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Monday 25 January 2010

Your Job Search Strategy

Have a look at the video by Kristi Daeda -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMe4PbEuCsw


It provides a simple & straightforward 4 point plan for your job search strategy covering:

  • Personal Brand
  • Mission Statement
  • Job Search tool kit
  • Networking Plan


For more help have a look at:

http://www.businessballs.com/personal-development.htm


This is a great web site ........ and this section provides good sound advice on personal development, self-discovery, self-help, motivation and achievement psychology


Whether you are in a job or looking for one I recommend reading this book:


How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie


This book is still giving us good advice after over 70 years!




Saturday 23 January 2010

Successes and failures

I guess we could all recite instances of these. Often, in business, the ones we label failures are to do with a breakdown in human relations. Maybe we don’t even notice it at the time. One example of this is back in the mid 90’s when I was working at Birse Communications in Tunbridge Wells. It was a great contract to be offered – good money and a company that genuinely needed help. My mistake comes down to very simple things. The management came from the construction industry – used to getting in at 7.30 am. I came from a very different industry. Telecoms and IT was already a much more laid back culture where the old fashioned 1950’s rules were already forgotten. Indeed, teleworking and homeworking were beginning to become a fact. I had family commitments down in Sussex as a single father. My idea was to get to the office at the normal time, 9am. The journey was over an hour and I thought this reasonable. However, my absence at that early hour meant to say that the MD of the company was frustrated at me not being there and he was already making decisions way down the track by the time I rolled up so my discussions with him were more by the way of instructions from him to me. Later on, by the time the company was sold to Sirti (an Italian company), I was already on the fringe of the decision making group.

I had not only lost the position of helping form policy but also had lost the opportunity to make a friend of the MD and be seen as one of his trusted parties. Thus, eventually, when the shake up came with Sirti, I was not included. The lesson to be learned from this is –

Understand who the important people in an organisation are and play the game their way. There will be plenty of opportunity later on for you to put your stamp on the organisation as your influence grows. Those first few weeks are critical.