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Anything but networking
Most of my clients think the best way to find work is by looking in places where jobs are advertised. These days that would be online. Literally hundreds of thousands of positions are posted on sites every day. Take your pick. Or they might prefer recruitment agencies, hoping that someone there will be able to find them the perfect job. Of course, jobs are advertised and filled online, and agencies or headhunters do place people for companies all the time. But it’s a fact that most jobs are found through some kind of personal contact. A 2016 LinkedIn article states 85%. I’m not sure that there are any accurate figures…
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Not knowing how
Every dream we have, every plan we make, starts with an idea. Or a thought, or a picture that comes to us from somewhere. And we connect with that thought or picture or dream somewhere inside of ourselves. Some of us are able to keep that connection, take that idea and run with it. Sometimes the vision just comes about like magic and we don’t know how it happened. Most of the time though, we put the idea aside. Too risky. Too unlikely. Too costly. Out of our reach, our abilities, beyond what is possible. Or even, beyond what we deserve. But in fact, if we hold onto that idea…
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As if
My client is sitting on the sofa looking uncomfortable. He shuffles about a bit, then says, “The thing is, most of the time I feel as if I’m making it up as I go along. You know… as if I’m pretending I know more than I do. That I know what I’m doing – or how to do it.” I listen, very interested. “It’s not that I can’t do it, what I do. People seem to think I’m doing okay. That’s why I’ve been asked to go for this next position.” “So what’s the problem?” I ask, still very interested. “I want to know how to get rid of this…
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Why work?
There are many reasons, of course. Money. To feel useful. To be part of something. To share skills, values, a vision. To feel valued, have status in society as a whole. And when we are ‘out of work’ – that is, not being paid in some way for our daily efforts – how do we feel? Often, less valued. Less useful. Invisible, even. When my son was small and I was not ‘working’ for a while, someone asked me at a party what I did. ‘I’m looking after my little boy,’ I answered. ‘Oh, but what do you really do?’ was the response. Not always, of course. Work in the…
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What I’ve learned from my clients (part 2)
So, after that initial phone call, I started helping other people who came to me –all through word of mouth. It seemed that the resources I’d collected from the US and the books I’d read really did help. But most of all my willingness to offer a space for them to talk through their situation was what helped clients most. I didn’t charge anything for some while, then just a little towards more books and resources. The more I listened, the more I learned from every person I met. Lesson 3: listening is key I listened to what these people were saying: they felt unskilled, out of date, too old,…
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What I’ve learned from my clients (part 1)
Maybe that sounds like a cliché. But it’s true anyway. I started out helping people with career change in about 1990. I’m not even sure exactly when it was, because I hardly noticed I was doing it at the time. I’d been trying to set up an advice service for what were then known as ‘women returners’. It was to be run by advisors who – unlike me – were trained in the career service. I nearly did it… but in the end couldn’t get the funding needed. One day a woman called me to ask for help because she had heard on the grapevine what I was doing. I…