What’s a pink slip party?

Job Interviewing 101

Most of us experience a sudden dryness in the mouth whenever the word ‘interview’ is mentioned. This is because our default image of an interview is of sitting in front of an unsympathetic group of people being asked a series of questions that we do not know the answers to! The first thing to remind ourselves of when thinking like this is that interviewing techniques have mostly moved on (and mostly improved) from the times when they seemed to be modeled on the Spanish Inquisition. Having said that, it is still possible to ace even the toughest interview by paying attention to a few fundamentals. Some of these include:

·         Be prepared: Interviewers are invariably impressed if it becomes clear that you went to the trouble to familiarize yourself with their company. Do your best therefore do develop a clear understanding of things like company structure, governance, industry issues and competition.

·         Do not be rushed: Entering an interview in an agitated and frazzled state is like entering a boxing ring with one arm tied behind your back. Do your best therefore to try to be at the interview at least 15 minutes early. One of the main reasons that people turn up late for interviews is that they struggled to find a street or building.  Make very sure that you know exactly where to go and how to get there. If you are unsure it might be worth your while to do a ‘dummy run’ a few days before the interview.

·         Dress the part: You may have very strong ideas about informality at the workplace but an important interview is perhaps not the best place to showcase them! As a general rule you should always try to dress one notch above what is acceptable in the company that you are implying to. By doing this you are not indicating that you will dress like that every day but rather that you regard the interview as so important that you are willing to take special care with your appearance.

·         Act professionally: Act as if your interview starts the moment that you enter the front door of a company. Remember that first impressions count. You should therefore treat the personnel at reception with courtesy and respect (you should do that anyway) and then take a seat to wait for the interview. No matter how nervous you are, do not pace the hallways or go and stand outside for a ‘smoke break’!

·         Remember the value of body language: Once you are called into the interview you should introduce yourself by shaking hands with everyone present. Make sure that you maintain excellent eye contact throughout and that you make use of appropriate gestures and body positions.

·         Answers questions clearly, concisely and to the point: When you receive a question, begin the answer by addressing the questioner directly. After this initial acknowledgement of the questioner you can broaden your answer the address the whole panel. Do your best to stay on topic and to address the question at hand. Whatever you do, don’t ramble! Say just enough to give a clear answer. If you do know much more about the question that is being asked, hint as this, but leave it at that. Interviewers don’t like it at all when they perceive that an interviewee is ‘hijacking’ the interview. Avoid this perception at all costs.

·         Avoid Diversions and Distractions: Do not respond to attempts by interviewers to let you go ‘off on a tangent’, this can often be a test of your ability to focus! You should also make sure that your cell phone is switched off. It is not and starts to ring do not under any circumstances answer it!

·         Be ready with a short statement and some questions: Many interviews will conclude with the opportunity to say a few words and/or to ask questions to the interviewers. Never decline this invitation since your refusal can easily be interpreted as lack of interest. You should therefore be ready with a few things to say and a few questions about the company and the position. The value of this part of the interview is to be found in the fact that it allows you to showcase knowledge and skills that you feel are important while also demonstrating your willingness to learn from the company. Your statement should definitely include something about why you would like to work for the company and a declaration of your desire to be appointed to the position that you are being interviewed for.

·         Follow up: Make sure that you have the contact details of everyone who was present at the interview and follow up the interview with a personal ‘Thank You’ letter to each of them. This letter should be short and to the point in thanking the interviewer for his/her time and restating your willingness and ability to take up the position that you were interviewed for.

Recommended reading:

Powers, P, 2005, Winning Job Interviews: Reduce Interview Anxiety / Outprepare the Other Candidates / Land the Job You Love New Jersey: Career Press

Career Change: Some Basic Steps

In any given workplace there is bound to be at least a few people who would love to take their careers in a totally different direction. Very of them will take the necessary steps to do so however. The main reasons for this are 1) Uncertainty on how to approach the complex issue of career transition and 2) Fear of losing the security that comes with a current position. The best way to overcome these barriers is to approach the possibility of career transition in a calm, professional and informed way. This will help you to make the right decisions at the right time! Possible elements of this process include the following:

1) Ask yourself some hard questions: Changing careers is obviously a major life decision and therefore not one to be taken lightly. You should therefore make sure that you consider the change for all the right reasons and none of the wrong ones! Ask yourself the following questions:

·         Why do I want to do this? Many people plan consider career changes as a way of fulfilling a life-long dream or as a way to be of greater service to the community. These are obviously legitimate reasons for taking such a major step. If however the only reason you are considering the change is that you are dissatisfied with your current management then the best course of action might be a change of employer rather than taking your career in a completely different direction.

·         What do I want to do? Just having a vague notion that you would like to change careers is not going to be enough to launch you into a new direction. Try to develop a good idea of that exactly it is that you want to do.

·         Is this the right time for a career change? Timing is one of the most crucial questions when considering a career transition. This is especially important when you remember that your family’s economic well-being might be at stake. You should therefore seriously consider whether you are ready to make to move now or whether a period of saving up for it or of retraining might not first be necessary.

2) Investigate your alternative career: If you decide that you want to go ahead with a career transition you will need to move from a good idea to where you want to be heading to investigating some specifics. This includes decisions on exactly what you want your new career to be and what the best way to get there would be. Deciding on an answer to the first question will often lead you to the answers for the second as well. Some of the ways in which you can make a decision about what it is that you want to do are to:

·         Define what it is what you would like to achieve and be remembered for

·         Analyze your passions and talents

·         Ask friends and colleagues what they think a good alternative career for you would be

·         Get formal career advice

·         Investigate whether there is a hobby or other part time pursuit that you could turn into a career

Once you have made a decision about an alternative career you would have to start looking at ways into that career. In some cases the entry routes are very clearly defined (e.g. if you want to become a doctor you would have to go and study medicine for a number of years) while with others you will have the opportunity to be a bit more creative in terms of how you go about things.

3) Plan and Implement the change: Once you know where you want to go and what the best ways to get there are, the next step would be to actually start the journey. Try to manage this like you would any other vitally important project by deciding on action steps and dates for their completion. This will help you to move things forward instead of just continuing to dream about perhaps changing careers one day. One of the best ways of keeping to your action plan is to make yourself accountable to someone (perhaps your spouse or a mentor) for the completion of the steps.

Changing careers is never easy and straightforward. When you consider however that the payoff could be the career of your dreams it is quite likely that all the blood, sweat and tears would be more than worth it!

Top Tips for Achieving Work-Life Balance

One of the most widely discussed issues in the corporate world over the past few years have been how employees could achieve a healthy work-life balance. The main motivator behind this debate was the growing realization that many people were working in ways that were seriously detrimental to their family relationships and general health. The best way to respond to the current discussion is to make sure that the growing awareness about work-life balance is not something that you are merely vaguely aware of but that it is something that that you seriously consider and implement in your own life. Here are some of the ways in which you can work towards achieving this balance in your own life:

1) Honestly evaluate where you are at: The first step to achieving work-life balance is to evaluate carefully whether you are currently ‘in balance’ or not. You can do this by asking yourself the following questions:

·         Is my work encroaching on my family and/or personal life? The best way to answer this question is to take honest stock of your relationships and to evaluate whether any of them are being harmed by too little time being invested in them. Another way of doing this would be to simply add up the hours that you spend working (both by formally being at work and taking work home).

·         Is my work affecting my health? It can sometimes be the case that work related stress becomes so severe that it causes all kinds of health problems ranging from sleeplessness to depression. If you think that you are suffering from any health problems that could be traced back to your working environment a good case could be made for reshaping the way in which you think about work-life balance issues.

·         Am I struggling to ‘switch off’? You don’t have to constantly be at work for it to completely dominate your life. If you are constantly thinking about what is happening at work while you are not there it is in a sense just as good as being there!

2) Design appropriate boundaries: One of the most common difficulties when trying to strike the right work-life balance is that both employers and employees are often not very clear where the one begins and the other one stop. Do your best to clearly define this boundary in consultation with your managers. This definition should include very practical matters like when you may be contacted when not at work and under which circumstances you may be asked to work overtime and for how long. You should also note that technology greatly contributed to the blurring of the lines between private and work life. It would therefore be appropriate to make the point that even though your emails may reach you instantly (e.g. through a Blackberry) an instant response should not be expected if you are not at work.

3) Investigate alternative way of working: Modern technology makes it possible to be ‘in the office’ while not actually being there physically. It may therefore be worth your while to investigate whether it might not be appropriate in your case to work from home at least part time. Doing this will obviously help you to reduce the time you spend commuting. Time gained in this way can of course be used invest in your family or in personal pursuits.

4) Get the best possible help and advice: Designing the best strategy for maintaining work-life balance can be a slightly complex exercise since it is so heavily dependent on your own circumstances, goals and work environment. It would therefore be worth your while to spend time with someone who could help you by bringing and informed “outsiders’ perspective”. This may simply be a co-worker who seems to have struck the balance in the right way; you could however also seek out the services of a professional counselor or consultant. Before seeking outside help you should start by raising any questions or concerns that you might have with your direct manager. This will, at the very least, flag up the issue as something that you feel deserves attention. It could often also lead to the manager working through some of the issues with you in order to achieve a mutually beneficial outcome.

5) Take care of your health: One of the most common results of a lack of work-life balance is ‘burnout’. This is where the mind and body simply cannot take the long hours; stress and lack of exercise associated with overwork anymore. Do your best to avoid this by:

·         Always taking your full holiday entitlement

·         Getting enough sleep and exercise

·         Monitoring your diet

Recommended reading:

Molloy, A, 2005 Stop Living Your Job, Start Living Your Life: 85 Simple Strategies to Achieve Work/Life Balance Berkeley: Ulysess Press

Top Jobs for 2009 and Beyond

It is obviously not possible to peer into some kind of crystal ball and then to predict the best jobs for the future. We can however analyze some trends in the world around us and then make some informed predictions based on them. With this in mind, here are some of the major trends affecting the modern workplace:

• A large aging population: The ‘Baby Boomer’ generation, one of the biggest single age cohorts of modern time is nearing retirement and old age. This means that there will be a great demand for services aimed at older people (e.g. residential care and geriatric health)
• Rapid medical advances: The medical profession is continuing to grow and to pioneer innovative new treatments for a variety of diseases and conditions. This makes it a high growth area as people are living longer and therefore need more medical treatment. More new treatments will also translate into more demand for medical services.
• Rapid technological growth: With the growth of technology come new challenges and opportunities in the sense that it will both create jobs (especially for people to manage and apply the technology) and take them away (by automating them).
• Rapid growth in the reach and quality of pre-school childcare: More and more mothers choose to return to work on a full time basis, thus creating the need for more quality child care places. This means that the childcare industry is rapidly moving from a source of low paid jobs to a stable career base.
• Rapid growth in ‘distributed working’: Technology is continuing to make new working patterns possible. This means that more and more job opportunities will cease to be office based or will be designed around a flexible working system.
• Short term (hopefully!) financial turmoil: The ‘credit crunch’ has meant that there will be a great need for people to help ‘sort out the mess’ over the next few years.

The trends mentioned above are borne out by the Employment Projections for 2006-16 published by the United State Bureau of Labor Statistics[1]. According to this report the ten careers that will experience the most employment growth over the next decade are:

1. Registered Nurses
2. Retail Salespersons
3. Customer Service Representatives
4. Combined food preparation and serving workers, including fast food
5. Office clerks, general
6. Personal and home care aides
7. Home health aides
8. Janitors and cleaners
9. Nursing aides, orderlies and attendants
10. Bookkeeping, accounting and auditing clerks

 

 The ten occupations that will grow the fastest are:

1. Network systems and data communication analysts
2. Personal and home care aides
3. Home health aides
4. Computer software engineers, applications
5. Veterinary technologists and technicians
6. Personal financial advisors
7. Makeup artists, theatrical and performance
8. Medical assistants
9. Veterinarians
10. Substance abuse and behavioral disorder counselors

The ten industries with the largest wage and salary employment growth are likely to be:

1. Management, scientific and technical consulting services
2. Employment services
3. General medical and surgical hospitals, public and private
4. Elementary and secondary schools, public and private
5. Local government, excluding education and hospitals
6. Offices of physicians
7. Limited-service eating places
8. Colleges, universities, and professional schools, public and private
9. Computer systems design and related services
10. Home health care services

Based on all the above, our recommendations for the top jobs of 2009 are:

1. Home Foreclosure Specialist
2. Day Care Worker
3. Management Consultant
4. Computer Programmer
5. Employment Consultant
6. Home Care Specialist
7. Network Engineer
8. Social Service Coordinator
9. Physician’s Assistant
10. Personal Financial Advisors (especially those specializing in rebuilding credit)