Posts in BUSINESS
How to explain leaving a job or business

If you left a job recently, it's important to have a good story for why you left (be positive, be gracious, and be clear). Don’t over-elaborate on what happened — that may lead to difficult questions. Be able to tell them how you benefited from the position, what you achieved and what your responsibilities were. Even if it was a nightmare situation, highlight what you learned from it. For example, if you had a boss who couldn’t give clear messages, you could reframe the situation, saying that you learned a lot about communication. If you had a huge workload, you could reframe the problem, saying that you learned how to manage multiple competing priorities. Reframing is really all about being able to say “the glass is half full rather than half empty”. If you want to come across well in an interview situation, I suggest you reframe negative experiences into positive learnings.

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Beliefs about work

We all have beliefs about life, the world, relationships and of course, work. They can be empowering or disempowering, conscious or subconscious. Removing limiting beliefs is a key step in achieving goals. But if we don’t move recognise and accept where we’re getting stuck, it can be difficult to make progress. For example, if you believed that there weren’t any interesting jobs available right now because of market conditions, why would you even bother looking? And then if you don’t look for them, of course, you won’t find them. The belief stops the action and the inaction leads to a negative result. This in turn becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you’re unsure of what your beliefs about work are, here are some questions to get yourself started. Of course, you must answer them honestly or else you won’t learn anything about yourself.

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39 ways of saying 'no'

You’re busy, stressed and starting to feel overwhelmed. And why wouldn’t you be? You’re time-poor because you always say ‘yes’ to everyone else’s requests. What’s more, they love you for it. So while you’re benefitting in the short term from this behaviour by receiving praise from everyone else, it’s ultimately going to weigh down your chances of progression. In addition, it keeps you stuck working in the business and not on the business. In other words, you’re working tactically and not strategically.

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CAREER, LIFE, BUSINESSRonan Kennedyno
Two Simple Paths to Self-Employment

I think self-employment is going to become increasingly realistic and enticing for more and more people as we drift closer towards a remote-working environment. The COVID pandemic has shown how our jobs, companies and industries can change quickly. What were once secure jobs can suddenly (almost overnight) disappear. We may need to revisit the idea of putting all our eggs in one basket of our employer and consider spreading our income risk.

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How to coach anyone on anything (even yourself)

Coaching is a process of facilitating someone finding answers to their questions. Mentoring on the other hand is generally about transferring specific knowledge, tips or subject matter expertise from one person to another. The two can often be mixed together which may confuse some people. Obviously, you can't mentor anyone on anything because you'd have to have that specific knowledge, whereas if you have the right questions and approach, you can coach anyone on anything.

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Video: How to Write a Professional Profile

“You need to sell yourself more“ is a phrase you’ve probably heard one hundred times or more. But the chances are that you don’t like the idea of selling yourself at all. Something about it seems awful, or disingenuous. But, never the less, we need to be able to do it - especially if we’re competing against others who are selling themselves really well. In this video, I discuss some points you can use to sell yourself well in interviews. The idea is that you don’t sell yourself as more than you are, but not less than you are, just exactly as you are, and honestly. That way, you’ll have no trouble backing up what you’ve said and it will give you more confidence when describing your career.

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Rationale for Competency-Based Psychometric Tests

Competency-based psychometric tests are tricky. They are typically used in the civil service and apparently have no correct answers. However, of course, some answers are more correct than other answers. This has been decided by both researchers and professionals working in the field.

But for candidates, it's not very helpful to know that there are no correct answers. So what can we do? Below I have noted a selection of criteria or values, that I believe, should be adhered to in order to optimise your opportunities impressing the examiners. This is by no means perfect but at least it gives you a structured thought process and a systematic way to answer the questions.

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Create a professional summary to "sell yourself"

“You need to sell yourself more“ is a phrase you’ve probably heard one hundred times or more. But the chances are that you don’t like the idea of selling yourself at all. Something about it seems awful, or disingenuous. But, never the less, we need to be able to do it - especially if we’re competing against others who are selling themselves really well. Below are some points you can use to sell yourself well and to talk about yourself in interviews. The idea is that you don’t sell yourself as more than you are, but not less than you are, just exactly as you are, and honestly. That way, you’ll have no trouble backing up what you’ve said and it will give you more confidence when describing your career.

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How to sell yourself and sound humble
  1. I had the opportunity to work with a great team which allowed me to...

  2. My role involves taking responsibility for...

  3. I've really worked hard over the past few years to develop my skills in...

  4. I've been fortunate enough to work with clients/stakeholders and deliver..., which resulted in an increase/improvement

  5. Luckily, after some trial and error, I figured out that..., which was key because it meant that...

  6. The benefit of the (qualifications/experience/manager/mentor) that I've had, ensured that...

  7. The (challenge) that I've had in my previous role has facilitated and empowered my personal/professional development in terms of...

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Job Application Management

Sending lots of applications to job postings, companies, professional contacts can be confusing. Below I’ve attached a spreadsheet that should help you organise the various applications, along with when you should follow up with them.

I would normally give a company two weeks to respond to an application (maybe longer if it’s the public sector), and then follow up with an email. If there’s no response to that, it's worth calling them a week later to check on the progress of the application.

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Creating Compelling Work Goals

What are your targets for this year? It’s the same question if you’re a business owner or an employee.

One of the big issues I see people having in this area is the lack of clarity around what the actual goals are. They might know generally speaking what they have to do - but they don’t know how to do it and when to have it done by. That’s why I created a handy template that you can use to identify and track your goals. Please click the button below to open the document.

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