For more career advice, visit the Career Energy homepage

Statistics are confusing. The unemployment figures out yesterday showed that the youth unemployment rate now stands at 18.4%, the highest figure since records began in 1992. But the TUIC have shown that youth unemployment was higher during the 1980s recession, before the current records began. (more…)

Sometimes amazing things happen to us, for reasons we don’t understand. We put them down to luck, or chance. Whilst things can, and do, happen by luck or chance, more frequently outstanding things happen to us because we make them happen, even though we don’t realise it. (more…)

One of my most frequent activities during the recession has been replying to the vast numbers of people who have asked to come and work at Career Energy as a career consultant. There is clearly something about the work we do which appeals to people; the idea of helping others is always attractive and what better to help them with than careers, which take up such an significant part of our life. (more…)

A fifty seven year old man came to see me. He had come to this country as a young man, a refugee from war in his homeland. His immediate need when arriving in the UK was to earn money to send home and he got himself the first job that he could, a fairly menial job which paid relatively well given what he was used to, but which did not stretch or challenge him in any way. (more…)

The past ten years or so have seen a remarkable growth in coaching as a technique to help us to do more, better. There are various forms of coaching- the most effective being workplace related, particularly career coaching, executive coaching and performance coaching. There are also others, like life coaches, financial coaches and relationship coaches. An analogy is often drawn between workplace of coaching and coaching on the sports field, but there is one major difference. (more…)

A report published yesterday suggested that the children of working mothers were likely to be less healthy than those whose mothers remained at home. The report, based on a survey of 5 year olds across Britain, found that those whose mothers juggled family and working life watched more television and had a less healthy diet. It is the sort of report which will inflame passions, re-opening the divide between those who believe that mothers should work, and those who do not. But does it really tell us anything at all? (more…)

One of the most important questions in any job search campaign is how you want others to see you. Although it may be uncomfortable to talk of personal image, or of branding yourself, the image that you project is the one that people buy you on; and when people offer you a job they are buying you – even though you are also buying them when you accept a job. (more…)

I was invited into the BBC TV studios yesterday to talk about Prince Williams’s career options. He had just announced that he wanted to be more than just a royal ornament and the BBC were interested to know what else he could realistically do. (more…)

One of the biggest obstacles that career changers face is accepting just how wide a range of options they have. At Career Energy we meet people on a daily basis who want to know what careers are open to them, as an ex-engineer, ex-designer, ex- lawyer or whatever. It can be difficult to accept that the career you are hoping to leave no longer defines you, that employers will exclude you because of career choices you made at an earlier stage in your life. (more…)

This weekend we saw the first indications of how public spending cuts will impact on the working landscape. The Schools Minister suggested that education departments will save money by reducing top tier management; schools and colleges are likely to share heads and deputy heads. (more…)