Richard Maun

Category: Uncategorized

  • Job Hunting Tips #4 …Do Something

    Brian does something to improve his chances of finding a job
    Brian does something to improve his chances of finding a job

    There are currently 2,470,000 people registered as unemployed in the UK, which is split roughly 1.46 million men and 1.01 women. I mention this because losing your job can feel like you’ve been cast into a snake pit, where your chances of getting out again seem slim and uncertain.

    In my experience, people looking for work seem to think they are in competition with all the 2,469,999 people who are also out of work. They tell me that it’s impossible to get a job in a recession (it isn’t). That there aren’t any jobs out there (there are). That nobody wants to hire them (this isn’t true). And so on…

    People give away their power by using negative words and scary statistics to frighten themselves into inaction. A classic example of this is when people say:

    ‘I’ve been made redundant.’

    Of course the truth is that they haven’t. The job has been made redundant. They remain a useful and talented person, who is looking for work.

    This post has the title ‘Do Something’ for two reasons. Firstly, if you change your language you retain your power and can set yourself up for energetic and productive job hunting.

    Secondly, and this for me is the BIG one, do something to cut down the odds against you. I’ve noticed in job hunting workshops about 40% of people own a useful job hunting book. If you buy a book and read it you’re now ahead of the 60% of people who know nothing and don’t invest in their own future.

    And I’ve come to realise that about 30% of people bother to properly prepare for an interview. By ‘properly prepare’ I mean rehearse their Minute To Win It, practise their STAR answers, know which questions to ask at the end of an interview and are aware of how to use attending skills to maintain contact with people.

    If you are one of six people waiting in turn for an interview, the chances are that only two of you will have prepared well enough. Would you like to be one of them?

    And finally, it’s true that networking is the smart way to find a job. How many job hunters make a concerted effort to go networking? About 10%. This means that if you go networking then you’ve left behind 90% of the unemployed herd and are competing with a much smaller pool of people. By the time you think about how many people with your skill set are actively networking, you might only be in competition with a few tens of people.

    So, if you really want to get a job please do something to increase your chances; buy a book (any relevant book), go networking and really prepare for your next interview.

    That way you know you won’t be competing with 2,469,999 other job hunters. You might just be competing with less than 100.

    Do something. Increase your odds in your favour. Do it today.

    **NEW** Video

    Here’s fun. My chums at Los Penguin Productions have posted a new Job Hunting Blues video on YouTube and you’re welcome to have a look. It features Brian, our resident job hunting stunt man. He was great to work with, a real pro.

    More Opportunities To Do Something

    The Minute To Win It, the STAR answers and much more useflness can all be found in the book Job Hunting 3.0. If you know someone who is looking for work then please point them at Amazon.

    Pass It On

    If you know someone who would be interested in this blog post please forward it to them, or ReTweet it, or let them know they can subscribe to regular emails via the box on the homepage. Many thanks.

    Next Week

    We’ll be looking at attending skills. How well do you engage with people?

  • Job Hunting Tips #3 …Practise

    Bicycles in Beijing. Or opportunities to practise, depending on your perspective.
    Bicycles in Beijing. Or opportunities to practise, depending on your perspective.

    Can you ride a bicycle? And if you can, did you jump on it and pedal off in to the sunset at your first attempt? Or did you, like me, have stabilisers and a patient father, who worked together to enable me to stay upright and out of the gravel?
    The point of course is this; I didn’t learn how to ride a bike, the actual learning bit was easy (keep the pedals going round). What I did was practised riding a bike. Practised until I could ride no-handed all the way to the shops and back and feel smug. Well, smug up to the point my little sister shopped me to the parents and I received a ticking off for dangerous riding. But am I bitter? ….I hardly ever mention it these days…

    …But silliness aside it’s worth noting all the things that we can now do to a good standard because we worked hard and practised at them. This would include reading and writing and talking, to name three. Job hunting skills are just a subset of these and the difference that makes the difference is how much you practise.

    Job hunting skills are there to be practised and if we want to get ahead of the competition then it’s up to us to put in the effort. Interviews can be predicted, networking conversations can be predicted, social greetings can be predicted…it’s surprising how much the patterns are there to be spotted, which makes rehearsal much easier.

    Pause for a moment and imagine you’re sitting in a waiting room with a smattering of other candidates. You’re the last in line to be interviewed and suddenly you realise that the other people are calm because they’ve all practised their interview answers, know how to keep eye contact and have great stories to sell their talents. You don’t, however, because you followed the other nine out of ten people I’ve worked with:

    You read your CV once the night before and decided to trust to luck. What more could you have done?

    …What more indeed? It’s up to you. My suggestion is that you make a choice:

    You can practise and increase your chances of success, or you can do nothing and risk falling off your bicycle. What do you decide?

    It could be a decision that determines how long you will be waiting to start your next job.

     

    More Opportunities To Practise

    There are more tips and worked examples in the book Job Hunting 3.0, which provides people with plenty of questions and answers to practise, in order to sharpen them up for their next interview. If you know someone who is looking for work then please point them at Amazon.

    Pass It On

    If you know someone who would be interested in this blog post please forward it to them, or ReTweet it, or let them know they can subscribe to regular emails via the box on the homepage. Many thanks.

    Next Week

    We’ll be looking at some statistics, to get people thinking. The numbers tell the real story.