The MyTalentPlace team recently spent a day helping out in an inner London school. The day was all about helping the students to understand possible career choices and what it takes to get there. The pupil population was really diverse with a healthy dose of Muslim kids. One of the exercises the students had to complete asked them to identify their career goals in order of importance. Most of the students came up with what one would usually expect from an audience of 15 year olds - big car, big house etc. Bling was emphasised at the expense of any deeper motivations such as making a difference, learning new skills, developing real expertise in an area etc.

What really struck me though was the responses of the Muslim girls to the exercise. Their career ambitions focused around the following:

1) Being faithful

2) Being a good Muslim

3) Being a good mother

To me, there’s a positive and a negative take on these results. The positive is that the girls are clear on their objectives and that these objectives are more meaningful than the superficial ones expressed by other students. Of course, they might not have a clue on what “being a good mother” actually involves, but hey! The negatives though are also clear.  Given that these kids are in London (not rural Pakistan), does this mean that Islam’s influence is so much stronger than the broader culture within which these kids live and study? Based on what I observed, I’d say yes. So these young girls are being encouraged not to think about careers, not to develop themselves but to take up the role that women over the ages have fulfilled - albeit with a strong religious twist.

I find this concerning. It suggests that Muslim teengage girls are not challenging the traditional roles they’re expected to carry out. What’s the point of any education if that’s what the future holds? The stated objectives are also unlikely to generate the desire to work hard and achieve at school. So if an individual decides to change their mind and try to achieve their potential at a later age, they face an uphill battle on a number of fronts.

The first point to make is that there’s a big difference between skills and experience. When we look at our CV’s, it’s clear that most new graduates have little experience. That doesn’t mean though that they don’t have skills. Working in a holiday or weekend job and approaching this with the right attitude can develop a range of skills really quickly. What if you haven’t approached your part - time job with the given level of dedication? Well, that’s another life lesson to be digested. Almost everything you do comes back to you in one way or another. If you’re serious about being successful in your career, be successful and take pride in even the small things.

When it comes to identifying your skills, try answering the following …”what do I know how to do well”? Often as individuals, we find it difficult to identify our skills. Sometimes this is due to a sense of not wanting to be immodest. For others it’s because we don’t really know how to think about skills. Let’s keep it simple. Skills are things that you can do - preferably well. Obviously these things have to be useful in a business context. Many youngsters trying to get a job now will have decent IT skills. I get irritated if I see skills listed in a CV such as “proficient in Microsoft Word”. That is a given and I believe you’re cheapening your personal brand by listing things like this. Let’s take the example of identifying the skills of someone who has started their own blog. Some of the skills that come to mind immediately are:

• Writing persuasively for a given audience
• Structuring a written argument
• Using social media to influence an audience

So, the challenge is twofold - identifying your skills and then describing them persuasively. Try not to be too matter of fact. How you describe your skills has a lot to do with how you market yourself and how you will come across to recruiters.

Finally, if you’ve had a part - time job while studying, you should be able to identify at least 8 skills you possess to incorporate in your CV. Do this and you’ll find yourself feeling a lot more confident in your CV.

This year I was one of the fortunate members of our squad to have won at Henley Womens Regatta - the main competition that we aim for. Yet strangely, the joys of winning for me were far outshone by the accomplishment of a successful seasons training and the progression of the entire squad - the discipline and dedication that has shone through in every crew/squad member.

I think it is important to prepare for every challenge that you may face in the same way as you would prepare yourself for a competition. This means that regardless if you are just starting out or if you are keen to develop your career, then you should approach it with the same discipline and enthusiasm you would a race. If you do the best that you can and do not succeed in the area/position - then at least you have been true to yourself - in that you cannot have done anything better.

Too often people are scared of failure or rejection but if you approach every day as a new challenge and do your best, then you have nothing to fear (except fear itself!). To improve your chances of success in your career is to get some career/interview coaching, invest time into your personal development and listen to others. But most importantly honour yourself and enjoy making the most of the journey!

Graduate jobs are getting increasingly competitive, with many training schemes getting over 100 applicants per position. Over two thirds of graduate training programmes now list the minimum entry requirements as a 2:1, and with so many applicants of high caliber they need a way to distinguish them. This explains just how important and competitive interviews have become.

Despite this many graduates will have little or no experience of interviews and will have received little guidance. Believe it or not many will not even be up to scratch with even the most basic of etiquette.

So… what can be done to get ahead of the competition? Coaching from a professional recruiter would be ideal but is often incredibly expensive - especially for students that have been living off baked beans for 3 years!

MyTalentPlace has solved this problem by offering affordable online coaching - with professionals who have no less than 10 years experience recruiting. The service is offered online over Skype, which means that the cost is slashed, and so far it has shown astounding results.

Kerry who went through the interview coaching after failing to get several jobs said “Thank you so much for your help. The interview went really well. I’ve just had a call from the agent to say out of all the people they interviewed over the phone, I am the only one they are considering for 2nd interview - she said I was a delight to talk to! I’ve never had such good feedback before. The interview coaching has really boosted my confidence.”

Grant Crow the founder of MyTalentPlace tells us more about this unique service “The true appeal of this service is that it is offered online. This means that it can be available for students and employees when and where they need it, which is often on evenings and weekends”. He continues “… because all of the coaches we use have worked in recruitment for a minimum of 10 years, they know exactly what employers are looking for”.

To find out more visit www.mytalentplace.co.uk/interview-skills/interview-coaching or contact info@mytalentplace.co.uk.

If the government wants to find costs to cut, how about introducing proper performance management in the NHS? In the NHS, you are judged on your knowledge and skills. That’s very nice, but any commercial company will tell you that’s only part of the requirement. How about motivation, innovation and competence? I would love to know what percentage of NHS staff will get fired this year for poor performance. Both of my friends said that they’d never heard of anyone being fired in their careers in the NHS. The reality of any organisation, particularly one so large, is that there will always be poor performers who are taking home their pay and not delivering anything. These people need to be ejected from the system. They’re a drain on resources and on morale. When committed staff see their manager behaving in this way, it’s hard for them to remain as motivated. My guess is that there is a small percentage of useless staff clogging up the system, hampering others’ best efforts and taking home a salary that you and I are funding. If that percentage is 5%, we’re looking at savings of £1.5 billion every year. OK, some may need to be replaced, but not all of them.

How about that for an idea Mr Chancellor?

Alan Sugars latest TV show ‘The Junior Apprentice’ featured 10 budding young entrepreneurs, selected from 28,000 applicants, to appear on the series as the crème de la crème of young British entrepreneurial talent (with a prize of £25,000 for a venture of their choice). However, after watching the series I was left questioning – is that really the best that we have to offer?

Sure - some of these 16-18 year olds had very impressive CV’s that go beyond the average student, but I don’t think they are quite the elite that they are hailed as being. Perhaps this is because very few with enterprising aspirations will have been encouraged and guided in schools and will therefore turn to more academic paths.

With business entrepreneurs viewed as fundamental to capitalistic society, and key to escaping the recession then why are our schools so reluctant to nurture entrepreneurialism? Whilst the media has given the entrepreneur a lot of attention why is our school system not reflecting this? Granted not every kid id going to be the next Richard Branson or Donald Trump, but at the same time our school system will quench any enterprising spirit a child may have, instead focusing entirely on roles in well established businesses.

So – what can be done to combat this? Firstly give your students/children access to some professional careers coaching. This is just as important to those who want to climb the corporate ladder as to those who may want to establish a more unique career path. An advisor with business and recruitment experience, such as those at MyTalentPlace, will nurture students’ ambitions whatever the path they choose. We also need to support initiatives that aim to develop entrepreneurialism in young adults and work to maintain the high profile that it currently has.

Overall, we need to ensure that our education system and careers advisors are able to provide support for those with a more entrepreneurial spirit and that in general they are up-to-speed to provide support for whatever career path their students choose.

I’d hate to be a foreign student graduating now and hoping to gain some decent employment in the UK. Why? Well, although the Association of Graduate Recruiters sees some silver linings, most people know that it’s going to be really tough to get a first job. Employers are being really selective and there simply aren’t the number of graduate positions as there were 3 or 4 years ago. So that’s the first problem. The second problem is that the UK has a fundamentally conservative business culture. When push comes to shove and a recruiter is considering employing Jim Jones from Manchester and Lee Tong (also graduated from Manchester, but lives in Beijing), I’m not going to bet my house that Lee get the nod. Recruiters here often go with what is familiar. When combined with the nagging suspicion that Lee may want to go home to China in 2 - 3 years time, his chances are further reduced.

Another minefield lies in the area of the soft skills required to impress recruiters. Recruiters will expect candidates to express themselves clearly and confidently, to evaluate their strengths and weaknesses as a minimum. In the case of assessment centres, the required level of soft skills rises substantially and foreign students find themselves competing to look good in challenging and competitive activities. Many of these require a subtle grasp of interpersonal communication that many foreign students are likely to struggle with. According to Zhuang from the BBC, Chinese students find it difficult to describe their weaknesses as this is not a cultural norm in China. So, the odds are really against foreign graduates. What can they do to improve their chances?

The first consideration is to think of the generic strengths that foreign students possess. Firstly, if you’re interviewing with a company that has operations in China (or whatever your home country is), that’s a great opportunity to sell yourself. You can gain a few years experience in the UK and then be transferred back home to help the operations there. Secondly, Chinese students in particular are thought of as being diligent and disciplined. These are very attractive traits to recruiters and should be mentioned and supported with examples. Thirdly, there is an opportunity to turn a supposed weakness into a strength. If soft skills are so important, foreign students need to do their research into these as well as potentially get some coaching. Start by looking at press releases detailing the soft skills that employers say most students are lacking. Then find out more about these and get friends, lecturers etc to give you some feedback on each skill. This will give you a starting point of awareness. Even though many of these soft skills take time to develop, recruiters will be impressed to see awareness of the skills required as well as some proactive action taken to identify your starting point and plan for improvement. Of course, if you’re really serious about getting that job, consider some coaching from our experts!

1. How your gap year could help you. For example it could help to choose your career path.

2. How you can help others - think about volunteering overseas.

3. What you can learn on a personal level. Don’t spend all your time partying, make sure you experience some of the culture and history of the places that you stay.

4. Work experience that you can gain - are you going to work while abroad? or before you go? Think about the type of job you will be doing and what you can gain from the experience.

If you write about your gap year on your CV try to show exactly what experience you gained and what you learned. It is a time for you to explore and enjoy yourself so it shouldn’t be all work, however you will be more satisfied if you have something to show for it at the end.

Here are some listings of  useful schemes you can partake in or try united playground for low cost volunteering.

Enjoy!

So what is it that makes young kids relatively interested in career possibilities and teenagers relatively disinterested? I imagine that it has something to do with starting to relate to parents and their roles and that talking about careers makes the young kids feel grown up. So are teenagers not interested in being “grown up”? Well they might be, but it’s probably more about being grown up with regards relationships. All of a sudden, any discussion around careers and the world of work becomes taboo. I guess this probably has to do with the “my mum and dad are idiots” phase initially, so anything they do is not worth considering. Those teenagers leaving school after GCSE’s are then faced with some rude surprises and choices and if they’re still in a “teenage” mindset, they’re not likely to engage willingly or constructively with these choices. Those fortunate enough to be going to study further are able to delay the inevitable and focus on the serious drinking and occasional attendance of lecturers that goes with being at Uni. Again, for many graduates, the reality hits home very late in the day.

I remember my dad showing concern at the fact that my marks at Uni were poor and my response was “I’m passing, aren’t I”? I have a feeling that it’s only the harsh realities of trying to get employment as a school leaver or new graduate these days that will change this. Unfortunately, I’m not sure there’s enough feedback taking place from those who now know how tough it is to those still under the illusion that life’s big decisions will take care of themselves.

Don’t fall into the trap of drifting into a career – design a career plan that meets your values!

I did well at university. I got a 2:1 in French and Politics at a redbrick university, then went on to do a Master’s in History. I thought the world was my oyster when I graduated. Fast forward 3 years however and my view had changed somewhat. I was an award-winning sales consultant, had been promoted several times and was earning more in a month than my entire student loan but was deeply unhappy.

Before you get the violins out, let me explain further. Nothing in my career was meeting my values and it took me several years to realise I could never be professionally fulfilled in sales, and another year to do something about it! I want to make sure you don’t fall into the same trap.

So, values. What are they and why are they important? A value is something you hold dear, something vital to the core of you, like honesty, freedom or creativity. If you act in conflict with your values you’ll get a funny feeling that something’s not right, like if you make a bad decision that’s in conflict with your instinct. But if you are true to your core values, then wow, you’ve got the blueprint to happiness, success and fulfilment.

Ask yourself the following questions and write down your responses without thinking:

1) What’s important to me in life?
2) What do I look for in a partner?
3) What do I look for in a colleague?
4) What advice would I give my best friend about what’s important?
5) What motivates me?
6) What do I need to get out of a holiday for it to be a success?

You should have a big long list of about 20 answers. Now’s the time for reflection. Highlight the 8 most important ones, the ones that resonate with you when you read them. These are your core values. Then rank them, 1 to 8, 1 being absolutely vital, 8 being important but not crucial.

What you now have is a decision making tool. Whenever you have a big decision to make, like which career to pursue or (hopefully!) which job offer to accept, compare it against your list of values and score each out of ten. For example, you may be looking at a law conversion course and have identified creativity as your top value. Would this career satisfy your need for creativity? If it scores less than 7, you may want to reconsider.

Try this exercise for yourself and see what new self-knowledge it brings. If you make sure your values are being met whatever you do then you can’t fail to get what you want out of life.