For more career advice, visit the Career Energy homepage

The streets of London were packed this week with commuters walking to, and then from, work because the tubes were on strike, the buses were packed and the roads gridlocked. It was hard not to reflect on the commitment that each one was showing to their job, it would have been so much easier for them to have just stayed at home; they almost certainly had colleagues who did. We can be very self deprecating in this country about our work ethic and our media dwell on our ‘broken society’ self image; but the evidence over the last couple of days flies in the face of that. (more…)

Students graduating from university this year are likely to find it difficult to get a job. Not only is the general job market poor because of the recession but places on graduate schemes this year have been slashed. Of course they will get jobs in time, recessions do come to an end and this one is already showing tentative signs of recovery. But how should those appyling to university for the first time react to the slump in graduate jobs?

(more…)

Sometimes the appeal of a substantial promotion or the offer of a far better job can blind us to the question of whether we are making the right choice. And if an inappropriate career move goes wrong it can be much harder to get back on track again. Fortunately the former chief executive of HBOS has managed to put a bad decision behind him and has returned to the sector where he knows he can excel. (more…)

Sometimes a new client will come to Career Energy with a rich and varied CV, demonstrating a wide range of experience and skills, and yet unable to get a job. They may have applied for as many jobs as they can, or they may have been very selective, focusing on just one particular route. In either case the outcome has been the same, they cannot get a job. And nine times out of ten it is the fault of the CV, nothing more. (more…)

What do you do as a leader when your team starts walking away from you? It is not just a problem today in Downing Street, it is something everyone in a leadership position needs to be aware of at all times. Because leadership is a much misunderstood term, particularly in the business environment, and if you don’t know what sort of leader you are it is hard to deal in the best way with problems when they arise . (more…)

I was horrified yesterday to receive an e-mail from an American supplier of (pretty poor) online tools to Outplacement companies. Their marketing is obviously as weak as their products because they clearly thought that Career Energy was a recruitment consultancy. But it was the content of the e-mail and the damage that it could do to the career profession that really concerned me. (more…)

Many Career Energy clients voice concerns about recruitment consultants and head hunters. Their complaint is that recruiters do not go out of their way to help candidates to reposition themselves in the job market, that they seem to take no interest in job seekers and their long term career goals. But this is to fundamentally misunderstand the role that a recruiter plays, and their relationship to job seekers.

(more…)

More redundancies were announced this weekend and the outlook is for a long hot summer with unemployment rising to 3 million. Many job seekers will be concerned about their future prospects, not least because they fear that a lengthy period of unemployment will leave a gap in their CV which is hard to explain.

(more…)