How To Get The Job You Really
Really Want - What Do You Want?
So, now you're organised and raring to go. Before
you do anything else, just stop for a moment and think. Ask
yourself the question above. What Do You Want? Have you really
stopped to think, what sort of job, career or maybe change of
direction you are really looking for?
You cannot, repeat NOT, afford to be passive
in deciding what you want from your next career move. This is a
life-changing decision, give it the thought such a decision
deserves. Do not be tempted to think that by not knowing,
you are showing flexibility, or that you will "know the right job
when it comes along". I know it does work like that a lot of the
time, but you are different. It shouldn't work like that.
And, by the end of this chapter, you will
know why!
If you go to interviews with such an attitude you
will fail. Want to know why? O.K., I'll tell you. I speak to
people who hire all day long, and the overwhelming consensus of
opinion is that as soon as a candidate shows up without a clear
sense of direction and purpose, the interviewer loses interest.
They feel they are being used as career counsellors. Their response
is simply, "If the applicant has not
bothered to take time to try and help themselves, why should I
bother?"
You have to know what you want in advance, and
possibly even more importantly, why. Yes, be up for the
"challenge", the "opportunity", the "personal growth" etc, but you
must pull these ideas together with some concrete career
goals as well. If not, quite simply, you will have lost before
you start, and you will alienate potential employers into the
bargain.
So, how do you go about deciding what you want?
In the past it has been fair to say that the most
realistic job target is one that relates closely to your current /
last job. This probably still applies in the higher salary
brackets. It is also true that the closer you go to your previous
experience, the easier it will be to find a new job. However, the
job markets of the 00’s are showing some major changes, and
these changes mean that personal goals and
attitudes are now much more relevant.
One thing is for sure, the recession of the early
90’s saw the end of the "job for life" scenario! However, I feel
sure you will be pleased to know, it was not the recessions fault!
There is a sea-change going on in the way business works. In the
twenty years I have been finding people jobs I have seen
incredible change.
The change was, and still is, being driven by
technology. The new and emerging technologies mean that information
exchange can now happen in a split second. For example, it takes a
couple of minutes to send a fax to Australia, it takes seconds to
E-Mail a friend in America. And, as sure as night follows day,
business is getting sucked in further and further. The result?
Business methods are being changed beyond all recognition, and
being changed for good! And…the pace of change gets quicker
every day.
Quite simply, that means job guidelines are being
constantly blurred. Because industry needs to respond so quickly to
change, the traditional job function is also being eroded. So, we
do not see so many jobs nowadays, rather more a number of tasks or
projects that are starting to replace the traditional job.
The main visible effect of this in the job hunting
world is simply the fact that many more positions are now on a short
term contract basis. For example in IT (that's Information
Technology for the uninitiated, you know, computers), most major
development projects are now staffed by a key compliment of
permanent technical specialists and business orientated managers and
then built by teams of temporary contractors.
You see, it suits all needs. Businesses get their
projects completed quickly, to budget and do not have to make a
number of computer programmers redundant at the end of it all. The
contractors simply move on to another project at another company
where their skills are needed. Everybody
wins!
Now, this may have come as a bit of a shock to the
system, but I can assure you that this is the way things are going.
This isn't a negative on your job search, on the contrary, armed
with this information it is very much a positive. Not a lot of
people know this, as they say. More and more, you need to be
prepared, and take this into account when you ask the question, what
do I want?
So,
whilst I would like to be able to give a personal tutorial to
each and every one of you, it is impossible on a website. So now
it's crunch time, you have to decide what you want! The
following section contains some prompts that will help you answer
this vitally important question. So, here goes.
Before we go any further:-
Next page -
Desires and Needs
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