Posts

Job Hopping Stigma – Adjust your view – or search until it is too late!

I think it’s time for the business world to get new spectacles so they can adjust or correct their view on the fast paced and ever changing world of job seekers. Don’t worry! I’m not talking about teaching an old dog new tricks.

I am talking about the ‘job hopper’ stigma. Read more

Breaking out of the job seeking rut!

Guest blogger:  Melony dos Remedios

We may not realise it, but we are all creatures of habit. We eat the same breakfast. We drive the same way to work every day. We travel to the same holiday destinations every year. We drink the same double shot soy skinny latte from the same café. The list goes on and on!

 

Some of these habits are helpful, such as brushing your teeth every day or going for your morning walk. Others – such as that nightly bag of chips on the couch while you watch TV – not so good. Read more

Tackling the Talent Shortage – get out of the City

by Guest Editor Scott Butler, Butler HR

Industry trends, such as big data and cloud computing, crowd–sourcing and all the other new buzz word solutions have arrived for a while now and regional and rural areas are not immune to the effects at an enterprise or small – medium business level. These effects are fuelling the demand for IT skills, sales & marketing skills and many other specialised trade skills. While these trends have been on the horizon for some time, most businesses have failed to plan ahead and hire in advance. Read more

Want a confidence boost? Move!

Guest Editor Melony dos Remedios writes:

As a Personal Trainer and Lifestyle Coach, I’ve worked with so many clients over the years whose goals vary from weight loss to stress management to six packs and everywhere in between.

Once they made a decision to commit to exercise, they found there was an added benefit: achieving goals in the gym or working out with a team or trainer helped them to achieve goals outside the gym: in their relationships; while job seeking and in their career. They quickly learned the importance of exercise as a tool to help them achieve physical, mental and emotional confidence and strength. Read more

Clean up your act before you start job searching or networking!

When you search for information on a product or a person online do you find what you want? I’m guessing that you often don’t, at least not easily. What often happens is that you end up spending a lot of time searching until you really find what you were looking for.

That’s because you get to see what Google and Facebook (and increasingly many other companies and search engines and solutions) think you want to find.  And here is the real bad part of the news.  It can also be because you have likely left a lot of personal online garbage out there on the internet. So, don’t be too surprised if you get hit with some embarrassing content from the past.  With this in mind, I strongly suggest that you clean up your ‘online shrapnel’ before you kick off your networking for a career change or before you embark on your job seeking mission. Read more

Hidden Job Market – really?

What’s behind all the hype and buzz of the so called hidden job market?

Where are all these jobs and how can you access them?

Part 1      Seriously what is it about the mystery of the hidden job market that has us enchanted and eager to cling to a belief that there is sea of undiscovered job opportunities out there somewhere? I am sceptical that we are missing out on 80% of the jobs out there so I’ve done some digging and here is what I have found for you. Read more

Australian recipe to win the next election: “Smart people hire the unemployed”

G’day Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott and all of the rest of the smart politicians in Australia.  Here is a recipe to guarantee your party new and everlasting votes at the upcoming election in September 2013.

It is a very simple, low cost concept, super easy to promote and makes lots of sense even if it is promoted by guys like Bob Katter or Warren Truss. Here it is …

“Smart people hire the unemployed”

(or at least they should)

Read more

Are you using all the right tools?

It doesn’t matter if you are currently employed and seeking to move to greener pastures, or if you’re an unemployed job seeker who wants to get back in the game, a proper resume is the best start for a successful job search.

I know…. bla bla …. yes we’ve all heard it hundreds of times before, so what else is there to do to secure more interviews?

Well, for starters, recognise that different job seekers require different tools.  A Blue Collar Professional who is seeking a new position over $40k a year may benefit greatly by including 1 or 2 more documents in their job search whilst the professionals seeking a position over $75k a year may need to get more creative with their documentation attachments. Read more

Job Loss

Imagine this: You are fired.

No matter what term your employer used – terminated, laid off, let go, restructured, and dismissed, downsized, right-sized the fact remains. You just lost your job. We used to think that 100-year-old firms were somehow safer than the brand new start-ups around the corner, but if you follow the daily news, you will find plenty of examples of how dangerous it can be to be in any industry, at any time:

Job Loss covers both imminent or recent job loss. So read on and give us your feedback. Read more

Dyslexia

Hi there. I’m Ulrich, but most people call me Uli. I’ve got a little favour to ask of you. Google the word dyslexia. Go ahead . . . did you notice 99% of the search results refer to dyslexia as a learning disability that impairs a person’s fluency or comprehension accuracy in being able to read or write?

 

dyslexia and Job SearchCan we stop using “Learning Disabled” to describe people with Dyslexia?

I was told that “To have a disability is to be unable to do something”, but with dyslexia there is nothing preventing me from ‘learning’. Instead, dyslexia makes it difficult for me to tie a phoneme (sound) to a glyph (letter). Most everything else is hunky dory. So why is it then, for my whole life, I have been classified as unable to learn?

 

Can we just let that idea sink in for a moment? Unable to learn. Seriously? Let’s not tell other people what they can’t do.

 

 

Even with dyslexia I can speak, create, dance (albeit badly), work a computer, write a complex business plan, read, debate, present, and sell almost anything. Why has the fact that I am a poor speller been translated to an inability to learn? The rich and rewarding worlds of education and careers are not suddenly cut off from me because I am dyslexic? Yet for most of my life, that’s what I thought:

I am unable to learn.

I have taught, mentored, coached, guided and managed many people, and I’ve only met people who Learn Differently.

LD no longer means ‘Learning Disabled’. We know better. I think I speak for all of us when I say we aren’t ‘Learning Disabled’, we have a ‘Learning Difference’.

 

I am still slightly dyslexic. I have learned to overcome most of my dyslexia and I am not planning to tell you about my amazing recovery process in this blog. This blog focuses on Job Seeker content. This section of the blog will be used as a resource for useful tools and as a platform to share and ask questions on the subject of dyslexia. So if you have some form of dyslexia, or if you are just interested in the subject, read on.

Thousands of dyslexic co-workers and friends are out there as well as thousands of successful personalities with dyslexia earning millions of dollars every year. James and Kerry Packer, Juern Utzon, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates are dyslexic. I decided to use the title for my blog to address the subject of dyslexia in the context of a Job Seeker and help both sides of the table to deal with it better.

 

So again, welcome to my blog!

Hit the keyboard and ask away … I am a creative curator and writer and I can send you useful answers or share some of my own wisdom and tools.

Hunt wisely, Uli

 

Tools for Dyslexic Jobseekers

Don’t worry – I am not here to sell you something. We live in a world of apps and online solutions and I am sure you can work out one for yourself. There is one solution, however, which truly works for me. It is affordable, easy to install, and most importantly easy to use. I highly recommend Ghot.it to improve your writing results via an assistive technology that understands you. Go and try it out. I am using it every day.