We’re 2 years into the global financial crisis and nobody seems to know who to blame for all the mess. Some say it is investment bankers, some say government. I must admit to finding it confusing that the investment bankers are taking the flack when the two banks that led the UK into the banking crisis both specialised in mortgages. But that is another story!
Suffice it to say, a tsunami of job-losses is about to hit! The long-awaited ‘Comprehensive Spending Review’ produced by the UK’s coalition Government arrived last Thursday and it spells out a lot of doom and gloom for public sector workers with many people expecting more than 400,000 civil servants to lose their jobs in the next year.
The idea is that, according to traditional Conservative ideology, these newly unemployed masses will be soaked up by a resurgent private sector. How likely is this to happen in reality? Many of my dyed-in-the-wool enterprising friends would struggle to justify hiring a worker with an entrenched public sector mindset due to the damaging stereotype prevailing in society.
Sadly, the latter-day British civil service worker is tarred with a quite toxic reputation of hiding behind red-tape and never being accountable for anything they do in the workplace. Rightly or wrongly, many British citizens have been on the wrong end of this experience and the toxic reputation looks like sticking. Beware of the image you present.
So if the job-loss tsunami is going to hit the public sector workers the most, and you are one, then your best strategy is to market yourself as a very dynamic worker with a demonstrable track record of productivity.
Many of the public sector workers I have assisted through the redundancy nightmare feel a gaping hole when asked to give quantifiable measures of their success; often because they are a cog in a much larger machine and laying claim to a number describing productivity which is their own can be very difficult.
The fact remains that hirers in the private sector do not hire generic workers as a first resort. They hire proven track records. They hire energisers. They’re looking for producers, deliverers and value generators who can contribute directly to the bottom line. Alongside which we mustn’t forget that it IS a dog-eat-dog world out there; especially when times are lean.
The Magic Ingredient:
For years, and years, and years I’ve talked to career professionals about what it is that makes a job candidate outstanding - truly outstanding. What is the one magic ingredient that makes the one interviewee stand out from the crowd? The Answer: Purpose and Conviction - they both amount to the same thing - attractiveness.
What is Purpose and Conviction?
I’ve written for many years about these two vital components in a well-planned job search campaign. The difficulty is that it is almost impossible to put your finger on exactly what Purpose is. The same applies to Conviction.
Both Purpose and Conviction are intangible commodities. Like the 5 Senses, they are relatively easy to describe. But when asked to describe the 6th Sense, that's a different matter! Yet these words find a way to be incredibly attractive qualities when seen in a person. They help the beholder omit a powerful sense of confidence. The person gives off a sense of understanding and a sense of direction in their lives which 90% of the rest of the population don’t have.
Very often The Hirer is threatened by this innate sense of purposefulness and sureness. Many of us can feel intimidated by someone who has an innate sense of knowing where they are going in life. Some people feel threatened and jealous. So once you’ve worked-out how to implant this fantastically attractive quality in your life, you’ve got to know how to handle it - it's a bit like your own version of Kryptonite! As many people are frightened by it!
How to harness your conviction and not intimidate people:
Imagine a pressure gauge on a steam train. Picture the needle hitting bursting-point and the need to get out of the way of a boiler which is just about to explode. Picture the gauge saying that there just isn’t enough pressure in the boiler to move the train forward and the scramble to shovel more coal into the firebox. We can see that there is a happy medium between too much power and not enough.
The same applies to conviction and purpose in a person. If we are overly confident people will tend to feel intimidated and possibly even resentful. On the other hand people can also get a clear sense of when a person does not have very much confidence with the metaphor being that their pressure gauge is too low; they lack self-esteem and a sense of direction in their lives.
Self-assuredness is the happy balance, neither not overly confident, nor lacking. If I go to see a doctor I’d like to be made to feel by their body language, demeanour and the tonality of their words that they knew exactly what they were doing and they exuded a sense of self-assuredness. 99 times out of 100 we can tell whether a person gives off this all-important sense of Purpose and Conviction the very moment we meet them for the first time. We can even detect this when the person is on the other end of a telephone!
Some people call this the Law of Attraction. Whatever it is, when the going gets tough, and you need to get going to find another job or prove your worth in the one you are in, dig deep and identify what your purpose is in life. And get hired for doing just that! Everyone I have ever met has an innate skill in their life, the only problem is that some people haven't found it yet!
Find a qualified career professional at http://www.acpinternational.org/ & http://www.icg-uk.org/
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Wednesday, 27 October 2010
Turning THREATS into OPPORTUNITIES for Career Professionals…
Since 2000 day rates for outplacement consultants have depreciated cumulatively by approximately 80%. Any owner / director of a careers firm may be deeply suspicious of my reasons for stating this unsettling fact. However, the bitter reality is that the viability of the outplacement industry is in doubt and it time to do something about it.
To turn this worrying trend around relies upon our upskilling, professionalizing, quality assuring delivery and ensuring procurement and HR professionals understand what they’re buying and why there is a ‘duty of care’ involved in the transaction.
The reasons why:
This is an almost infinitesimally complex answer! A key factor is that following the aggressive round of mergers and acquisitions seen in the early 2000s the large firms swallowed-up many of the smaller firms and the great outplacement price-wars ensued. Margins were cut-to-the-bone and very soon consultant day rates started to feel the pain. Back in the high days of outplacement when firms prided themselves on recruiting duly qualified professionals day rates of £400 + expenses were not unheard of but the prevailing average was in the mid 200s per day.
Coming up the present day, a key factor is that in the passed 12months an additional 90 firms have entered the tender lists for outplacement contracts – nearly all of whom are recruitment firms. It begs the question, why?
At this point I’ve got to admit that it becomes increasingly challenging to remain objective and not be seen to be defensive and protectionist as at the end of the day this is a partial view as career coaching and outplacement is how I prefer to earn my living. But the reality is that giving the newly redundant a CV make-over and a half day’s job search workshop does not constitute outplacement, at least a service worth delivering.
The flipside of this argument is that – making sweeping generalisations – recruitment professionals tend to fuel their work by very contrasting sets of values to those of a bona fide career professional. Recruiters are, in the main, business development professionals. Whereas, career professionals would tend to demonstrate a helping, caring, empathetic / counselling dimension in the way they go about their work.
There is also the stark reality of legislation. The Employment Agencies Act 1973 openly discourages any vested interest in taking fees from both ends of the recruitment – career development continuum. Firms taking commissions from organisations for placing candidates in roles have a vested interested that cannot, or should not be ignored, if they are to take an outplacement fee as part of the same transaction. Yet here we are in the UK with some of the most successful recruitment organisations in the world owning and operating outplacement firms as well; albeit separated by ‘Chinese walls’.
Whilst running the London Chapter of ACP International we twice invited the former DTI’s special task force responsible for policing the Employment Agencies Act and twice they stood us up with delegates waiting and primed. How I set the presentation up was for the task force to come and translate the legislation for career professionals and to help us understand the implications for our work. The upshot was that the department explained that taking fees for career coaching and career guidance as private practitioners was illegal and in breach of The Act! I continue in my attempts to lobby Government for clarification on this.
Unhelpful lack of ‘joinedupness’:
So if the former DTI (now BIS) are policing the Act, why then does the DWP tend to appoint recruiters to supply contracts to Jobcentre Plus for delivering job search workshops to the long term unemployed? Apart from anything, this is a clear indictment of the state of the career profession in the UK and a placard for why the career profession has got to now get its house in order.
Another qualification which seems to satisfy many of the outplacement firms hiring consultants is that of the Sales and Marketing discipline. Let’s get one consideration right out in the open, I do not harbour any issue with portfolio workers earning a living from more than once strand of income. Far from it, I am proud to be a ‘portfolio worker’ myself! Nonetheless, where I do feel unabashed is in my professional expectation that anyone entering into the careers profession is duly equipped to offer safe, high quality, career coaching and guidance based upon a reasonable amount of time invested in training and experience tested 'at the coal-face'. At the moment quite literally anyone can set themselves up as a career professional; which sullies the whole industry and drastically diminishes our brand as a 'profession'
No matter what you might think there is a very serious element to providing outplacement consultancy and that is of impartial, confidential counselling. Suicide is a real potentiality of redundancy and happens all-too-often. This might smack of scaremongering, and to an extent it is. But it is aimed at demonstrating a point; outplacement is a very serious business and should never be sold short by the uninitiated, ill-prepared and the professionally naive.
I dare say that in writing this article I will win more enemies than friends. But I have no axe to grind with anyone, when all I want to achieve is to re-establish the reputation of an industry I have been very proud to consider myself a part of for 13 years.
Dame Ruth Silver, has led the Career Profession Task Force in the UK since the turn of the year. She has done a remarkable job of engaging with and exercising the plethora of strands that comprise the various branches of the careers profession in the UK. We wait with baited breath on the Minister’s reactions to the task force’s recommendations given early in October. The Recommendations can be accessed here:
‘Towards a Strong Careers Profession’ - http://publications.education.gov.uk/eOrderingDownload/CPTF%20-%20External%20Report.pdf
There is one outcome for certain, whether through a ‘License to Practice’ or a form of ‘Registration’, career professionals in the UK will need to step up to the mark and demonstrate competence if they are to continue to practice at a level seen to protect the consumer on the one hand, and to satisfy the Recommendations on the other.
The Major Benefits:
• The number one bi-product arising will be consumer safety and a raised profile in society for the career profession. Inexpert raids on our work will end and bona fide career professionals will benefit from a properly delineated professional boundary. As with any other legitimate professional field of expertise.
• Quality standards will go up and the consumer will experience greatly improved standards of service. No longer will a college student sit in front of a so-called Career Coach and have a quick tour of their LinkedIn network passed-off as a quality-assured career development intervention. Giving someone a half hour CV make-over and a cover letter with no longer be seen as an acceptable interpretation of outplacement consultancy specialism.
• The appropriately qualified career professional will soon experience a resurgence as they are regarded as the stand-alone profession they ought to be. But in spite of what owner/directors might think, this will not lead to a collapse in the outplacement industry. It should in actual fact reinforce its status and generate value as a result.
Former President of ACP International, Mark Venning, explained to me a few days ago that ‘employability training’ is neither ‘career development’ nor ‘outplacement consultancy’. It is a low value impersonation of a more full-blown service. HR professionals should consider this when they appoint service providers. As should procurement professionals. I recently posted an article on the HR Director’s Summit LinkedIn Group on the lack of quality assurance standards in outplacement buying and not a single HR professional responded.
Diminishing the anxiety attached to qualification 'Snakes & Ladders':
A few weeks ago I spoke to a hugely experienced and respected career development company’s owner. He was very worried about the implications of upskilling his workforce and having them meet the soon-to-be established standards recommended by the Careers Profession Task Force.
The prevailing misconception amongst my experienced colleagues practicing in the private sector is that they would have to go all the way back to entry level training and retrain from scratch. Very few people, my friend the company owner included, have come across two distinct methods designed to avoid such wasting of time and equally as importantly, money.
Accreditation of Prior and Experiential Learning (A.P.E.L) and the Credit Accumulation and Transfer Scheme (C.A.T.S.) are designed to make the most of your work-based and education-based learning and experiences. So no one who is well into their stride in a given vocation needs to feel in the least intimidated about translating their experiences into formal qualifications.
The Association of Career Professionals International UK is working very hard to identify learning institutions and partners who can help experienced career professionals to develop the necessary evidence portfolios to convert into relevant career-based qualification frameworks.
This is not scaremongering – it is really going to happen:
In the coming weeks, months and years the Career Profession will be expected to meet a universal level of professional competence as a bare minimum. This is not scaremongering. The Careers Profession Alliance is currently distilling a common set of professional standards and a Code of Ethics. ACP International UK is integral to this dialogue. Therefore, now is the time for independent and salaried career coaches and outplacement consultants operating in the UK’s private sector to mobilise and demonstrate their commitment to this exciting initiative by becoming part of the key professional body representing career professionals in the private sector.
A call to unite:
To quote Dame Ruth Silver: “It is time for careers professionals to work together to provide a strong and unified voice, to show professional leadership and to take responsibility for transforming careers advice for young people, and their parents, who rightly expect excellence in the services they receive.”
To join ACP International: http://www.acpinternational.org/main/join.aspx
Our goal is 500 new UK members by the end of 2010!
Attend the UK conference for private sector career professionals on 27th November at The Hubworking Centre, Wormwood Street, London.
To turn this worrying trend around relies upon our upskilling, professionalizing, quality assuring delivery and ensuring procurement and HR professionals understand what they’re buying and why there is a ‘duty of care’ involved in the transaction.
The reasons why:
This is an almost infinitesimally complex answer! A key factor is that following the aggressive round of mergers and acquisitions seen in the early 2000s the large firms swallowed-up many of the smaller firms and the great outplacement price-wars ensued. Margins were cut-to-the-bone and very soon consultant day rates started to feel the pain. Back in the high days of outplacement when firms prided themselves on recruiting duly qualified professionals day rates of £400 + expenses were not unheard of but the prevailing average was in the mid 200s per day.
Coming up the present day, a key factor is that in the passed 12months an additional 90 firms have entered the tender lists for outplacement contracts – nearly all of whom are recruitment firms. It begs the question, why?
At this point I’ve got to admit that it becomes increasingly challenging to remain objective and not be seen to be defensive and protectionist as at the end of the day this is a partial view as career coaching and outplacement is how I prefer to earn my living. But the reality is that giving the newly redundant a CV make-over and a half day’s job search workshop does not constitute outplacement, at least a service worth delivering.
The flipside of this argument is that – making sweeping generalisations – recruitment professionals tend to fuel their work by very contrasting sets of values to those of a bona fide career professional. Recruiters are, in the main, business development professionals. Whereas, career professionals would tend to demonstrate a helping, caring, empathetic / counselling dimension in the way they go about their work.
There is also the stark reality of legislation. The Employment Agencies Act 1973 openly discourages any vested interest in taking fees from both ends of the recruitment – career development continuum. Firms taking commissions from organisations for placing candidates in roles have a vested interested that cannot, or should not be ignored, if they are to take an outplacement fee as part of the same transaction. Yet here we are in the UK with some of the most successful recruitment organisations in the world owning and operating outplacement firms as well; albeit separated by ‘Chinese walls’.
Whilst running the London Chapter of ACP International we twice invited the former DTI’s special task force responsible for policing the Employment Agencies Act and twice they stood us up with delegates waiting and primed. How I set the presentation up was for the task force to come and translate the legislation for career professionals and to help us understand the implications for our work. The upshot was that the department explained that taking fees for career coaching and career guidance as private practitioners was illegal and in breach of The Act! I continue in my attempts to lobby Government for clarification on this.
Unhelpful lack of ‘joinedupness’:
So if the former DTI (now BIS) are policing the Act, why then does the DWP tend to appoint recruiters to supply contracts to Jobcentre Plus for delivering job search workshops to the long term unemployed? Apart from anything, this is a clear indictment of the state of the career profession in the UK and a placard for why the career profession has got to now get its house in order.
Another qualification which seems to satisfy many of the outplacement firms hiring consultants is that of the Sales and Marketing discipline. Let’s get one consideration right out in the open, I do not harbour any issue with portfolio workers earning a living from more than once strand of income. Far from it, I am proud to be a ‘portfolio worker’ myself! Nonetheless, where I do feel unabashed is in my professional expectation that anyone entering into the careers profession is duly equipped to offer safe, high quality, career coaching and guidance based upon a reasonable amount of time invested in training and experience tested 'at the coal-face'. At the moment quite literally anyone can set themselves up as a career professional; which sullies the whole industry and drastically diminishes our brand as a 'profession'
No matter what you might think there is a very serious element to providing outplacement consultancy and that is of impartial, confidential counselling. Suicide is a real potentiality of redundancy and happens all-too-often. This might smack of scaremongering, and to an extent it is. But it is aimed at demonstrating a point; outplacement is a very serious business and should never be sold short by the uninitiated, ill-prepared and the professionally naive.
I dare say that in writing this article I will win more enemies than friends. But I have no axe to grind with anyone, when all I want to achieve is to re-establish the reputation of an industry I have been very proud to consider myself a part of for 13 years.
Dame Ruth Silver, has led the Career Profession Task Force in the UK since the turn of the year. She has done a remarkable job of engaging with and exercising the plethora of strands that comprise the various branches of the careers profession in the UK. We wait with baited breath on the Minister’s reactions to the task force’s recommendations given early in October. The Recommendations can be accessed here:
‘Towards a Strong Careers Profession’ - http://publications.education.gov.uk/eOrderingDownload/CPTF%20-%20External%20Report.pdf
There is one outcome for certain, whether through a ‘License to Practice’ or a form of ‘Registration’, career professionals in the UK will need to step up to the mark and demonstrate competence if they are to continue to practice at a level seen to protect the consumer on the one hand, and to satisfy the Recommendations on the other.
The Major Benefits:
• The number one bi-product arising will be consumer safety and a raised profile in society for the career profession. Inexpert raids on our work will end and bona fide career professionals will benefit from a properly delineated professional boundary. As with any other legitimate professional field of expertise.
• Quality standards will go up and the consumer will experience greatly improved standards of service. No longer will a college student sit in front of a so-called Career Coach and have a quick tour of their LinkedIn network passed-off as a quality-assured career development intervention. Giving someone a half hour CV make-over and a cover letter with no longer be seen as an acceptable interpretation of outplacement consultancy specialism.
• The appropriately qualified career professional will soon experience a resurgence as they are regarded as the stand-alone profession they ought to be. But in spite of what owner/directors might think, this will not lead to a collapse in the outplacement industry. It should in actual fact reinforce its status and generate value as a result.
Former President of ACP International, Mark Venning, explained to me a few days ago that ‘employability training’ is neither ‘career development’ nor ‘outplacement consultancy’. It is a low value impersonation of a more full-blown service. HR professionals should consider this when they appoint service providers. As should procurement professionals. I recently posted an article on the HR Director’s Summit LinkedIn Group on the lack of quality assurance standards in outplacement buying and not a single HR professional responded.
Diminishing the anxiety attached to qualification 'Snakes & Ladders':
A few weeks ago I spoke to a hugely experienced and respected career development company’s owner. He was very worried about the implications of upskilling his workforce and having them meet the soon-to-be established standards recommended by the Careers Profession Task Force.
The prevailing misconception amongst my experienced colleagues practicing in the private sector is that they would have to go all the way back to entry level training and retrain from scratch. Very few people, my friend the company owner included, have come across two distinct methods designed to avoid such wasting of time and equally as importantly, money.
Accreditation of Prior and Experiential Learning (A.P.E.L) and the Credit Accumulation and Transfer Scheme (C.A.T.S.) are designed to make the most of your work-based and education-based learning and experiences. So no one who is well into their stride in a given vocation needs to feel in the least intimidated about translating their experiences into formal qualifications.
The Association of Career Professionals International UK is working very hard to identify learning institutions and partners who can help experienced career professionals to develop the necessary evidence portfolios to convert into relevant career-based qualification frameworks.
This is not scaremongering – it is really going to happen:
In the coming weeks, months and years the Career Profession will be expected to meet a universal level of professional competence as a bare minimum. This is not scaremongering. The Careers Profession Alliance is currently distilling a common set of professional standards and a Code of Ethics. ACP International UK is integral to this dialogue. Therefore, now is the time for independent and salaried career coaches and outplacement consultants operating in the UK’s private sector to mobilise and demonstrate their commitment to this exciting initiative by becoming part of the key professional body representing career professionals in the private sector.
A call to unite:
To quote Dame Ruth Silver: “It is time for careers professionals to work together to provide a strong and unified voice, to show professional leadership and to take responsibility for transforming careers advice for young people, and their parents, who rightly expect excellence in the services they receive.”
To join ACP International: http://www.acpinternational.org/main/join.aspx
Our goal is 500 new UK members by the end of 2010!
Attend the UK conference for private sector career professionals on 27th November at The Hubworking Centre, Wormwood Street, London.
Thursday, 26 August 2010
What is the point in going to university in 2010? With such an oversupply of graduates, surely many will be modiocre....d
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*Why did they stigmatise the ‘Career’ word?
When the Labour Party came to power in 1997 legend has it that they banned the word 'career' from policy-making documents on the grounds that it was "aspirational, discriminatory and elitist". Many of my friends know my favourite retort to this nonsense is the story about the Street Cleaner in London who was given the freedom of the city for never missing a day's work in his 40 year career; shopkeepers could set their watch by his pushing his barrow along the pavement and you could eat your lunch of the footpath it was so clean! When interviewed he exclaimed how proud he was of his career.
I regard myself as being very fortunate that I worked as a Career Adviser in 1996 and 1997, the last years of the previous Conservative government; not because of my political affiliations but because their career services mechanisms were hailed as being the gold standard amongst the 28 OECD countries. What this meant in reality was that 95% of school leavers had at least one careers interview with a trained career professional in their final year and left school with a signed Careers Action Plan including at least half a dozen action points designed to help them fulfil their career goals.
The new Connexions service saw many former career guidance practitioners having to learn to shape-shift into a Personal Adviser and not only help and advise young people on their career strategy, but alongside these challenges they also had to learn about how to assist with welfare payments in complex benefits system, how to intervene in complex family and social traumas, often with their main focus turning to the minority groups in the population whilst the majority were left to flounder. To a large extent this contributed to a significant loss in profile for career guidance professionals and a collapse in professional standards.
Who Said We Need So Many Graduates?
Sadly, the first thing that Tony Blair’s Government did when it came to power was dismantle this internationally acclaimed system for supplying career guidance. The next strange act by the Labour Government was to hurl themselves at getting 50%+ of school leavers into university. Our global competitors don’t need this many graduates. Why do we? Could it be something to do with the smoke and mirrors of hiding the real number of unemployed who would have gone onto the dole queue? I hope not.
This naivety has made a significant impact on the health of the economy as there never could be enough capacity in the British labour market for such a number of graduates when the main reason we lag behind our global competitor’s economically is due to our lack of technicians not our theoreticians and academics. Couple this with the controversial, but increasingly obviously truism that our education system has been dangerously dumbed-down to satisfy the Labour Government’s obsession with targets, and you are left with a potentially broken generation whose career dreams are unfulfillable even before they enter the labour market.
Surviving the agony when reality bites
So within 2 years the whole world has changed beyond recognition and we are staring at a ‘double-dip’ recession. It is now August 2010 and everyone is holding their breath. The ‘Combined Spending Review’ is due out in October and the press are guesstimating between 400,000 and 2miilion public sector workers will lose their jobs in the next 2 years. Many have already gone since the swingeing cuts of the new coalition started to bite immediately post General Election.
The shifts in the tectonic plates of old education policies and the ambitions of the new are going to cause shockwaves felt mainly by the young. Gone are the aspirations of winning door opening degrees with the promise of fast-tracking to success in the ranks of full-employment as reality bites in. Overnight, we are going to have to accept that the supply and demand economics of higher education are changed forever. Universities geared up over 13 years to accommodate thousands of extra spaces now need to reverse that economically dubious trend.
As a would-be graduate considering going to university, take a long hard look at those economics. For the fresh graduate with that newly earned financial millstone around your neck, consider your next steps carefully. What you need to identify quickly are where the skill shortages lie. Where is the oversupply and run quickly in the other direction? Early 21st Century career survival is about adaptability and resilience. People applying for jobs through job ads and recruitment sites are playing an agonising numbers game where they are competing against almost insurmountable odds. Networking your way to job search success is more important now than ever and without these skills, the outlook is stark.
Unorthodox approaches win through. I hope that's an obvious point! Conventional approaches to employment are where all of your competition lies. This is the hardest job search maxim to translate. If you are looking for full-time, permanent, 9 till 5 kind of employment, then you are in the market of over-supply. Take yourself where the demand is high and the supply is low. If moving geographically is required to achieve this, then more power to you for having the gumption to react to labour market demand. It is always a tough decision. (Believe me, I know).
Maybe even consider overseas markets. Maybe even consider self-employment. Have you ever explored the option of being a ‘Portfolio Worker’; someone who possibly has a part-time job to cover the bills on 2 or 3 days per week, a voluntary job to feed the soul and a couple of self-employed contracts to speculate on generating real wealth? This might include buying a franchise, mowing lawns, proof-reading documents, buying, selling and merchanting – maybe using auction sites like Ebay.
The important survival skill in a competitive labour market is to make sure you are not welded to convention. Your parents will likely have experienced a hugely different labour market dynamic and your grandparents, many of whom enjoyed one or two jobs in a career spanning and uninterrupted 50 years, possibly with one company, will have no comprehension of the challenges facing a 21st Century career changer. Unless, of course, they were around in the Great Depression of the 1930s!
Two Eyes on Future Trends
Adapt and survive. Be prepared to take on new challenges. Only stand still with cast iron certainty. But always, always have two eyes on future trends. The labour market never stands still and will continue to evolve. Keeping the British economy at the leading edge of global commerce is an uphill struggle until we sculpt a labour force fit enough and up-to-date enough to compete for overseas currencies. The emerging economic giants of India and China have stolen a march on UK whilst we wondered what to do with 3rd and 4th generation unemployment after the collapse of all of our heavy industry. Ship-building, steel, mining have all gone.
We reinvented ourselves into a Hi-tech nation manufacturing semi-conductors just before the world’s semi-conductor markets collapsed. We then reacted swiftly into the world’s call centre capital and remodelled our science parks into call centre hubs. Sadly, many of our blue-chip organisation decided to outsource our call centres to Asia, Africa and now South America and our call centre hotspots in the North of England and Scotland are fighting to retain their market share. What are we going to do next?
There is no better time to obtain some impartial career advise. To identify a local career professional why not check out:
http://www.icg-uk.org/
http://www.acpinternational.org/
Follow this column for further updates or contact http://www.careerdovetail.co.uk/ if you have found this blog thought-provoking and would like anymore information.
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What to do if A-levels didn't go according to plan
"Open clinics, first come, first served, for A-Level Students who may not have won their first pick degree course or university.
Are you sure this is a good time to compromise and risk wasting a lot of money? Is university the only option? What are your viable options?"
Are you sure this is a good time to compromise and risk wasting a lot of money? Is university the only option? What are your viable options?"
Wednesday, 12 May 2010
Job Search Sound Byte Number 3
Most citizens are petrified to embrace their uniqueness and exercise their individual talents because it is so often beaten out of us as kids.
The very definition of innovation is resistance - from those ‘scaredy-cats’ wishing to perpetuate the status quo. History is littered with descriptions of original thinkers being outcast as heretics – maybe this is the definition of ‘history in the making’. Fresh thinking is usually met with entrenched thinking. Look at historical figures like:
· Alfred Wegener whose Pangaea Theory hailed the existence of a supercontinent that drifted into today’s continents, led to his ostracism from the geological community on the basis it was too far-fetched to be possible
· Ignaz Semmelweis outcast by the medical establishment for encouraging surgeons to wash their hands and cleanse of the new-fangled notion of germs, and, of course.....
· Charles Darwin who, for many decades, concealed his findings on natural selection being the basic mechanism of evolution could undermine long-established Christian ideology.
My ‘Potential-Thieving Triangle’ (below) is aimed at making sense of how society specialises in squashing fresh-thinking. And why courage and respect are key values in empowering creativity and perpetuating innovation - two values conspicuous by their absence in so many organisations.
So if you want to really get on in life, and not hide your light under a bushel, get in touch with your working passions, embrace them, it can only be good for your self-esteem and contagious in your job search campaign.
Work courageously!
The very definition of innovation is resistance - from those ‘scaredy-cats’ wishing to perpetuate the status quo. History is littered with descriptions of original thinkers being outcast as heretics – maybe this is the definition of ‘history in the making’. Fresh thinking is usually met with entrenched thinking. Look at historical figures like:
· Alfred Wegener whose Pangaea Theory hailed the existence of a supercontinent that drifted into today’s continents, led to his ostracism from the geological community on the basis it was too far-fetched to be possible
· Ignaz Semmelweis outcast by the medical establishment for encouraging surgeons to wash their hands and cleanse of the new-fangled notion of germs, and, of course.....
· Charles Darwin who, for many decades, concealed his findings on natural selection being the basic mechanism of evolution could undermine long-established Christian ideology.
My ‘Potential-Thieving Triangle’ (below) is aimed at making sense of how society specialises in squashing fresh-thinking. And why courage and respect are key values in empowering creativity and perpetuating innovation - two values conspicuous by their absence in so many organisations.
So if you want to really get on in life, and not hide your light under a bushel, get in touch with your working passions, embrace them, it can only be good for your self-esteem and contagious in your job search campaign.
Work courageously!
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