Resume or CV - What's the difference and who cares?

Do you want to be successful, or is failure your preferred option? If you prefer the former, whether you call yours a resume (which means 'summary') or CV (which roughly translates to 'my life story'), this personal marketing tool is an essential  item in your jobsearch toolkit - but preparing it is fraught with a range of potential disasters.

 Don't worry, there is plenty of helpful information at hand. A google search today revealed that 'writing a resume' provides over 21 million results, and 'writing a CV' over 17 million. Simply google 'resume' and you can choose from almost 1 BILLION results.Yet, despite the plethora of data and advice available, it is amazing to find so many poorly written resumes/cv's around the place. It can only be assumed from this that information does not necessarily lead to knowledge or ability.

I can't tell you how many articles and books I have written myself that provide truly outstanding information which, if followed, would lead to the production of amazing resumes. Sadly, none of this seems to have lifted the quality of resumes that are sent out in the hope of getting a job interview. (For those of you who do not know about my sense of humour, please take this last paragraph with a grain of salt.)

I guess it is like anything really. If your car develops a strange sound whenever you turn a corner, you have a number of options. One, you can ignore it and hope it will go away. Two, you can take a look, perhaps undo a few nuts and bolts and see if your untrained eye can detect the source. Three, you can ask a non-mechanic-but-more-mechanically-minded-than-you friend to take a look. Four, you can read the manual or google the problem and hope to get some kind of relevant answer. Five, you can book it into the mechanic and get them to fix it, for a price.

Resumes are a bit the same. Just like a car needs to take you from one place to another, your resume needs to take you to your next job. If it doesn't get you interviews, you can simply stop applying, or just keep sending it out in the vain hope that someone will eventually like it. You might decide to do some self-analysis, and check it over and see if there is anything your untrained eye can see that is glaringly wrong with it. You might show a friend or family member, but their love for you may blind them to glaringly obvious omissions or mistakes. You might turn to one of billion websites in the hope that you will find a diagnosis there for why your resume is not working. Or, you could get a professional to take a look at it, for a fee. I know which one I recommend, but maybe as I am a professional resume writer I am a bit biased.

But let's look at it a different way: your resume is a tool, it's only purpose is to get you noticed. If you are not being noticed, or are being noticed in the wrong way, you are closing doors to many (possibly great) careers. If your resume needs work, do you procrastinate for days, weeks, months or even years? Or, do you spend hours browsing the web, or spend inordinate amounts of time drafting and redrafting your resume? Or, do you see it simply as a task to be done and forgotten.

If you want to get a great resume, think about this - what is more valuable to you - your precious time, or a few dollars?

Sorry if this sounds like a thinly disguised ad for my services. Yes of course I would love to take a look at your resume and tell you what is wrong with it, and help make it really great if you are willing to trust me to do so (thousands have, so you are not taking too great a risk here).

Whether or not you use my services, or those of another professional writer, my main message is twofold:
1) We are all good at different things, and
2) No one can be good at everything.

People often ask me if getting help from a professional will guarantee that they will get an interview. Of course it can't, but which risk are you more willing to take? To me, it's a no-brainer.

(That reminds me, I must take my car in for a service, that knock in the engine is a bit of a worry...)

I hope your resume or cv is doing its job and opening the door to your next career. Which brings us back to the beginning ... if you really want to know what the difference is between a resume and CV, I'll answer that one in my next post.

Being part of the In-Crowd - whoever that is for you

Who we hang out with says a lot about ourselves and what we value. Of course, sometimes we don't have too much of a say in this; the circumstances we find ourselves in are not always chosen by us, for one reason or another.

To relate this to working life, people who are unhappy at work are often not so much focused on the kind of work they are doing, but where they are doing it and who they are doing it with. Conversely, sometimes a job we would love to do is made less attractive by the kind of people who are already there.

Confused? I'll use myself as an example.

My work provides opportunities to engage with widely varying communities. Talking to a group of professional writing students last week about career planning really energised me, while talking to a group of sales managers a while back made me feel like slashing my wrists. This had nothing to do with the content of what I was presenting, but everything to do with the community I was delivering to. The students loved me, I loved them - I definitely felt like part of the in-crowd. The managers? Well I might have been from Venus, as any connection I felt was slim indeed.

Further on the matter of in-crowds, I have often fantasised about the idea of being a real estate agent. I have had a passion for this industry since I was about 9 years old when I visited my first display home. I was so excited that I immediately starting saving my pocket money (five shillings a week) with the hope of buying that house (cape cod, three gables, green-shuttered french doors, double lock-up garage) myself one day. The saving didn't last, unfortunately, as I soon developed a passion for vinyl (both records and clothes - it was the sixties!) which provided more instant gratification.

What stops me being a real estate agent? Obviously, I don't fit in with the real estate community. I could do the work, if I could do it my way, and if I could change the culture of the industry, given that I share none of its values (such as making a profit at all costs) and it shares none of mine (everyone deserves a nice house to live in). House buying and selling being a highly commercial enterprise rather than one in which social justice ever has a chance, and knowing that it would take a lot more than me with a placard to turn the tide on this industry, I run a mile from it instead. I simply don't have any sense of connectedness with the real estate community.

What has kept me in the career industry for over thirty years, even when I am feeling overwhelmed and defeated, is the people that form my community. Here, I definitely feel part of the in-crowd. While there are some members who would make great real estate agents (if you get my drift), in general career people are more like me - and I call them my friends, my allies, my mentors and confidants.

It makes sense that, when planning a career change, or even when thinking about it for the first time, we should all give conscious attention to the kind of community we want to be part of. Who is our 'in-crowd'? Where is our ideal setting for work? Which communities do we want to serve, or service?

Obviously within industries there are a range of communities. For instance, a banker might want to deal with large accounts, perhaps in a global organisation, or they may prefer to be locally based, such as in a community bank or credit union. Adapting this to other settings, it is easy to see how the communities of each occupation and profession would vary widely.

Of course, our community does not only consist of those we work with, but the clients we work for and the kinds of needs they have. Compare the in-crowds of a doctor working in a large metropolitan hospital, one operating in a small country town and another in a third world country - each of their 'patient' communities, along with their wider 'in-crowds' will differ.

Investigating the communities one is part of, and would like to be part of, are important elements in career planning. Sometimes, the biggest and most troublesome component of career change is in penetrating a new community - in fact, most unsuccessful career changes relate to a lack of visibility and acceptance, rather than a lack of work skills, knowledge and expertise.

Like John Holland said way back in the sixties, perhaps we should start any career decision-making activities by focusing on who we like to be with rather than what we like to do. Conversely, if we really like the idea of doing a particular job, we should spend some time considering how to become known, accepted and respected by that community.

So if you are considering a career change, or are finding work less than enjoyable, who is your in-crowd and why? I'd love to know.

Stop Working So Hard - Before it is TOO LATE!

Synchronicity plays a large role in my life. I was thinking about this blog post when I woke up this morning and decided  that it was going to be about the myth that we have all bought into about the need to be 'on the job' 24/7 and how we will all come to regret this in our later years.

Then, before I get a chance to start, my inbox pops up with the latest news from BNET with two articles on exactly this topic. Synchronicity at work? I like to think so.

The first article talks about how, like machines, the human brain needs time off work to rejuvinate. If we spend more than 35 hours a week working we will just start making mistakes that we then have to spend more time fixing. It also demonishes us for multitasking - no, it says, you cannot do five things at the one time, at least not to any reasonable level. We should go for a walk instead, which promotes our cognitive abilities. Ever hear or the term 'work smarter, not harder'? Well now there is evidence.

The next article I read encourages us to send us a message from our 100 year-old selves on our deathbeds, admonishing us at whatever age we are now for our lack of gratitude. I use this tool in career coaching, but with limited success - I say limited, because people find it revelatory at the time of doing it, but rarely change their patterns of behaviour.

Maybe we are meant to be miserable workaholics who are so wracked with guilt that we cannot begin to imagine just sitting back and enjoying the fruits of our labours. I despair when I work with a corporate slave who wants to change her life but then looks me in the eye and tells me point blank that there is NO WAY she can leave the office at 7pm - she would feel so bad leaving others behind to keep working while she went off to have a nice meal and a bath, maybe even watch a bit of telly, and then there would be the cold shoulder treatment for the next two days from her boss that would make life positively unbearable.

Those that know me will say this is definitely a case of pot and kettle. I have been known to send emails at midnight and/or at 5am. I have been called the multitasking queen, able to focus on three projects simultaneously. Perhaps this is all a ruse, and I am fooling myself and everyone. Perhaps I am really superwoman (... really, I am kidding). But perhaps I suffer less from overload, burnout, ill health and apathy because I am doing what I love just about all the time. Perhaps I am happy to work long hours because I feel I am doing some good for the world, or am at least trying to. Perhaps I am 'in the flow', living each day with meaning, passion and purpose. Perhaps there is some sense that what I am doing is a little bit important and that I can make a difference.

So the message for this month, my lovelies, is do a lot of what you love doing and try to avoid the things you really hate most of the time. It really is as simple as that. The trick is in recognising the difference, which takes self-examination, reflection, planning and persistence, which in turn might mean downing tools for a while to give yourself the time and space to do that. There you have it -  the real secret to career success!

Asking a Monkey for Career Help - Why Not?

A much-needed five week European vacation provided the distance from my work that I needed to regain perspective. It reminded me just how important taking time out is for body, mind and soul.

Unfortunately, taking a few weeks off from the daily grind is something most people believe is impossible these days. We have been conned into feeling that if we are away from our workplaces for more than a week, our jobs, livelihoods and lifestyles are jeopardised. In fact, the opposite is true - without taking time out to recharge we become stale, less competent and likely to make mistakes. Worse still, we become anxious and fretful, but don't see any of this until we gain some distance. Without gaining new perspective, ironically, many of us find our careers pulled from under us (if you don't know what I mean, ask Kevin Rudd - or you may already be saying, 'Kevin who?').

So if you are thinking you can't afford to take time off to get away from your normal surroundings and routine, I challenge you to rethink this now. How much money and time are you spending just propping up your current existence: eating out because you are too tired to shop or cook, gym fees that are hardly ever used, retail therapy or doctor's visits and pills?

Besides taking time off for some R and R, another way to revitalise is to review your career at regular intervals - once or twice a year, if you are not making significant changes. Obviously, if you are contemplating or going through a career change, then there are other things you will need to do as well.

One thing you can do is attend a careers expo. During the last weekend in Melbourne (that's Melbourne, Australia for international readers), I coordinated a stand at the Reinvent Your Career Expo, which is now in its third year. A group of career development practitioners volunteered their time to provide career check-ups and resume reviews, as well as conducting seminars and workshops on a range of issues. We know we were appreciated by those we helped, but we couldn't help everyone, and it was quite obvious to us that a lot of people are lost and confused about their career paths,and about how to get the right kind of assistance.

Our own little poll of people in a workshop we held in the final hour of the expo indicated that expecting to get actual career help from most standholders is, apparently, a waste of time. You might as well go to the zoo and ask the resident babboon. These people had come to the expo because they wanted or needed to do something different with their lives; they wanted something to excite them, to transform their careers - but had found little that was helpful.

They told us there were a lot of course providers wanting to engender interest in the programs they had on offer, others were selling resume or coaching services, some government departments were advertising themselves.

Tragically, no one (besides us) seemed interested in helping these people to actually reinvent their careers. All the other stallholders, apparantly, were self-interested and not concerned at all about the individuals who approached them. This is probably why our stand was always the busiest. Those of us who volunteered our time felt the real pain of those we talked with, and it was good to send quite a few people away with some concrete ideas and follow-up actions.

During and immediately following the expo, I have been wondering why people come to careers expos believing that they will get the answers to their career dilemmas. Most often, they don't and can't. Is it something to do with the way these events are advertised? Perhaps. Here are two reasons why I think careers expos fail to deliver on expectations.

1. Careers expos, like all expos, are essentially large marketing exercises. Instead of a 2 by 2 column in a newspaper, a billboard, or a radio or TV spot, expo organisers sell space for a limited period so that organisations and their potential clients can come together to achieve a common purpose. The reason this fails is because visitors expect something more, a community service perhaps - people to hold their hands and walk them into their new careers. Thus, they do no preparation, and wander from stand to stand hoping that someone will appear, god-like, with a job that is tailor made for them. Reinventing one's career is something that must start and end with the individual. Most of the work that needs to be done happens before and after the expo.

2. The second reason careers expos fail to meet expectations is that people who are wanting to change, improve, or just manage their careers, tend to seek help from all the wrong places. Unfortunately the career development industry - my industry, that requires post-graduate qualifications and experience - is still not understood at all well. This is compounded by the fact that many other industries use the word 'career' in their own titles and advertising, which misleads people into believing that they are career professionals.

For example, recruiters are not terribly interested in a candidate's career, other than whether it is a match for the positions they have to fill; nor do they usually know how to help them with a career change. (I say 'on the whole' because I have friends who are both recruiters and career counsellors/coaches, but these are exceptions to the rule). But people still complain about the recruiter who did not show much interest in them or empathy about their situation. Recruiters are not in the empathy business, they are in the business or getting candidates to pass on to their employer clients.

A course provider is not interested in a person's career development either, they really only want to fill their courses, so a person visiting their stand is a 'potential student',and if that person is uncertain or presents a difficult career dilemma, they will soon be relegated to the 'too hard' basket. This makes good sense; getting people into classes ensures their institution remains viable and they get to keep their jobs.

Do go to careers expos, they can be really good if you go prepared and if you know how to use them well. Go with the idea of 1) getting ideas that you can follow up on, 2) finding specific information on a career or job that you find interesting or 3) asking some direct questions that are targetted to the professionals you will be talking to. Don't go to an expo thinking you will be handed a job - you will most probably be disappointed. When it comes to managing your career or landing that job, hard work on your part is required.

There are no shortcuts, but getting the right kind of help can really provide a boost. Qualified and experienced career development practitioners are available - they may be a bit hard to find, but if you contact us at Career Dimensions we will do our best to make that part a whole lot easier.

Career tests - do they work?

The Career Development Association of Australia's national conference was held in Adelaide a few weeks ago; one of the sessions I attended was a research paper delivered by a colleague who I admire greatly, Dr James Athanasou. The paper was, in many ways, a culmination of a lifetime of work, and the conclusion was that career assessments are incredibly unreliable - so unreliable, in fact, that Jim actually proposes that these should not be used until we ensure we have industry-wide agreement on terminology, criteria and metrics. The other message I got was that we should not be inflicting these inventories on the general public until testing of such instruments is much further advanced.

If anyone is qualified to make such bold statements about how the industry operates, Jim would have to be a top-ranker. Recently retired from his post at UTS; Jim was a pioneer in the career industry in Australia, and has had the opportunity to witness the development of career and vocational assessment instruments over the years. He himself developed one of these, the Vocational Interest Survey, over twenty years ago.

Jim's clear message at the conference - that career assessments do not work - was supported with several slides containing data to show how the various instruments currently and previously in use bear little resemblance to each other; also it was made evident that there is no identifiable correlation of career success, happiness,fulfilment, or even satisfaction (the hallmarks of our trade) with the completion of any one of these instruments. As a graphic image to reinforce his point, Jim revealed a picture of a young person walking along a road, being covered by a cloud of dust from a passing bus. The cloud of dust represented the career confusion created for the young person by the administration of an interest assessment. Add to this another paper by Dr Mary McMahon, another giant in the industry, who at the same conference argued that career instruments were created by middle aged, middle class white males (and which therefore have little relevance for a significant percentage of the population), and it seems like we are in dire straits.

Nonetheless Jim's talk included some hope that, one day, a career assessment tool may be developed that will be relevant and useful, however much needs to be done. Personally, I fear that this is a long shot, for many reasons, the main one being that careers, and life generally, are messy and unpredictable. Second, I doubt that any career instrument can actually cut throught the layers of a person's skin to get to the heart of the career interest gene, if in fact one truly exists. One further reason for my scepticism is that people on the whole still don't believe they can expect to have a job that is interesting, fulfilling or even just nice. Too often, this notion is consciously or unconsciously perpetuated by parents, teachers and other well-meaning adults who instill the importance of getting a 'real job' (whatever that means), rather than a job one really likes.

On the whole, by the way, parents tend to be appalling careers educators. As well as being to close to the game, for various reasons they have usually failed to manage their own careers effectively - a large percentage of Baby Boomers, having failed to have, or realise their own career dreams, don't know how to help their kids have them, while Gen X parents, whose start in working life was characterised by the boom and bust of the 80s and 90s, still live in fear of what might happen if one is not prepared financially, and in the process have made their children fearful of stepping off the corporate treadmill, even when this is shaky.It appears to be much easier for people of all ages to buy into a preconceived idea of how we should live and work, rather than to dare to be too radical and different.

Whatever the reasons behind most people's career choices, therefore, it seems that the least of these is to do with genuine interest in, or passion for, that work, therefor career interest assessments are never likely to have a great impact on people's futures, no matter how much time and effort is into building sophisticated tools.

So at this stage, it seems that all we can do is acknowledge the prevailing situation and continue to use these less than adequate tools in the absence of something really worthwhile, knowing that they are unlikely to enhance our clients' career decisions even if they take notice of the results.

Or, we can, on the other hand, encourage our clients to throw caution to the wind, to take risks with their careers and to become extraordinary, in one way or the other, with no safety net to provide a soft landing. As a professional, I have to ask myself which of these is the more ethical stance. Where does my responsibility lie? Others in my industry may disagree, but I am of the persuasion that people should feel empowered to follow their hearts, but what right do we have to tell them this? For example, what if following one's heart leads to financial risk, or a truckload of other risks for that matter? What if it causes arguments within one's household, or worse - disinheritance, expulsion, alienation? Are the costs of this method also too great, and if so, where does this leave the career development profession? I would be very interested to hear what other career development practitioners and our potential clients have to say on this very important issue, as the implications for our industry are huge.

What happens when you stop but the work doesn't?

A few weeks ago, I was doing some tidying in my office and I fell - one small error of judgement on my part and five subsequent seconds of chaos has led to three weeks of lost work hours.

Fortunately my injuries were neither sufficiently visible nor serious to put me out of action permanently, and to the world at large I was probably 'as normal', but every minute of my waking and sleeping hours since that time has been a reminder that my body is not functioning as it should. Pain also dulls the mind, so I have become haphazard and forgetful, which is perhaps more troubling than the physical issues of walking slowly and painfully, spending five minutes getting up from the couch, leaving something that has dropped on the floor rather than adding to my pain by picking it up.

Well I think I am finally 'on the mend', I have managed a couple of full nights' sleep and am thinking more clearly. I am sure my family is glad as well, I do not make a good patient! But all this strangeneness has caused me to wonder about people who have continual pain for long periods of time and permanent injuries to manage, not just for a few weeks but forever.

What does this mean to careers? I have helped many people with disabilities to find work and to adjust to newly developed restrictions, in a surface way. I have been aware that there is a huge emotional component to living with newly acquired disabilities as well, but I have never really thought of the myriad adjustments that must be made to tasks and in contemplating how to go about managing these when a person has real limitations to what he or she can do. Being a constant multitasker, for me doing many things simultaneously is important in getting through the day; doing them quickly is another way of ensuring life runs reasonably smoothly. A third element of this is that I have never before had to put off a task, simply because I can't physically do it at the time. Overthe past three weeks I have learned to put some things on hold, such as walking to the postbox, until the pain of walking is minimal. Having good and bad times in the day is not something that was part of my repetoire, in the past (and hopefully in the near future) I have wanted to do something, and gone off and done it.

All this has given me new respect for people who manage significant disabilities. I have been thinking a lot lately about what is really important, what activities must I continue to do to ensure I feel happy and fulfilled. If I had to limit myself, what would I drop out, what would I make sure I had the time, energy and ability to do, and how?

This brings me back to my work as a career coach; we all know that at the core of good career management is a sense that we are doing work that best fits with our personalities, values, interests. It might be a useful exercise for us all to reduce ourselves to thinking about just one thing we would need to do to make living worthwhile, and then add more things to the bucket in order - one would presume that the things added later would be less essential.

I'd like to hear if others try this exercise and what results they get from it. It would obviously relate to things other than work.

Impossible workloads - a career management issue

This year, an increasing number of my existing and new clients have been asking me to help them address workload issues. They often introduce the subject as a need to manage their time better. The reasons for this vary. Typically, a staff member has resigned and not been replaced - so those who remain must share that person's workload. Another situation might be that a company diversifies, absorbs another company or adds new products or services. Unfortunately, the more competent negotiators or work avoiders (you know, those people who never seem to be around when volunteers are called for) are able to minimise the impact of this, forcing those with a greater conscience and/or work ethic to take a larger share.

Either way this invariably leads to:
1) A readjustment of an individual's role - this is usually done organically rather than by design and in cooperation with management, the person is simply expected to add new tasks or duties - it is rarely acknowledged as extra work though, and is usually shrugged off as 'we all have to pull our weight during this difficult period'. It remains hidden from the world until the position description needs to be rewritten, often because the person has resigned or become too incapacitated to do the job any longer. At which point management usually decides it is actually two (or three) people's work and the poor person who has left, miserable and disempowered, finds themselves replaced by an army or two.

2) The need to develop new skills and knowledge - from what people are telling me, this rarely involves being sent off for professional development, rather the person might be instructed to locate information internally, either by trying to establish methods from static data or out of date manuals. If they are lucky, there will be someone around who knows a little bit about the work who can be a sounding board (provided that the other person isn't also going through the same thing)

3) The requirement to work longer and longer hours. I am astounded at the hours being put in by blue and white collar workers - typical days for fleet controllers and fork lift drivers right through to accountants and recruiters are sometimes up to 16 or 17 hours! The saddest thing about this is that most of these people do not even like their jobs - the reason they chose them in the first place was so they could have a good life once the work day was over - now all they are doing is falling into bed between shifts.

As a career coach, this information is critical. For many years, I have been expounding the view of 'doing what you love' - I have said so on Channel 7 News and on Red Symons morning show. Now I have real ammunition with which to propel these words.

Those who know me well may be tempted to call me a hypocrite. After all, don't I typically work a 16 or 17 hour day? the answer is 'Yes, often I do.' But how many of those hours do I love my job? I think you know the answer to that one. Sure, at times I am grumpy, feel overloaded, and wonder how I am going to do everything. But I get them all done anyway (well the important things). Do I have good time management skills? I suppose I must, but I don't don't do the textbook time management stuff - I work with my strengths at the time, or else I manage myself in a way that gets me to the finish line on an essential task or project, and then reward myself with a task I enjoy.

The point of this post is not to discuss time management skills and how to develop them, it is to recognise that being overworked is systemic to the noughties, and that to cope with this we need to develop some survival strategies. So, here are the Top 10 survival strategies for working in demanding environments:

1. Do everything you can to work towards the goal of doing work you love – you will resent the work you are doing much less if it is a good fit with your passions, interests and challenge needs.

2. Learn to say 'No' or 'Not yet' when asked to do something outside your usual duties while you analyse how much work is involved, rather than saying ‘Yes’ and feeling it is your responsibility to make it work. At the very least, negotiate by requesting for some duties to be temporarily or permanently reallocated.

3. Ensure that 90% of the work you are doing is useful and essential to the core business – this is especially useful to remember when handling telephone and email communication, as so much time is wasted in these activities.

4. Set some milestones and announce your achievements regularly to show others you are doing important work that is vital to the organisation's success

5. Avoid any meetings that don't serve a strategic need for your work or your own career development

6. At the end of your (normal) shift, practice standing up and announcing that you are leaving, and do just that!

7. Keep important people in the loop as to what you have achieved, what is still outstanding and when this might be done if there are no significant interruptions. Once each week is good.

8. Do everything you can to cut down time spent on tasks by minimising mistakes and unnecessary duplications – taking a few minutes each day organising your workload may save you hours of work.

9. Spend at least ten minutes three times per working shift contemplating your job, what you are doing there and why, and how this is making your life more meaningful.

10. If none of the above steps works, actively seek out a new role with an employer who appreciates your unique attributes and who will see employing you as a great investment, on your terms.

Some thoughts on Career Punctuation and Life Planning

Those who know a bit about me know I am also a professional writer. This has no doubt informed the title of this blog. I think it also provides a good analogy for my message this month.

Lately I have been pondering the credo of 'life is what happens while we are busy making other plans' and what this actually means. It seems that those of us who do plan (and I am definitely a planner and goal setter), tend to do this in a rather grandiose way. Well, why bother making plans if they are going to be about everyday things. We want some magic, something a bit edgy, don't we?

For instance,have you ever heard someone say, 'Oh yes, I have a plan - I want to have a really boring life with nothing much that happens, I hope to get married to someone I can only just tolerate, have one or two kids of average intelligence and looks, oh and I don't want to get promoted or have any kind of career satisfaction. Oh yes and I hope I don't get lots of money and free time to travel and do all the things I am interested in.' The sad thing is, all of these elements do characterise many of our lives. So much for planning!

Of course we should plan to have the superlative things in life, to have some great achievements, fantastic adventures, or to be seen as the best something-or-other or to win a great title such as President of the such-and-such club, or, in the spirit of that great pageant, to achieve something spectacular like 'world peace'.

But we also all know that, for the most part, our lives will in fact turn out to be quite ordinary. We will fail to achieve many or most of our grand plans, hopes and dreams. Most of us can easily identify with the words of Shirley Valentine: 'I have led such a little life. Why are we given all this life if we only ever use a little bit of it?'

Because we can always dream much larger than is realistically achievable, this does not mean we should not dream at all, it is just that we tend give them too much power.

I like dreaming, but I think this needs to be seen as an important activity that is intrinsically entwined with our humanity. When we realise that dreams can only inform our plans, we can start to make some headway towards living a great life.

Dreams don't care that we only exist for around 80 years or less, or that we only have human power not super powers. So, in acknowledgement that much of life is reasonably uneventful, how do we make it unique, satisfying and fulfilling? The answer may lie in the notion of 'career punctuation'.

Career punctuation is both an activity and a list of surprising results - these both relate to living an insightful and more satisfying life. No one person's life can be spectacular every day - even Ghandi and Lawrence of Arabia had lots of ordinary days in which little happened (just watch the movies if you don't know what I am talking about).

Regarding the activity part, what I am proposing is that each of us should factor in some 'exclamation days', some 'question mark days', some 'full stop days', even some 'quote days'. I won't go into what all these days mean here, as these form the chapter of a book I am writing, however what it means in effect is that we should actively program some days into our schedule that are extraordinary. For example, someone who dreams of climbing Mt Everest might plan on doing some mountain climbing activities for one weekend a month, or one month each year. The person who dreams of becoming a best-selling author might dedicate their time to writing a chapter of a novel each month. These smaller 'punctuation' events can be celebrated in their own right. Eventually, some of us will achieve the bigger dreams, but even if we don't, there is usually enough joy along the way to more than compensate.

Regarding the surprising results part - well, we all have achievements and interesting things happen when we least expect them. We need to acknowledge these points in our lives - for example, someone thanks us for a small favour, or we become the recipient of an unsolicited award. Perhaps we win a competition we never thought achievable - this happened to me in my twenties, when I won a work table tennis competition against all odds - this was such a surprise to everyone that the whole staff discounted it as a complete fluke - I still remember it with pride thirty years later. Giving ourselves credit for these results makes our lives that much less ordinary.

Perhaps thinking about career punctuation will make us all a bit more satisfied with ourselves, our lot in life, and our achievements, and make us realise we are just that little bit more remarkable than we might have led ourselves to believe. And, along with that, we have a new measure for career success - so that can't be too bad!

Where is a good Change Agent when you need her?

A friend and colleague, assisting me through a crisis of sorts this week, reminded me that a personal strength of mine is that I am a change agent. Sometimes I don't feel this is a strength. Sometimes it is quite tiring, because I find it hard to just sit and accept things the way they are, even if they appear to be working OK. There is always the need to be revising procedures, searching for new projects, finding a place for a great idea to be introduced or implemented.

The world needs change agents, because we see better ways to do things, we invent new ways to get things done, we see outside the box of 'what is' and focus on what can be. We motivate people to change as well, which is usually a good thing.

Change seems to be an integral component of emerging industries. Environmentalists are change agents who want us to interact more kindly with our natural world. People in the IT industry are constantly inventing new systems, languages and applications to both drive and adapt to tne contemporary world.

Career development practitioners are change agents as well, because we want people to have better lives, more meaningful careers, to move on to something that is an improvement on their current situation.

Change is not always warranted, but, too often people fight change when it is useless to do so. There is an inbuilt survival urge to maintain the status quo (even when the status quo is less than desirable) - this is the law of equilibrium which has a strange power over us. The trouble is, it is an outdated response and one that is unsustainable in a constantly changing world. It also requires a great deal of effort - as soon as we get outside our comfort zones, whether or not we have instigated this ourselves, we subconsciously pull ourselves back a little.

It would be easy if we could go to sleep at night making a wish for how we wish we were, how we wish the world was, and wake up in the morning a new person with a new life, but this rarely happens outside of fairy tales. Real and lasting change is thus often neither fast or radical, but slow and steady, more often than not implemented as two steps forward, one step back.

On the surface, career change can sometimes happen quickly: we are made redundant, we acquire a disability, we find ourselves uprooted from our world due to a small or large scale tragedy as happened in Haiti this week.

In reality though, these changes are often pragmatic and practical. As a change agent involved in careers work, I have come to realise that my ways of working does not suit a lot of people. I can help people to prepare a fantastic resume, I can coach them through the interview process, but this is only fulfilling (for me, and, I would argue, for them) if these activities are related to real change.

What is real change? I describe this as transformational change, which involves examination of one's dreams, hopes, real strengths, areas of challenge, and aiming for a career-life that is wonderful rather than simply workable. We often use phrases like 'unlocking potential', 'finding a true vocation' etc. but these have sometimes unpleasant connotations, for example, that we need to be constant striving and/or giving up our human desires in order to have a 'proper' career or 'true' vocation.

Not so, in fact, career change using the transformation model means not struggling, and not giving up anything (well anything that is really important) except for belief systems that are past their use by date and habits that are less than useful. Unfortunately, in a consumption-driven society we have all been conditioned to see some things as essential - the big house, car, holidays, expensive clothes (or at least a constantly changing wardrobe). This thinking traps us, it locks us into dollar signs on employment contracts, into sacrificing more important things like spending time with friends and family, time in the garden or even just time sitting still and doing nothing.

It is the way of the world that some people will be rich and others poor, that some living environments will be friendly and others alien, that some people will live long and others will die young. But what if you spend thirty years building wealth, only to find it disappears in a blink because you placed too much faith in a particular investment? What if you work out at the gym seven days a week for twenty years, only to become a paraplegic slipping on a just-washed floor? It happens.

This doesn't mean you shouldn't save money or exercise sensibly, but it is all a matter of proportion. So much of what we do is unconscious, related to coping with life rather than living. Ask yourself, how much am I doing something because it is beneficial, and how much am I doing it through habit, stress, anxiety, compulsion? Above all, how much am I doing something to avoid doing something else?

As a career practitioner I ask myself, my clients and those around me the hard questions. I do not tend to be happy with superficial answers to these questions, especially when these are dismissive or an attempt to control what is really an uncontrollable environment. Real change begins within, and happens only alongside a healthy dose of self-belief. As we learn to appreciate the small improvements we are making each day, we see change as a positive thing, something to be treasured rather than feared.

So how do you identify a change agent? These people will become your best friends as the world becomes less stable; look for people who are tolerant, open-minded, non-judgmental, risk-takers, who make the most of opportunities, and who are not worried when things don't work out as planned. Change agents do not need to see others fail so they can be seen as winners, as only when everyone is winning does positive change actually take place.