It is obvious that the Pepsi ad was inspired by the challenges that many people are facing in the current job market. I know that it is just an advert but at the end of the day, it shows someone thinking creatively in order to secure a positive outcome to a job interview.

How are job-seekers coping within this turbulent job market? How many people are finding the strength to cope and how many are actually folding under the pressure that the job hunting puts them under? What are the solutions?

Things that you should not do include staying indoors all day focusing on the fact that you are unemployed. You need to do anything and everything that stops you from wallowing. So, get out of the house, find yourself a coffee shop and get creative. Never leave home without a notepad and a pencil or pen! You never know when you might need to write down some creative idea.

In this article, I’d like to show you how to turn a bad situation into a positive situation.

Fact or perception: One of the first things about dealing with an issue is deciding if it is based on fact or perception. If you are unemployed this is definitely a fact, not a perception so that is half the problem solved. Accepting this fact and looking forward is the next step. However, many people will dwell on the fact that they are unemployed, that the market is difficult at present, thereby unintentionally wallowing in the fact that they are unemployed and therefore not seeing beyond this fact. People can spend ages thinking about why they cannot get a job, why it is happening to them in particular, reading more and more news about the level of unemployment and how it is not going to get any better, worrying about how they are going to pay bills at the end of the month, worrying about losing their homes, and really just focusing on the enormity of the problem. Is this wrong? Not at all, it is the most natural response, but it is not productive and will not lead to the solution. It is a symptom of not just accepting a fact, but of embracing the fact. In effect, we let the unemployment become us, to take over our lives and we find it difficult to see beyond it. It surrounds us, envelopes us, but only because we let it. We have all heard about getting sucked in, about a vicious circle…well, this is a classic example of that!

Break the cycle:  say to yourself “okay, I am unemployed but I am active, the unemployment is passive”. You are unemployed but you have not become unemployment. Having accepted the fact, it is time to find ways forward. Sitting around doing nothing is not going to help.

Start being creative: find that creative being, trapped deep inside. One thing you could consider at this stage is aiming to make sure that you look at jobs that you really want to do. I know that in the current job market that you can’t always be too choosy. However, this might be a time to really focus on not only your strengths, weaknesses and skills, but also on what it is exactly that you want to do. Why? Because this will help you to be more motivated in your job searches and also give you that energy boost. Getting that buzz will help! Being creative allows you to see outside the box.

Get to know who you are: How do you know more about what you want to do? Start by looking at your values and deciding what is important in your life. If it is money, for example, know that money is not a value, but what money can bring you is more of a value. So, look at what your values are and see if you can link them to your job searches. While it is important to return to employment, don’t rush into the first thing that comes along. It won’t help you rebuild your life. Instead, you will continue to feel that you’ve not achieved your full potential.

Keep an open mind: When you are searching advertisements, don’t search “in desperation” in which you turn everything you read into your “ideal” job, just because you’re so desperate to get another job. Read with discernment and as you’re reading, look for your values in the advertisement. Remember, you want to get the job you’ll love, not the job you’ll hate.

Revamp your CV: Look at your CV, is it the usual run-of-the-mill? If it is not getting you shortlisted, then maybe your CV is not saying what it should be saying? Then you have your cover letter/letter of motivation: are you communicating what you can bring to the company? Are your values coming through?

Visualise your dream job: Think about the future, not about the present. Paint a better future in order to get away from the oppressing present. Picture your new job, what you’ll be doing, what your office will look like or if it is not an office job, what your new work space will look like.

So, to summarise:

• Be active, become proactive, don’t wallow in your unemployment
• Know who you are by getting understanding what your values are…this is the only way to become authentic and to find intrinsic motivation
• Find that creative person within: think of creative ways of improving your job search, CV, cover letter(s) and interview techniques
• Get out of the house, get a loyalty card at your local coffee shop and write down your ideas and thoughts about anything and everything, not just your job-seeking. In other words, think laterally
• Get the job you’ll love!

For coaching on any of the above issues, please email me on angus@coachexec.co.uk or fill in the contact form on this website.

Start with yourself

I believe that before you can expect to get the best out of others who rely on you for leadership, you need to examine what it is you are currently doing and see if there is anything you could be doing better. If you are brave enough, you could ask for some feedback from your team similar that of a 360° assessment. This would give you some honest opinions from your team as to how they perceive your strengths and weaknesses as a leader. However, this is not for the faint-hearted.

What exactly is your task?

Looking at your own leadership, the starting point might lie in the way in which you communicate with your team. Having a clear idea of what it is you’d like to achieve and being able communicate this desire effectively to your team will get the ball rolling. Make certain that you know exactly what it is you want your team to achieve.

How does your team operate?

The next step might be to identify how your staff thinks and feels and tap into their preferred thinking and learning styles in order to bring them more closely on board. Treating your staff as individuals and then arranging for them to work more closely with other staff members who think and learn similarly might also be effective.

Setting goals and a time-scale

Setting CLEAR and SMART goals with time targets is also an important step in motivating your team. In other words, your plan of action and call to action must be established from the start. Equally important is to set check-points – let your team know precisely when you will be assessing their performance – this will help to keep them on track. Set them a clear expected delivery date and reward the team appropriately when they deliver.

How could coaching help you achieve all of this more effectively and in less time?

• Your coach will run personality profiles on your staff in order to establish what motivates them.
• Your coach will help your staff to visualise the end result.
• Your coach will help you to set CLEAR and SMART goals and help you to hold them responsible for achieving these goals by positively challenging them where necessary.
• Your coach will help you to communicate with your staff more effectively throughout the process.
• Your coach will be able to offer you a Return On Investment (ROI) for the money you spend improving your leadership of your team.

If you’d like some help motivating your team in order to achieve optimal performance in your business, contact me at angus@coachexec.co.uk or fill in the contact form on my website.

At the most basic level, career coaches and recruiters want the same thing: candidates and clients who present a professional cover letter and CV, a successful interview and job satisfaction. What then, is the relationship between career coaching and the recruitment process and how can recruiters and career coaches compliment each other’s individual skills more effectively?

What does everyone want?

Employees want the best career opportunities and employers want the best candidates for the jobs they advertise. Recruiters want to place their candidates in the right job as this is how they earn their commission, whether directly from the candidate or from the company whom they represent. It is therefore in their interest to have candidates who are confident and who qualify according to all the demands of the advertised position. This is exactly where career coaches and recruiters might work together.

According to Louise Trance who runs the free recruitment website  www.ukrecruiter.co.uk, a recruiter should have interrogation and interviewing skills. More specifically, a recruiter would be expected to “write a job description, person specification and full company briefing document. He or she should then be able to create competency and skills based interview questions to pose to each candidate they meet.” Asking probing, challenging and solution-focused questions is the basis of coaching so once again, we see a similarity in the two roles.

What role could a career coach play in supporting the work of a recruiter?

In the first instance, job seekers will see either a recruiter or a career coach because they would like to find a new job or to change jobs. Both the recruiter and the career coach would help the candidate to produce the best CV and covering letter as well as improve his or her interview skills. This is a common factor linking recruiters and career coaches. However, a recruiter is paid when a candidate is placed, not while the candidate is still unemployed. It stands to reason then that the recruiter is less likely to have the time or inclination to spend weeks with various individual candidates allowing them time for introspection, for exploration of their ideal job or for personal development. And let’s face it, that is exactly what some candidates might need. Numerous job seekers are not really certain about what it is they really want to do and often cannot seem to identify the source of their dissatisfaction. They are facing the pressures of the current job market and often feel obliged to take whatever is available in order to put bread on the table. They might even have to take salary cuts or drops in levels of responsibility in their new employment. Undoubtedly, this will lead to problems later on if these issues are left unresolved. This is another area in which the career coach can play an important role in supporting recruiters and prospective employers in the recruitment process.

The role of the coach in terms of motivation

Motivation is perhaps the most crucial ingredient in terms of success in every professional situation. Whether you are seeking the motivation to get off the couch to find a job or seeking the motivation to improve your performance at work or to aim for promotion or a pay rise, you need to discover a sufficient source of motivation. Your recruitment agent or your employer will both play a vital role in providing you with extrinsic motivation to apply for a job or to improve at work, but it is your coach who is your biggest ally in terms of helping you to find the most effective and long-lasting form of motivation, intrinsic motivation.

How does a coach help you to secure a high level of intrinsic motivation?

Your coach will encourage you to engage in different exercises of introspection. Depending on your individual situation, the coach might ask you to consider the following questions:

1. What tasks do you enjoy doing at work? After what type of day do you return home satisfied?

2. This feeling of satisfaction, is it linked to a particular talent or skill? In general, are the tasks you enjoy doing directly linked to your level of skills?

3. Are you getting to use your talent and skills extensively in your current job? Are you given enough time and encouragement to develop these skills?

4. Are your work conditions positive or are they part of the reason you are considering alternative employment?

5. Are you staying in your job because it responds well to your skills and passion or are you staying because you’re comfortable, happy with your colleagues and don’t want to start again, or because you think you do not have what it takes to do something else?

6. What prompted you to go for your current job? Have these reasons been justified and is this what you expected in terms of the job delivery?

7. What type of person are you, reflective or active?

8. Is interaction with your colleagues important, like in teamwork, or are you more of an individualist, preferring to work alone?

9. Do you like to plan and organise things yourself or do you prefer being told exactly what to do?

10. Are you good at solving problems, do you like making important decisions and are you more rational or more emotional?

By allowing you time to answer these challenging questions (and many others), your coach begins to understand what it is that motivates you and at the same time, is able to formulate a programme that will help you to find and to secure a deep resource of self-motivation. Your career coach will also encourage you to make a list of things that you do at work and at home, covering a period of several days. We do this because we often discover many extra transferable skills of which our clients were not even aware. For example, a client might mention helping a friend fix their computer over the weekend, not realising that they had computer skills which could be used in their current or their future job.

What is the main source of self or intrinsic motivation?

In my opinion, the main source of self-motivation lies in one’s values. Every coach will take time to question their client on their values. We do this because our values are the driving force behind true motivation. If we believe in something and the good it brings us, we will be more motivated to follow that path. When a client’s values are not nurtured or respected in their career, or when there is no correlation between the client’s values with the values of the company, then there is every chance of unhappiness, dissatisfaction and low performance.

What then is the key difference between recruiters and career coaches and how can the two work more closely together?

The key difference is time; recruiters are under extreme pressure to place candidates on time and effectively. Coaches have more time than recruiters to explore deeper issues that might be preventing the candidate from achieving a successful placement, such as extreme nervousness during interviews or not knowing exactly what it is the candidate would rather do. Recruiters could encourage their candidates to have one or two sessions with a coach in order to ensure that the candidate enters the interview confident by strengthening verbal and non-verbal communication, and enters the new employment certain of what it is they actually want to do by ensuring that their own values as well as those of their prospective employer, are aligned.

CoachExec  runs successful coaching clinics with leading recruiters and their candidates either during the intake process or during the review stage when candidates have not yet been successfully placed. Combining the knowledge and skills of the recruiter and the coach can only lead to more successful placements, ensuring that employees, employers, recruiters and coaches have all achieved a common goal, that of ensuring that the candidate finds the job they’ll love and loves the job they have.

For further reading, buy “How to get a job you’ll love” by John Lees. Highly recommended.

This blog is written solely by Angus Margerison. Should there be anything that you would like to explore further through coaching, please fill in the contact form and we will get back to you as soon as possible.