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The Ten Step Job Hunter Plan

After working with many long term unemployed job hunters, I have found that several common themes stop job hunters securing employment.

This ten step plan will help overcome these obstacles and clear the path to your new career. Long term job hunters after securing work often report that other areas in their lives improve including confidence, family relationships, stress levels, self esteem and their quality of life.   

A career coach can help you move forward with your life, your career and your future.

The Ten Step Plan                                                                                                        

  • Have a Clear Career Goal: Have you ever been to the supermarket not knowing what you want to buy for tea? Do you find yourself walking down each food section without choosing a product? It is the same with job hunting if you don’t have a career goal you will find it hard to apply for vacancies no matter how many job search websites you use.

You need to find a career that you will be passionate about, a job where you will wake up wanting to go to work – if you could choose any career and there were no restrictions, what job would you want to do? If you can find a career that suits your personality traits you will be successful as your values, beliefs and identity will match the job role.

  • Job Requirements: Once you have a job goal, your next step is to understand what skills, qualities and qualifications are needed for the position you will be applying for. You can easily learn this from reading job adverts, job specifications and job profiles. By recording the employer’s essential criteria on your CV, Job application and discussing how you possess these essential skills during the job interview, you will double the amount of job offers you receive.

 

  • Where are vacancies advertised? Depending on your job sector depends where the positions you will be applying for will be advertised. As some job sectors rely heavily on job search engines, others will only advertise on their company website, while others prefer to receive speculative applications.  A good starting point is the sector skills council.

 

  • The Speculative Approach: Remember, not all jobs are advertised often due to the cost of job advertisement. We just mentioned the speculative application; I have added this as a separate bullet point as there is a 40% success rate in using speculative applications. A speculative application is when you send a speculative letter and CV asking if the employer is currently recruiting.

 

  • Know the Industry: Become an industry expert, showing your industry and knowledge expertise on your application form and during the interview will increase your job offers, as employers often think if you understand the industry and job role you will enjoy and do well in the position.

 

  • Believe in Yourself: As well as not having a job goal, not believing in yourself is one of the biggest barriers job hunters have. In some cases this lack of self belief has stopped people attending a job interview, even when the candidate had made it to the interview venue.

An NLP Life Coach can help you improve your confidence, for now imagine you are a confident person, how would you stand? What is your confident posture like – do it now, is you head looking up or down, what will you say to yourself. Already you are starting to feel more confident by imagining that you are confident. If you believe you can pass job interviews you will!

  • Telephone Skills: I am always surprised that more job hunters have a fear of talking to employers on the telephone then they do talking to interviewers face to face. The secret to passing telephone interviews is practice, you would prepare for a face to face interview and you also need to practice for a telephone interview.

 

  • Interview Questions: from following the above steps you now understand about becoming an industry expert and you know the essential criteria needed for the position you are applying for. From this you can confidently predict the interview questions and prepare your answers. Remember to have a list of questions to ask the employer.

 

  • Keep A Record: It is important to keep a log of the jobs you have applied for, this way you can follow up unsuccessful applications and gain feedback from the employer. Often job hunters will gain a job interview and forget the position they have applied for which will lead to poor interview preparation. A job log will help you stay on track.

 

  • Keep Your CV Updated:Once you have been successful with your job application, continue to update your CV with your new position, duties and any new training. This way if you are unpredictably made redundant your CV is ready to go. Often employed people who are not job hunting accidentally come across an excellent opportunity and having an up to date CV will allow you to apply for the position straight away.  If your current CV does not secure you job interviews use a CV Template Package to update your current CV.

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5 Successful Ways to Create Business Ideas

This article will help you understand how other successful business people came up with successful and profitable business ideas. To be successful you need to be keen, passionate and able to learn from your mistakes, Richard Branson once said that failing his first business is what made him successful.

Business Ideas

Business ideas are all around you, many inventors and business people originally came up with a product, service or idea due to their own need and then later turn this idea into a profitable business.  Business Start Up books are also a great way to gain some cheap expert advice.

  • The World Wide Web (WWW.) was originally created for scientist studying high energy physics around the world to share information more efficiently.

Many people see “something” is missing or notice how one product or service can be improved, turning this business idea into profit.

  • In 1907, while working in a department store as a janitor, James Spangler thought that his carpet sweeper caused his cough. He decided to improve that way he clean carpets and tinker with an old fan motor, broom handle, pillow case and soap box creating the first Hoover which he later patented in 1908.

Other successful business people sell other peoples products and make millions without having to spend money on materials, initially.

  • The Amazon affiliate programme made Amazon successful as well as many internet marketers, selling Amazon products on their website and on Google Ad-words.

Life Coaching can help you prepare yourself for self employment and achieving your business goals.

Do what you love to do


As with any job, career and business, you need to do what you love to do! By doing what you love, you will bring passion, creativity, knowledge and persistence to your business. Businesses don’t happen over night, they take time and hard work, if you do not love your business idea you will soon stop working towards it and in many cases this will cost you a lot of money.

Hobbies

One of ways to have a successful business is by creating a business from something you love to do. You can do this by looking at your hobbies. What are you really good at? DIY, creative Christmas card designs? Writing stories? Many successful business people often turn there hobby into a business, Peter Jones started a Tennis Coaching business from his passion of tennis.

Remember you may enjoy your hobby because it is a hobby, would you enjoy your hobby if you had deadlines to meet? Would you still be passionate about your hobby, if you had to work on your hobby everyday?

A good way to start a “Hobby” business is to keep your full time job and work on your business part time, this way you will know if your hobby is losing it’s passion.

Turning the Old into the New

New business ideas are often few and far between. Many businesses take one idea and improve it. Take the mobile phone, first this was a portable way of communicating with others. You can now read e-books, add events to your diary, take photos and videos the list go’s on and on.

A mechanic decided to take the garage to the customer, by using a transit van fitted with all the tools and equipment needed to fix cars and carry out MOT’s

Chefs do this all the time; they take an old recipe and add a new twist. Once they add a new name to the recipe they open doors and wit for the customers.

What idea can you improve? What product or service do you use that can be improved?

Offer a Service

A great way to make a successful business is to offer a service to your customers. More people prefer others to carry out everyday jobs and high profits can be made offering a service. Recently we have seen an increase in Hand Car washes, many started by offering a car wash for around £2-£3 and now many of these businesses have evolved into a valet service charging around £30-£40 a valet.

Franchises

If your business minded and know you can be successful and know your not type of person to come up with new ideas and new ways to better existing products, you can buy a franchise.

A franchise helps you build your own business with (in many cases) an already established brand. Don’t fall into the trap of “if I buy a franchise I will be successful”, the franchise is still a business that you need to manage and make profitable.

To minimise your risk understand what you will get for your money and like with any other business write a business plan that is realistic and achievable.

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Achieve Your Career Goal

This technique will help you achieve your goal, by breaking down your goal into realistic chunks. Also, by looking at the outcome of your goal and the resources you can access you will start to think about a future time when the outcome has been achieved and how this will make you feel and the changes this goal will bring. 

  

This is a great motivational tool used by many coaches. We have written this technique as a set of questions, you can print of the questions and answer them one by one. Clients who have used this technique feedback how effective a small number of questions can be. 

Good luck and enjoy achieving your career goal and outcome.                              

  

Setting Your Career Goal  

  

First think of your career goal as a positive and state the career goal in the present tense; as an example if your goal is to “get out of the company I hate” you can change this to a positive “To find a new job in a company that will help me develop” 

  

Record Your Positive Goal _______________________________________ 

  

Be In Charge of Your Goal  

You need to take responability of your career goal, it is good to use other resources like asking a friend to check if their company have any vacancies, but you are fully responsible for achieving your career goal – it is only you who can make this goal a reality. 

  • How will you start it?
  • How will you maintain it (the activity)?
  • If anything, how might you stop the good work?
  • What could you do instead to continue making good progress?

 

 A Career Coach can support you to achieve your career goal                                                      

Be Specific  

Your goal is the overview, now lets get specific. The smaller the details and information, the more achievible and real your goal becomes. As a motivational tool having smaller chunks of your goal recorded, makes it easier for you to move forward, by seeing yourself  each step along the way that you have achieved 

  • Where will you be when you start your goal?
  • When will you start working towards your goal?
  • How will you know you are moving forward?
  • What specifically will you be doing?
  • If you were doing this now, where are you? What can you see? What do you say to yourself? How do you keep going? How do you feel right now?
  • What would others say when they can see you achieving your goal? What will others see you doing?
Collect Evidence  

What is the outcome to achieving your goal? As we achieve the goals we set our-self we tend to find our lives move forward in more then just one way.

 

  • How will you know that the goal has been achieved?
  • What will be different? What will you see, hear and think when you have achieved your goal?
  • How will you know that your goal has lead to your desired outcome?

Resources  

Once you have a goal and desired outcome and you are motivated to achieve your goal and outcome, you may want to use some additional resources.
 

  • What resources do you have available that will help you to reach your goal?
  • Who do you know that may be able to help, support and encourage you?
  • What books, information, state of mind may help you achieve your outcome?
  • Who do you know that has achieved the same outcome?

Size Matters                                                                                                                 

Ask Yourself:

  • Is the outcome the right size?
  • Does the outcome seem realistic and achievable?
  • Does it represent enough of a challenge to keep you interested without it being so big that it feels overwhelming?
  • Does outcome look, sound, feel exciting enough to keep you motivated?
   

A Little Extra

 

  • What would be the consequence in your life and relationships if you got your outcome?
  • How do you feel when you have achieved your outcome?
  • Who else would the outcome effect?

   

   

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What Happened To All The Career Advisor Jobs?

As you will already be aware with the cut in public spending, large contract holders such as Connexions (the largest career advisor recruiter in the UK) have slowed down their recruitment policy.

 New All-Age Career Service                                                                                   

This has lead to high competition for career advisor jobs in both public and the private sector. With schools, colleges and universities able to fund their own career advisors and the new government announcing the new all-age career service jobs are still available even with the public spending cuts and I would add competition is high especially for newly qualified careers advisors.

 Competition for Jobs

Fierce competition means that you need to understand what career companies are looking for in terms of skills and knowledge and how you can evidence that you possess these on your CV and how you can back this up with stories during a careers job interview.

As a career advice company with a background in careers advice in both the private and public sector, employment king understand what employers are looking and how your Career Advisor CV will pass the application process.

For newly trained careers advisors, I would highly recommend practicing your skills as a volunteer, there are many volunteering opportunities throughout the UK.

Career advisor interviews are often long processes with questions directed on your skills and experiences and a second section on your values, beliefs and personality. As a career advisor you will already understand the importance of self development and how meeting a professional careers advisor to discuss interview techniques will give you the upper hand.

To be offered a career advisor job in these testing times, you need to understand the job role, the contract you are applying for (as these vary massively throughout the company) and the skills needed for the job role.

Once you understand the employers requirements you can evidence you have what they require on your CV, Application form and during the Job Interview.

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Internet Marketing – How to Get Customers to Your website

Do you have a website you need to promote; are you looking for more hits and more customers? To have a successful business you need to know how to market your website and to gain returning customers with a monetised website.

  • The more hits you get to your website, the more customers you will receive and the more money you will make.                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

This article will teach you how to promote your website to gain new customers, with a monetised website the more customers that hit your website the more income you will receive.

Getting Hits to your website

To get traffic to your website you need your website to rank on page one or two on Google, any lower then this and your traffic will be low – no customers. People search on what we call “key words” such as life coaching in Manchester  (for a coaching website) you need your website to rank high on your search term to get any real amount of customers  to your website.

Google Ad-Words

The quickest way to gain instant clients is by paying for Google Ad – words, as your clients search for a Key wordthe adverts that are shown on the right hand side of page are paid advertisement and you only pay when a client clicks on your advert – and it’s up to you how much you pay, obviously the more you pay the higher up the page you go. The advantage here is that you rank on Google page one within minutes of setting up your ad-word account.

SEO

You can also get your website on Google page one or two for free, the way this works is once Google have a key word entered in their search engine, for this example we will use Business Coaching the adverts that come up naturally (not paid for with ad-words) are called SEO. This works by Google checking how many backlinks – people linking to your website from their website with the search term. The more backlinks you have directed to your website the higher up Google you climb.

The myth is that Google check your website content, which is true and I would add that backlinks make up 95% of the power to make your website rise up the Google pages.

  • Remember the higher up Google you rank the more clients will hit your website.                                                                                                                                      

Directories

Directories rank high in Google searches for a large amount of key words, you can pay for (in most cases) a yearly subscription for your website to be added to their directory. You can also add your website to free directories but these do not rank very high but do in most cases add a backlink to your website.

What next?

If you want hits to your website quickly use Google Ad-Words and Paid Directories, you pay out initially but gain clients normally on the same day.

Alternatively, market your website for free, add comments to blogs and free directories and build up your backlinks. Once your backlinks increase you will see your website climb higher in Google searches.

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Volunteering – The Best Job Searching Tool

We all know Volunteering is an advantage for anyone looking for a new job or career. From my own personal experience I enjoy volunteering as it gives you sense of satisfaction, accomplishment and for me a chance to give something back.

You can use volunteering to gain new experience and in some cases new qualifications, many professionals I have met have gained their career by starting as a volunteer.

CV

 

When recording volunteering on your CV, don’t, like many other job hunters, undersell your volunteering experience. Add your volunteering work under the Employment section and record it as you would with any past or current job position.

Interviews

 

A great opportunity to sell your volunteering experience is during the job interview. Most employers are impressed with a volunteer as it already proves you have dedication, your reliable and hard working – if you wasn’t you wouldn’t volunteer. Also employers will recognise that you have good time management skills and that you are able to take on new responsibility.

For your volunteering to gain a new job offer, you need discover the skills you have gain that are relevant to the position you are applying, even when apply for a job in a different sector. 

  • Project management – organizing events or fundraising activities  
  • Sales skills – contacting people face to face for donations or recruiting volunteers
  • Communication – explaining games and rules to groups of youths

Companies and employers value dedication and passion, as a volunteer you already have these qualities; you need to ensure they come across during the job interview as many good natured volunteers often undersell their skills.

Write down a list of all your skills and qualities you gain from volunteering

Volunteering Employment
  • Communication
  • ITC
  • Time Management
  • Organisation
  

Next read the job specification and if your skill or quality is needed, record an experience when you have used the particular skill as a volunteer in the second box; this is the starting point for answering your interview questions.

Many volunteers win awards, again the job interview is a time to sell yourself, don’t be shy mention anything that will help you gain a new job offer.

Being a volunteer is great for a number of reasons including meeting new people, new experiences and gaining new skills. As you have discovered volunteering can also help you find work, if you are not a volunteer start looking for a volunteering opportunity now.

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Enterprising Skills

In the recent government budget, we were told that small business will help get the UK out of the recession. The chancellor announced that there will a £45 billion increase in lending to small and medium size businesses, which could lead to 57,000 new jobs.

This is a great time for entrepreneurs with creative ideas and enterprising skills to enter their sector as self employed business person.

 

What are Enterprising Skills?

To be able to create and operate your own enterprise you will need the knowledge and ability to contribute to your enterprise or and employers enterprise.

Key Enterprising Skills Include:

  • Formulating business plans
  • Selling and marketing of products and services
  • Identifying and obtaining resources
  • Understanding your sector/marketplace needs and wants.
  • Creating and advancing new services and products for the marketplace

A great technique created by Walt Disney to help you create and advance new ideas is the Disney Model (an NLP Technique) The Disney Model allows you to use your creativity, while at the same time ensuring you don’t miss any pitfalls.

 

How to Plan Out Your Ideas  

 

This technique in NLP is called the Disney model, as Walt Disney used this model when creating and planning out his ideas for films and theme parks. It allows you look at your idea creatively (Dreamer) realistically (Realist) and critically (Critic)

This technique works really well if you do it physically by placing 3 A4 sheets, each one with a title written on each one; Dreamer, Realist and Critic and place these on the floor. Alternatively you can do this technique from your desk; again you will need the three labelled pieces of paper. 

Step One – finding your inner resources as a Dreamer, Realist and Critic.

 

Step on to each of the A4 sheets one at a time; when you step onto the Dreamer piece of paper, close your eyes and think of a time when you have been highly creative, this maybe recently or even far back as your school days. Relive the experience and notice what your creative side felt like, how it felt to work to no rules allowing your imagination to work in its own speed.

Shake off  – this helps you break state.

Next step onto the Realist sheet, think back to a time when you felt realistic about an idea, (if you can’t think of a specific time, imagine you are the type of person who can be highly realistic) re-live this experience as if you were that realistic person now, what makes you feel realistic, what do you say to yourself, how do you act and sound? Do you follow or devise a specific plan? What do you do when you feel realistic about an idea?

Shake off and break state

Finally step onto the Critic piece of paper, again close your eyes and remember back to a time when you were able to criticise an idea or project in a constructive way. Remember all the details of this past experience, how did you feel, how do you view ideas when your being positively critical? What do you say to yourself, how do you stand, what is different physically and mentally when you are being a critical person?

Step Two – Your Outcome

 

Think about your outcome, this could be a business idea, becoming a millionaire, creating the new Facebook – what is your outcome? Step onto the Dreamer piece of paper remembering all the emotions and energy from your re-lived experience.

Visualise yourself completing this outcome, imagine you’re a character in a film or a dream, anything can happen, let your imagination open up and see all the different and varied ways you can achieve your outcome. Feel yourself achieving your outcome.

Next step onto the Realist piece of paper, see yourself as all the other characters in the film or dream, look at your outcome from their eyes and their experiences. Follow this by looking at your process for achieving your outcome as a story board. How realistic is this idea?

Finally, step onto the third piece of paper, the Critic. Look at your outcome from a critic’s point of view, what is wrong? What doesn’t work? What would your inner critic say? Turn all your criticisms into questions for your dreamer.

Now you have used your creative dreamer side, checked how realistic this outcome is and have come up with several good critical questions. Step back onto the Dreamer sheet for your creative side to come up with solutions – walk through all three sheets and continue to use the cycle until you have an imaginative and realistic idea that will work, as you have been your own critic and found and solved any possible obstacles.

Summary

 

Some entrepreneurs have lots of creative skills, others are realistic while some can be critical – all these personalities have positives from a business sense, the Disney Model helps you to access each one of these characteristics for your business model to ensure your projects have been observed at all angles.

The technique allows you to access your Dreamer, Realistic and Critic state to be used to look at project overviews and individual details. If you are new to NLP this technique once read may seem a little strange (standing on A4 pieces of paper) and I would add once done, many entrepreneurs and business people feel the benefit of having the opportunity to look at all the angles of their business idea.

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