My Job Ticks All The Boxes, But Im Still Not Happy. What Should I Do

“My Job Ticks All The Boxes, But Im Still Not Happy. What Should I Do” Help from our Community “My Job Ticks All The Boxes, But Im Still Not Happy. What Should I Do?” * Paige's current work fulfils all her criteria for a career she loves, but somehow she's still not fulfilled. Where does she start looking for something new? What's your career history and current job? I work as a Project Support Officer for a housing provider, helping to deliver business development projects and broaden our range of services for vulnerably housed families. I've always worked in the housing sector, starting out as a lettings agent and then moving into charities about four years ago. How do you feel about your work? It's a weird feeling, and I'm not sure how to explain it without sounding really ungrateful! I'm glad I'm doing something to help people who need support, and I'm good at the organisational side of my job. I get to use my skills every day. My colleagues are very sweet people and although it's tough to deliver what we want to deliver sometimes, on the whole we do well at our work. I get to see the results of my work at the end of each project, so I feel like I've achieved something real. On paper, my job ticks all the boxes, but I'm missing a sense of excitement and real drive. It feels like I'm doing what's expected of me, rather than what really makes me happy. It feels mundane. What would you like to be doing instead? I'm not sure, and I don't know how to figure it out. I have a few ideas â€" front-line support work, advocacy, things like that â€" but they're all just jobs I see other people in my company doing. I'm not sure they're actually based on anything deeper than that. What's the biggest obstacle in your way? Because my current job seems so appropriate for my skill-set and the things I think are important to me, I can't seem to come up with anything else. I don't know if I need a total 180-degree spin, or if, actually, I'm in the right field already and I should get my thrills in my spare time! Where do you start when you already seem to be at the finish line? Can you help Paige? Have you been in a similar situation, or are you in the same boat right now? How can she find what she's missing? Do you know anyone she could talk to? Share your thoughts in the comments below and click the thumbs-up button to show your support. Give Paige a cheer of encouragement by hitting the thumbs-up button here:

Career change A (relatively) low stress approach

Career change A (relatively) low stress approach Since you know you are going to have multiple careers in your life, changing is not high stakes. Dont make a huge deal about it and dont spend five years searching your soul. Just start testing the waters put a toe in the current to see how it feels. Then take a leap, and if you dont like where you land, reframe your landing pad as just a stepping-stone. And start putting your foot in the water again. But first, before you do any of this, make sure its time for you to change what youre doing. Here are some bad reasons to switch careers: 1. You hate your boss. (Switch jobs, not careers.) 2. You want more prestige. (Get a therapist youre having a confidence crisis, not a career crisis.) 3. You want to meet new people. (Try going to a bar, or Club Med. What you really want is to get a life. Pick up a hobby.) Here are some good reasons to switch careers: 1. You want a role that is more creative, more analytic or more management-oriented. 2. You want to live in a location that does not accommodate your current career. 3. You want more flexibility or fewer hours. Once you decide its time to try something new, you should act fast. Herminia Ibarra, a professor of organizational behavior at INSEAD, in France conducted scores of interviews with career changers that lead to her book, Working Identity: Uncovering Strategies for Reinventing Your Career. She concludes that career change is not so much about time spent philosophizing as time spent actually trying something new anything. Step 1. Conduct a perfunctory soul search. When you know you want to change, you need to understand what you dont like about your current situation so that you dont duplicate it. But dont assume your current job is not right for your personality. And dont assume that if you zero-in on your personality youll know exactly what you should be doing. Daniel Gilbert psychology professor at Harvard University, says that in pursuing happiness, we should have more trust in our own resilience and less confidence in our predictions about how well feel. Like Ibarra, Gilbert is a fan of jumping into the mix and just trying something. In fact, Ibarra finds that finding our true soul mate in a job is not so important. There are many. People have multiple selves. So changing careers means changing our selves, but this is not a process of swapping one identity for another. Rather, its a mater of reconfiguring the full set of possibilities. In any of us theres a part thats very pragmatic and theres a part thats very creative, and there are times in life when we give more time and space and energy on one side than the other. But if its in you, eventually it kind of bubbles up, and it wants some airtime. You can take personality tests till youre blue in the face, but Ibarra thinks they have limits. In many cases, you cant know what you love to do if you havent done it. And all the research says that adults learn by doing. So less analysis and more action will help you find the best change for you faster. Step 2. Try it out. Youll never know if you fit into the career environment until you try it. A baby step, like volunteering, or taking a part-time job will allow you to go back to your original career if need be. The most effective way make a serious move in your life is to do it in a not-so-serious way. Play with new professional roles on a limited but tangible scale, without compromising your current job, says Ibarra. Try freelance assignments or pro bono work. Moonlight. Use sabbaticals or extended vacation to explore new directions. And by all means, do not enter a degree program for a career change until you are positive that you know what youll be doing with the degree. If you dont know what youll be doing once you get the degree, then how do you know you need it? Step 3: Take a leap. Getting your first job in a new career is hard, especially if you dont want to work as the copy machine operator. So first try to make the change at the company youre at, because they already know they like you; ask for a department switch. If that doesnt work, use your network, which you probably developed during step two. Headhunters and help wanted ads are geared toward people who have skills in a certain area. People who change jobs probably do not have a lot of skills in the new area, so networking is the best way to get someone to give you a chance. Sometimes there is room to sell your skills, during a career change. And if you can, you should. For example if youre a teacher and you want to go into technology, apply for jobs at software firms that sell to the education sector. Youll be worth a lot more to an education company than a video game company even though both sell technology. A career change is a chance to address a change of heart by building on proven skills. Done right, this is a chance to show another side of your successful self.

MC2 account executive recruitment day Tuesday 16 July University of Manchester Careers Blog

MC2 account executive recruitment day Tuesday 16 July University of Manchester Careers Blog MC2 are holding its account executive recruitment day next Tuesday (16th July) from 10:00-16:00, and have space for a limited number of exceptional graduates to join them. Youll be joining a select group to work on briefs from real clients, as well as having the chance to meet some of the most renowned marketing professionals in the north west. The key attitudes and aptitudes theyre looking for are: • An entrepreneurial outlook • A talent for creativity and innovation • Determination, ambition and drive • A genuine desire to work in communications They have four roles available across their teams (public sector, financial and professional services, consumer brands, technology and property), all of which will involve exciting work with big name clients and have outstanding opportunities for progression. If youre interested in these vacancies and are available next Tuesday, please send your CV to Mary Wilson on maryw@mcmc.co.uk and theyll will be in touch. To look for opportunities like this and a range of vacancies, go onto http://www.manchester.ac.uk/careerslink All Media

How Can Businesses Become More Efficient at Recruiting

How Can Businesses Become More Efficient at Recruiting There are two sides to this. Firstly, how can businesses structure their recruiting needs efficiently and secondly, how can they go about the hiring process in the best possible way? From a recruiting perspective, it makes it harder for an agency to sell a job to a candidate if the employer has clearly not thought about where the new person will sit in the organisation and/or the precise parameters of the vacancy in question. Not to mention, businesses could also be saving money! Equally, there is little to motivate an agency when their standard fees have been negotiated heavily and many of their competitors have also been briefed on the same job. Pre-planning can save your business money: When someone leaves your organisation, it is common procedure to call your agency and ask for a replacement. Before picking up the phone take time out, from a Managerial or HR perspective, to look at the individuals within your organisation. How effective are they in their jobs? Are they able to carry out their roles in the best possible way within the current organisational frame work? By making a few tweaks here and there, you might help your employees to do their job better and you might increase efficiency within the organisation. It in turn means that you will be more targeted in your approach when it comes to hiring. To use an example, a Client has a team of 5 PAs. All are paid the same, yet one is supporting the CEO and another is based on Reception. The PA supporting the CEO doesn’t have the experience required and the CEO is unhappy and the PA working on Reception has too much experience and doesn’t want to be based on Reception any more. The PA to the CEO is leaving and so is one of the other three PAs. This is a classic case for restructure. In this case, move the PA/Receptionist into the Team PA role and bring in a dedicated Receptionist at a cheaper cost to the business. At the same time, hire an experienced and more expensive PA to support your CEO, with previous experience at this level. The support network will run more efficiently and the team will be happier as a result. Also, there is no additional cost to your business. When you speak to your agency/agencies, they will be able to present a clear and structured picture to suitable candidates and introduce you to the most talented individuals for each job. Clearly, in some situations, there are HR related issues which means your hands are tied with what you can or cannot do. How to recruit efficiently: By: Jenifer Magalhães Firstly, sourcing your staff in-house (i.e. investing in an in-house recruiter) is not the answer. Yes, you are saving on agency fees, but there is a reason why there are a good number of recruitment agencies out there and that is because, on the whole, they provide a very good service that offers businesses value for money, despite their charges. There are many examples of businesses trying to improve efficiency by bringing recruitment in-house and an equal number who then revert back to outsourcing their recruitment. The difficulty is locating talent and the time spent to locate that talent. Agencies tend to specialise in compartmentalised market sectors and are experts in their given area/areas. They spend resources (both time and money) to make sure they are attracting good candidates on to their books. If they do not invest these resources, then they will not last long in the current marketplace. In short, should you brief the “right” agency on a job, they should be able to provide you with a targeted shortlist of candidates promptly (clearly turnaround times depend on market sector). They will set up interviews for you, take feedback and negotiate on your behalf. In short, they save a huge amount of time and the opportunity cost of using an agency generally outweighs the cost of recruiting in-house. I say “generally” because when businesses get above a certain size and have a large and dedicate recruitment team, then the in-house recruiter model starts to work. First tip then is use an agency and do not try to recruit yourself. Select the right agency: There is a lot of choice in the marketplace and choosing the right agency is vital. Personal recommendation is the strongest pointer to a good agency, but in the absence of that, do your research. Most agencies have developed websites. If you click on google and type “hire a ……..”, then a list of agencies should come up. Read through their websites and shortlist three or four that stand out to you. Then act as you though you are a candidate looking for a job that you are recruiting for and see what jobs the agency has listed on their website, the volume of jobs they are working on and the dates these jobs were posted. This information should lead you to picking up the phone to a couple of agencies confident in the knowledge that they have the expertise to help you with your recruitment. Spend the time to meet face-to-face with your agency  so that you can speak further about your recruitment needs with them and have a clear idea of timelines going forwards. Understand how the agency sources their candidates, how are they screened (are they interviewed face-to-face?) and when will a shortlist be presented to you. A few key tips: Never brief more than 3 agencies on the same position. Market sectors are only so large and you do not want agencies to be speaking to the same candidates otherwise they will lose motivation. Do not be afraid to use a sole agency. If you believe they have the credentials, then this is the most efficient way to recruit. You can negotiate better fees and refund guarantees on a sole agency basis. You also will only have to look through one shortlist of CVS as opposed to two or three. HINT: To protect yourself, you can always agree “sole agency” for a specific time period! Do not negotiate too heavily on fees. If you push an agency to reduce their fees from 20% to 15% then you may lose out on the perfect candidate. For example, your top candidate may be interviewing at another business, through the same agency. If you both offer the candidate, then the agency will be motivated to place the candidate with the business paying the higher fees. Ok, the candidate will make their own mind up, but if it is a close call, a Consultant does have an impact. Also, if a Consultant is working to 15% fees with you and 20% with the rest of his/her Clients, then your needs will not be given the same priority. Refund periods. There is a cost to using an agency, so you need to be sure that you will get a proportion of your money back should the candidate you hire not work out. Make sure you are clear about the length of your refund period and the terms and conditions to that. Pay particular note of the payment terms and remember, if you are briefing an agency on a sole agency basis then their refund period should be longer than if you were briefing them alongside others. Author: David Morel  is Managing Director of tiger-recruitment.co.uk, a leading recruitment company in the secretarial/administrational arena.

Tips For Writing An Objective For A Resume For Labor And Delivery Nurse

Tips For Writing An Objective For A Resume For Labor And Delivery NurseWriting an objective for a resume for labor and delivery nurse is important to help describe the type of nursing care your patients will receive. Nurses do have a variety of duties and responsibilities that do not necessarily include the care of their patients. Understanding how to write an objective for a resume for labor and delivery nurse will help a nurse make the most appropriate decision when finding a job.Patient care encompasses more than just physical contact with the patient. It involves a great deal of research, communication with the doctor, as well as medication administration. When you are applying for a job with this type of nursing, you will need to prove that you are committed to the tasks and responsibilities that are expected of you. The objective is a way to describe what these duties and responsibilities are in as many details as possible.You will find it useful to understand the difference be tween an objective and a summary statement. A summary statement is a statement that summarizes the information contained in the objective. In other words, this statement simply provides a summary of the information found in the objective. An objective is often a paragraph or two long, but it is a very critical part of your resume.In the medical field, as in most professions, professionalism is important and it is one of the keys to the care you provide in professional health care. Knowing how to write an objective for a resume for labor and delivery nurse will help a nurse demonstrate that she is able to act in an organized manner. It will also help a nurse determine which work has to be delegated to others.As you complete your education, you will find that you will have to take on more responsibilities outside of your education and clinical training. This includes non-clinical work as well as other nursing jobs. Your objective for a resume for labor and delivery nurse can help you identify this more rapidly and it will be one of the first pieces of the puzzle.As you continue your education, you will find that you are expected to handle more patient contact and this will require more detail and planning than is found in the previous sections of your resume. By reviewing your objective for a resume for labor and delivery nurse, you will be able to see if you have done enough preparation to address this change in your career. When you find that you have taken care of this item, you can use it to find more opportunities.By reviewing your objective for a resume for labor and delivery nurse, you will be able to identify what areas have been delegated to others, and you can use this information to find other jobs. Although you may find this task frustrating, it will be one of the most valuable parts of the process. One of the best ways to approach this issue is to determine what you want to be doing when you finish school and then make a list of the types of work yo u are interested in doing.Once you have determined the types of jobs you are interested in, you will be able to include a summary statement or an objective for a resume for labor and delivery nurse to cover all of these areas. It is important to consider the objectives you use in your resume as 'road maps' that will point you in the right direction. For those who are applying for the same job, it can be helpful to understand how to write an objective for a resume for labor and delivery nurse. Knowing the basic concepts will help you achieve your goal of a career in the medical field.

Reaching for the Brass Ring in Job Search - CareerAlley

Reaching for the Brass Ring in Job Search - CareerAlley We may receive compensation when you click on links to products from our partners. I lost my heart On the carousel . . . Michael Jackson from the song Carousel Remember ridding the carousel as a kid? The horses that would go up and down and the horses that just went no where? What about the embarrassing bench that not only didnt move but was on the inside near the gears (did your parents make you sit on the bench when you were too little to ride the horse)? And then, of course, there was the Brass Ring (or most often, the Iron Ring). But on the horse, it was all about reaching as far as you could without falling off, timing it just right so you could grab the ring. And then, every so often you would grab the ring look in your hand and it was the Brass Ring and a free ride! Job search is much like reaching for the Brass Ring. Just getting a job at all is sometimes a challenge, but there is nothing like getting the Brass Ring of jobs. Todays post continues Fortunes Best Companies to Work for series and reaching for your Brass Ring. Cisco 16 on the list (down from 6 last year), Cisco is the leading supplier of network equipment. You can view a short video from their careers page. The left hand side of the page has links for Featured Jobs, Graduate and Intern Career Programs and more. There are related links on the right hand side of the page including Career Training and Cisco Jobs. Once you click search for jobs you can use the search function to find your job. The site uses your posted resume to help find a good job match. There were 2,623 job opportunities when I checked the site. Methodist Hospital System Methodist is number 17 on the list (down from 8 last year) and is based in Houston, Texas. Their career page leads with Job Search (center page) followed by a Company Overview. The left hand side of the page has links for Areas of Talent, Graduates and Students and more. The Job Postings page has a link to a Career Center where you post your resume and manage your job search. Click Search Jobs to link to the results with additional filters on the right hand side to help narrow your search. There were 388 job opportunities when I checked the site. Whole Foods Market Based in Texas, Whole Foods is number 18 on the list (up from 22 last year). This organic food store chain has over 275 stores. Their career site has links on the left hand side for Benefits, info on Job Fairs and info on the Hiring Process. There is plenty of information on the company center page including information on how to apply and a search jobs function at the center top. Begin your job search by selecting the state where you want to work. Its not clear if there is a way to search for all jobs across all locations.. Genentech Number 19 (down from 7) on Fortunes list, Genentech is a Biotech company. Their career site also has a lot of information on the company. In addition to search jobs on the right hand side of the page, they have links to their national career conferences as well as their campus recruiting. From their job posting page, you can create an account, add a resume, search for jobs and manage your job search at Genentech. There were 100 job opportunities when I checked the site. Devon Energy Devon is a oil and gas exploration company and is ranked 20 on the list. A company fact sheet is available from the main page. Their career page is mostly filled with background on the list (they are also included on Canadas Best Places to Work list). There are links to company background and compensation benefits on the left hand side of the page. There is a Work Here/Apply link which leads to another page that allows a click to opportunities. A quick search returned 66 job opportunities. There were 30 job opportunities when I checked the site. Good luck in your search.

Already-thereness - The Chief Happiness Officer Blog

Already-thereness - The Chief Happiness Officer Blog Already-thereness is the idea, that whatever youre trying to achieve, you are in some measure already there. The advantage of this approach is that it allows you to build on strengths and successes, rather than on failings and shortcomings. Appreciative Inquiry works very much in this spirit. Heres a cool quote on already-thereness, ripped from Michael Hermans weblog: The Spirit Of Already-Thereness: The familiar idea of searching-to-grow, exciting though it may be, is a gap maker. The long-cherished notion of becoming can soothe, but it can also serve to distance us from ourselves rather than bring us nearer. The spirit of already-thereness, on the other hand, is a gap closer. Being has more power in it than becoming. Imagine just proclaiming already-thereness. No questions asked. No permission sought. Simply take residence. Its audacious, but declaring it is what creates it. Thats the leap! Jack Hawley in his book Reawakening The Spirit In Work Thanks for visiting my blog. If you're new here, you should check out this list of my 10 most popular articles. And if you want more great tips and ideas you should check out our newsletter about happiness at work. It's great and it's free :-)Share this:LinkedInFacebookTwitterRedditPinterest Related