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For many people redundancy is highly traumatic and rates with bereavement, divorce, marriage and moving house as one of the most stressful situations you may ever have to face in life.

If you have been in a job for a long time, it will inevitably have become an integral part of your life. To have this taken away from you can seem like your own personal loss or bereavement.

In the current competitive global market, which can nowadays be affected by so many previously unthinkable influences, company fortunes can change almost overnight, making for an extremely volatile employment market.

Sometimes radical decisions must be made, which can leave you ‘out in the cold’, through absolutely no fault of your own.

However, as with most things in life, there are two ways at looking at your situation:

1/ You are a ‘victim’ and a failure

2/ You view this as an excellent opportunity to completely re-evaluate your career and what is important to you in your job and life

You may well find it extremely difficult to be of a positive mindset and take an optimistic view, especially when redundancy has suddenly been thrust on you!

However, even when you have months of warning and think you have come to terms with your situation, it is often difficult to see past the negative emotions and feeling ‘bitter and twisted’ and as a result waste all this opportunity to be proactively developing your career.

If you have never experienced redundancy or it is something that you previously didn’t manage particularly well, it is important for you to understand how redundancy may affect you and what you can do to turn this negative situation into a positive outcome for you.

There are five main impacts of redundancy, which can be dramatically exaggerated if the redundancy is very sudden or totally unexpected:

• Shock, denial and anger – why me?
  
• Fear of the unknown – will I get another job, can I survive financially?
  
• Loss of Confidence/self esteem – do I have any value?
  
• Loss of control – you feel this has been taken away as ‘the rug has been pulled from underneath you’
  
• Loss of structure – to your daily life or thoughts about how will you cope without routine?
  

What can you do to help kick start your career?

SMP Solutions top tips for making redundancy work for you:

• Learn to be proactive and to take control of your career to be the ‘architect of your own future’
• The biggest mistake many people make is to procrastinate (especially if they are likely to get a good pay off!) and wait to just before or even after they leave before they start even thinking about their next step
• Worse still, don’t spring into life when you become desperate
• Getting a job can become almost a full time activity so a good tip is to treat your job search like a project in itself with a start and end date, review points along the way and contingencies
• Consider what resources may be required to ensure your success
• If you have access to a company outplacement programme then use it at the earliest possible opportunity
• If not, don’t feel too proud to get help from a Career Coach or Career Development specialist, it could put you ahead of the game and repay you handsomely!
• It may not seem like it at the time but this is your great opportunity to take stock and review your career to establish what is really important to you and plan your next step
• Review your finances – take a good long hard look at your outgoings and incomings, taking account of your partner’s earnings if you have one plus ‘discretionary’ expenditure and everything that you value e.g.  holidays, meals out, sport and leisure

• This is an incredibly powerful exercise, as you can clearly establish what you need to earn as against what you were previously earning or desire to earn
• Understanding your financial situation can totally empower you to thinking about your career in a completely different light, especially if you establish that you do not need to earn as much as you had anticipated!
• Avoid taking the first job offer that comes along just because you feel flattered, relieved or because you feel you have got one up on your colleagues, as you could be jumping from the ‘frying pan into the fire’
• If you plan your campaign right, you will get offers of jobs that you really want or you may even decide to set up your own business
• Actively network and use more than one approach for your job search
• Enlist any other support you can get, including friends, family and acquaintances who have won through redundancy and share knowledge and experiences
• Surround yourself with positive people as it is all too easy to get in with the whinging negative crowd who will quickly drag you down even further
• Above all else you must keep a positive mental attitude
• There is always something else on the horizon that may prove your redundancy to be a blessing in disguise!

If you want to know more about developing your career, visit our Career & Personal Development website

These days it is not enough to just think about the skills that you need to compete and get you ahead in the workplace, if you are really forward thinking, you will also think about the skills to survive the workplace.

This may sound negative but with businesses going through constant change, retsructiring, downsizing, takeovers and mergers, it pays to understand the survival game, as it is ‘a jungle out there’!

It is generally agreed that there are 10 essentials of a survival kit:

A map of the area you will be in, a compass, a flashlight, sunglasses, extra food and water, extra clothing, waterproof matches, fire starters, a pocket knife and a first aid kit. All things being equal, this kit should allow you to survive in many settings.

Consider your workplace survival in the same light. Knowing and understanding your environment and what pitfalls you’re likely to encounter puts you ahead of the game. Learning by experience is a big part of the job, and it is inventibleby the way most people find out.

To help you along the way, here are a few pointers to help you avoid avoid the snakes and losing your way in the jungle, to survive in the workplace!

Commercial awareness – for this read company politics!

Appreciation of workplace culture and being effective in the organisational environment. This knowledge is often gained through ‘water cooler talk’!

Willingness to learn and continue learning – You are on a short fuse if you show no interest in learning new skills in a changing environment

Managing time / Planning & prioritising workload – with flatter structures, most workloads are getting greater so how well you can ‘juggle lots of balls’ is key

Working to deadlines / coping with stress – says it all!

Accepting responsibility – passing the buck and abdicating doesn’t wash

Meeting goals – If you have set goals then it’s important to achieve

Implementing decisions – If you have made decisions or they have been made for you, then put them into action!

Attending to details – Procrastination and sloppy work doesn’t cut

Demonstrating punctuality, reliability & commitment

Computer skills – you don’t need to be a wizard but need to know enough to be effective in your job

Ability to work as part of a team/s or under own initiative and re-adjust your role – being able to work both as part of a team or autonomously definitely helps

Flexibility/adaptability to respond to, pre-empt and lead change

Finally, demonstrating these 6 ‘self’s’

• Self assurance
• Self confidence
• Self awareness
• Self belief
• Self sufficiency
• Self promotion – in other words, don’t expect your boss to be

shouting about your successes on your behalf, (unless you are very fortunate) you have to raise your success profile yourself, which is something most people struggle with but could keep you in a job!

If you want to know more about developing your career, visit our Career & Personal Development website

In the current economic uncertainty, many people are still likely to be re-evaluating their future and careers and more managers have been changing jobs than before the recession!

Although it may not seem to be the best time to change career, if your chosen sector is experiencing extreme difficulties and new jobs are hard to come by then there is a strong argument that it could be a good time to consider new opportunities and even self employment and setting up your own business.

If you have had a reasonable redundancy pay off and you can survive for a good few months whilst training to learn new skills or building up your business, then maybe now is the time to take action.

Home based businesses are springing up everywhere and now could be the time to turn a hobby into a business and do something that you love and earn a living from it or using some entrepreneurial spirit and providing new products online or exploiting a gap in the market.

Many people are moving into careers where they feel that they can make a difference e.g. teaching and opportunities in the Not for Profit sector, where they have a real need for private sector commercial skill sets.

Although certain careers may need qualifications and re–training, research conducted by The Independent last year established

The top ten most popular second careers are:

1. Plumber

2. Teacher

3. Florist

4. PR Officer

5. Interior designer

6. Complementary medicine practitioner

7. Chef

8. Web designer

9. Nurse

10. Garden designer

If you want to know more about changing careers visit our Career & Personal Development website

Firstly some key considerations ……………

Q/ What is the purpose of a CV?

This seems like a simple and obvious question but amazing how many people of all levels and at all stages of their careers fail to grasp this!

A/ To get you to an interview. Forget anything else, as this is your primary objective

Q/ How long has your CV got to create the right impact with a recruiter or potential employer to get on the yes pile?

A/ A trained eye will take around 20 seconds to scan your CV. You therefore need to create an immediate impact and show initiative; otherwise they might not read past the first half page!

Key tips for ‘Killer CV’s’

1) Focus with the end in mind to get you on the ‘yes’ pile for the interview i.e. try to see things through the eyes of the reader/’buyer’. Make it easy and interesting for them to read your CV

2) Presentation is key. The aim is 2 pages of quality information. Use the space wisely with plenty of white space for ease of reading and bullet points to keep it short and specific, avoiding cluttered text

3) Start with a profile and bring your CV to life by bringing out your personality, work ethic and career objective, as (apart from your covering letter or email) this is your one chance to really sell yourself and create a positive impression

4) Write the CV in the 3rd person (not I) e.g. self motivated rather than I am self motivated

5) Focus on what you have achieved and contributed rather than what you have done. This is what employers want and shows initiative

6) Think carefully about your specific career achievements. Highlight achievements that you have gained recognition for, also aspects of importance to you that may have gone unnoticed

7) Flesh out your key skills, attributes and experience; relate these to your job roles or as a separate heading to stand out

If you have had a long career, concentrate on the last 10-15 years. Most employers aren’t too bothered about what happened before this

9) Highlight relevant work related training, qualifications and memberships of professional bodies

10) Highlight anything else that will put you in good light or shows that you have developed or demonstrated skills outside of the workplace e.g. voluntary work, outside interests and projects

11) It is not essential to highlight interests, however it is always useful to show that you have a life outside of work and it maybe that one of your interest could be a talking point at the interview especially if unusual or beneficial e.g. you like to keep fit

To find out more about CV’s and job search strategies visit our Career & Personal Development website