| Career Development And Change Advice Blog |
| Career Advice, Job Search, Redundancy and Career Change |
Those who manage their careers well will find it much easier to protect their job against possible redundancy. I know that is not much comfort if you are fearing redundancy and are not proactive in managing your career but before we discuss instant solutions let’s look at what career management means and how it can assist you in the long term. (more…)
Surveys recently have suggested that we could be in for another twelve months of redundancies before the economy really starts to turn around. Unemployment could reach 3.2 million, maybe more. Redundancy is a possibility for most of us, and the question has to be, how do you protect your job in a climate like this? (more…)
There are grumblings from certain quarters about BT’s plans to offer staff time off work in return for big pay cuts. The argument is: If they can afford to be without so many staff for so long they can afford to be without them permanently; why don’t they go the whole way and announce redundancies? This is both an illogical and a retrograde argument.
A report published by the CBI and recruitment consultants Harvey Nash shows that employers and staff are working together to protect jobs by increasing flexible working and by freezing pay and recruitment. The CBI hails this saying that one of the recession’s “most positive and striking aspects has been the commitment of many businesses and their staff to work together to try to trim costs and save jobs”. It is indeed a welcome trend, although unfortunately there are many companies and staff, who have a diametrically opposed position.
Leaving aside the social and moral issues, yesterday’s announcement that the Chief Executive of RBS is to receive a £9 million salary package will come as welcome news to many. Not because it shows that elements of the City are not prepared to establish a new salary regime but because of the statement it makes about the demand for top talent in the City and the implications for those who believe they fall into that category. (more…)
According to a report published this week, 28% of managers are unlikely to hire someone whom they consider to be long term unemployed. But 84% of managers would have no concerns if the unemployment period was less than six months. This is more encouraging than one might have expected, but it does leave some important questions to be addressed by those who find it is taking a long time to get a job.
British Airways is asking staff to work for up to one month for nothing, in order to rescure the company from collapse. The Chief Executive (who earns more in a month than most of his staff earn in two years) has agreed to give up his salary for July. Although BA is not the first company to make such a request of its staff, the approach is still quite novel and it will be interesting to see what sort of response it gets. Staff do have the option of a month’s unpaid leave instead.
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…)
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.