Lifes Work 12 Proven Ways to Fast-Track Your Career

Lifes Work 12 Proven Ways to Fast-Track Your Career by Amber Rolfe By the time you retire, you’ll have spent a third of your life at work. That’s far too long to spend in a job you hate.  Luckily, James Reed’s new book, Life’s Work: 12 Proven Ways to Fast Track Your Career, contains 60 career nuggets that will help to make you a little bit luckier at work and in life.Creating a career you loveThe good news is, the future lies in your hands.All you need is the right actions and attitude, and you’ll be able to power ahead with a career you actually enjoy.Providing crowdsourced insights from thousands of recruiters and business bosses across the UK, this book will help you challenge your thinking, approach the world differently, and ultimately get ahead at work.Because it’s never too late to create a career you love.12 ways to fast-track your career Here’s a glimpse into 12 of the key ways to build and sustain the career you want, courtesy of James Reed’s brand new book:Look in the mirror Ask who am I?, who do I w ant to be? and how am I going to become that person?  Go to partiesEmbrace the magic of invitations and conversations. Play Poohsticks  Find the fast-flowing water and locate your career in that.  Be selfish  Do what you enjoy and youll perform well at it.  Kick start some good habits (and kick out some bad ones) The things you do every day are the ones that make the difference.  Pick your targets  Make sure you are where you are because of the choices youve made.  Think in days and decades  Focus on the immediate present and dare to imagine the unforeseeable future.  Be powerful, be prepared  Planning and preparation are essential for a great career.  Showcase your work ethic  Work hard, learn from your mistakes and show it.  Ask for help  This is something too many people find difficult.  Find a boss you can learn fromThe more you learn and the faster you learn it, the further youll travel.  Change your job and change your life  If you dont enjoy your job, keep looking until you find one you do.Ready to fast-track your career?Todays job landscape allows you more freedom to carve your own path than ever before. Along with this, however, comes the responsibility of shaping your mind and actions to make your career work for you.This book shows you how.Find a job What Where Search JobsSign up for more Career AdviceSign up for moreCareer Advice Please enter a valid email addressmessage hereBy clicking Submit you agree to the terms and conditions applicable to our service and acknowledge that your personal data will be used in accordance with our privacy policy and you will receive emails and communications about jobs and career related topics. Features Life At Workfeatured featured-hero

Thrissur Professional Resume Writing Services

Thrissur Professional Resume Writing ServicesThrissur professional resume writing services can help you boost your career, enhance your business contacts and deal with past issues. These services enable you to access various aspects of working life.For individuals with busy work schedules, hiring freelance writers is a good option. You can offer relevant information to these freelance writers in return for their time. The creative thinking process can be adopted by hiring them. They can do this on your behalf or you can involve them in making your own business resume.With the help of professional resume writing services, you can post your resume in a few online job portals. These sites help individuals get a chance to showcase their work history and achievements. Besides, these sites give them a platform to display their skills and qualifications.These resume writing services also help you in publishing your resume in different media such as websites, blogs, classifieds, social netwo rking websites etc. This helps you to reach the prospective employers more effectively. The professional resume writing services will not only prepare a professional resume for you but also ensure that it is printed in the right manner so that you get a chance to demonstrate your skills. While preparing your resume, ensure that all the details are mentioned clearly.Thrissur professional resume writing services can prepare your resume from scratch or can recommend you a template for this purpose. Using templates would help you to make certain things easier. You can use templates to create a logical flow for your resume.Online companies can also be hired to aid you in this process. These firms can ensure that your resume gets published in a few online job portals. Your potential employer will be able to contact you on the right means. These companies will also provide you with an e-mail address which can be used to directly communicate with the employers or with your prospective colle agues.Most of the times, freelancers use these services for creating resumes for the first time so that they can show their works and start getting jobs from the job boards and online career websites. With the help of these services, you can have a shot at creating a very competitive resume in the initial stages of your career.Thrissur professional resume writing services are available online. Before finalizing your career move, you should definitely investigate the services that you can avail online. You can also get some additional tips by getting in touch with the professionals who are offering these services.

8 Ways Hobbies Can Help You Get Jobs - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career

8 Ways Hobbies Can Help You Get Jobs - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career Looking for work can be emotionally draining. It creeps into your life, consuming nearly every minute of your day. At 11 p.m., you’re browsing job boards. At 3 a.m., you’re rewriting your resume for the five thousandth time. Weekends become a haunting ground for feelings of guilt and self-loathing, and any time spent away from the hunt feels squandered. But a growing body of evidence attests to the positive effect of “non-work creative activity” on work-related performance. As it turns out, workaholism doesn’t work, and the best way to find a job (or excel in the one you have) may be to do the thing you’d least expect: something else. Whether you’re looking for a new job or trying to accelerate the career you have, having a hobby can take you far. So, put down the resume and close the job board, and read on to see how popular hobbies can benefit your career. Grow Your Circle Surveys of former job-hunters have generally returned the same results for the past few decades. While the medium may change, the single consistently highest-rated source of a new job is that dreaded n-word: networking. But networking doesn’t mean what many job-hunters think it does, i.e., glad-handing business-cards at swanky conferences. All it means is forging connections with people to whom you can potentially prove useful, and vice versa. The best way to do that, then, may be to take up a hobby with a group-oriented focus. If you’re an athletic person, that might mean joining a recreational sports league in your area. If not, you could try a gaming group or table-top board-game meet-up. No matter which route you go, these hobbies help to build and strengthen connections through cooperative competition. When it comes time to start job-hunting, having broadened your circle can increase the size of your dragnet. The more people you know, and the better you know them, the more likely it is one can lend you that crucial early tip-off or put in a good word. Learn to Manage Your Time Chronic busyness is endemic, and it has a destructive effect on recreation. When every hour in your day is spent working or looking for work, trying to find time for something as seemingly frivolous as a hobby can be downright impossible. On the other end of the spectrum, over-indulgence in a leisure activity can lead one into the dangerous self-perpetuating spiral of addiction and escapism. The trick is to find a happy medium, and doing so both requires and cultivates time-management, a skill which is highly in demand. Having a hobby forces you to learn how to handle your time: how to make, invest and spend it. So why not kill two birds with one stone and take up a time-oriented hobby, such as cooking? Nothing teaches you how to master the clock like trying to get a hot four-course meal to the table all at once. Better Mental Health The links between personal pursuits and personal happiness are well known anecdotally and have recently begun emerging in research. People who have hobbies are generally happier, and people who aren’t happy tend not to have them. Furthermore, hobbies with repetitive physical motions can put us into flow, a psychologically beneficial state that is remarkably similar to that achieved through meditation. Better Physical Health Studies show it takes around 66 days to form a habit, and repeating habitual behavior is psychologically rewarding. So if you’re looking to improve your physical health, you’d be hard-pressed to find any way of doing that which doesn’t involve taking up an ongoing hobby. The good news is, when it comes to physical activity, your choices are only limited by your creativity. You could take up jogging, hiking, kayaking, a sport or any of the other 100+ activities listed on the President’s Challenge website. Stronger Self-Discipline Soft skills are the focus of increasing attention by employers, and effective self-management is one of them. More than that, though, people with stronger self-discipline are happier and more productive overall. Gardening has long been used as a way of cultivating self-discipline, and metaphors for the garden as the physical manifestation of the spirit crop up in just about every world religion. Learning to care for plants every day is one of the best ways to learn how to care for yourself. When you backslide, the results are immediate: your garden withers. When you master self-discipline? Your garden â€" and your job-hunt â€" flourish. More Self-Reliance Have you ever known â€" or worse, worked with â€" someone who seems powerless to do anything on their own? The kind of person who’s constantly requesting help, feedback, attention or permission on even the most mundane of tasks? This kind of paralysis is called learned helplessness: the tendency to stop taking action when you learn or perceive your actions have little effect. In the context of a job hunt, learned helplessness can take on another face: the discouraged worker. By taking up a hobby that encourages self-reliance, you can avoid the trap of learned helplessness and steer clear of the steep-sided pit that is worker-discouragement and unemployment. After a week of hard searching, outdoor activities like camping are great ways to blow off steam and learn self-reliance at the same time. There’s no better encouragement to “figure it out” than trying to pitch a tent under dwindling daylight â€" and no greater satisfaction than eating food you made in a shelter you built yourself. Encourage Creativity Here’s a fun exercise: grab a piece of pen and paper, and in 60 seconds, list as many uses for a brick (besides the obvious “building a wall”) as you can possibly think of. This experiment, first devised in 1967, is called the Guilford Alternative Uses Test, and it’s a means of measuring creativity. No surprise, then, that those who score the best tend to be those who are regularly creative in their daily lives. The health benefits of creativity are well-known, and likewise for job-hunting benefits. Employers desperately want workers capable of outside-the-box thinking, so why not make yourself a more appealing candidate by taking up a hobby that’s creative in nature, like photography? Photography For Beginners books are a dime a dozen, and you probably have at least three devices that take pictures within arm’s reach right now. Figure Out What’s Important and Cultivate YOU Soul-searching is not an idle exercise: It’s hard work, with distinct consequences for neglect and strong benefits for success. Hobbies, then, are the mad scientist lab of the soul: they’re your opportunity to play and experiment with what makes you tick. One of the best ways to cultivate yourself as a person is also one of the most rewarding hobbies: Volunteering your time and skills to charity. Head over to volunteermatch.org to find causes and events near you. Taking up a hobby is the best way to discover what you can do, what you like doing, and what excites your passion. When seeking to define your personal branding for the purposes of a job-hunt, these three qualities are absolutely essential.

How to Find the Best Temporary Staff

How to Find the Best Temporary Staff Finding a temporary employee to join your team can always be a struggle. You may worry that they won’t take their role as seriously as a full-time worker or perhaps they’ll leave before their contract ends if something more permanent comes along. Seeking out temporary staff who are committed, passionate and capable of hitting the ground running can be a hard task for many business owners, particularly during busy seasons where your staff face high demand because of a surge in customers. However, there are plenty of ways you can skim the very best talent and keep them around for as long as you need them. Here’s our tips to finding hard working, trustworthy temporary staff that really add value to your business. Do they understand your business? Any candidate should show how serious they are about the position by researching the business theyre hoping to join. Whilst this may be difficult when it comes to smaller businesses that might not have much information out there for candidates to research, you should still be able to gauge whether an applicant is really keen on this position. It seems like an obvious one, but plenty of us fail to see the warning signs of a candidate that isn’t the right fit. They might seem confident and willing, but a few weeks in they may find that they’ve made the wrong decision and you’ll be back to square one again. Make sure they really know what your business is about and what the role entails so that they can make a fully informed decision. Do they have passion for the industry? It’s no surprise to anyone that there is a growing ‘job hopping’ culture throughout the UK. Temporary positions have become somewhat of a breeding ground for those looking to get paid and get out. So how do you ensure you’re not attracting these people to your business? Make sure you’re hosting your advertisements on an industry-specific website. There are plenty of job directories that source jobs from multiple industries, allowing anyone to apply based simply on how they fancy their chances. By advertising on a sector-specialised website, you’ll be sure to find people with a genuine interest in your field. For example, whilst a kitchen porter role may not sound appealing to someone scouring a generic recruitment site, anyone with a genuine interest in the catering industry will more likely see it as a great way to make strides in this particular field. Using a specialised chef industry recruitment site you’ll be able to find someone who understands this role better than most. It is important that you find someone with passion. Your candidate may be attracted to temporary roles in order to build up experience in your field and you could be offering the perfect opportunity for them. Ask them what their future aims are. As we mentioned before, some people may be looking for temporary recruitment in a bid to gain work experience in the industry. By asking questions about the candidate’s future, you get a better understanding of who they are and what they aim to achieve by working at your business. You may also realise that qualities you may have previously disregarded as bad, turn out to be perfect for a temporary role. For example, if you were recruiting for a full-time role you may avoid candidates who aim to go off travelling or can’t seem to stay in one place. On the other hand this is perfect for a temporary position, they may seek out these opportunities to fund their next trip and since you’re only offering a short contract, there will be a mutual understanding that the candidate will not be part of your team forever. What are you doing for them?   Above all, the job role needs to suit the candidate for the candidate to suit your team. Whilst a temporary role is a great opportunity for some, it’s also a last resort for others. That doesn’t mean your business isn’t desirable to work at, these candidates just want something more permanent. To make your role more attractive to these applicants you could offer extra insights to assist them further in their career. Shadowing those above them or learning a new skill may not be the first thing on your mind to offer when trying to find temporary staff, but advantages such as this make your job stand out and you’ll eventually find a much more worthy candidate because of this. Now that the January rush for new careers has started to die down, you can implement this recruitment strategy with ease. You won’t have missed the best of the bunch as people are always looking for their opportunity to jump on their desired career ladder. Author: Tessa Hudson writes for www.ChefsJobsUK.com, a specialist recruitment site showcasing the best UK catering talent and opportunities.

CV and Resume Writing: Learn to Write a Professional Resume

CV and Resume Writing: Learn to Write a Professional ResumeThere is a lot of difference between CV and resume writing. While writing a resume, it is important to include all your qualifications and achievements.Whereas in CV, you have to list your skills and expertise in the job area. One can see that resume and CV writing is a combination of technical as well as non-technical requirements. The person who is writing a resume should list his/her skills so that the employer can make a proper analysis of the person's qualifications before hiring him/her.CV and resume writing are totally different as they need a lot of planning and strategy. The person is supposed to write a CV that shows off his/her skill and knowledge related to the job. The difference between resume and CV is that resume is intended for the prospective employers while CV is meant for the employees.Resume is designed in such a way that the candidates who apply will get noticed by the employers. As it is, they get first notice of the company and after that the word travels faster in the workplace. It is also a method of 'determining' the skills of the applicant. The candidate who writes the resume must be able to explain how he/she could provide the necessary skills in the job interview.Though resume and CV are two different kinds of writing, one can combine both for better effect. In CV writing, a candidate can use both the technical and non-technical specifications of the job. The person must do so because when CV is written, it is for the prospective employer to resume is meant for the employee.If a candidate is a perfect fit for the company, it is important that the right person or the right group of people can read and understand it. You can also opt for different formats for resume and CV. It is recommended that you go for the 'professional format' which includes business card, resume cover letter, and brief summary of career history. Most of the resume companies allow their clients to uploa d resume samples on their website.You must always keep in mind that an employer will not hire someone who is presenting a resume sample as their 'own' resume. For this reason, one must ensure that their resume sample has proper formatting and layout. The best way to create a professional looking resume sample is to hire a professional resume writer.Resume samples need to be well organized and detailed. It is best to select from a number of resume samples available online or print a resume sample from a computer.

Values Driven Goals Design

Values Driven Goals Design Photo Credit â€" Pixabay.comMany of us have engaged typical goal design; we think about a desire or state of being in the future, and then create goals to get ourselves to that place.But, how many people have designed a goal in this typical way, completed the goal and then realized that it felt empty, meaningless and was an extremely exhausting process? ….. Not very inspiring, right?!That exact rift, is where values driven goal design can disrupt and enhance the engineering of goals.evalValues driven goals are reverse engineered goals. We start with our values; what matter most to us and, then we use these values as a filter to look into the future and decide what we REALLY want most and what is going to fire us up to accomplish.The process of creating values driven goals is an energizing, fulfilling and powerful journey. Throughout this three step journey of values driven goal design, you will be encouraged to take a deep dive inwards and uncover some of your core values. The outc ome will prove to be far more meaningful, inspiring and worthwhile. Now that I have you all fired up about this amazing way of designing goals, let’s get started.The three steps to designing values driven goalseval1. Know what your personal values areIt’s crucial that you get to know and get connected with what matters to you most. Your values are the foundation of this whole process, so we want to make sure that they are rock solid and add significant meaning to your being.This can be a challenging task, but the end reward that comes from getting clear on your personal values is something that cannot be outweighed and never loses its significance.This is also not a one and done type of deal. Just as we evolve and grow, so do our values. What may have been important to us at one point in time may lose its significance as something else takes its place. The process of values exploration should be an ongoing and iterative process.2. Determine what areas your values are being lived inevalAfter we have determined what our values are, the next step getting clear on how thoroughly those values are being lived in all areas of your life.It’s time that we take stock of all of the areas in our life and discover where those core values are being lived.As Walt Whitman said, “be curious, not judgmental.” During this process, I encourage you to leave judgment at the door and take an unfiltered view at your life to unveil some exciting data.This process will help you to discover areas where your values are not being fully lived; these gaps then provide us with an epic, exciting opportunity to create goals that will have a powerful impact on your life.3.Set the GoalevalNow that you have revealed your values and the areas of your life that you would like to see those values more fully lived, we are ready to set the goal.Setting values driven goals is no different from setting regular goals, we still want them to be specific, timely, energizing and connected to our vi sion. The key is the reverse engineering by starting with your values first. We now have the essentials for making this journey to our end goal enjoyable, meaningful and exhilarating.You will see and feel the euphoric difference along the journey and past the end destination.If this process has you inspired, there’s icing on the cake â€" five-way wins.Five-way wins are goals that have an impact on more than one focus area. I like to work with five focus areas to keep things manageable and concise. When we design a goal that has the ability to impact all five focus areas, we have created a five-way win and, that is a high performing goal that will maximize your ROI and effectively leverage your time.Five-way wins maximize time, energy and resources; they are the quintessential values driven goal.When you have designed values driven goals while looking for five way wins you will find that your goals support one another and the process of working towards the goal is just as fulfillin g as the final destination.

Introverts embrace your genius.

Introverts embrace your genius. When it comes to competing for a job, we often feel we have to be something we are not.   This can be especially true for introverts.We feel compelled to enthusiastically say yes to anything and everything in the job description.   We build resumes by scouring the internet for the right key words to get our resumes picked up for the right searches; and we shoehorn ourselves into what is out there only to find that when we land the job, weve made a mistake.Core genius to the rescue.   Core what?   Genius?   Is she talking about me?   Yes I am. We all have a genius at our core created with our unique combination of preferences, skill sets, talents and experiences.   What I have found in my 13+ years as a career coach is that we are all perfect for something using our set of unique abilities. In fact, the world needs us to be of service in our unique way so that we can solve the problems and reach the goals only we are capable of.   We are perfect the way we are and embracing our core g enius gives us each a competitive edge that no one, literally no one else can match.Start Your Soul Search.   Soul Search is the way to uncover your core genius.   I divide Soul Search into 8 elements and use a workbook of thought-provoking exercises to help people uncover: their top interests, key values/motivators, skills they want to employ, ways they want to contribute/find purpose, their best qualities, their best work environment, activities they get the most enjoyment from, and salary benefits requirements.   Start uncovering your core genius by getting clear and specific about your work values those aspects of work that would get you jumping out of bed in the morning.    For some this may mean exercising competence, for others camaraderie at work and still for others having autonomy. Get a full look at my entire work values exercise.   Complete it and you’ll know what uniquely motivates you. This beginning knowledge will empower you to align your daily work responsibili ties what what excites you and get you started expressing your core genius.Embrace your introversion as genius. Introversion can be a competitive advantage.   My client (we’ll call him Tim) is an introvert. Hes built a successful career in a large corporation.   He recently came into a new role where the person before him had a very different extroverted style.   Though he had years of success, Tim felt he needed to change his style to succeed.   It didn’t feel right.   He reached out to me for advice on a different approach.   Could he find a way to be of service in this role as his introverted self?   We talked about the benefits of Tims more introverted style.   He preferred to ask questions first, then take time to process the information and only then come to thoughtful conclusions recommendations.  It took Tim a few months to do this in his new role.   During this time he felt pressured to deliver fast but in our conversations, we determined it was best for Tim to stay t he course. Now 6 months into the new role, Tim is getting great feedback from his boss that his recommendations are spot on and his boss now sees value in Tim thoughtful approach over the shooting from the hip of his predecessor.   In his own words, here’s what Tim did….“I realized that I could not be that intense extrovert that was common with my colleagues so instead of continually trying to do that all the time I planned for when I knew I need to “turn on” my extrovert personality and when I could be more introverted.   Just recognizing that alleviated a lot of the stress.  I also took time to meet with my colleagues on an individual basis so I could listen to their needs and find out how I could be of service without the distraction of group meetings.   This 1:1 connection gave me confidence in the work and value I provided without the need to demonstrate in an extroverted fashion.   It was nice to find balance and not feel stressed that being an extrovert was the onl y way.”Need more convincing?Tim loved Susan Cains “The Power of Introverts” Ted Talk when I shared it with him and found it offered further validation to embrace introversion as part of his core genius.   Tim also read and loved Susans book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in World That Cant Stop Talking.   For more books and resources to help validate your unique genius, contact me.Being who you are is the best path forward if you want sustainable career success and happiness.   If you feel like you’ve been shoehorning yourself into roles that just don’t fit, perhaps it’s time to embrace your core genius as well.

Highlighting Purpose Prize winner Randal Charlton -

Highlighting Purpose Prize winner Randal Charlton - How is someone who has run a public company going to explain hell take a job as a night watchman? Its a question Purpose Prize winner Randal Charlton of Detroit asked himself at one point in his career. His story is really inspirational, as hes experienced many ups and downs personally, but has been working to help create jobs and opportunities in Detroit. Civic Ventures, which awards The Purpose Prize, is a think tank on boomers, work and social purpose. The organization introduced the concept of encore careers, which combine meaning, continued income and social impact. They provide   social entrepreneurs over 60 $100,000 each for using their experience and passion to make an extraordinary impact on some of societys biggest challenges. Now in its sixth year, the $17 million program is the nations only large-scale investment in social innovators in the second half of life. Learn about this winner below! Randal Charlton (pictured), 71, TechTown, Detroit In his lifetime, Charlton has bought and sold 14 companies, worked as a journalist, tended dairy cows for a Saudi sheik, started a jazz club and consulted for a world bank. For four years, he served as executive director of TechTown, a business incubator aiming to recruit local entrepreneurs to revitalize Detroits economy. Charlton transformed TechTown from a nearly empty industrial building with few resources into a thriving hub, currently supporting 250 companies. More than 2,200 entrepreneurs have received training at TechTown, which has helped clients raise $14 million. On November 1, Charlton will transition from leading TechTown to focusing his expertise on BOOM! The New Economy, a TechTown-affiliated venture that offers training, one-on-one mentoring and internships to people over 50 exploring second acts. Read about prize winner Jenny Bowen. photo and video courtesy of Civic Ventures