CV Template and Suggestions

There are many pages online offering advice for writing the best Curriculum Vitae possible, but let’s start by getting the simple things right. Make sure that you have good quality content, a clear layout/design, relevant information, and the correct length. In terms of writing a CV, you can use your own personal style as long as you stick to a few standard rules. Generally speaking:

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CAREERRonan KennedyCV
7 Tips for Fun and Effective Networking

Networking is important for job-hunting and developing business connections - and everyone knows it. We prefer to work with people we know and to hire people we know. 

BUT, there’s a problem! Almost everyone I speak to about networking tell me that they really dislike it. So here are a couple of tips and pointers to remember about networking that I hope will help you.

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Principals of Behaviour

Would you steal a loaf of bread to feed your starving family? You probably would. Why? People often break their values to meet their needs. But what are these needs? The following paradigm is very useful for identifying what motivates us to do what we do. We are motivated to meet one or more of our 6 human needs at any one time. So what are they?

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Newstalk, RTE and Interviews

I’ve been on radio 4 times now, which is a lot for me as I had never done anything like that before. Initially I thought it was going to be a nerve-wrecking experience, but it was absolutely fine. And I believe the reason for that comes down to my preparation. There are a couple I things that I try to do before radio interviews that are relevant for any type of interview or important meeting. Here they are:

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Beliefs and Spirituality

In order to bring our society closer together, I feel that we must emphasise, through this education, the vast commonalities in beliefs, values and ethics that these religions share, as too much time and energy has been spent identifying differences, which we now know, often only lead to unnecessary conflict between neighbours. If you want to create ill-feelings, emphasise differences. If you want to create fondness, emphasise similarities.

“Familiarity breeds liking”
- Robert Zajonc, Social Psychologist

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Where are you searching?

Below is a short tale by Mullah Nasruddin about searching. It’s a tale with a strong lesson, which like a lot of things, is simple when you know it. Take a look:

A man happened upon his friend one night on his hands and knees beneath the only streetlight in the immediate area.

‘What are you doing?’ he asked his friend.

The man glanced up then back down at the earth he was sifting between his fingers. ‘I lost my keys’, he said. “I’ve been searching for more than an hour and I still haven’t found them.'

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Changing Jobs with Transferable Skills 

When so many people want to change jobs or even change industries, some of the difficulties that they come up with involve feeling that they are stuck in the same job because it’s all they’ve ever done. And while this may be true, it’s not true that they don’t have any skills that could be used in other positions. In any case, whenever you go to a new workplace or company, you have to learn the ropes in the new position. Therefore, often the details of the job or the industry may be different, but the fundamental skills are the same.

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Active Recovery

Some people don’t like their jobs and want to change careers. Others don’t like their jobs because there’s too much stress at work. If you’re in the second category, then making sure that you have active recovery periods every week is key. It can be a waste of time and energy changing jobs to avoid something like stress - because you could just walk into the next job and have even more stress there. In that case, you haven’t really solved the problem, you’ve just changed the location of where it happens. 

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More Opportunities = More Possibilities

Often clients come to my office and feel like they don’t know what they want to do. In many of these cases, the person actually does know what they want to do but they have run out of ideas for making it happen. Maybe they’re not getting the interviews they need, there doesn’t seem to be any jobs for them or they’re just not having any success in general. That’s a tricky situation so let’s think about some solutions. 

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How to avoid making bad decisions

In 2011, Nobel Prize Winner Daniel Kahneman released his book "Thinking Fast and Slow" which summarises research that he conducted over decades, often in collaboration with his colleague Amos Tversky.  The book was an absolute game-changer as far as I am concerned. Kahneman successfully outlined and defined many common thinking errors which we all make from time to time. Being able to successful identify and avoid these errors will help us we make better choices in our personal and professional lives. That is the aim of this blog post. 

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Career Interests

Here are a list of categories of interest based on the categories of books on Amazon. I thought it was a good way to help identify what job searchers or career changers would be interested in. Basically, if you were going to go into a book shop or watch a TV program, which categories would you choose? This exercise is designed to identify and increase your areas of interest. Once you've identified them here, you can go even deeper on the Amazon website itself. Enjoy!

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Create Your Environment

It can be difficult to stay motivated all of the time, particularly if you’re not getting enough support. With that in mind, this week’s blog post is about keeping your enthusiasm up by surrounding yourself with inspiring people who are also striving to achieve a goal. This doesn’t mean that you can’t see certain people if they don’t have any goals, it’s just that you decide not to spend the majority of your time with them. 

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Everything You Need to Know About Doing Interviews

I have compiled the best information from around the world in one blog post to help you prepare for your job interview. Below are the essential tips and resources that you need to practice before your moment in the spotlight. Remember, knowing your answers to the key questions and understanding the best body language positions are only have the battle, you need to practice them so often that they become natural.

We don’t want to just survive the interview, we want to excel.

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6 Crucial Tips for Reaching Your Goals

We can have exciting goals written down on paper or in our heads, but either way we have to be careful of making the same mistakes repeatedly and never achieving anything. Here are six crucial tips for achieving your objectives.  

  1. Remember that persistence is crucial because many goals include a period of lag time. Lag time is the time difference between when you set the goal and when you start seeing results. So, if you’re not seeing results yet, that’s because you’re in lag time. You need to keep going and updating your strategy as you go. If you find that you’re struggling for any reason, try looking to your support network for help or guidance. 
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Dealing with Self-Doubt

Firstly, please be aware that a lot of people are struggling with the same problem on a daily basis. They may have very good reasons for lacking confidence or they may just have very strong habitual thinking patterns. In any case, changing these is the key - but only if you want to. Some people feel comfortable in their old patterns and prefer not to change them because they don’t like change, that’s fine. But...

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