Ten things to do when your work is casual

I have several clients, family members and friends who currently work in casual work settings. This is not by their own choice, but due to the nature of the industries they work in.

This means that, despite them being great workers and good at what they do, and even though some of them have worked for their employers for a long time, they never know from week to week when they will be working, and for how many hours.

The work is seasonal, but also fluctuates on a week to week basis, so until the start of the week they don't know whether they will be required for one, ten, or sixty hours over the following five or six days.

This is bad enough if you are single, let alone if you are supporting a family, which some are doing. 

If you are working as a casual employee, like most who are doing this, you might be hoping that this is just a stop-gap, while you look for a job with a more permanent arrangement. Unfortunately, this is not an option for most, especially in regional areas, where it seems that the casualisation of the workforce is at its most intense. In any case, having worked in, and observed the recruitment industry over three decades, it is clear that we are on a trajectory to even greater workforce casualisation, so we had all better get used to the idea that for many of us, working life will involve juggling two or three jobs each week, or over a year, just to get the required hours and income.

The problems of casual work are ongoing topics of conversation.

In addition to making it harder to manage one's personal finances, being a casual employee makes it harder to get loans, and there is the constant fear of how to exist if the casual job dries up (which can happen quite suddenly), due to there being no more work, or if the person has an accident, develops an illness, or simply wants to take a holiday. Most of these are things that the waged employee has no concept of.

Don't despair. There are several steps you can take to limit the downside of this way of working. With a bit of luck, you will start to see the positives and embrace it.

1. You may want to stop reading at this point, but please don't. It is important. You need to set yourself up an entire and proper budget, so you know what your regular outgoings are, including your rent/mortgage payments, utilities, food and other bills. Write up all these amounts in a yearly format, as this makes it easier to see how much you need to earn and to account for fluctuations. If you can use computers well and calculations don't make you go into meltdown, you can probably do this yourself, using Excel or a specialised system. If not, hiring a service like My Budget will save you heaps of time and worry. I've had several clients who have done this and they have all given rave reports, even those who were skeptical at first.

Once you know what your yearly outlay is (including a percentage buffer - most financial planners recommend adding at least 15% to account for inflation and cost increases), you can break this number down to more manageable chunks - for example, if you are usually paid fortnightly, divide the total cost by 26, if weekly, divide by 52 etc.  (If you want to factor in a couple of weeks off, divide by 25 or 52 - it is a good idea to do this anyway).

Whatever else you do, take the time to get this step right, it is the floor, the bedrock, on which your casual working life will stand.

2. Next on your 'to do' list is to anticipate your earnings over the next year. If you have already been working on a casual basis, this means looking over your past year's income; if you are new to this type of work, you will need to do some thoughtful projecting. Ask your employer when the peak work periods are, whether there are forced down-times (for example, do they close down for the month of January?). Ask other people who work in your industry, or talk to recruiters. When you have finished your guesstimation, check this against your list of outgoings and see if there is a discrepancy. This will help you to work out if you need to make changes to your lifestyle, or perhaps find other work to support you. 

Knowing your financial situation is a precurser to anything else you do as a casual employee. (I presume you are doing it for the money it brings in, not simply for the love of the job. If it is the latter, I have a slightly different strategy for you.) If you are not getting paid enough, this work is only going to cause worry and anxiety, and you will resent the work you do and may fail to work to your own, or anyone else's, satisfaction, causing problems now and in the future.

3. Make sure you use two separate bank accounts. On the weeks when you earn more than your allocated budget, the excess goes into an account that you only touch during the 'dryer' weeks, when you are earning less (or nothing at all). Because you already have your fortnight's costs written down, you will be able to see at a glance how many fortnights you have in store. Pay as many bills as possible in advance, pay others as soon as you get them, or pay in instalments to help prevent the surges (you know, those times when all the bills come in at once.). Just remember that often you pay more when you pay in instalments, so only do this if it is totally necessary.

4. (Nearly finished with the boring stuff, I promise.) Cut up your credit cards. I'm serious. Casual work and a credit card is a bad marriage, and multiple cards will be your nemesis. if you must, keep ONE with a $500 credit limit, but don't use it, if you need that kind of security. You don't actually need it, as much as you think you might, and you certainly won't want it when you get your monthly statement. You can use your debit Visa or Master Card like a credit card, to pay online etc., with the advantage that it is only your money you are spending.

5. This takes us away from the finances into more interesting areas (for me, anyway, and hopefully for you as well). This is about making yourself employable as a casual. Everyone needs to maintain a good set of work skills and attributes, but for casuals this is even more important.

The first way to do this is to provide good value to your employer or employers: turn up when you are rostered, don't ask for changes to your roster unless these are essential, be on time, put in the effort and tidy up before you leave. In any job, the biggest gripe I hear from employers is that a person was late, or that they left a mess behind at the end of their shift. They remember these two things more than anything else, so if you get those right you are already on a winner. Oh, and try not to slack off while you are there, either.

6. Make yourself indispensable. This could mean that you always handle a particular task (preferably one that your boss doesn't like doing). This might be dealing with a difficult customer, if your boss prefers to stay in the background, or sorting out a storeroom to make it easier for everyone to find things. This way, when you are not on shift and something is not working, everyone will be saying 'We need (insert your name) here, to sort this out.

7. Make yourself as attractive as you can in the workforce generally. After all, you know, this job won't last forever. This might mean developing a specialisation. For instance, there might be a new piece of equipment that no one wants to learn how to use. You learn how to use it! You will become the expert in your workplace, and no doubt other employers in the field will be purchasing this piece of equipment, so you have a unique transferable skill to your credit. (Don't forget to add it to your resume).

8. Be flexible about the kind of work you do. Most jobs are relatively easy to pick up, and making yourself available for other tasks makes you more skilled and experienced, with more to offer in this increasingly competitive field. Make sure you get appropriate safety training!

While this seems to be almost saying the opposite to point 7, in which I suggested you specialise, I prefer to see them as a pair.

9. Always make sure in job search mode. Loyalty will only take you so far, and being a casual means you can never be sure you will be employed tomorrow. Scan your neighbourhood for other work, keep your ears and eyes open for other opportunities, and keep your resume up to date. This way you are prepared whenever the axe falls on your current job.

10. Consider becoming your own boss. Plenty of people transition from the casual workforce to becoming a sole operator. You can usually command a higher pay, and while you do need to organise your own tax and superannuation, there is little or no greater risk involved, as a casual. All you need is an ABN and an invoice template to begin. (I will talk more about this in another post). You might even find yourself working for your old boss, but with more klout (and money). 

Autism Spectrum Teenagers - Why is it so hard to get work experience?

Despite all the research that has been done over recent years describing the benefits of employing young people on the autism spectrum, it seems that we have a long way to go before we, as a society, fully embraces the power of the kid with autism (and the adult, as well, mind you).

Evidence abounds that people who display autistic behaviours are actually the ideal employees. Those employers who have been brave enough to employ a person 'on the spectrum' attest to their:

• ability to get the job done without distraction (no social chitchat, slagging off for an hour or two, long lunches etc,)
• learning abilities which mean they usually only need to be shown how to do something once
• attendance record (they hardly take any time off, because, well, work days are work days)
• timekeeping prowess (if you want them to start at a particular time and finish at a particular time, they will be there)
• determination to do the job to the best of their abilities, and
• not providing minute-by-minute updates on just how great they are at their job (they just do it!)

So, I was mightily upset when a local dad posted on the local community facebook page just yesterday that, despite there being so many jobs coming up for young people where 'experience is not necessary' (we are in a beachside area where the crowds swell for summer), his 16 year old son had been rejected for upwards of a dozen jobs. No doubt he would have he had trouble completing the bizarre online form, and answering questions about 'where he would like to be in five years time' and 'how would he deal with an angry customer'.

Clearly, these kinds of stock-standard interview questions are anathema to people on the autism spectrum. They think from day to day, and long range plans are just not something within their scope. Likewise, dealing with a difficult situation can be learned, but without a context, a question like 'What would you do if...' is irrelevant to them. 

The other problem faced by young people with autism is the form-filling stage, which often eliminates them even before they get to the interview. People on the spectrum can be brutally honest, for example if asked about working preferences they might put down that they are not willing to work evenings because they don't understand the concept of evening, or they find it too vague - providing the actual time periods involved would lead to a better level of understanding on both sides.

Interview questions and forms aside, when you consider that a significant number of customers of  nurseries, fast food chains, supermarkets, cafes and hardware stores will demonstrate autistic traits, the owners and managers of these establishments would find added benefits in employing a broader range of workers with 'different gifts and talents'.

Thankfully, the power of social media worked well for this dad and his son - they received several invitations to attend workplaces, and, with a little bit of luck, this young man will be on his way to his first paycheck by now.

With a little support and education, I am sure that most employers would be happy to adapt their practices to enable them to find the right employees. I have developed a check list that I have used in my interactions with employers, which many have found very useful. If any potential employers, or parents of young people with autism would like a copy of this, just let me know by sending your email address in the comments section.

The latest job search strategy - environment scanning

We've heard about networking, information interviewing, tapping into the hidden job market. Chances are you have used all these strategies, or at least heard of them.

Last week I talked about the trend towards insecurity in employment, so this week I want to tell you about a less well-known, but important career development technique called environment scanning, which can assist with the career decision making and subsequent planning processes. This actually started as an organisational development tool, offering businesses and other employing entities new ways to look forward and plan for a future that is characterised by many unknowns. In career development today, this term makes sense, as these days we are all trying to 'best fit' ourselves for futures that cannot be guaranteed. We have all heard the news that most of the jobs we will be doing ten years from now have not been invented yet, and those that will continue to exist will be carried out quite differently, thanks largely to technology and the increasingly global nature of work.

The kind of environment scanning I want to talk about bears some similarities to what career practitioners have traditionally called 'opportunity awareness', 'understanding the world of work', or just 'labour market awareness', but these are not quite the same. Let me explain.

'Opportunity awareness' is part of Career Development 101, it is the other side of the coin to 'self-awareness'. Broken down, this means that in order to have a meaningful, self-directed career, you need to understand yourself in a work-sense (your skills, talents, interests, motivations, core values and drivers, your social context, also your perceived and real limitations), as well as what opportunities exist for you. Sounds fair enough, doesn't it? Unfortunately, though, what this implies is that there is a job out there with your name on it; that there will be something just right for you and all you have to do is prepare yourself and it will come.

The thousands of law, medicine, education, engineering and accounting graduates working in non-related and often low-skilled jobs should be evidence enough that simply doing a course and graduating does not guarantee a job in that field. More than ever before, the labour market is far from being an =SUM equation.

The fact is, there may be a large number of jobs you can apply for, or, there may be just a few, or in fact zero opportunities. There may be a hundred jobs you would be more than happy to undertake, and which you feel at least somewhat qualified for, but for one reason or another, you are never going to get thanks to the increasing knowledge of creeping credentialism and the multiskilling hangover (to be the subject of another blog post). Understanding the world of work generally may be useful in developing your theoretical knowledge, but it is not going to get you a job and could, quite possibly, be a source of disillusionment. In any case, even if you find the contemporary labour market a fascinating field of inquiry (as I do), this is a field of constant change, and I doubt that many people, even career practitioners, have the time or energy to keep up to date.

This is the basis for the mistakes parents and other adults with good intentions make when they advise young people to become a this or a that.  Their knowledge is, quite simply, limited and flawed. This is why people believe, truly, that because there are well-paid jobs as a doctor, accountant, lawyer, therefore studying to become one of these will mean you will in fact become a well-paid doctor, accountant or lawyer. In most cases, this is really bad advice, on a number of levels, but most of all, because unless you are truly gifted and passionate, you will only ever be an average doctor, accountant or lawyer and the really good jobs will always elude you.

So, what is environment scanning and where does it fit in? It is a number of things.

1. Firstly, it is an active process, or should I say a pro-active process. You are not passively reading the Job Guide or listening to an industry group paint their field with a coat of gloss. You are actively engaged in finding out the information you need to make the right decision for you.

2. Secondly, environment scanning is unique, because you are unique and your career needs and goals are unique. So, every single person will develop a unique and different view of their environment.

3. Thirdly, environment scanning puts you in the driver's seat. You are actually making decisions about the environment, whether it is friendly or hostile, open or closed. This helps you adopt an analytical approach.You determine the parameters for your scan: how far will you search geographically, how in-depth, and over what period of time. In fact, if you are properly engaged, environment scanning is something you are doing, to a greater or lesser extent, all the time.

4. Placing this in fourth position does not mean it is less important. Environment scanning is a holistic process: it engages the spirit, the imagination, your creative core. You need to, firstly, imagine one or more possible futures for yourself - you want new information, not old data. You are adopting a stance of curiosity, which enables to you discover new possibilities inside organisations, or perhaps in a business idea for yourself. Does that sound exciting? This process is akin to 'job crafting', in which you work towards creating your own 'best fit' job, perhaps by showing the leaders of an organisation how you can assist them to achieve their goals, or maybe in starting a business yourself to fill a gap in the market.

5.Lastly, if the last four elements are taken seriously and implemented, environment scanning is profound, creating a lifelong interest and the motivation to achieve. You have, in essence, found your life's work.

Does this all sound a bit new-agey and creepy? That's OK, you don't have to engage in any of these activities. In fact, I predict that less than 5% of people will ever be brave enough to really embrace this technique, which makes it all the more likely that the 5% minority will succeed.

If you are part of the 5 % and want to know more about how to undertake a successful environmental scan, along with other contemporary job search techniques, you'll be able to do so very soon, by reading my books, 'Who's Who in the Zoo? and 'What's New in the Zoo?'; both will be out later this year.

The latest job trend - insecurity!

Is your job on the line? It probably is, whether you are working on a permanent, casual, or contract basis. I wasn't around during the Great Depression, and it sounds like it was pretty bad for a lot of Australians, but I think the outlook for workers today is equally grim, but in a very different, twenty-first century way.

I've seen a lot of change in the Australian labour market since I was a fresh, bright-eyed nineteen year-old clerk in the Federal Department of Employment (then it was tied to Immigration, interestingly). This was my entry point into my own world of work and my initiation as a budding career development practitioner. While I thought I was just having fun working with larrikins in the Commonwealth Employment Service I learned the ropes of social security benefits, government funded employment programs, jobless statistics and industry reports, and, even more importantly, I learned a lot about people and what they want and need from jobs.

I have often made predictions about what was going to happen in the labour market, with some accuracy, but mainly to myself and family members, or to colleagues and friends during philosophical discussions. I have never thought to put out a prediction publicly. I have never seen the value in it, especially when the outlook does not look good. However, I am going public with this prediction, actually, in the hope that it does not eventuate.

I predict that, for the average Australian worker, real wages will fall significantly over the next five years. Tony Abbott wants Australians to earn less, and, like it or not, what Tony wants, Tony seems to get. One way or another, he is definitely not the Australian worker's friend. The 457 visa floodgate has opened and willing workers are pouring in from overseas. Didn't you notice all those people flying in while the Liberals have been so busy announcing their successes in stopping what  was always a paltry number of boat arrivers? Anyway, these 457 visa holders are very happy to work in crummy conditions for far less than the minimum wage, as recent 'alleged' news stories about Koreans working for a certain mining company illustrate . Unions have shown little grunt or ability to change or end this situation and will not, at least as long as we have Liberals in power.

I'm obviously not happy with our neo-conservative political situation but I am going big picture here, way above the blame game. So, back to the prediction. Wages will be cut for Australians who want to compete with the incoming workers, but so will jobs for Australians. Like manufacturing, white collar jobs are heading overseas. Health care and insurance claims are processed in India and Japan, while your call centre is in the Philippines.

Alongside this, I predicted a while back that as the 21st century advanced, more and more Australians would be working casually or under contract; that there would be less jobs in large organisations and more need for outsourced labour. This is already becoming obviously the trend. Cutbacks and retrenchments (or is that right-sizing) are everywhere.

We want all of our young people to get good vocational training, but where will they find jobs? Australia is a living conundrum. On one hand, we already have far too many graduates than there are available jobs.On the other hand, we need more teachers, nurses, doctors, paramedics, but we have education systems that fail to supply these in the right proportion, and career opportunities at the end do not match our actual need.

For the seventy-five percent of us who don't have a degree, plus those who do not work in the area in which we qualified, one of the chief barriers to success in job search is that 'demonstrated skills' drives the whole recruitment process. This means, people are competing with hundreds, possibly thousands of others, for jobs that have an extremely 'tight' set of required skills (which is heavily enforced by the Applicant Tracking System) - unfortunately the notion of transferable skills has not penetrated the minds of most recruiters and hirers. For example, a client came to see me recently, she had worked as a bookkeeper for many years using a range of software, but not MYOB. She had absolutely awesome bookkeeping skills. After more than 200 applications she was still not hired because, rather than asking questions that would identify her ability to use MYOB, the questions stopped after 'Have you used MYOB?' and her truthful answer was, 'No'. I sighed, gave her a free copy of MYOB I had lying around and told her to go home and set herself up a home accounting system. She did. We wrote on her resume that she had used MYOB. She applied for a job. At the next interview, able to answer 'Yes, I have used MYOB', she got the job. Interestingly, they did not ask one more MYOB-related question.

One of our big problems is the mismatch of qualifications and available jobs. We have a large pool of workers trained for jobs that don't exist.We have jobs going that people could actually do well, but the selection process begins with a particular qualification (even for lowly clerical roles, older workers with years of experience are shut out because they don't have a Certificate in Business Administration).

Does the answer lie in retraining? Retraining for what?  Besides the fact that spending 6-12 months studying something you already know is ludicrous, how do we know that next year the benchmark for entrants will not be a Diploma, that the Certificate in Business Administration is all but useless? How can we be sure jobs will be available in any other current line of work?

Retraining is simply not an option for many people, especially if it means sacrificing opportunities to job hunt. Studying is far less palatable when you are fighting to keep a roof over your head, and with funding cuts to training programs anyway, it's not hard to see why most people aren't warming to the prospect of undergoing lengthy self-funded training programs with dubious employment possibilities at the end.

Not long ago, employers used to train people on the job, nowadays they will be more likely to purchase a product and leave it up to the person operating it to work it out, or if they are lucky, they may get a few hours of vendor training thrown into the purchase price. When they hire someone new, it becomes a requirement to already know the product - the employer is not interested in wasting time training a new person, they want them pre-manufactured.

So, in summary I further predict that within the next five years we will have a large pool of workers with outdated or unusable skills that do not match employers' requirements. This is a safe prediction, because it is already happening. But this situation will get much, much worse as no one, not even me, can guarantee what course a person should do to ensure any level of job security.

A also predicted a while back that as the 21st century advanced, more and more Australians would be working casually or under contract, that there would be less jobs in large organisations and more need for outsourced labour. This is already becoming obviously the trend. While for some of us, the jobs we had are still needed, we are just doing it another way, more Australians are becoming, effectively, itinerant workers, at the mercy of the on-hire process. Those of us who want to take some control are opting to go into business for themselves. These new-age entrepreneurs are often reluctant business people, and are ill-equipped to handle the rigours of financial and business management, not to mention marketing, administration and tax accounting.

We currently have a labour market in chaos. It is disconnected, unpredictable and constantly shifting. My prediction is that it will get a whole lot worse, and that there will be many casualties. For individuals who find themselves in the middle of this maelstrom, unsure which way to go, I offer this advice: Stop and breathe, accept that many things are out of your control, then accept that you must take control of your own life. This is your anchor. This means not rushing into anything, especially not because someone on the TV or radio tells you that you too can have a career in aged care or personal training (some of us will, but most won't). Take stock of your successes, and eliminate from your thoughts the bits of the 'old you' that are hampering you in the present. Times are changing; you are reshaping yourself. Look around with fresh eyes at what is happening in your local area, or in a new area you might want to move to, and try to identify some areas of interest for you. This is called 'environment scanning' which is the topic of my next blog.

Adios for now
Julie

Thoughts on passion and whether a job is just a job after all

 In my professional circle, there has been a lot of discussion lately around the topic of career satisfaction; this mainly comes down to an argument between the people who think we should each find our passion and let that drive our careers, and the people who say 'work is work' and it is not meant to be enjoyed.

The careers people on the 'passion' side argue that we spend more of our lives at work than in any other area, so we might as well love what we do. These are the people who usually believe we are put on the earth for a purpose, and it is our duty to work out what this is. If we don't do this duty to ourselves, we are more likely to become stressed and ill - physically and mentally. There have been many books devoted to this subject, some from career practitioners but many from the life coaching, motivational speakers/writers, and the self-help industry as well. 

Some people (myself included) have found this argument persuasive; although I didn't actually read it in a book, it was more a matter of listening to that small voice inside me that gradually grew bigger and more all-pervasive. There is an element of liberation in following one's passion, of 'treading one's own path' (thanks Barefoot Investor!), but it can also be hard work (mainly in trying to keep a roof over your head and food on the table while carving new territory), so it is no surprise that many people have preferred to view work as something that must be endured..

The most pervasive argument for work as something to be endured is a transactional one. There are only so many jobs in the world - what would happen to society if everyone just did what they wanted? Who would collect the garbage, hold the 'Stop' and 'Slow' road signs up in all weathers while work is being done? Who would clean the public toilets? (oh, wait - we have technology for all those things now).

Whether or not the transactional argument is true, most of the reasons relate back to our society, how we want to live and what we are prioritising. As a society, we value wealth, material possessions and competition over family, community and equality. This is a harsh truth that cannot be disputed. We like money and the type of freedom it brings. Thanks to the scaremongering going on in political circles and the superannuation industry, we now believe that we are going to live a long time and we are going to need lots of money to do it - we'd better store it away now or we will be living on the streets, old and incontinent, with no one to look after us. Short of winning the lottery or becoming a game show champion, we can only do this one way - by working hard and getting lots of money so we can store it away till later. Yes it is true - the Protestant Work Ethic is alive and well!

I propose a rethink on both these extremes. It is about balance. It involves following our hearts/intuition/gut feel to an extent while paying attention to opportunities. Getting locked into one, unsupported but possibly romantic, fixed idea is fraught with dangers. 

To avoid the tragedy that comes from a life devoid of any sense of purpose, the first thing to do is to get in touch with who you are and what you want RIGHT NOW! It's really not hard - you just need some space and time so you can think clearly. Write down some key points; draw a picture, talk to a non-judgemental friend over coffee.

The job market is constantly shifting, so it is really hard to make long-term plans. Also, over  the course of our lives, as we grow and change (along with our priorities) we need to adopt a 'fluid' approach to our careers rather than the fixed one that many of us still buy into. I am amazed when I hear well-meaning adults still saying things to young people like 'Do this or that course and you will be set up for life', or  'Go to uni and get a law/medicine degree first, then when you are earning good money you can do a bit of art on the side.' You can pretty well guarantee that the young person in question will have killed off any artistic talent well before the end of his/her course, and do you know how many hours young lawyers and doctors work? These are definitely not just jobs 'to do', they involve a great deal of attention and many sacrifices - they are important jobs for those who have the heart to do them well.

If you are a young person reading this, remember, you have all the time in the world to make your career something fantastic! Don't jump into the first thing you think of, and especially do not do a course just because you got  the marks to do it! That is the first bad mistake that is easily avoided. Give passion a little bit of a chance to have its say as well as all those other, boring messages you keep hearing from those who want to lock you up in a job title for the rest of your life. As financial advisor Scott Pape so wisely says, 'Tread your own path' (But I did say it first, many years ago now).

If you are an older person who is in a new career stage, remember - your career has been building all your life, whether you have been in work or not. It is a continuum, and your past has relevance - even though it might feel like it. You have a wealth of experience, skills, successes and failures who have made you who you are. Use this as an opportunity rather than a threat and you will be energised rather than encumbered by change.

My next blog will be about how to be over 50 and attractive to employers. Yes it is possible!

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.

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.

The rise of the career futurist

I have been reading a lot lately about futurists and wondering whether or not I can and should call myself one. As a career practitioner, it seems that I am, more than ever, focusing on the future and trying to keep ahead (as much as I can) of trends in order to best help my clients and to inform my writing. After all, most people realise they can't change the past, but they might have some control over what happens in the time that is yet to come.

Not wishing to sound pompous or to just be jumping onto the latest bandwagon, before deciding whether or not to add this to my already lengthy repetoire of job titles I thought it best to do some research. So I started by googling the word 'futurist' (and wondering at the same time if there is something more futuristic that I should be doing, but hey, google has been pretty good to me up till now!).

I found out some interesting stuff. This site came up number one in the search results: wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn. The first thing I learned was that a futurist is 'a theologian who believes that the Scripture prophecies of the Apocalypse (the Book of Revelation) will be fulfilled in the future' - hardly a 'new' label then, how disappointing!

The next definition was: someone who predicts the future. How eclectic? Smacks of crystall ball gazing and John Edwards. (Who hasn't got an opinion on 'Crossing Over'?).

And the next: futuristic - 'of or relating to futurism; "futurist art"'.
I also learned, thanks to Wikipedia, that 'Futurist is an album released in 2005 by Alec Empire'. In fact, many songs, works of art, plays and movies of late have included 'futurist' somewhere in their titles, themes or blurbs. But don't get too excited yet, this term was 'first used to describe an artistic movement in Italy around 1910 that tried to express the energy and values of the machine age'. Dig a little further and you will find out that 'Futurism was a 20th century movement in art which encompassed painting, sculpture, poetry, theatre, music, architecture and gastronomy. Filippo Tommaso Marinetti initiated the movement in his Manifesto of Futurism, published in February 1909'. So, paradoxically, something that is futuristic may well describe things from the past.

Next link: 'One who studies possible futures'. How universal and ubiquitous! This could be interpreted to mean that anyone thinking about the future can be a futurist. All you dreamers out there, listen up - you have a new jazzy title!

In mainstream society, however, the term 'Futurist' has become quite serious, as commercial, political and community organisations alike struggle to ensure their own futures as well as cope with ever-changing needs and demands. Most of us are probably most familiar with this term as it has come to be used in the business world. In this sense, a futurist is someone who has some claim to being able to accurately advise on trends (and/or about how trends operate) to help enterprises plan for the future. (Sadly, it is this notion on which the Futures Exchange is also based, and we all know how successful that has been!).

But futurism is not all smoke and mirrors. I am an advocate in that I believe focusing on the future provides us with ample scope to fix something that is not working, change our lives for the better, and work towards achieving something we feel it is important.

For a career practitioner, this is a much more interesting and challenging way to work with clients. It also keeps us on our toes, and focused while we find ways to encourage and motivate our clients to build happy futures for themselves, through a combination of envisioning and practical tasks, a positive attitude, and a dose of faith.

Those of us who would like to call ourselves career futurists have some excellent role models on which to base our work. Well-respected and credentialled members of society who call themselves futurists are growing in numbers each year. Organisations, some of which operate in virtual space, are being set up at an alarming rate, and they are attracting people from diverse fields including geneticists, environmentalists, climatologists, public benefactors, defence personnel, politicians and community group leaders.

Australians who call themselves futurists include Bernard Salt (KPMG Partner) and Dr Marcus Barber (www.lufg.com.au.) Maree Conway (www.thinkingfutures.net) comes close to calling herself a futurist; Maree 'works with people in organisations to enhance their long term thinking capacity and to use that thinking to build stronger strategy.'

I have heard these and other futurists speak and what they have to say is compelling.I can relate to a lot of what they say to my own work, and there is definitely a level of commonsense in approaching careers work from a futuristic perspective. I will stop short of stating that everyone in the career development industry is, or should be, a futurist, however in order to be the best at what we do I believe we should all be treating the future with respect.

In my 'working definition' of a futuristic career development practitioner, he or she would be, at least:
1. assisting clients to create their 'preferred' future, to examine trends in their present occupation and industry, or the one they wish to enter, in order to help them make adequate preparation, including ongoing learning and skill development,
2. working alongside clients while they elaborate their future vision while at the same time being aware of what may happen in the wider world context (in order to minimise and manage the risks involved while taking advantage of the new),
3. taking time regularly to update their own skills and practices in order to continue being innovative in the way they go about doing their own work so that they can meet present and future needs,
4. engaging in activities such as ongoing reading, attending seminars and webinars, listening to and watching relevant broadcasts and reflecting on how these can inform best practice, and
5. contributing to an ongoing futures conversation by providing up-to-the-minute expert information on the world of work of today and beyond to media representatives, politicians, business or community leaders, or members of the general public.

If the future doesn't inform our practice, then, I would argue, we cannot really call ourselves career development practitioners. While no one can actually predict the future, it would be irresponsible of people like me not to incorporate some well-researched speculation into our programs.

And if you are likely to be seeking the services of a career practitioner, either as an individual or as an organisation, perhaps you should be asking them whether they consider themselves a futurist as well.

Job Career and google - gobbledegook or a whole new language

I am a career development practitioner. What does this mean to you? If you are like most of the world's population, probably not much.

This is a problem. It is a problem for you, because without knowing about me and my colleagues and what we can do, you might be missing out on something unbelievably good: a better time at work, personal fulfilment,a feeling that life makes sense, and yes - achieving your dream career.

This is also a problem for me, and for my fellow career development practitioners, because without you, we have no job, we can't earn a living, and we can't achieve our own career dreams. We feel unfulfilled and dissatisfied.

The career development industry itself is just a little over one hundred years old. A man called Frank Parsons is the 'father' of our profession, establishing the first career assessment in 1907. Mr Parsons was the first person to show people that they could choose their own career. This was radical - prior to this time young people were handed a career, either through inheritance of the family business or because this was the work available in their area, and this was pretty much it for the rest of their lives.

Parsons' career planning tool was simple but effective, so effective in fact that career development practitioners still use a version of this today. Basically it involves establsihing career interests, working styles and personal preferences (or values) which become key career ingredients for that individual, then turning these into tangible career goals and developing a plan to make it happen.

Behind this simplicity, there is a lot of skill required. Unfortunatley, career development practitioners often do our jobs so well that we are almost invisible in the process. Let me explain.

If you are successful in your career and you have had the help of a career career adviser, counsellor, or coach, the success is all yours, and you will have put in some effort to make it happen. But perhaps a career counsellor was there at the start, helping you to sort through the haze of options, or to help you come up with ideas in the first place. Perhaps a course adviser was there to help you to make sense of the courses on offer to help you become accredited. Perhaps a career coach kept you motivated during times you thought it was all too hard.

These days, career development practitioners often take on all these roles to help you through each stage of transition. Obviously, to have all these skills requires a lot of training and ongoing skills development.

Even if you haven't ever actually seen a career person, our very existence has helped cause a mindshift. I am sure you would find it difficult to conceive of a time when you would have been stuck in a job for life, whether you loved, hated or loathed it. For this, you can thank the career professionals who have pioneered this way of thinking and working over the last hundred years.

If you have always thought that career people 'just work in schools', 'help with course selections', or 'are just for people who are not coping at work', it is time to think again.

You probably aren't aware that there are a lot of career development practitioners working from home offices or in co-located offices around the world. Alain de Botton's recent book called 'The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work' has a chapter on career counselling in which he describes the work of one rather quaint career development practitioner. Whether this is a good or bad advertisement remains to be seen; certainly people moving into this field come from a range of backgrounds and age groups, this is not addressed in de Botton's book.

OK, so what does all this have to do with google?

Given that the career development profession needs to be more widely marketed, and given that the Internet is arguably the best marketing tool in the world today, I am concerned that google may well dictate the future of our industry.

I have a website; it describes what we do accurately. Visitors often comment on how appealing it is, how easy it is to read, how professional it looks. They often decide to use our services. However, for every person who finds the site thousands of others do not. This is because the google search engine does not understand the words we use. Admittedly, it relies on input from searchers, who don't know what career development is - are you beginning to see the problem?

So, let's say you want to change jobs or figure out what you want to do with your life. What words do you enter into the search engine? Well, our recent research into google searches show that 'career advice' (which does not describe what we do at all well, nor does it sound attractive to most adults), 'resume help' and hardly sensible phrases like 'job career' and 'get help job' are popular. Should I change the words on my website from 'We are a group of career development practitioners' (which is the term we want you to know describes us and what we do) to 'We are job career people'?

Doctors, accountants and lawyers don't have these problems because their industry terminology was set well before the advent of internet search engines. But for the career development profession, we must now decide whether we should be led by the almighty cyberspace god Google, or to find some other way to get our message across.

I doubt that will happen, the Internet and google are far too entrenched. So just be aware that although we might just have to bow to public pressure and call ourselves 'career advisers', we don't actually give advice, but what we do give is so much more useful to you - we help you manage your working life in a way that reflects your individuality and prevailing needs at any one point in time.

How important is workplace fit?

After they receive instruction on how to take details of a job vacancy, one of the first things new recruitment consultants are taught is how to find the ideal candidate. They are taught to shortlist based on these three criteria:

1. Can they do it? (i.e. the job, which means they have the skills, experience and other requirements outlined)

2. Will they do it? (i.e. do they appear highly motivated, will they be happy to do the tasks, work at that level etc.)

3. Will they fit in? (i.e. to the workplace, with the team, will they be accepted by others)

Of all of these, No. 3 is the most difficult for recruiters and employers to get right. I am sure we all agree that a person who is a good fit will be happier, work more productively and probably stay on longer than someone who is a square peg in a round hole.

Anecdotal evidence from colleagues in the recruitment industry indicates that the 'best fit' criteria is fraught with difficulties. I would be interested to receive some real data if anyone knows of any research into this area.

The issues created by 'bad fit' employees include: excessive days off, poor performance, poor output, teamwork hampered by delays, right through to conflict and outright sabotage, all of which have a devastating affect on the bottom line.

So why do hirers get this wrong so often? There are many reasons, and not all of these can be blamed on human error. For instance, a couple of years ago, before the GFC, there simply were not enough people applying for positions, let alone ideal ones.

Now, we seem to have the opposite problem. With excellent candidates coming up for a large number of jobs, it is often a matter of choosing between two or more who seem equally ideal. While a recruiter may tend to place too much emphasis on assessments and impersonal processes, they will generally have a greater ability to remain objective than their client, who is more inclined to
- recruit 'people like us'
- look at the past, trying to fill a former employee's shoes, rather than focusing on how the replacement can help the organisation move forward into the future
- spend time gaining 'intelligence' from people in their network rather than relying on their own gut instincts
- select the person who interviews best (i.e. who appeals to their ego), rather than the one who is more likely to work hardest and most productively

Compounding the 'fitness' issue is that ephemeral issue of blatent discrimination - yes, it still exists, just look around a range of workplaces with eyes open to find real evidence that we have not become any more tolerant of people who are different to us, or aware of the negative results of prejudice. This is now more heavily cloaked, because we are sufficiently savvy to avoid expressing openly discriminatory remarks. With Recruitment 101 firmly embedded in their brains, no real data to work with, and an unwillingness to harm their relationship with their client,recruiters are often left to second-guess the 'best fit' part, usually based on their own preconceptions, on a hunch of how their client thinks.

So what is the best way to determine 'best fit'? I believe this has less to do with the physical attributes of the candidate OR their cultural background than with the prejudices of the hirer. For example, do they avoid hiring someone from India or Venezuela because of a preconceived idea about the standard of work they can expect, or the time they might front up after lunch? Do they fail to see the possibilities in any female candidates because 'they have always had a male' in the past? Do they eliminate a person who worked in an organisation they don't respect, when the reason that person left that organisation was they didn't like the way it was being run?

What if 'best fit' was based on a whole different set of criteria, such as 'having a different viewpoint' to the interviewer, or that the person who interviewed least well was potentially the best person for the job? This can happen, because often the person who is most keen on a position is the one who is most nervous and who, as a result, performs less well than someone who really couldn't care less if they got the job or not.

Arguably, one of the biggest interferences in the selection process is superificial appearances. Few people will admit to rejecting a candidate because he or she was too short, too fat, too 'foreign' in appearance, but it still happens, and far too often. If job interviewers had to 'blind interview' each candidate, so that they were unable to make assumptions based on presentation, would they be more successful? Obviously, because then they would have to focus on skills, strengths and the best fit of worker to the job. Add a voice distorter to hide accents and we are beginning to develop a recipe for success. And building a culture that welcomes people who might not look, dress, act and speak exactly the same as everyone else in the workplace will ensure that they fit most comfortably into the team. In a golbal, dynamic and unpredictable climate, giving the 'best fit' criteria a complete makeover is one step in the right direction for the bottom line and the future of an organisation.