| Career Development And Change Advice Blog |
| Career Advice, Job Search, Redundancy and Career Change |
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…)
Writing in the Guardian this weekend, Equality and Human Rights Commission Trevor Philips makes out a powerful case for increasing the opportunities for all in the workplace. In addition to their traditional work around gender and ethnicity, the Commission’s Working Better project aims to ensure that new ways of working are introduced which address the specific work-life and personal life management issues of all groups. These include parents, carers, younger workers, disabled and older people. (more…)
How would you react if you discovered the company that you worked for was engaged in corrupt practices? It is not an idle question. The allegations that British Aerospace paid out millions of pounds in bribes to secure contracts raises important personal questions for all of us. How would you react if you had to choose between your personal integrity and the risk of losing your job? (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…)
A man goes into a field with a metal detector hoping to make a few bob by finding some scrap metal. Instead he finds a hoard of Anglo Saxon gold and gets himself a share of a multi million pound treasure trove. A woman buys a lottery ticket, just for a bit of fun, and it turns out she wins seven million pounds. Extreme events can and do happen. (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…)
We have reached the point, common to all recessions, at which economic growth is beginning to recover whilst unemployment continues to rise. History suggests that an improvement in the employment market lags about two years behind economic recovery. And this raises an interesting question. (more…)
The Centre for Social Justice have proposed that the state subsidise the salaries of low paid workers, so that they can earn more than if they were on benefits. In this way, the Centre argues, people will be encouraged to come off benefits and return to work, at a lower cost to the state. (more…)
The engineering consultancy WSP have been running an innovative scheme to encourage staff to reduce their carbon footprint. The scheme will be welcomed by environmentalists and career professionals but less so by libertarians. Libertarian environmentalists will have something to think about.