you are being helpful and when you are actually providing a service that should in fact be a chargeable job.

Think of it this way: if you go to a specialist for advice you expect to pay for it don’t you, so why should you sell yourself short?

How do you decide when enough is enough

This is actually one of the most important aspects of not giving too much away! If you are in the habit of happily helping family and friends, you might never have established how much is too much. As a general rule of thumb, I work on initial advice being comprehensive and encompassing. Any follow up from this point actually invites a repeat transactional relationship, ie: just look at this, ok I’ve done as you said, now look again – ad infinitum! So I am more than happy to have a look and offer you advice, how you implement it, or choose to action it is then up to you. Sounds easy right? It has actually taken me YEARS to get to this point!

Listen for the triggers

Once you are aware of your tendency to give away that which actually is of value, you will start to become aware of when and where you are selling yourself short. It might just start as finding yourself annoyed at being asked the same questions, or feeling put out that the person isn’t listening to your advice. It might be that you out and out realise you are being used, even thought the person doing the ‘using’ is not likely at fault (after all you have allowed and perhaps even encouraged them)! Whenever you start to notice that it seems the relationship has become unbalanced, it’s time to take action!

What strategies can you employ to value yourself?

Firstly, remember that you are not a personal career consultant – you have mastered your craft to assist those who will ultimately provide your income, so don’t cut yourself out of your deserved income! Secondly, there is nothing wrong with owning the fact that you have a specialist knowledge and this is a service you have a right to expect payment for! Finally, remember that YOU set the boundaries – make it clear from the outset that you are able to give initial advice and from there on they have the tools to make it work for themselves!!!