Career Management Scotland
September 3, 2010
With everyone’s life being influenced these days by innovative changes in communication technology such as Linkedin, Twitter and Facebook, we could say by the time we have gone to work, we have already received 21 comments from friend, colleagues and business acquaintances across the globe giving us advice on the colour of suit we are wearing today or even the new colour and cut of our hair, from rising stars to existing senior board members managing our network in today’s business and personal environments has never been so demanding and competitive as it is now?
Career management Scotland might sound like a simple statement but for the determined individuals who are looking for that competitive edge to enable them to get the right moves, next steps, here in Scotland, it has to be how you use and access modern day platforms to open those career opportunities that are out there waiting to be snapped up. The days of relying upon that old school tie? Coupled with private education? Or even your parents owning the company might feel like it helps! But the truth of the fact is that they are slowly but steadily being overtaken by the individuals who are looking to get the very best Career Management Scotland advice in areas of technology, finance and communication to win the day.
Career management is about accessing the very best advice, for the privileged few or top end executives it has always been about accessing “information and support” this can help give you the edge on making that decision. In today’s global economy the internet has never been easier to help access routes, channels, introductions to people and companies in order to help you get the very best “information and support” Career advice has always been out there, it is just been that the masses of middle management have always had a perception that the cost of accessing this support is pricey.
For those managers based in Scotland having now to deal and work through this global recession, it has become fairly apparent that many of us have been exposed to experiences and situations that we have never had to deal with or even think about in the passed, career management Scotland is about assembling the very best “information and support” from professional that can advice, inform and support those individuals who are looking to take the next step up in their career and grasp those opportunities that are our there waiting to be snapped up for the career professionals who have re armed and re positioned themselves within the new technology marketplace
Career Management
August 20, 2010
We all know how to get a job? Or do we? It was only a few decades ago the internet was a thing of unbelievable fantasy! and long before that we thought the world was flat! career management has been an activity of fact and, for some, fiction for a good number of years.
For the majority financial stability depends on the salary provided by your employer and yet most people will spend more time each year planning their holiday than looking at their career management.
Most people perform their job / career search the same way they live their life…….fast, enthusiastic, energetic, slow, lazy, half hearted…… and the results show!
We have all in our working life managed to gain a new job or career path. The processes we have used to get there are well known e and when we need to find another job, or we have decided to find a better career, we often think we know how to go about it. This, like it not, is your 1st step into career management.
In only a few hours of interviews and probably only an hour with the actual decision maker, you will expect this person to invest a large amount of time and money in you for an indefinite period. Most people spend 40% of the time at work but only take a fraction of their time deciding the right or wrong move. If you equate the same % v time finding a house / car or partner! You’d make some serious mistakes.
The job seeker market is a marketplace like any other. There are people selling and people buying. In this market, as a job seeker, you are both the seller and the product.
You are realistically ‘selling’ your skills, experience, ability and your cultural fit into a group of strangers and will need to be someone the decision maker feels they can spend up to 40% of their time with.
For a lot of people competence and confidence lacks when it comes to job and career seeking.
The career management experts recommend these tips for you to help you do the right thing at the right time with the right information:-
- 65% of your activity should revolve around contacting people who are able to offer advice in and on your target sector and suggest new contacts I.E NETWORKING
- 25% of your activity should involve directly approaching decision makers in target companies I.E NETWORKING
- Up to 30 minutes a day should be spent on social networking sites, especially Linked In.
- 10% of your activity should involve targeting recruitment contacts who specialise in your sector
Notice the absence of the job boards? Posting your CV on a ‘Job Board’ is necessary but often ineffective.
The failure rate for job seekers of this kind is somewhere over 80%, so over ¾ of frustrated job / careers seekers searching in this way fail to find a job if using only this method.
2009, 2010 and probably 2011 will be the most competitive employment markets ever. The whole recruitment industry (all recruitment /employment agencies and headhunters) only account for 20% of vacancies filled in any year, often less in tough budgetary and economic times.
Remember
- There has never been a better time to get your career management strategy and activity right
- Most potential employers are going to ‘Google’ you
- Recruiters search for candidates on Linked In more than on the ‘Job Boards’
- A large majority of all recruitment decisions are made because someone has recommended the applicant or the applicant is already known to the employer
Happy Hunting
Career Management Services
August 10, 2010
What does it mean to invest in your career? Go on a course to update your skills? Spend a few hours each week trawling through jobs pages and websites? Or pay a company to manage your career?
Very few will think of the latter but those who do have taken ownership of their own career by investing in their career.
In reality, career management companies deal with individuals who command salaries of £30,000 and upwards, broadly described as middle to senior management.
Based in Edinburgh at Straiton Business Parc, TCMO is Scotland’s most innovative career management services and outplacement services company. Raymond Currie, a Director of the company, explains how the career management service works in practice. “Contrary to the perception most of our clients are not out of work. Most are in jobs but are now taking control of their future career moves.
TCMO offer a personalised service, no seminars and no workshops. Everything is tailored to the specific needs of the client and is a results driven process backed up with TCMO’s career lifetime guarantee. TCMO take you on an interactive journey to success, project managed and delivered by a team of career professionals. The key to success is TCMO’s pro active support built on strong foundations. These foundations include identifying the client’s primary career objective through a Career Diagnosis and Focus consultation.
Effective marketing is essential with cutting edge CVs, covering letters and profiles being created before ensuring that interview techniques are thoroughly addressed. Routes to market are researched before TCMO tap into their network which in turn provides access to the unadvertised job market which accounts for 75-80% of positions in the UK.
TCMO are innovative in their approach to career management. Everything they do is on a one to one basis, scheduled around the client’s diary and existing commitments. Their unique selling points are the on going career support until the day you retire but in particular the professionalism of the career managers.
TCMO start the “investment in your career” by offering two initial career assessment meetings, free of charge after which they produce a proposal tailored to your needs. So if you are changing career, seeking promotion, facing redundancy or at a crossroads in your career, why not contact TCMO with the view of taking ownership of your own career…or do you want “to wait and see?”
How To Find Out What You Really, Really Want
August 2, 2010
LAST issue we considered why people leave jobs. This time round we assume that you do indeed have a vacancy (or an apparent vacancy) and are at the beginning of the recruitment process.
The first thing to do is to ask: Why are we recruiting?
It may be that someone is leaving, it may be that the business is growing, it may be that head office has restructured and you have to meet new staffing arrangements, it could be that increased regulatory pressures mean you need
another person or persons.
In any event you should ask yourself what has changed since the last time you recruited. If someone is leaving, ask yourself if anything had gone wrong with the role. That might lead you on to asking yourself what’s right with the role and what’s wrong with it. In particular, think about how things have changed in the business and in the market generally since the last person was appointed.
It can be very useful to get the continuing team involved at this stage. Ask them if they think a new colleague should do what the leaver has been doing or whether there are other needs. This both gives you valuable information and
it helps ensure the team buys into any staff developments that occur as a result of the recruitment you’re planning.
If you have already carried out an exit interview, which we mentioned last time – where someone (not always the direct manager, maybe someone from HR or from another department) asks the leaver why he or she is going, whether they thought anything was inherently wrong with the job, whether they thought managers could have done things better – then you should have some of this type of information already.
Put the two together and you may find weaknesses you have to address or, for that matter, particular strengths that you hadn’t realised but which you would then be able to build upon.
Either way, it is important to address the issues. Split them into things you have clear control of, or influence over, and those things which are a result of outside influences over which you have no control.
Explain that the outside influenced stuff is difficult but that you are at least aware of theconcerns.
But if, for example, it comes out that the chef’s a bully you can and indeed must address that. Armed with the information from your general analysis you can get down to the active recruitment process.
First of all you have to decide whether there is a need to recruit at all. As we’ve already noted, things may have changed a great deal since the last person was appointed. And the information from exit interviews and staff consultation may tell you that the leaver’s duties could be reassigned to continuing employees.
But if we assume that you are indeed going to recruit the first thing to do is to decide whether it’s Like for Like or Time
for Change.
If the leaver has been doing critical, relatively unchanging work that you simply cannot do without, it may be a case of looking for someone you can slot in to the position to do exactly the same thing – Like for Like, in other words.
But that will only be true in a proportion of cases. In many other situations you may well identify that it’s Time for Change – either a change in the type of job, or a change in the type of person, or a bit of both.
In which case you should draw up two things – a job brief and a person profile.
The job brief is the more straightforward of the two, it should list key tasks, duties, responsibilities, how the job fits in your structure, how the person will be measured in the job, the salary and other conditions etc. The person profile in a sense paints a picture of the ideal candidate. Here you should list all the things that would be good in a person who got the job. Those would include experience, skills, aptitude, attitude and perhaps circumstances (the post may include a real requirement for flexibility in working hours, for example).
While the job brief is effectively a functional list with few, if any, areas of grey, the person profile is different.
We don’t live in an ideal world and when you do come to interview people you may well find that no candidate ticks all the boxes but instead that one will resemble your dream candidate in some ways while another meets your criteria in different ways. So it’s important that you should list your wants under two headings Essentials and Desirables.
The words more or less speak for themselves. Essentials are nonnegotiable must-haves. Desirables are things that will help but aren’t deal breakers.
For example for a senior manager or an important part of the kitchen team in a five star establishment you may absolutely require a certain period of experience as an essential.
On the other hand you might view five-star experience as desirable but not essential. When you are drawing up the briefs it can be useful to take advice from your peers or from professionals or experts. That could include managers in other departments in a big company or it could mean talking to fellow business people in your local trade group if you are an owner operator.
You may be dealing with a recruitment agency or indeed with the Job Centre. It can be very useful to talk to them early, to find out what they have learned in the past about similar posts.
What Makes Staff Members So Keen To Leave?
July 29, 2010
RECRUITMENT should always be considered hand in glove with retention. Keeping good staff is just as important, in some ways more important, than finding good staff. That being said, it has to be remembered that hospitality has a high natural level of staff turnover. Businesses and services are often marked by seasonal, weekly or monthly variations in activity. The labour pool includes many people who aren’t looking for long term careers – students, travellers and others. Read more
TCMO Career Management Masterclass – 10th August – Glasgow
July 14, 2010
Contact Rob Moore - rob@tcmo.co.uk to book you and your team onto this interactive 1 day masterclass.
Our key objective for the day is………
To provide one day programme of coaching that gives you the skills and advice to embark on a results driven job search campaign.
