In a volatile global economy, thousands of people are facing uncertain futures.  In times of reorganisation, redundancy and change, many individuals use the opportunity to review their career and choose career coaching to help them assess their options and create an action plan for moving forward.

The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development report more than a third of workers want to change careers (Financial Times July 2009). Other surveys - from around the developed world - show that up to 80% of people would like to change job or career. The demand for good quality career coaching is potentially vast.

Many people who are dissatisfied with their jobs or facing redundancy are looking to coaches to help them ignite their potential and discover a new and fulfilling career. They immediately see the value in investing in coaching in this part of their life. And yet, helping such people can be very challenging for coaches. In a very real sense, career coaching is unlike coaching most other issues. People expect guidance through a process which leads to a clear result - deciding on a new career and having a plan for making it happen.

At Figuring Out, we have experienced qualified coaches who are licensed to use The Firework Career Coaching Programme, a ground-breaking and unique set of materials which takes people through such a process. Firework’s reputation as a quality brand has grown over the years and Firework is now an International Coach Federation approved provider.

The Firework Career Coaching programme was developed and tested over three years by two ICF coaches to help people in career transition - and it really produces results! Using the Firework programme, you can find the work you were born to do.

Our licensed Firework Career Coaches, can help you to transition to a brand new career whilst giving you value for money.

For more information, please contact one of our Fireworks Licensed coaches

In the last article, we talked about common CV mistakes and in this article, we’re covering the two most common pitfalls:

Achievements: Surprisingly, many people do not list achievements on their CV. Most employers, want to see how you SOLVE problems. What have you achieved? An achievement-based CV ABSOLUTELY critical in today’s marketplace.

Your achievements are made up of three parts: the assignment or project description, what you did, and the result. You want to quantify your results where possible (i.e. percentage of productivity improvement, amount of savings captured, and / or amount of revenues generated). Sometimes, you can add a compelling situation, such as a “volatile recessionary period,” to frame the achievement. Here’s an example:

Generated $1M in new revenues during a volatile recessionary period by developing XYZ new product and structuring a sales blitz to drive sales during the launch.

Additionally, you can list projects that you completed, the result(s), if the project was completed on time, or under budget, etc.

No Customization: Your CV is not a one-size-fits-all document. You MUST customize your CV, making sure it’s applicable to your background and experience. As you customize it be sure to write about the type of position you are seeking. Emphasize areas that directly link your skills to that type of position and de-emphasize the duties or achievements that are not related.

As you read job postings for positions for which you are interested, note the keywords (noun and noun phrases) they use throughout the listing. Are those keywords on your CV? One strategy you can use to customize your CV for a particular position is to interweave keywords in a job posting that are applicable to your background and experience. Why is that important? If the hiring manager wrote that job posting, chances are greater that those keywords will be in the search parameters that he / she utilizes if they are using CV scanning software.

Including these elements on a well-formatted, error-free CV will help improve your career marketing material. Remember, your CV is not your silver bullet for getting a job. You need to employ multiple job search strategies, especially networking!

Written by Fiona Biggins, adapted from the article Using the Web for Work By Kristen Jacoway

Contact one of our Career Coaches for more information on our services.

As a career coach and career preparation expert working on the Future Jobs Fund Programme aimed at getting young people aged 18 to 24 back into work, I have the opportunity to review many CVs. For many of these young people it is their first foray into the world of work, so I wanted to address the top seven CV shortfalls. In this article you’ll learn how to make your CV stand out and shine. In the next article we’ll look at the  2 more pitfalls.

Email Addresses: I am often surprised at some of the names people develop and list for their email address. I’ve actually seen ones like Foxylady@….com or 2hot@…com. Think about this for a minute. If you are an employer or a recruiter, what’s your FIRST impression of a person that would use this as an email address? I suggest you try to use your first and last name as your email address. Additionally, I also recommend getting an email address that you exclusively use during your job search. Having a separate email address for your job search helps you to track your search activities more efficiently.

No “WIIFM” Paragraph for an Employer: Of course, employers are all tuned into their favorite radio station, WIIFM - What’s in it for me? People in career transition often make the mistake of putting an objective stating what he/she wants with no regard for what it is the employer is seeking. Instead of an objective, you want to use a “Profile” paragraph to introduce your skills and abilities and leverage your personal brand. How are YOU different from everyone else who has the same job title? Relate your profile to the top three to five requirements for which the employer is seeking.

Data Dumping: Are you suffering from “TMI” on your résumé - too much information? Remember, studies show that on average, a recruiter or a hiring manager only takes 10-45 seconds to look at your CV for the first time. If you’ve included everything you’ve done in the past 30 years, you are data dumping. You need to include the skills and abilities that are relevant to TODAY’s marketplace. Most employers, hiring managers, and recruiters are generally interested in the last 10-15 years since that is what’s relevant to today’s market challenges.

Use hyperlinks: According to Webopedia, an hyperlink is an element in an electronic document that links to another place in the same document or to an entirely different document. Typically, you click on the hyperlink to follow the link. They are useful on your CV so that employers or recruiters can click on the link to find out more about the companies you’ve worked for. For example Gordon Brown’s CV:

Contact Information: Many people use a header function to enter their contact information. Why is doing this a mistake? Many CV scanning software systems cannot “read” header and footer information, so the information is missed and could cause you to miss an opportunity!

For more CV writing tips check out article “Tips for writing a compelling CV”

Written by Fiona Biggins, adapted from the article Using the Web for Work By Kristen Jacoway

Contact one of our Career Coaches for more information on our services.

If you have never been for a formal interview or it has been some time since you have attended one, the thought of attending an interview can be quite daunting. However, with the thorough preparation and the right attitude you will succeed. And remember “fail to plan, plan to fail…”

Here you will find some clear and easy steps to make your next interview experience as straightforward as possible.

In the weeks leading up to your interview;

(i) Research the role and identify how you match the skills required, also identify any extra transferable skills you have to offer.

(ii) Research the company; understand what they do and how you can contribute to this.

(iii) Decide what to wear, first impressions count so ensure you dress suitably for the organisation and role you are going for.

(iv) Plan your journey, how will you get to the interview and how long will it take. Make allowance for any potential travel delays and plan to arrive at least 10 minutes before the scheduled start time.

On the day of your interview;

(i) Arrive at least 10 minutes early.

(ii) Remember, the interview starts from the moment you enter the building and does not end until you leave the building.

(iii) It’s quite natural to feel some nerves, however, smile and make eye contact.

(iv) Speak clearly and confidently and project yourself well, the organisation have recognised your skills and talents from your application, use the interview as an opportunity to really demonstrate these.

Although the interview can feel like a daunting prospect it can be the first step towards securing a rewarding and fulfilling role, enjoy it!

If you are either at crossroads in your career or still figuring out what ‘ladder you really want to climb’, a dream job may well be just what you should be looking for. However, many people are unprepared to contemplate the idea - well, it’s just a dream, isn’t it?

The short answer is - it is entirely up to you.  The job you yearn for is somewhere out there waiting for you to find it. First you need to know what it is you are looking for, otherwise you can keep looking aimlessly and, after a while, give up saying that ‘it is simply not there’. Once you know exactly what your dream job is all about, you can then establish the steps you need to take to get there - do you need new skills, qualifications, experience?

Often, it can be a question of really knowing that whatever you have done with your life so far can be useful in a field you never thought was possible. For example, if you want a career in banking, that’s a good start.  But what exactly do you want to do?  The banking industry is vast.  In fact, there could be an argument here that whatever your background, you are probably well on your way to making your mark in the banking industry, even if you don’t have the most obvious credentials. Someone with a background in anthropology or international development, for example, could make a great candidate for the industry’s corporate social responsibility sector.

If you are a carpenter and your dream is to make films, the same applies. You just need to look at any film’s credits to find out the range of skills needed to make that happen.

The journey to a dream job maybe bumpy, but that’s doesn’t mean the road is not there. If you need support, career coaching can help you define your career goals, plan your career path and make a realistic assessment of what you need to get there.

There may well be challenges ahead, but the easy road is not always the right road. A few months ago I attended a training course and was quite surprised to learn that about 80% of the people in the room - aged between 20 and 50 - felt they had made a bad career choice. Many had spent time and quite a lot of money building a career they later found to be unfulfilling. Many wished they could turn the clock back while others felt that, after all the effort they had put in, they had to bite the bullet and get on with it.

It is a matter of individual choice but it makes me question - what is worth more than waking up every day knowing that, even in a bad day, your job is something you enjoy, excel at and has meaning to you?

Tips for finding your dream job

1)    If there were no limitations or barriers, what would your perfect job description be? Be as specific as possible and don’t think about labelling your job yet - many jobs with the same title can be quite different.

• What would you be doing?
• Where would you be working?
• What would your work environment look like?
• Would you work alone or in a team?
• What would your colleagues be like?
• How far would you commute?
• What would be your every day activities?
• What would be your achievements?
• How much would you work?

2)    Divide a piece of A4 paper into three columns.

Column 1 - Write down everything you are naturally good at

Column 2 - List all the things you enjoy doing

Column 3 - Write down everything that’s important to you.

Don’t think about it too much, just put your thoughts down on paper. There is no right or wrong, or indeed possible or impossible. Now look at the three columns and try to find a common thread. It may not be obvious at first. If that’s the case, put the paper way and look at it again another day. You will realise there is a theme which runs through some your answers, which may point you in the right direction.

No-one can tell you what to do with your career.  The decision is yours.  So use the skills you have, and perhaps learn some new ones in order to reach your full potential and eventually get the job of your dreams.

For more information contact Figuring Out

Written by Ana Paula Nacif

Have you found yourself being stuck in a relationship with your boss or colleagues?  Or stuck in a job you no longer enjoy? You hear yourself saying  “well that’s the way it is”, ” that’s the way he/she is”, “I can’t because ….” “that’s reality” or “I wanted this promotion so….”

The stuckness can bring up emotions such as frustration, resentment, anger, despondency and you end up feeling powerless and that you don’t have a choice.

This in turn can be destructive in your work relationships and ultimately your career, if the pattern repeats itself. You end up going nowhere fast!

WHAT IF you could develop the ability to see a situation not just through the lens of your own viewpoint, but also from the perspective of colleagues, boss, spouse or prospective employer? What could be possible?

The dictionary defines perspective as a “mental view of the relationship of aspects of a subject to each other and to a whole” and “an idea of the relative importance of things”.     More simply a perspective is “how we view a situation or circumstance”. The circumstance or situation remains the same it is the way we look at things that makes a difference.

Here is a familiar, general example “Blondes have more fun”. Notice our tendency to take a stand, as if it is true or false. It doesn’t really matter. What matters is, if you take this on as a belief, or a way of looking at life situations, things are coloured in a certain way. If you’re blonde, you probably expect to have more fun. If you’re not a blonde you’re either wishing you were one, lamenting your bad fortune, or coming up with an alternative perspective that lets you have fun too!

Coaching can help you to separate yourself from the people and situations in your lives, and even from your beliefs and assumptions.  A coach can help break open this blindness and help you see that there are other ways of looking at things and that you really do make the choices, even on days when it feels like the world is running the show.

See below some examples of “seeing it one way”. Notice that there may be some truth in the following statements, just as there is some truth in alternative perspectives, but they are not the absolute truth, just one way of looking at a situation.

“Everybody knows that, if you work in corporations, you have to be a team player. You have to sacrifice yourself for the good of the team”

“Either you’re committed to your career or you’re committed to being in a relationship. You can’t have both successfully”

“I’m a freelance designer. I can’t turn work down - not from my best clients”

A coach can challenge these long held “absolute truths” and help you to shift your perspective by asking questions to identify your current perspective. A coach can help you to also articulate other people’s views or other filters through which you might look at the situation.

Here are some sample questions you can ask yourself on a situation you are stuck in.

If you were X (the other person in the situation), what would you want/feel/need/say?

If you were advising yourself, what would you suggest for getting unstuck?

If you weren’t stuck what would you do right now?

If you didn’t blame X, what else might be possible?

If that weren’t true, what else could it be?

Remember there is ALWAYS more than one way of looking at our situation/circumstances.  We are not the victims of our circumstances. We can choose differently, and the first step is to shift our perspective and start living creatively again, making conscious choices.

As Henry Ford said “If you think you can do a thing or think you can’t do a thing, you’re right.”

With help to get from “Stuck to unstuck” in your career, contact a Figuring Out career coach

Written by Fiona Biggins - Career Coach

A personal insight into how Rosalyn Clare changed her life for the better. …

I spent ten years working in large companies. Two were US owned multinationals and another was one of the British big four accountancy firms. Despite working in a number of different roles with some success I wasn’t happy. My value to my employer seemed to be only in terms of the time I billed each month.

Every time I contemplated change I panicked. What about the mortgage? And I told myself I had to get it right next time. It felt so scary that each time I stopped thinking about change and put it off again. I
hadn’t yet learned that moving out of comfort zones isn’t comfortable.  I lacked any strategy for making decisions about the future. I didn’t want to ‘waste’ the professional qualification  I’d gained and I feared there was nothing else I could do.

I was stuck.

As is so often the way, life stepped in. A divorce gave me freedom to consider my life afresh. At a Christian arts festival I realised I’d been a round peg who had tried to fit into a square mould for a long time and had been compressed. I needed a break to recover my roundpeggedness, to recover my own identity.

I gave in my notice 3 days later and in less than 6 months flew to Rio de Janeiro and the Rio carnival. This was the start of an eight month round the world trip, a glorious time of temples, cocktails, mountains
and a skydive.

Coming home was hard. Lots of anticlimax and adjustment. Yet I took a temporary Social Services job and found a peace in feeling that I was making a difference which I had never experienced amongst the glass
lifts and chrome coffee machines.

I rejected an early intuition about life coaching - I didn’t even know what that meant - and trained as a voluntary counsellor. After yet more fear and procrastination I employed a life coach Bruce Stanley
who helped to clarify that my twin desires to make a difference in the world and see people change would be used as a coach. I took the steps to train as a coach with the Coaching Training Institute.

As a coach, starting my own business and learning to be an entrepreneur has been another journey of discovery. I still feel fear as I step out of comfort zones. The big difference is that I have strategies to deal
with the stressful thoughts. I have learned tools for dealing with the negative thoughts. And I’m doing work that I love which uses my strengths and meets my values.

It’s great to work with others who are stuck, sometimes in different ways, and I really enjoy working as a career coach for Figuring Out. I work with a wide range of people from professionals to young people to help them change their life for the better now and love it.

If you’d like to explore how career coaching can help you, email me at rosalyn@stridingout.co.uk to arrange a chat.

We can access funding to provide free coaching to unemployed professionals  and young people aged 18-25 claiming JSA. Drop me a line to find out more.

What a change!

At Figuring Out we believe that rewarding work and high performance are closely linked. Work is more likely to be rewarding if it gives you what you want from it and you are more likely to perform at a high level if your work is rewarding.

It is a reinforcing cycle because performing at a high level in itself is often rewarding.

Lets explore the different elements of what makes work rewarding and what enables high performance:

Your Values - What is important to you?

Your values represent what is important to you. Although you may think you know what is important to you, it can be useful spending sometime clarifying this and reminding yourself of the really important things.

Values are about who you are and when you are honouring your values you are being ‘true to yourself’. You are more likely to be happy, content and fulfilled if you are honouring your values.

The process of clarifying your values is not a choice or decision-making process. It is a discovery - to uncover the values that are already there and intrinsic to you and your life. Once you are clear what your values are, you can make decisions that are aligned to being ‘true to yourself’, rather than what you believe you should do.

Your Motivations to work

To be motivated is to feel inspired and excited, and to look forward to doing something. Each of us is motivated by different factors at work, including both the type of work and the environment in which we perform it.  We will not perform at our best unless these motivating factors are present.

While many people know the types of tasks they want to perform they are often unaware of what really motivates them. Motives are often unconscious, and as such become a driving force that must be fulfilled. They may appear as needs, wants or concerns and usually include a desire to reach a certain kind of goal.

Values often influence our choices about where to invest our energies, while motives - what motivates us  - reflect how much pleasure we get out of certain activities. What are your motivations to work?

Your Enablers. What enables rewarding work and high performance?

There are many things that can enable both rewarding work and high performance. Below are some possibilities and add more that are important to you.

Your Skills, Knowledge and Abilities

Jobs consist of a combination of functional or technical skill sets, with management required in many jobs/areas.  Rewarding performance is when your skill-set matches the requirements of the job, so you feel you are “good at it” and are “doing a good job”.

Think about the most important skills to your job and out of 10, rate your level of competency in them. Which ones can be improved upon and what difference would that make to enabling higher rewarding performance?

Stock Take

Do a stock take of each of these elements in relation to your current role. Use the elements to look at your job from a different perspective. Then reflect on each element to see how you can make your work more rewarding enabling higher performance.

Written by Fiona Biggins (Career Coach) and Suzanne Cleal (Business Coach) based on the workshop Rewarding Performance.

For more information please contact Fiona Biggins

Is it who you know, on-line networking or more traditional methods that are best to find out about vacancies?

Here are top ten tips that harness all three approaches.

Ten Top Tips

1. Work out what you can offer to employers and design your personal brand statement

Your personal brand statement needs to possess three qualities according to Career Distinction: Standing Out by Building Your Brand by William Arruda and Kirsten Dixson

a.     It consists of just one sentence

b.     It can be easily understood by a 12 year old

c.      You could recite it from memory at gunpoint

Following are two personal brand statement examples from Arruda and Dixson:

“Sitting at the intersection of technology and business, I use my passion for communication to help IT professionals in Fortune 100 companies express themselves in ways that are understood by business people”.

” I inspire and activate high achieving sales people in health care organisations through my focus on motivation, positivity, empathy and competition”

2. Keep positive, remember you only need one job

When job-hunting you only need to find one role and it is unlikely to be the first opportunity you go after.

3. Don’t box yourself in with a job title, keep it fluid and attractive across sectors

There has been a proliferation of job titles and levels and many people have jobs, which do not fit, easily into a box. Describe your work without a job title to grab the imagination of the employer.

4. Identify potential employers and check their corporate websites for vacancies

The latest CIPD Employer Outlook survey found the most popular way for employers to attract candidates is through the corporate website (78% employers)

5. Contact past colleagues and employers and let them know you are looking

They are the people that know your standard of work and who will refer you more readily and authentically

6. Use your professional organisations to find jobs and network

Build strong referral networks professionally and outside of work.  People can often feel embarrassed to exploit their networks. At the gym or sports club, talk to people about work and possible opportunities

7. Attend conferences or trade events to network and keep up with current trends

Where better than to meet the people in your industry and make strong face-to-face connections

8. Be prepared to ring the decision maker in the organisation but first think about what you can offer

This can reflect positively showing enthusiasm for the company and make you stand out above the competition.

9. Take a systematic approach to cold calling and see it as an opportunity to get ahead of the advertisement

Connect to your purpose for making these calls e.g. “I’m making useful connections and gathering information with each call,” rather than seeing them as a chore

10. Use business networking sites like Linked In to look for jobs and to let people know you are available.

Use Linked In Groups to build up your profile. HR Directors use their contacts on Linked In to see if someone knows a good candidate for hard to fill roles

To discuss careers and job search in more detail, please contact please contact Fiona Biggins (Career Coach and Career Preparation Expert)