Let joy be unconfined!

Meet Jeff. He's a good looking chap of around 26 with a car, and a nice suit with matching shirt and tie. Until recently Jeff was employed as an Account Manager for a gym equipment company until they were bought out by one of their competitors and Jeff was made redundant. Although he was professional and composed about the decision at the time, Jeff was really devastated when his job finished up. He really loved visiting his clients regularly, seeing positive results from his sales and getting to know their customer base.

Fortunately for Jeff, he had developed a great reputation in the gym equipment market and had no difficulty scoring interviews with other suppliers in the industry. Jeff knew his stuff, they knew him and he was cool and confident about getting back into work.

Unfortunately this is where Jeff made a big, blustery mistake. He believed that his expertise and experience would show that he was an invaluable candidate to the new potential employer. He expected that his local business and industry acumen would be pounced on and savoured by the people who were once his competitors. He loved the gym equipment industry and was very frustrated with being out of the loop, so he was putting his most professional hand out for the better offer available to him.

This approach was a mistake for several reasons. Jeff is right in knowing his value as an agent in the industry and a great asset for a new company, but his prospective employers are looking for something different that Jeff just wasn't putting out there. Although Jeff knew within himself that he really enjoyed the gym equipment scene and loved his clients, his professional demeanour didn't allow that to come through. His prospective employers are probably better off hiring someone fresh who is new to account management or gym equipment who will have to prove their passion for the industry in order to succeed. So Jeff's achievements are now not looking so hot.

This is an entirely made-up example, but the difficulties Jeff faced are described to me all the time. Regardless of whether you are continuing a career in a field you have prior experience in, or changing to a new area - the most vital ingredient in an interview is passion. Love for your art. Excitement for your trade. Enthusiasm for making a hobby into a job. Energy to get started! The importance of putting life into the impression you make cannot be overestimated here - it is just about the most important ingredient in converting that interview into a job offer.

No, that is not to suggest that we just scrap professionalism like last week's newspaper stack. But many job candidates mistake professionalism for woodenism. Robotism. Politeism. Pleasantism. Starchedism. Courtesyism. Rigidism. The sort of soothing voice at you normally use for children and dogs. Who do you think is already employed with this company - a team of cyborg drones with no personality? Don't try and conform to a mould that you only imagine. Let your love for what you do spread out all over the interview table and get your interviewer excited about having you on board. Please do this. I would like to phase candidate cyborgs out completely if possible.

Next time: Channeling rage into something helpful.

The Passion Assassin

It's a question mark that will probably never quite leave you - from your first thoughts in school about what to do when you "grow up", to your first few jobs and ongoing employer changes, career changes, life changes:

Am I doing what I love?
And if not - how would I make the transition and still earn a living?

For many people, working is separate to what you love doing. This might be for soundly practical reasons: if you are crazy about mountain bike riding, it might be wonderful release to tear off the suit and go bush-bashing on the weekends. Same goes for cooking or graphic design - to make your passion into a career may even end up killing your personal love for it.

But there are opportunities out there to do what you crave, and sometimes it just takes a leap of faith to start your career again in another area that you know will satisfy and inspire you.

Say for example that you've spent several years in financial planning. The money is good, (financial crises aside) your clients are loyal and plentiful and you work for a reputable employer. But....deep down, it doesn't really turn you on in the way that you'd hoped, and you are aware of others in the industry that get a lot more out of it personally than you do. They are in their element, and as much as you would like to be, your daydreams are more often filled with: coffee.

Yes. The hustle of the early mornings, the regulars, the latte art in the lazy afternoon, the steam of the machines, the cake forks and smooth napkins...if only.

Plenty of people spend their lives talking to family and friends about another adventure they never take. They may have run the figures, partners, locations, plans, through their minds a hundred times but can't ever seem to make that leap.

I'm not even suggesting here that we venture as far as going into business for yourself. There are people who have had those dreams before you and set those businesses up already. If you can't secure paid employment in the area you love, try looking for volunteer work. Aspirations are not meant to be kept in a glass box, take them out and use them!

I'm not finished with this. The next entry will be talking about your passion once you decide to experiment with direction, and find yourself in that exquisite interview moment where your life could change for the better...

It's not them, it's you.

Interest rates are going up again. Retail companies are nervous, mortgage holders are apprehensive, but if we're being truthful, it also suggests that the economy is recovering. And the media hype around economic improvement reverberates through the psyches of business owners, employers, international traders and political commentators - meaning that if we are heading into better times, then hiring confidence will grow and company teams will again start to resemble their size pre-hiberation.

So it's time a bit of tough love now.

A few months ago it was our priority during the darkest recession-like months to educate our clients and the job seeker market at large that it was not their fault that they were not able to find work, that they were not alone in being made redundant and that many, many other talented people were facing the same crises. We provide comfort and encouragement when it is needed most, and we will always do this.

However, with the economy starting to claw its way back to a healthy, balanced state, we need to acknowledge that the employment market will be showing a bit of muscle. While this means more job vacancies (great!), it also means that your reasons for unemployment cannot continue to be limited to the "the market" indefinitely.

This is a slow process, of course. But as the current out-of-work demographic starts to be reabsorbed into the workforce, it is critical that a) if you find yourself still out of work weeks and months on, then b) you identify exactly why that is, so that you do not get left behind.

A key factor will be your resume. Our clients are getting the jobs and interviews they want right now because their resumes are super-professional. The resume maketh the interview, so please - please - please get yours seen to by a resume doctor such as ourselves!

A day of Great Change

Helena here had the fortunate pleasure of speaking with a gentleman here this afternoon who is having the day of his life!

His wife was admitted to hospital this morning at 1am for an emergency caesarean (mother and baby are doing great) and he then had a job interview for a major retailer later on this morning. He completed a psych test and met with a company representative to discuss the store manager role for which he had applied, was advised that he was not suitable, but asked to stay on site to speak with another company representative and complete another psych test which he did, but again was advised that he would not be offered that position. Again, he was asked to stick around, complete another psych test and meet with someone else. By now, the man was getting very tired (having had no sleep and the greatest emotional event of his life already that morning) and was becoming a bit frustrated. But to his credit, he did finish the third test and met with the third interviewer. To his astonishment, he was offered the NSW State Manager position! And accepted!

So...this man has a lot to get his head around: a new family and a state in less than 24 hours. Congratulations and our very, very best wishes.

Real ingredients, real results.

The skincare and beauty industry thrives on the promise of active ingredients and noticeable results. Most of us at one time or another put the question to ourselves exactly what DHEA5, Factor17A and hydroxynuclease are, and why we now need 35% more of it.

Shifty words and shady outcomes - we would like to believe what advertising tells us, but we are natural skeptics when it sounds like the answer to all our problems.

So does your resume currently include a broad selection of these? honest, reliable, trustworthy, kind, supportive, a team player, motivated, dedicated, results-driven, enthusiastic, easygoing, confident, committed, ambitious, loyal, willing to learn, approachable, open-minded, dynamic, eager, considerate, pleasant and responsible...

What rubbish. It's no use telling the reader all of these things. These words in a resume mean nothing because they are so common - they will appear in 90% of the other applications the recruiter/hiring manager will read that day.

If you really are ambitious and have great energy and initiative, that will be very evident in the detail you have provided and the achievements you have made both at work and in your own time.

To talk about your personal characteristics in your cover letter and resume, don't rewrite the Thesaurus of Goodness. Pick some that really are you and elaborate on them, use your own language and examples so that you stand out. If you spread happiness and improve team morale, say so. If you are last out of the office because you want to spend time helping others, spell it out.

Talk about your real qualities so that you really can deliver on those skills and produce results. Make the you on paper resemble the you in person. After all, no-one else really is like you.