Category Archives: The labour market

Establishing career goals, General Career Management, The labour market, Uncovering opportunities

Firms fail to meet employees’ career aspirations

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Today the Chartered Institute of Management published its survey results, which show some interesting things career wise:

Resignations have increased over the last year – and these aren’t redundancies – these are people leaving voluntarily. Requests for internal transfers are also down. So, despite the volatility in the jobs market, more people are choosing to pursue career opportunities elsewhere.

More than half the employers questioned (53.8 per cent) admitted that restructuring and job insecurity caused many of their staff to ‘jump ship’.  A significant proportion (38.5 per cent) recognised that their ‘failure to offer career opportunities and training’ contributed to employees leaving.  Given widespread recognition that engaged staff are more loyal, it is alarming that 61.5 per cent also admitted that their employees’ heads had been turned by head-hunters and recruitment consultants.

My sesnse of one of the best things to come out of this recession is a new intelligence about careers. I congratulate the people who’ve had the courage to move on to something better (sacrificing significant employment rights if they had more than a year’s service with the former employer), and I am disappointed that employers still don’t place enough emphasis on career management.

Too often, when someone hands in their notice, the manager says something like ‘I wish I’d known, I had big plans for you’. WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL THEM THEN?!

If you are considering a move, why don’t you take the initiative and ask for a chat with your manager about your career goals? You don’t have to be totally upfront with them about your desire to move on. Something like ‘I’ve been thinking about how I could add more value, and these are the things I’d like to focus on over the next year or so…’ will test the water. See if your manager responds with an open and authentic discussion about your career with the organisation.

In most cases, he/she won’t want to lose you and, assuming there’s a good cultural fit between you and the organisation, there are several advantages to staying with the same employer and shaping your job to play to your strengths more (longer holiday entitlement, established relationships, better visibility of new career opportunities, etc – and, if the worst does happen, your long service will entitle you to a bigger redundancy package).

So if your employer has been a bit remiss about helping you to manage your career, why don’t you get the ball rolling…..what have you got to lose? Looks like there’s still healthy demand for good people out there.

Career success stories, Establishing career goals, General Career Management, The labour market, Uncovering opportunities

Ten careers that didn’t exist ten years ago

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This article at Carerbuilder.com isn’t a scietific survey, but it does make you think about how technology, social and environmental trends are shaping careers.

It contains an interesting example of a career shifter: the customer service rep who became a full-time blogger and more than doubled his salary!

And ten years ago, who’d have thought you could get a job as a Green Funeral Director or a Social Media Strategist?

Dom Sagolla, co-creator of Twitter, is also quoted as saying his success is down to his efforts to position himself at the intersection of two emerging new industries – iPhone apps and social media.

Nice work if you can get it! Rather than trying to predict the next big thing to get into, look for the convergence of two industries – the intersection is going to create a real hot spot and demand for people who can capitalise on it.

Establishing career goals, General Career Management, The labour market

New year career resolutions? Which world of work will you be in?

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What do you think the future of work will look like over the next decade?

As 2009 closes, many of us will be considering new career objectives for the year ahead. But why not think longer term – where do you think you’ll be in 2020? As part of their ‘Managing Tomorrow’s People’ research series, PwC have put together a little quiz to help you forecast which world of work you’re headed for in 2020 – blue (corporate), green (sustainability and social values) or orange (small, collaborative networks). I was orange.

They also published a press release yesterday showing the effect of showing a little appreciation on employee loyalty:

One in three (33%) UK employees say they have not felt valued by their employer during the recession and would leave for another job if they could. Of those respondents who said their employer had shown appreciation for them in the downturn, 41% said they had no plans to leave as a consequence of this loyalty and just 23% said they would consider leaving regardless.

Either way, that means one in three or almost one in four people in every workplace is considering a career move – so now’s the time to do some prep and get ahead of the competition. Max Messmer, author of Managing Your Career For Dummies, offers ten New Year’s resolutions for your career here.

Whatever your career plans for 2010, I wish you all the best!

The labour market

Why Scottish workers avoid the worst of the recession

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The latest unemployment figures published a couple of days ago showed unemployment had fallen in Scotland, whilst it has continued to rise across the rest of the UK:

  • The Scottish unemployment rate declined to 6.9 per cent, with 2,000 fewer people in Scotland unemployed. At the UK level, unemployment increased by 21,000 and the UK unemployment rate was 7.9 per cent over the same period
  • Scotland’s employment rate increased by 0.5 percentage points to 74.2 per cent, with 15,000 more people in work, while the UK employment rate remained unchanged at 72.5 per cent

However, on the traditional measure – the monthly tally of people claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance – unemployment rose by 1,300 to 136,000. The only explanation I’ve heard for how one measure can go up whilst the other one goes down is that the time periods over which they report are different – with the Jobseeker’s Allowance claimants figures taking November into account.

The Scottish Government, of course, chooses to highlight the positive news and portrays it as the result of all of its hard work through PACE and the Future Jobs Fund. I’m not so sure, but hopefully it is a fragile sign of recovery nonetheless.

More interesting comment on Scotland’s resilience comes from David Bell, Professor of Economics at Stirling University. In this article he explains how a housing market that was less overheated in Scotland than the rest of the UK helped Scotland to suffer less pain during the recession of the 1990’s. Because consumers and small businesses would often use housing as collateral, Scottish workers and business owners were less over-stretched because they had lower levels of house price inflation to borrow against.

This time around, the credit squeeze may have also had relatively less impact in Scotland, because we had not borrowed against soaring house prices to the same extent as other parts of the UK. In addition to that, Professor Bell has seen businesses use short-time working and other flexible methods to hold on to people, rather than let them go.

So, if you have avoided redundancy so far, it is worth preparing to be flexible and adaptable so, if it comes to it, you can discuss alternatives to redundancy with your employer.