A new year is approaching and many people are thinking of using that as a motivation to change scenery. Head of the Careers Clinic, Eoghan McDermott, is on hand with advice.
By Eoghan McDermott
With Christmas just a few weeks away, you’re going to have time to sit back, relax and get merry. You’ll also have time to reflect on the year that’s been – family, love life and work. People look at the New Year as an opportunity to turn over a new leaf and make a change. And a lot of the time that means changing job.
But getting the right job is never easy. Getting the right job in a recession is desperately hard. Constantly we’re seeing photographs of queues where as many as two thousand people have lined up to be interviewed for perhaps a hundred jobs.
That’s tough. But that’s the reality. Your capacity to build a worthwhile career depends on three things:
1.   How you cope with negative circumstances.
2.   How you motivate yourself and others.
3.   How you constantly assess how you’re doing.
Optimism
If you find yourself constantly focussed on the problems of your position, you need to force yourself into realistic optimism. Realistic optimism is the kind that says “This is going to take perhaps fourteen months longer than I’d like, but at the end of the process, what I’ll learn during every one of those fourteen months will have made me a better executive/teacher/consultant.
One of my recurring themes when working with clients and I’ll pass it on here is about maintaining your own optimism by hanging around with people who make you more, rather than less, buoyant. People who make you laugh. You don’t have to share all your bad news with those people.
In fact, I’d suggest one of the bits of information you never share is the humiliation of applying for a post, or being interviewed for a position, and failing to get even the basic courtesy of a reply afterwards. It’s not fair. It’s not acceptable. But you know what? It’s a reality.
The job-hunt
It affects everybody who’s currently on the job-hunt. Get over it and keep quiet about it. On the other hand, whenever you get a muted positive – like, for example, an HR Manager coming back to you saying you were number two in the list rather than number one, keep in contact with that person. You can ask their advice, drop them a note of thanks and the chances are that if they have a temporary position to be filled, they’ll think of the number two who had the wit not to sulk in silence.
Assessing how you’re doing while you’re doing it is one of the skills you must develop if you plan to have a serious career. It should, for example, never happen to you, after you are appointed to your dream position, that, a few months later, just as you’re coming up to the end of your test period, your manager calls you in and tells you she knows you understand that this is not working. If that happens and is a shock to you, you haven’t been observing yourself ruthlessly enough.
The threat of tiredness
During the job-seeking process, you face the same threats every job seeker faces. The threat of tiredness. Tiredness, not just reflected in your face, but in the way your clothes hang. Tiredness that amounts to being defeated before the battle is begun. Think of yourself as a third party and take care of yourself just as you would take care of a friend going through difficult times. Take care of yourself.
And – finally – remember the great sports technique. Great athletes have always visualised the race or the fight they have to go through before they go through it. It is a powerful technique, because it allows you to rehearse, face the worst, beat it – and do it all in your head before you have to do it in reality.
Constantly imagine yourself in the role you want to fill.
Sooner or later – and probably sooner – you’ll get there. The people with the shining eyes always do.
If you have a question about your job or career that Eoghan could help you with, why not email JOE at [email protected]?
Eoghan McDermott is Head of The Careers Clinic in The Communications Clinic and is the author of The Career Doctor- How to Get and Keep the Job You Want.
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