Career Road Map: 52 weeks of career coaching in one book

By John Lees

There are many times in a career where short pieces of advice come in useful, whether you’re looking for a new job, thinking about leaving your current role, or trying to make progress inside an organisation.

Here are 52 short pieces from careers expert John Lees, aimed to provide vital short-cuts, help you out of a fix, re-energise your job search or interview planning, or to rethink the way you manage your career. Most originally appeared in John’s weekly column for the UK daily newspaper Metro.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AUK Authors
• Release date: May 25, 2016
• ISBN: 9781785384691

John Lees

John Lees is one of the UK's best-known career stategists. He writes regularly for the Times and the Guardian. His work appears regularly in glossies including Psychologies, Marie Claire and Red and he has appeared several times on both the BBC and ITV. He has trained recruitment specialists since the mid-1980s and worked with numerous organisations including HSBC and Reuters.

Book preview

Time for a Change?

It’s Sunday night. You’re packing your work bag, and a movie runs in your head called ‘Five Days Until Friday’. What kind of movie is it? A road movie? An adventure comedy? Or a horror film?

At least half the workforce gets the Sunday Night Work Blues - we know this because more people post online CVs on Sunday than any other time of the week. If you feel unsure whether it’s worth getting up on Monday morning, perhaps it’s time to think about a change.

You may think the automatic next step is finding a new job, but how about shaping or changing your job, perhaps even learning to love the job you’ve got? Many people change jobs for all the wrong reasons, and the big important skill set we never acquire is managing your career from the inside - creating new opportunities and reshaping your job. Often simply adding new content to your job mix will refresh your week. What’s more, it can quickly remotivate you and change the way others see you in the workplace.

It’s easy to get in a rut in any job. Perhaps it’s become repetitive, or you’ve stopped learning. You might feel you’re only giving 75% to the job, and worried that someone might notice. Or you are overwhelmed with work, and can’t see what matters any more. So you mention it to your friend over lunch, who gives you the same advice as your family: Stick it out. Keep your head down. Stay in your safe job until things get better.

The problem is, even when you’ve accepted this advice and decided to hunker down for another year, you’re still in a rut. It might even be a velvet rut - just a little too comfortable.

And what do you do? You look at job ads. Not in an enthusiastic, active kind of way, but just to prove to yourself how few roles are out there, and how lucky you are to be in a safe, boring job. So you put your head down again, and before long it’s Sunday night again...

Here are some strategies that help exceptional people take control of their working lives. Firstly, review – what have you achieved in the last 12 months? What have you added to your job? What can you do that you couldn’t do a year ago? Reflect with a friend who’s good at reminding you what you’re good at. What’s your contribution, and has it been noticed? Your pitch to your employer begins ‘this is how I have made a difference...’

Secondly, negotiate ways to reshape your job. This could mean new learning opportunities or experience, or fresh contacts. Don’t present your request as a puzzle or a complaint - managers have other things to worry about - and don’t issue ultimatums. Present small to moderate suggestions for small alterations to your job. Offer them as a sensible ‘deal’ between what you want to get out of work and what your employer wants to get out of you.

I’m Still Looking for My Dream Job...

I love listening to career conversations in coffee shops. Today I overhear to friends say how boring their jobs are. One says ‘Why don’t you look for something different?’ Her friend replies ‘What I do now gets me down, but it pays the mortgage. However if my ideal job comes along...’

Some people really do have a specific dream job. They can name it, point to people who are doing it, but they are perfectly happy keeping it at a distance like an exclusive resort on the other side of the world - so far away you give yourself permission to do absolutely nothing about getting there.

Other job dreamers haven’t yet found a label to hang round their idea. In their coffee shop meditations they say that they want to do ‘a job that makes a difference’ or is ‘a bit more creative’. They’ll know it when they see it, they claim, which again is a perfect excuse to never really begin looking. Every year there are new distractions, and before long you’re coasting towards retirement.

A third category of people who play with the dream job idea put everything off until later - deferred gratification, psychologists call it. You deal with an unfulfilling career by working hard now in the hope of doing something interesting later (perhaps when the mortgage is paid off or the kids have left home). For many of us the dream job conversation is really saying ‘Don’t disturb me - I’m happy being miserable’.

Finally you can of course set the bar higher than you can reach to prove to yourself that being happy in work is a myth. If you pick nearly unreachable jobs (astronaut, TV presenter, Formula 1 driver) you can fall back on the nation’s favourite career game - ‘either I do something I enjoy doing 100% of the time or I have a job that pays the bills’. The danger with seeing the world in black and white like this is that you miss out interesting colours.

Listen in to career conversations and you’ll hear how often people play the dream job game, and then quickly lower their sights or allow others to trample over good ideas. It’s easy to accept that the idea of fulfilling work is a romantic distraction from the gritty reality of getting and keeping a job.

Here’s a thought. You don’t need a perfect job. That’s simply your way of preventing yourself looking. Every job is a compromise and will include some uninspiring tasks. You don’t need a job you love five days a week. 31/2 days out of 5 seems to do the trick.

Next time you float and then sink your job ideas, try some different approaches.

First of all, let go of job titles. Start to think about job elements that you might find combined in a wide range of roles. Ask your friends to play ‘Ready Steady Cook’ with your work ingredients and follow up on suggestions and leads.

Secondly, think about what gets in the way. Most of us believe that making a career change is the biggest barrier. However if you ask people who have found roles they enjoy, you’ll discover the toughest step isn’t applying for a job, it’s picking up the phone, reaching out to someone doing what you’d love to do. Talk to real people in real jobs, find out how people made career breakthroughs, and spot pitfalls on the way. Discover the skills required by new jobs and sectors, and you start to understand how to describe your experience in attractive terms. Research, rather than job search, is the key - but through face-to-face conversations not the Internet.

This week you may spend 70-80% of your waking energy on work. Work takes up such a huge part of our life that it might just be worth looking for something that puts a spring in your step on a Monday morning.

From Study Into Work

First job moves

Sacha is depressed by lack of success chasing graduate roles. ‘I can’t even get an interview even though my CV lists strong qualifications. What’s the point of three years’ study if I’m starting at the bottom?’

There’s no magic bullet, but you can aim at two targets: shortening your job search time, and finding a job which may not be the job of your dreams but is a good learning experience, broadens your skill set and adds to your CV. To get that role you’re going to need an above-average job search technique.

Firstly, take every opportunity to talk to employers who are interested in meeting new talent. Graduate job fairs and other employer events are highly recommended to help you spot opportunities, but don’t just pick up leaflets and go home. Build your confidence by taking opportunities to talk about yourself briefly, and pick up on the language employers want to hear. Take opportunities to speak to people who were hired as new graduates 2-3 years ago and learn from their histories.

Think about your message. Most CVs for market entrants over-emphasise examination results, something employers don’t find terribly exciting. Long lists of modules go unread. Affirm in a range of evidence that you’re smart enough to benefit from training, open to new ideas, can cope with the unexpected - but give plenty of evidence that you’re a fast learner.

A hallmark of someone new to the labour market is the CV cliché. People who would curl up in disgust at a cheesy chat-up line describe themselves to employers as highly motivated, results driven, and self-starter - all empty language which screams out ‘untested material - approach with care’.

What should you say about personality? Find terms that employers find realistic and useful, so less ‘bubbly and outgoing’ and more ‘interested in the needs of customers’, less ‘up for anything’ and more ‘able to respond flexibly in a fast moving work environment’.

Savvy candidates leaving the world of study, at whatever age, know that a CV works best if it’s a fresh, honest statement of what you have done well, and what you have achieved. Remind yourself of achievements from work, volunteering, or learning - these simple narratives of problems solved, challenges accepted and results obtained put you ahead of the game.

At interviews and in your CV your opening bid should always be