Job Search Advice Archives - Page 2 of 14

What Do You Really Want?

Do you know what you want in life going forward from today?

Over the past few months I have had the opportunity to reflect on where I want to focus my energies going forward, the sort of work I want to be doing and the type of organisation I want to work for. I feel quite fortunate that I have had the time and space to think about those things and to come to some conclusions.

However, even in the rush of our daily lives we can find some time just to stop and think about what we really want from life can’t we? Whether it’s when travelling by train, taking some time at the weekend to go for a walk or just quietly sat in a corner at some point in the day.

Do You Need a Personal Development Plan?

In my last post I looked at the importance of understanding our own core values and beliefs in order to focus on areas for development. I now want to start to take a look at how we formalise our own development. Do you really need a Personal Development Plan? If we consider that Personal Development is a process that you will work on for your entire life then, to me at least, it makes sense to have a plan for how you are going to approach it!

What is the Purpose of a Personal Development Plan?

It will help you assess your skills, qualities, and will help you build the lifestyle and life that you envision that you desire for happiness and a high quality of life. The personal development plan can help you with all aspects of your life and help you become more self-aware at home and at work.

Perform a SWOT on Your Life

A well-designed personal development plan will address your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and roadblocks or threats in all areas of your life that you develop. Your plan will identify your strengths so that you can improve them, your weaknesses are so that you can make up for them, and new opportunities, so you know when a door (or window) is open, as well as noting any roadblocks or threats along the way.

Recognise Development Areas

When you perform your SWOT in each area of your life, you will discover internal and external things that are blocking your success. For example, you may hold the belief you’ll never have enough money to save for the future. Because of that, when you do get “extra” money, you tend to blow it right away on all the things you feel you missed out on before. This is a limiting belief about money that a lot of people have because most people think money is a finite resource when it’s not. It’s manmade. Therefore, we can make more.

Identify Your Resources

You may do some work that helps you look at the resource you have available to do a specific task. For example, if you decide you want to start a coaching business, what resources do you have to start it. What things do you need, what things can you live without, what can you do yourself, what does someone else need to do. This works in every single aspect of your life. You may realize you already have all the skills inside to do exactly what you wanted to do. However, you may realize that you need to pay for additional brainpower (resources).

Build Better Relationships

One of the most shocking aspects of creating a self-development plan is how much it can help relationships. When you realize that you only control your own behavior and actions, it starts to get easier to manage relationships. Treating them how you want to be treated is an excellent start but becoming self-aware enough to go farther and realize that not everyone likes what you like so you may need to treat someone the way they like to be treated instead.

Whatever you want to work on can be done via the personal development plan. Whether you want to lose weight, start a business, change jobs, or go back to school – the goal doesn’t matter as much as developing the plan that you need to get where you want to go. Your plan will not be the same as anyone else’s because you are different. That’s why it’s so consequential and unique because it’s just for you.

It’s Common Courtesy

We often read as Job Seekers attending an interview that we should write and thank the organisation/interviewers for their time and confirm that we are still interested in the role.

How about it also working the other way round?

This week having attended an interview I received an email later the same day which thanked me for attending, confirmed the details we had discussed in terms of when the outcome would be communicated and wished me a pleasant evening/weekend.

That was a first in my experience but has left me with an incredibly positive impression of the organisation and interviewers.

Whether I secure the role or not they have won a fan (and probably a customer) for a great Candidate Experience!

I was impressed! What about you?

Thanks for the Interview Invite!

Great! I have received your invitation to attend an interview and it arrived in good time. What happens next?

I replied acknowledging receipt and confirming that I will be delighted to attend. I have a couple of questions ahead of the interview and because the invite came from a person rather than a donotreply@ email address I can contact you. You reply to me very quickly with the answers to my questions and apologise for omitting those basic details from the invite. You make a note of the things I have asked about because you can add them to future invites and avoid others having to ask the same questions.
On the day of the interview I arrive in good time and the person on your reception is expecting me and welcomes me in a friendly manner. They know who you are and how to contact you so they let you know. They also ask me if I need to use the facilities and whether I would like a hot drink. I make use of the facilities to freshen up and politely decline the hot drink because I don’t want to spill anything!
A few minutes before the interview is due to start you come and collect me from reception. We make small talk on the way to the interview room and you also point out any interesting things along the way – like where I might find myself working if I am successful at interview. It’s obvious that it’s a friendly place to work because people speak as we walk along and even hold the door open for us.
When we arrive in the room the other members of the panel all get up and introduce themselves. Of course they are not hindered by their mobile phones and are not checking their email because they have already put them away or put them into “flight mode.”
Everything is already set up for the presentation which is great because I don’t need to work out how the various pieces of your kit work together. We start with the presentation, once you have offered me a glass of water which of course I gratefully accept and can place within easy reach.
Even though you have seen similar presentations, because you have been interviewing all day, you maintain an interested look and even if you are starting to tire you avoid yawning! I am grateful for that and reach the end of my presentation and answer the questions which you have around one of the points I had made.
Then we move onto the interview questions. Actually, it was much more a discussion about my experience, my thoughts on some of the key challenges/issues in my area of work and what I would bring to the role. That was so much better than us working through your list of competence questions which I then had to select one answer to from my memory bank of STAR (Situation, Task, Actions, Results) responses. You knew that the Question Tennis approach was old hat and recognised that a two sided discussion was much more useful. What was also great was that because we had a discussion rather than competence questions you didn’t find yourself having to say “Ah you have already answered this with one of your previous responses.”
There had been lots of opportunities for me to ask questions during our discussion so we didn’t then have to have that laboured “Any questions from you?” But I did have a couple of remaining questions and you very graciously answered them without making me feel rushed. Of course it helped that we didn’t have to go through all those HR type questions about Notice Period etc. because they had all been covered at application stage.
As we came to the end it was really clear to see that you had planned the whole process because you were able to tell me exactly what was going to happen next and by when.
You then walked me back to reception and as we chatted along the way you avoided the inane questions about the weather. You shook hands with me as we parted and your friendly reception team signed me out.
So now I just need to wait for the date you had given me for the outcome. What a really pleasant email I found waiting for me after I had driven home. You thanked me for attending, confirmed the details we had discussed in terms of the outcome and wished me a pleasant evening/weekend. I of course responded thanking you for your time etc.

That was a great interview in fact probably the Perfect Interview. Will it continue into the outcome stage to ensure that I really do have a great Candidate Experience? That will be covered in my next post!

If you want to read the previous two posts looking at What I want from Recruitment (as a candidate) then you can find them here: