Everyone Has Gone Off On Holiday and Left Me Holding The Fort at Work!

The summer can be really busy times when you are working, colleagues are off on their holiday and very often you are left not just doing your work but covering for them too.


This time of year can be busy and frantic, however, rather than gritting your teeth about the extra work that has landed on your plate, take a moment to think about it differently.


What opportunities could this present for you? What opportunities can you make of it?


Now I obviously don’t know the specific answer to this question, however, here are a few of my thoughts:-


Opportunities to:-



• Meet new people who you wouldn’t normally interact with, this can give you good networking contacts that are useful.



• Do different tasks, which is always good and can add some variety.



• Start to develop new skills, if the job is different from the one you do already.



• Practise your organising and planning skills so you manage to get all this extra work done.



• Actually try a different job and see if you like it. You can test it out, this is often a better way than actually applying for another job.


So whilst there is no getting away from the fact that you do have more to do in a day, reframing it in this way can help you get through the mountain of work and look at it more positively.

Good Luck!

What Are You Good At?

Have you heard of the Back to Business Clubs? They are a fantastic resource for people who are job seeking. Originally set up in Peterborough a couple of years ago, due to the success the concept has been adopted and set up in other counties close by.

I was asked to present at the Back to Business Club on the subject of Skills Transfer.

The main strength the Club offers is the networking opportunities and support, for anyone who is currently job searching you will know it can be a lonely time.

I’ve given several presentations, and was invited back by Alan who runs the Peterborough group with a request could I talk about skills transfer. I thought you might be interested to see an outline of what I talked about and the group got involved with:-


• Being Aware of What You’ve Got To Offer – the group identified their top 3 skills they were taking to the job market.



• Skills Audit – we conducted mini audits to understand our broad skill bases.



• I gave several examples to the group of clients (no names) I have worked with who had used their existing skill sets and taken them in a different career route.



• Using Johari Window small groups shared ideas and gave suggestions to others on where they might transfer their skill base to.



• Finally, we had a lively debate on transferring skill sets from the public sector into the private sector and vice versa.


Being able to clearly identify what you are good at, what your key strengths and skills are is imperative if you are to make any mark on your career.  Yet for a lot of people this is a really hard task.  People often say to me I just don't know.  The reason for this is that our strengths are such an integral part of us and almost we do them, demonstrate them on auto pilot so of course being able to name them is a challenge.

If you are struggling to identify what you are good at and what your skills are, why not give me a call to see if I can help?

How Can Your Summer Holiday Help You Make Changes To Your Career?

Holidays are a great time of year for lots of reasons.


If you are about to go off on holiday I’m sure you are counting the days until you get away. Time off from the routine of normal life gives us the opportunity for space and reflection.

It’s also a great time to think about the future. I read a piece of research once that most people make major changes to their life…eg divorce, new job, house moves etc after they come back from a break or holiday. The reasoning behind this was that at any other time we are just too busy to find the space and the time to think about what we need to do to make these changes.

Time away gives us that space to think things through so we are ready to take action when we return.

So if you are going to use your holiday to reflect back on your job and think about where your career is going, here are some questions you might want to ask yourself to aid that process…

• What do you really enjoy about your job?





• If you had your dream job, what would you be doing?





• What are the not so good bits of the job you have?





• Is there anyway you can minimise or reduce these elements?





• Looking back over the whole of your career what has been the best thing you have done?





• What changes do you want to make in the next year?





• If we could push you forward in time to 2012 where would you like to be, and what would you like to be doing?