employability - the pencil approach

The pencil approach will help you to boost your employability in time of turbulence.

Many people are affected by difficult economic situation. Some will be unlucky and are not able to retain their jobs. If you are one of them, do not let the situation dampen your spirit to boost your employability.

Here are some suggestion how to move forward. The approach is know as 'pencil approach'.

1. Plan
The plan is the advance work you have to do prior to the actual effort to get the job. Do research on the job opportunities that suit your qualification and your interest. Review your resume, and update with your new skills or qualification. The resume has to be revised to suit the targeted jobs.

2. Exercise
To face the challenges, we have to be at the top health, both the physical as well as mental. The key to healthy body is the moderate intake of food and continuous and consistent exercises.

3. Network
Not all jobs are advertised in the paper or in the webs. Many companies would prefer to use networking to fill up a vacancy. This is especially true if the vacancy is in small number and demanding a generic skills. It is expensive and time consuming to advertise in the newspaper.

4. Communication
This skill is critical for all levels of jobs. It is more in demand for jobs that involve direct dealing with customers.

It is important for us to sharpen our skills, both the verbal and written communication. Reading books and practice what we had read will be beneficial.

Beside the writing and verbal skills, we also need to develop our listening and well as our non verbal communication. The non verbal communication would have some cultural connotation, as it may be interpreted differently by different groups.

5. Learn
Learning is a continuous activities. It can be in the form of additional qualification or skills. Keep track of the happenings in your profession and events in your country.


Appreciation
Reference was made to thestar,com.my on an article by Paul Lim, a certified ACTA trainer.

Handling Your Retrenchment in your next interview.

Being retrenched is both affecting your financial and social standing. You may feel really down, but the stigma of being redundant is less today. This is because, more and more company retrench there staff as part of their corporate restructuring, downsizing, outsourcing and cost-cutting exercises.

The main issue is to get the next job. Most will find it difficult to tell interviewers and potential employers about it as they have the impression that employers are viewing the retrenched staff unfavorably. Employees are actually concerned about the reasons of the retrenchment. No employers would like to employ a poor performer or one with attitude problem and become a source of conflict.

Some job seekers also believe that once a potential employer knows that they are currently unemployed, they will lose their bargaining power and be offered a far lower salary than if they were still employed.

However, if you choose to hide the information, the effect can be worst off.

This Is a Small World.

With the advance in information flow, it is not difficult to know the status of the applicants and the reasons for exploring new position. If the applicants choose to hide his real status, it may create the negative impression on the applicants, as it appears that they are truthful about vital data. This alone makes the candidates look suspicious, and the employer may draw negative conclusions about his departure from his previous job.

So, the issue is, how do you tell the potential employer that you had been retrenched without giving a negative impression on your eligibility for a job?

What can you tell interviewers so that your job status is a non-issue?

These are the suggestions:

1. Get an official statement

When staff members are notified of an impending downsizing exercise, there is usually an official statement or story from the company's senior management.

Affected employees should speak to their direct superior or human resource manager to get more information.

Common reasons include cost-cutting measures (where entire teams have been disbanded), the relocation of operations to lower-cost sites, the outsourcing of a function to a third party or the cessation of certain jobs altogether.

Repeat the official story to potential employers in a matter-of-fact tone, without any trace of bitterness.

2. Pre-empt the question

Candidates will invariably be asked why they are looking to change jobs.

When asked, those who are still employed will typically state that they are looking for new challenges or new growth or a better environment in which to excel.

If you are an unemployed candidate, it is okay to tell your potential employer that you have been affected by a restructuring exercise.

It might be even better to tell him the facts before being asked, thereby getting it out of the way early so everyone can focus on the key objectives of the interview — how you, the candidate, fit the role requirements.

3. Offer referees

Another way to erase any doubts about your performance is to offer your potential employer the chance to speak to a referee.

In this instance, the best referee is obviously a direct supervisor or someone fairly senior who has worked closely with you in the recent past. It does not matter if the referee has also been affected by the restructuring.

4. Highlight pertinent details of the restructuring

Give the interviewer important information such as how many people were affected by the restructuring, which location the operation has been moved to, how the former employees' responsibilities have been divided up, what the new structure looks like and so on.

Such information points to the fact that your exit from the company was not performance-related.

Moving Forward

Look on the bright side. Being in transition gives you several other positioning advantages.

This can be an opportunity to venture into a new field. You can be very direct and open about the fact that you are pursuing many other job opportunities and are currently speaking to several potential employers. This can be used as an effective negotiation tool.

Being in transition also does not mean that you should succumb to pressure to lower your salary expectations.

If you have a solid track record, it is possible to maintain or even increase your salary because of the value you will bring to the role and the market forces of supply and demand. .

Sources:

ST/ANN

* Article by Chee Sze Yen, senior consultant, DBM Singapore, a global human capital management firm that provides transition services.

Extracted from Thestar published on 3 nov 2010

barriers to listening

Have you ever experience a situation when you are trying to woo a lady of you choice and you get distracted by the strong music. This is happening all the time in different situations, at work or during family outings.

The surroundings can be a barrier to you listening skill. The noise in the room, poor acoustics, bad odor, extreme temperature and uncomfortable chair can distract your attention and affect your listening. In order to improve the communication, the noises and barriers have to be removed.

The other barrier to listening is psychological. You can be very sad, or upset about some other things or you had something against the speaker. Basically the barriers to listening can be summarized under the following headings:

1. Too many distraction - There are many other things fighting to get the attention of the listener. The noise from radio, tv, the people that pass by, all can be a distraction. The mind will naturally filter out the least relevant items.

2. You think you know the subject - With this in mind, you can jump to th conclusion and interrupt the conversation. There may be details that he has missed.

3. The gap in the speed - A speaker can speak at the rate of about 150 words per minute, whereas our mind can manage about 400 word per minute. So the mind actually has some gaps to play with, and this enable him to venture into different areas. Without proper discipline, it is easy for the listener not to listen to the speaker.

4. Lack of knowledge on how to listen. Average people will spend more time to listen compared to other skills like reading and writing. The other skills are being taught and researched, but not many people undergo a training to listen effectively.

Charting Your Career

Like an organisation or a business entity, your career needs to be planned and work upon to increase its chance to reach the intended target. Please do not assume that the employer will be managing your career.

There are basically 2 important issues in charting your career.

1. Setting the vision or target

2. Working on the steps to achieve the target.

It seem to be so simple and straight forward, but the implication is great. It reminds me of my schooling days, in year ninth, the best student was a girl, and when asked what she wanted her career to be, she said she wanted to be a nurse. And later, I found out that she actually became a nurse, despite her outstanding academic result.

This demonstrates the difficulty of setting the target, if it is too low, you would be wasting your talent, if it is too hight, it would be beyond your capability.

The followings are the 4 steps to create your career map:

1. Examine your current position. Write down the details of the following items:

- job title

- salary and benefit

- key responsibility

- existing skill

- future prospects

2. Identify your long term goals

- identify at least 5 goals. It is important that the goals to be smart, i.e specific, measurable. attainable, relevant and time-bound.

3. Plan your future career

For the next five years, identify the job you are eyeing, identify the skills and knowledge required for the job and link it to the long term set goals.

4. Create a detailed action plan.

Identify the objectives and the skills you need to achieve both the short term enabling goals and identify the plans to achieve the required skills.

THE DOMAINS OF THE GOALS

There are many areas where you may need to focus your goals. The list are given below, which may not be similar to your intended order.

a. Money matter - you may like to put a target of your intended salary, or monthly savings or money related life-style.

b. Social Standing - You may want your career to position you in the circle of the elite, or social class.

c. Skills building - The career can be a steeping stone to develop skills that can be used for other purposes. Some of the questions that can be asked are:

- which of the existing skills would you like to develop or master?

- Which skills do you like to learn?

- which skills will support me to get my objectives?

d. Personal life - The career can be viewed as one of the elements of your life plan. So having a clear objective of your life plan will help you to construct the career plan. Some of the relevant questions in you life plan can be:

- if you had passed away, what do you like people to remember you as?.

- Assume if you are doing to die tomorrow, what are the things that you regret that you had not done?.

The career map, just like the road map, can help you to reach your destination. It will give the logical path and the steps to be taken in you move to reach the destination

Get Yourself Headhunted

It must give us the nice feeling to be headhunted. It is a form of recognition by the other organisation about your value.

Employers are very critical of getting the right people for the important positions in his organisation. They are very specific of their requirements and likely to get the services of headhunters to fill up the posts and they are very particular of trying their best to get the correct people..

What actually they are searching and what are the traits that attract the headhunters,

1. The Background.
Where you come from, your background and social networks are important for some positions. This is because the social positioning reflects the nature of a person. The upbringing will in a certain degree influence the personality and the thought.

2. Expertise in the field.
Before the headhunter does the search, he would talk to the industry and get some informations or leads. That mean the chosen person will be well known to the industry. He may had spoken in a seminar or had written papers. He would be of better value if he had a track record of performance.

3. Value added skills.
In the present global setting, certain skills stand out compared with the others. These are the skills that can transgress across the cultural boundaries. Some international corporations are looking for individuals with overseas postings, wide educational exposure or able to speak the alternate languages. For that reasons, the younger managers are recommended to gain experiences in working oversea.

4. Career Experiences.
To gain sufficient experience in any areas, an employee had to spend some time in that role or function. Depending on the type of job, certain position will require a detail depth. However there are positions that are looking for the breadth. The wider and variety of experience will indicate flexibility and ability to face different challenges.

So whatever areas of work you are doing, do think of the short term objective and a longer term interest.

Thank You.

joha rahman