Time For a New Career? Here’s How to Scope Out Your Options

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StrategyDriven Professional Development Article |New Career|Time For a New Career? Here's How to Scope Out Your OptionsRight now, there are a lot of people looking for new roles. The reasons for this are various and as individual as each person searching the jobs boards. A major cause of people looking for employment is the coronavirus and Covid-19 pandemic. Throughout the course of the pandemic, many people lost their work – whether that was due to the company they worked for collapsing or being made redundant. Many people also took time on furlough or between jobs and have had time to reconsider what they’re doing, realising that the work they’re currently carrying out isn’t for them and that they’d like to try something new. Whatever your reason for looking for a new job, you can rest assured that there are plenty of options out there. Here’s how you can whittle them down and find the right position for you and your needs.

Industry or Sector

First, consider what industry or sector you want to go into. Many people have a vague idea of what kind of work they’d like to do and would find fulfilling. Knowing a general industry or sector can help you to determine what roles are available and conduct more research into them. Some popular industries and sectors include retail, hospitality, healthcare, IT and more.

Training

If you’re entering a completely new field, you may find that certain roles require training or qualifications that can take time, money and effort to receive. You need to determine whether this is something that you are willing to do to be able to land the position you have in mind. If you want to go into medicine, you could have a long, seven year degree ahead of you. If you want to become a security guard, you may need to undertake security guard training. If you want to become an accountant, there will be all sorts of specific courses to the area that you live in that you will need to complete. Determine whether you’re willing to undertake the necessary training before setting your heart on any given role.

Location

The location of a job can determine whether it’s right for you. You need to determine where you want to live and then you can start job hunting within the area. The good news is that most roles are available in most areas. For example, if you want to become a social media manager, chances are, most locations will have a company in need of this. However, for more specific roles, you may need to relocate. For example, if you want to become a marine biologist, chances are, you’re going to have to be willing to live near the sea.

Salary

Of course, salary should be a consideration when applying for roles. What amount of money do you need to be able to provide yourself with a good quality of life. This figure will differ from person to person. If you have dependents, chances are, you’ll need to earn more than someone who lives alone and independently.

These are just a few areas to mull over during your job hunt. Hopefully, each will help you to find a position that works for you!

Nine Ways You Can Further Your Career

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StrategyDriven Professional Development Article |Further your Career|Nine Ways You Can Further Your CareerCareer development is not the responsibility of your manager. You are responsible. The manager is liable for your output. Thus, determining your goals and accomplishments at the annual review time is not the best idea.

These 9 career-boosting steps you can take today and in the coming months will boost your career.

Set Small Goals Often

There is a lot of emphasis on goals during annual reviews. It is difficult to set realistic, attainable goals in a year; it is actually too long. For this reason, setting smaller goals is more appropriate.

Consider what you do on a daily basis. Are there any ways to elevate that work? How can you improve yourself? Put these items on your list of goals and give them some thought. Once you’ve set your goals, give yourself a deadline by which you must learn these things.

You should grade yourself at the end of the deadline. Please. You know how it goes. What did you do? How well did you do it? You may also want to ask a friend or colleague how they would rate or grade your new skills. Do it again.

Stretch Yourself

We think the only way to succeed is to get out of our comfort zones. As such, you must learn to think outside of your expertise.

Dare to be scared. Are you afraid to speak in public? Attend business presentations and networking events. Do you feel anxious about sharing your industry insights? Request that someone publish your articles. Emotional intelligence training for geeks could be one way to stretch yourself.

Ask For Feedback

It is important to do self-assessments and to get feedback. You should also get feedback constantly. You should ask the following questions after every meeting:

What were your most successful strategies?
If it were even better, what would it be?”

From these two questions, you can learn a great deal. There is a lot you can learn from these two questions about the quality of your work and performance. Try them out.

Learn About Your Industry

Every week, spend some time learning about your industry. Consider yourself to be being tested on your industries and companies. Consult experts. Get advice from colleagues and managers. Speak to your clients about their feelings. Gather information from industry experts. Share the insights you collect with your clients.

Research

Keep up with the latest blogs, whether they are big or small. Take the time to read books relating to your profession. Read books about business that encourage you to think differently. As a reader, you can spark conversations with other people you meet at networking events. You can also build your career by learning new ways to do things and different hacks about living your life that will make it run more smoothly, both at work and at home.

Networking

The standard LinkedIn invite should never be sent. Not ever. That is all we can say. Let the recipient know what you have in common with him or her, and how you want to help them. To get a face-to-face introduction, ask a member of your network. Keeping an impression is the key to successful networking. But LinkedIn is not the only platform. Meet as many people as possible by attending industry events, local events, and local functions. This will also keep you interested in what you’re doing.

Find A Mentor

For all those elements, mentors can be an excellent resource. What are you looking for in a mentor? Let your mentor know what you are looking for. Do you have a question about the industry or how your company operates? Want to find out how you can stretch your abilities? Try mentoring!

Find A Protégé

Furthermore, a good protégé can be a valuable source of information and knowledge as well. It is possible to break your paradigms when you have a protege. In addition to exposing you to new ideas, they can present you with new approaches and ways to approach problems.

Always Be Listening

Even if you are happy in your current job, building relationships with new people and listening to other opportunities never hurts. Whether you want to grow and improve your career or grow and improve your personal life, that’s what you need to do.

Don’t shy away from your next opportunity or new connection. It feels great when people notice you! Do you have any other tips that could help? Please share them in the comments below.

How To Spur Yourself On To Greater Success

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If you are seeking to gain a lot of success in your field, whatever field that might be, then there are a lot of things that you might want to try in order to get there. The truth is that for most of us it is essential to have something in mind as a vision to work towards, so that there is an obvious thing to work for. Spurring yourself on to greater success is largely about that and about making sure that you have the motivation to do whatever it is you have decided to do with your life. Let’s take a look at this in more detail.

StrategyDriven Professional Development Article | Success|How To Spur Yourself On To Greater Success

Know Your Ultimate Goal

Most importantly of all, you have to know what your ultimate goal is. This is important for any kind of motivation, so it’s something that you need to really understand as deeply as you can. The more that you can get to the bottom about this stuff, the more likely it is that you will be able to have a reason to carry on when things get tough. It is best if your ultimate goal is something that feels important to you, rather than merely enjoyable or attractive. That way, you are much more likely to succeed and keep pushing yourself on.

Have A Few Side Goals

As well as your ultimate goal, you should also aim to have a few side goals that you can aim for as well. These can be anything you like – it might be that you want a speedboat with a top of the range Volvo Penta engine, or you want to have the freedom to travel the world extensively at leisure. Whatever your side goals are, just make sure that they are something fun that you can aim for while trying to get that greater, larger success that you have been aiming for. That way, you will have all the more reason to keep on pushing.

Create Positive Role Models

It is always easier to achieve what you want to achieve if you have people to look up to – ideally in your field, but they don’t really have to be. Just by having some positive role models, you can ensure that you are going to get a lot more done and achieve a lot more, and you will know how you best need to approach everything by imagining how those people would have approached the same. This is therefore one of the most powerful things you can do in trying to become successful.

Always Evolve

Allow yourself to always evolve and improve, no matter what point you are starting out from. As long as you make a point of always doing this, you should find that it really makes a radical difference to how you can achieve things and how easy it is to believe in yourself. This is arguably the most important point of all in this whole article: give yourself the freedom to evolve, as you should be able to get a lot more out of it.

3 Signs Your Line of Business Is No Longer Making You Happy

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StrategyDriven Professional Development Article |Line of Business|3 Signs Your Line of Business Is No Longer Making You HappyOwners start a business to achieve financial freedom and to get into an industry that appeals to them. Many owners have a five or ten-year plan that gives them a chance to set up an organization that is a fine-tuned machine, and they can let managers run it while the owner does whatever they want. This isn’t the case with all business owners, and some become trapped in the business.

There are several signs that the owner is no longer happy with their company or their day-to-day lives. When it becomes apparent to them that this business isn’t what they want to do for the rest of their lives, the owners will need to take some drastic steps.

Brokers can help business owners who are dissatisfied with their business sell the company. They can present the owners with several options for selling the business and collecting a great return on their investment. When selling a company, there are several steps that must be completed, and the first step is to decide when it is time to sell. For many owners, the moment they notice the following three signs is when they have an epiphany that the business just isn’t for them anymore.

1. You Feel Like You’re On A Hamster Wheel

When starting a new business, the owner chooses a niche or industry that they are passionate about. They want to provide products or services that the owner is excited about and enjoys doing or creating. If the business becomes too much for the owner, it could make them feel like they are running on a hamster wheel. At this point, the owner is just going through the motions of everyday business operations and isn’t as passionate about their venture.

It could take many years of being in business before the owner feels this way, but if they lose their passion for the business, it is likely to occur when times are their toughest. If a business venture starts to fail, the business owner will become stressed in their attempts to save the company and keep the doors open.

They will feel like each day is the same as the day before as if they are on a continuous loop of the same activities. This could be the last straw for many business owners who have lost their happiness in the company. Business owners can get help from brokers from CGK Business Sales if they are ready to sell their business.

2. Self-Sabotaging the Success of the Business

Once a business owner has reached the end of their rope with their current venture, they may start self-sabotaging the success of the business. This could start out as rude or outlandish responses to followers on their social media pages or a botched interview on a news outlet. With each turn, the business owner will take part in activities that do not keep the company in a positive light. They could create a complete PR nightmare that sends customers running.

The owner may choose to make changes to the product line that will make the products unappealing to their target audience. They could undermine their workers and cause conditions that make their employees begin to leave the company suddenly and unexpectedly.

When self-sabotaging, the business owner will create situations that make it impossible for the company to thrive or generate adequate profits. They continue to delay the release of a new product or spend entirely too much on one product. There are a variety of circumstances that self-sabotaging could create that cause the business to fail.

For most, it is the simple fact that the owner is no longer happy with their business, and it can become something more than they expected or ever wanted. There are several reasons the owner will self-sabotage, and they all have the same outcome, which is the end of the business.

When it becomes apparent that the owner is self-sabotaging, it is wise to speak to a broker about selling the company. It is best to sell the company while it is successful and generating exceptional profits. If the owner sabotages the company until they destroy it, they will not get as much back when they sell the business.

3. You Don’t Get Any Enjoyment from Your Work

At the beginning of a new business venture, the owner will find happiness and enjoyment in what they do. New owners often choose businesses that let them do the things they love the most. Once this task becomes tedious and boring, the business owner will not want to continue to do any of it.

A lack of enjoyment in their work could lead to depression, heightened stress levels, and the need to isolate and shut themselves off from others. Whenever a business owner is no longer happy with a business, they have two options: they can sell a thriving business to another company or new investors or shut down the business and sell the assets.

A broker could provide further insight into what option is best for the business owner. They went into business to become successful and thrive, but even if the business is thriving it doesn’t mean that the owner is happy. They may want to start a new chapter in their lives and go in a completely different direction. Once the owner decides to sell the business, they can contact a broker and get started on a new journey.

Business owners who no longer feel the joy in their business or their daily operations may be ready for a dramatic change. If they are no longer happy with their business, the owners have the opportunity to sell their business and start fresh. Brokers can help business owners get a proper valuation for their business and determine the best time to place it on the market. With the right plan, the business owner could get a major return on their investment and find a new venture that brings them happiness.

How To Impress An Employer With Little Experience

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Although you might think that it is impossible to impress an employer with little experience, it is possible. Experience does help, but it is not the only thing an employer looks for during the hiring process.

Here are some top tips for how to impress an employer with little experience.

StrategyDriven Professional Development Article | How To Impress An Employer With Little Experience

Do an internship

An internship is a great way to learn your skills while showing off your hard work and abilities to an employer. It is a stepping stone for working for your dream company.

For example, those keen on working in social media and helping brands grow their following might want to consider digital marketing internships. It is a great opportunity to show off your marketing skills and get started in the world of marketing.

An internship will allow you to attain experience and network effectively. When you work in an industry for less pay, you might not attain the greatest income, but it gives you a great insight into the world of work and offers many opportunities to attain a full-time position.

Write a great resume

A resume includes more than just your experience. Therefore, use it to your advantage. You might have achieved amazing certificates at school or you might have interesting passions that could impress your employer.

Your resume should ooze confidence and show off your best abilities. Don’t be shy to be confident or proud on your resume. The prouder you are, the more you will be able to impress the employer.

Ask questions

Although an employer will be asking you questions during an interview, it is important to ask them questions too. Being inquisitive shows that you are interested in learning more about them as well as the company.

The more interest you show, the more interested an employer will be in you. Before your interview, take your time doing your research and find out interesting facts about the company. Use these facts as questions to show off that you have done your research.

Be comfortable

During an interview, it is common to be nervous. Although it is easier said than done, you shouldn’t let the nerves overtake you. You might come across different from what you had hoped if you let the nerves overshine your true personality.

The more comfortable and confident you are in the interview, the more interested the employer will be in you. Employers appreciate confidence as it reflects your confidence in the workplace.

Follow up

After an interview, you might be left in the dark for some time. This is normal as the employer will likely be interviewing other candidates and making their decision.

To show that you are interested and to ensure that they remember you, make sure to follow up. Do not follow up straight away as you may look too keen and seem a nuisance. Nobody wants to hire someone that will be annoying. Therefore, leave it around a week before following up in a call or email. Asking them for feedback is normal and they might use this follow-up email as a way to verify that you are keen, passionate, and the right person for the job.