| Career Development And Change Advice Blog |
| Career Advice, Job Search, Redundancy and Career Change |
The 1980s play Six Degrees Of Separation is undergoing a revival at the Old Vic in London. In the play a New York couple believe that they are going to be given parts in a film directed by the actor Sidney Poitier. Their paths and his have crossed, or so they believe, through an unlikely series of connections. (more…)
My colleague Justin Culver and I spent time with some contacts from another company yesterday. We had never met before, it was an exploratory meeting. They offer employee benefits to companies, we provide outplacement services to a similar market and we were all interested in discussing ways that we could work together. (more…)
I wanted to contact a fellow Chief Executive yesterday, someone I had never met but to whom I wanted to suggest an idea. I had to decide whether to ring, e-mail, write or try to find him on a social networking site. As I thought about the best way of making contact I realised that I was going through exactly the same process that job hunters go through when deciding how to initiate a speculative approach to a company they want to work for.
Should we take comfort from the fact that the rise in unemployment has slowed down? Not if you are one of the unemployed, nor if you are one of the million or so people who are likely to lose their jobs over the course of the next few months. The decline in the pace of unemployment may indicate that the recession is finally bottoming out, but that makes little difference in human terms. (more…)
As far as I know there have been no forecasts published on how the expected increase in swine flu cases this autumn will impact on businesses already struggling due to the recession. With one in eight workers expected to be affected by the pandemic it is clear that the impact on business will be significant. Which will impact on productivity, which may in turn impact on job security. (more…)
There are several possible ways for a company to approach a round of redundancies. They can ask for people to step forward for voluntary redundancy. They can implement a policy of last in first out, or concentrate the cuts on one particular department or team which has become surplus to requirements. They do have legal constraints on what does and what does not constitute redundancy. But at the end of the day, irrespective of the law, many companies will use personal, subjective methods to determine who to let go and who to keep. Put bluntly they will try to get rid of those who are underperforming or who do not fit it. So how do you guard against possible redundancy yourself? (more…)
What do you do when you have devoted your life to one successful career and it all blows up in your face? Take the example of someone who started work in the UK, joined a global company, was promoted to senior level, relocated to the New York office then sent to Singapore to head up the South East Asia division. The global recession caused the company to hit the rocks and he lost his job. Now at the age of 55 he is a global traveller, living in a country he does not want to be in, he wants to go home but no longer knows where that is, his networks in the UK are long dissolved, he feels his industry is now dominated by younger, sharper people and he does not know where to turn. (more…)
Fiat’s talks to take over the Vauxhall and Opel brands from GM, may result in the loss the loss of many British car workers’ jobs. There is no reason to assume that the take over will go ahead, the unions are opposed and Fiat itself is not as financially secure as it would like to be, particularly after agreeing to buy 20% of Chrysler. But whether the takeover proceeds or not, it represents one of the most high profile of many potential mergers, takeovers and restructurings under consideration at present. The numbers of which will increase over the coming months as the economy realigns. Takeovers threaten jobs, both in the acquired and and the acquiring company. Yours could be amongst them. (more…)
A newspaper reported over the weekend that private school pupils are to be encouraged to coach their contemporaries in state schools on debating techniques and on how to develop their self confidence. State school pupils will also be encouraged to develop networks similar to the old school tie networks to which private pupils are said to belong. The advocates of this proposal believe that private school pupils excel in the professions and business due to their childhood networks and their greater self confidence. I am not sure that this assumption is correct.
Our local Italian restaurant is closing this week, after over thirty years. No great surprise you might think, family-run Italian restaurants, once a permanent feature of the British high street have been disappearing for decades. But this closure is a direct result of the recession, if you had told Mario last summer that he would be gone within nine months he would have thought you were mad. So what does someone aged fifty, who has run their own business since the 1970s do now? (more…)