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How to manage your career like a successful business? |
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Many entrepreneurial types harbour a desire to one day be business owners. The truth is we are all already running our own businesses in the form of our careers. If you can look upon yourself as a company with a product or service to sell and apply a few simple business rules, success in your career should follow.
Businesses have to work hard to win new clients. In trying to do so, they are evaluated against many different criteria. Good business owners, therefore, spend considerable time developing a plan before going to market.
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When is an achievement a good achievement? |
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The work experience section on most CVs usually mirrors a job description. A strange phenomenon when you consider employers look for evidence of achievement, skill and value.
Clearly stating your achievements separately from your responsibilities is a very positive way to give information about your skills, abilities and value. The work history within your CV could read, for example:
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Test: is your CV specific or generic? |
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Great news: 90% of job-seekers still use generic CVs. So, if you’re in the 10% minority you stand a great chance of success. Truth be told it’s hard work creating a tailored CV. Take the test below to see what camp you’re in.
Most job seekers have a CV documenting a series of responsibilities (“managed a team of 5”, “responsible for delivering a sales target of 1million per annum” or “reconciled accounts on a monthly basis”). Some go on to offer a profile highlighting the key skills and perhaps weave in a few examples to back this up. Very few compose their CVs according to the specific requirements of a company.
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Competency based interviews, behaviours, emotional intelligence: confused? |
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Attracting and retaining staff has long been a top priority for most employers. To hire more effectively, interviewers are focussing less on applicants’ past job responsibilities and more on how they carried those duties out.
When faced with an interview the likelihood is you will be told it is ‘competency based’ or that the interviewer is looking for certain ‘behaviours’ or evidence of ‘emotional intelligence’. I want to make sure you know exactly what this means...
First of all a simple tip that most don’t bother to follow: find out the format of the interview. It’s fine to ask beforehand so give yourself a chance to prepare.
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Take the content of your CV and cut it in half |
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Intelligent and articulate communication should use few and wisely chosen words. That’s why we strongly suggest taking your newly updated CV and cutting the content in half.
Even if you listened to other advice and kept your CV to 2 (or max 3) pages, this should still be an invaluable exercise. We’re not suggesting you write a 1 page CV but instead be ruthless about what is included and work harder to generate content employers will want to see.
Not many job seekers go this extra yard, so in doing so you give yourself a grand chance of success.
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Test: are you accessing the hidden job market? |
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Every week we hear about employers turning away hundreds, if not thousands of applicants for each role they have. Registering on job boards and applying to well publicised adverts is fine, but it has never been more important to be able to access the hidden job market.
It makes sense to step back and double check your job hunting activity. This may require tackling uncomfortable truths but will lead you to understand how to access the elusive hidden job market.
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Do you respond to adverts or hunt for opportunities? |
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Barely a week goes by without a new award for the ‘best’, ‘most socially responsible’ or ‘diverse’ (etc) employer to work for. Yet it seems the same 10 employers win all the awards. No disrespect to PwC or HSBC for being recognised for their latest innovative campaign, but truth-be-told I tend to stop reading once I see a big brand. I feel like I’ve heard it all before.
As a job-seeker what I’d really like to hear about are the innovative businesses that operate without multi-million pound advertising / PR / recruitment budgets. The best part of job seeking should be looking for companies that relate to your interests. The problem with job boards and the internet is the biggest companies have the loudest and often most visual voices.
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Is your recruitment consultant your trusted advisor? |
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This may seem a little strange but developing a close relationship with a recruitment consultant could be one of the best uses of time in your career.
Over the years I’ve met a number of directors who regularly seek careers advice from and place a huge emphasis on the relationship with a particular recruitment consultant. These are smart individuals and they know the value of having a good consultant on their side.
Photograph : BBC
Just as Nick Hewer and Margaret Mountford are Alan Sugar’s formidable aides on The Apprentice, the truth is your recruitment consultant could be your best careers advisor.
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No beating around the Bush with body language |
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Little unintentional signals can be interpreted by your interviewer to make you seem like the real deal OR the imposter. If you’ve had body language coaching and been encouraged to always adopt one particular style – think again.
We all know that despite Tony Blair claiming to stand shoulder to shoulder with George W Bush for example, we often witnessed shots of him looking uncomfortable, being ushered into aeroplanes and doorways by the far more assertive President Bush. He was clearly number two to the US rooster in this particular pecking order.
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4 golden CV rules from 277 other articles... |
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If you were to abide by 4 rules to CV writing what would they be? You shouldn’t be short of ideas...a trawl through back copies of newspapers shows careers advisors, journalists, recruiters, psychologists and other ‘experts’ have churned out 1,000s of articles on how to construct the perfect CV in the last few years.
Providing fresh, useful advice is difficult. I think the majestic skill is in distilling all the advice and actually doing something about it.
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