One of the British comedians chosen was Jimmy Carr.  Now this was interesting for me because I remember seeing Jimmy perform many years ago when he was just starting out.  It was in my local pub “The Catcher In The Rye” in North London.  The pub manager had just introduced comedy nights on Sunday nights and Jimmy was performing at the very first one.  Now I like Jimmy Carr, but I’ll always remember that night as he had a tough old time.  The members of the audience sat next to what passed for a stage were giving him some terrible stick.  I thought he was really funny but they obviously weren’t ‘getting’ his comedy and weren’t afraid to tell him so….in very rude terms!  I also remember when he left the stage he was blushing bright red.

Now this was about 10 or 11 years ago.  I’ve watched Jimmy’s career get bigger and bigger.  In fact it didn’t seem like 5 minutes after that night in my local pub that he was appearing on television and doing really well.  For me this shows that he must have tremendous amounts of self-belief and persistence to deal with nights like the one I saw.  I know some people might be saying, “Well that was only one night and in the grand scheme of things that’s not much.”  But how many other disappointing nights did he have to endure?  And more to the point, how many people would have the balls to get up on stage in the first place and do stand up comedy?  Let alone endure a night (or maybe several nights) like that one, and still come back for more?

Your attitude isn’t the only ingredient in being successful.  You have to be good at what you do.  Despite the ridiculous comments that Jimmy got from some of the audience that night, it was obvious he was genuinely funny.  But the idea of an overnight success is a myth.  The young performers you see on talent shows such as the X Factor have usually been performing for years, since they were young kids.  This is particularly true when people are changing career.  Despite what people want to hear, career change can take a while.  It might involve taking stepping stones from one career to another, picking up new skills each time, all relevant to the career you eventually want to do.  But if you show a bit of persistence, self-belief and patience, then you can really get some amazing results.  Who knows….in 10 years time you could go from performing in front a huge audience at Madison Square Garden in New York.  You’ll never know unless you give it a try.

Quite often the major problem with people looking for work is that they don’t know how to market themselves. They are more than competent enough to do a role, but the way they present themselves to potential employers doesn’t make the most of their abilities.  One of the main reasons is that they talk about things which simply aren’t that relevant to the job they are going for now.  The “So What?” question should always be asked when talking about  something on your CV or when mentioning your capabilities to an employer.  Why should they care?  What has what you have achieved in previous roles got to do with what they are looking for?  That should be the first step in appraising how to contact a company to look for any opportunities.  See if what you have to offer is a good match for what they are looking for, and if it is, make sure you get that across to them.  But one way of making yourself stand out is to get them to see the person behind the achievements.

So it’s not just a case of what you have achieved.  It’s also about how you achieved it.  What is your personal style?  Your potential employers are going to be employing a person, not a robot.  So give them an indication of what your personal way of going about things.  Have you got a calm, understated style that brings out the best in people below you.  Are you more extravert and action orientated and like to be very much in control.  When you think about bosses you’ve worked for, whether you have got on with them or not has not just been down to the results they have got.  It has also been about their style in managing you.

A useful anacronym for describing the experience of working with you is STAR.  This stands for:

• Situation
• Task
• Action
• Result

What was the general situation at work, and the particular task in hand that needed sorting?  What action did you specifically take?  Not the action taken by the team as a whole, or other department members.  But what action did you personally take?  And  as mentioned above, this includes your personal way of doing things.   Then the final part is what results were achieved as a result of the actions you took.

So, remember, when  you are contacting firms to look for work….you’re a human being, not a robot!

I totally understand that position as well.  In my previous career working in legal admin, I used to use 2 routes for finding work.  The first was to send off my CV in response to a job advert.  The CV was written by myself of course, and didn’t really sell me that well.  But it didn’t matter too much because jobs were easy to come by so if I didn’t get the position I was going for at the moment, then another one would come along fairly soon.  The other method was to use recruitment agencies.  There were 3 agencies that specialised in Trade Mark work, the area that I used to work in.  I had good relationships with people at the agencies and they wouldn’t take too long to find me the kind of work that I was looking for.  So generally there was little stress in finding something new that I was a good fit for.

But I was using them during the boom times.  However the game has changed now.  Work is not so easy to come by and the average job seeker has to be that little bit smarter to get the position they want.  There is so much competition for places that sending off your CV in response to job adverts is going to put you up against a vast number of other qualified candidates.  And if you haven’t got help with writing your CV then your task will be even harder.  If you spend the rest of your time using recruitment agencies or using job websites, then, again, there will be an awful lot of competition.  You’ll just be one of the herd struggling to stand out.  Have you every stood in a crowd at a concert or a sports fixture?  How difficult would it be for someone to pick you out?  Well that’s how hard it is to stand out in a congested job market if you’re using the same routes as everyone else.

But the good news is, it’s not impossible to find work.  With a little bit of know how and application, the work opportunities will come.  For them to come though, you need to know what you’re doing.  If you’re spending the vast majority of your job hunting time using the methods described above, then I’ve got news for you.  It’s not the job market that’s to blame for your inability to find work. It’s your overreliance on old fashioned ways of finding work.  A career coach can help you with the strategies that will work in the current job market.  But you probably won’t know what help they can give you yet.  As you don’t know what you don’t know when it comes to job hunting.

The problem with ageism is one of perception.  It’s not taking a candidate on their individual merits.  Instead, it’s lumping them in with an age group and assigning all the perceived negative perceptions of that age group to the individual concerned.  So to combat ageism, you need to elegantly distance yourself from those negative perceptions, and move away from the group so that you’re seen as an individual.  If you’re part of a group of very similar levels of skills and talent, then chances are an employer will take someone younger than you.  Whilst it’s illegal to discriminate on the grounds of age, it still goes on but isn’t overtly expressed by an employer.  For obvious reasons!

• Rejection on the grounds of age can be due to:
• Fears that you are not IT savvy enough for the modern world
• Concerns that someone your age will not be willing to managed by someone younger than them
• Your ideas will be outdated in the modern workplace

If you’re looking for a new job in a new company, then the concerns can be:

• Worries that you won’t stay in a job for too long.  That it’s only a stop gap until you get something better, even if you’ve expressly said you want a less stressful job and a better work/life balance
• Concerns that you’re overqualified and will soon get bored with the job and will lose motivation
• Fears that you won’t be happy for long on a reduced level of pay

If you’re just applying for jobs via recruitment agencies or by sending off your CV in response to job adverts, then you’re still amongst the herd.  You’ll face lots of competition in the current job market, and will many applicants for one position, unfortunately on way for employers to reduce the stack of applications is by weeding out some applicants on the issue of age.  You need to get seen as an individual, with your own individual strengths, skills and experience that you can bring to the job.  You want your ‘perceived value’ to increase and to stand out from the crowd.

So start thinking about:

1. Being seen as a problem solver.  Which company wouldn’t sit up and take notice of someone who has the ability to deal with their major issues.
2. Stressing the benefits that a person of your experience brings.  There are also some negative perceptions that a younger person can have, so stress that you’re a mature person in a positive way.
3. Look to address any of the negative perceptions you are likely to encounter because of your age and argue your case as to why they don’t apply to you so they won’t be an issue.

There’s no point pretending that the issue isn’t there.  Despite the anti-discrimination legislation, it’s still a problem and it won’t be going away any time soon.

But this train of thought got me thinking.  What other areas of my life do I get ahead of myself in?  And once I asked myself this question, the answers came flooding in!  I’ve been like that with my business several times over the years, particularly when I was starting out.  In fact, in the early days, one of my biggest problems was my frustration that things were taking so long.  Instead of just taking action and moving forward, I kept on beating myself up about my supposed lack of progress.  Without realising that most coaches take an awful long time to get into the position of having their business as their full-time source of income.

I also have a habit of getting one area of my life into shape but then niggling at myself for not having it 100% perfect.  I’ve changed around my social life quite a bit in the last couple of years and enjoy a much wider range of activities.  But instead of giving myself a pat on the back for this, and recognising a positive achievement, I tended to look at what I still wanted to do with my social life and take for granted what I had done.  I’m not saying you should break out a bottle of champagne for every little achievement, but sometimes you can lose sight of how far you have come by constantly looking at what you feel is missing.  So again, accept where you are currently, give yourself some credit for what you have done so far, and then move forward to where you want to go.

I’ve started reading several books in the last year or so about living in the Now.  Rather than going back to a Past that has already gone, or constantly worrying over a Future that only exists in your mind, just live in the Now.  And I guess finally the penny is dropping.  It’s so easy to mull over things from your past that have upset you, or fear about what dangers the future might bring.  But the more I accept the present and deal with it, the less I’ll have this tornado of negative thoughts blowing around in my brain.  Once I accepted the shape I was in last night and just got on with the run, the easier it actually got.  And the more fun!

I can easily see this approach reaping dividends in people who are changing career.  If you are making the move from one field to another which is completely different, then the change is likely to take some time.  You need to prove that you can achieve certain results and are adept at that work.  But if you refrain from beating yourself up at any perceived lack of progress and just take the action to move yourself forward, then the journey to your new career will be that bit more enjoyable and probably seem an awful lot quicker.  Here’s to 2012, where I’m actually present in 2012, rather than living in a different era!

People’s negative emotions can flow from worries about how they fear they might cope with the situation. Will they be able to survive financially if they don’t quickly find another job? If they are above 50, they might have further worries that they will be considered past their prime and that hiring companies will look past them and go for younger candidates. What about supporting a family? How will they cope with that whilst they’re out of work?

There is also the sense of identity that a lot of people feel with their work. If someone is a high flying executive and then they are laid off and are struggling to find work, then that may really hit their self-worth. But you don’t need to be a high flier to associate a lot of your self-worth with your job. Many people feel a pride in what they do and to have that taken away from them, against their will, can be quite hard for them to deal with. As I mentioned earlier, it’s not just a case of looking at the bare facts. What someone’s job means to them and how much they link their personal identity to it is an individual’s choice. There is the question of whether it is wise to link your self-worth to things outside of you but the fact remains that many people do this with their job. So coping with the knock to their sense of identity can take some time for them to come to terms with.

The circumstances in which someone left their work can also play a part in their emotional state. In quite a lot of cases bosses use redundancies as an excuse to get rid of staff that they don’t personally get on with, rather than strictly looking at it in terms of who are the best performers and should be kept on. If someone feels, whether rightly or wrongly, that their bosses used redundancies as an excuse to get rid of them, then they may be feeling quite a lot of bitterness. Going straight back into another job may not be that straight forward, if they haven’t come to terms with their intense feelings of anger and frustration. Their emotional issues may need to be dealt with first, before they can move back into the workplace.

Considering some of the intense feelings that people may experience when they have been made redundant, it is always a good idea to look for support. Trying to deal with all this on their own is probably not the best idea. Depending on how someone feels their friends or family would react to their need for emotional support, it may be a good idea to talk these issues through with someone who is outside their usual family or social circle. Whatever works basically.

There is also another angle to emotional issues brought up by redundancies. And that is with the people who have been kept on at work and survived the redundancy chop. They may be feeling some guilt that they have been allowed to stay, whilst some of their friends and former work colleagues have been shown the door. They may also have bigger workloads as a result and this can increase their stress levels.

So you can see that redundancy is more than just another job statistic. There is an emotional side to it that can affect the person laid off, their friends and family, and their former work colleagues who are still working at their former workplace. Which goes to show the importance of work to us and how much it means on a personal level.

I have made the first gaff, inadvertently-insulting-a-woman-about-her-age, myself.  Ouch!   This horror occurred when I was working for Kingston University. 

Allow me to relate … (better put any hot drinks down before reading).

Here we go.  One summer afternoon I spied a senior female university colleague walking down the street in Surbiton in the company of an attractive young woman.  Later that day, I overheard the same colleague talking about her daughter in the staff room, something about how much she had enjoyed seeing her. 

 ’Oh’, I chirped,  ‘I saw you two together in Surbiton this afternoon!’ 

‘Which ‘two’?', asked the colleague, frowning.

‘You know, you and your daughter.’

The frown turned to a tensioning of facial and fist muscles into a sort of pre-attack posture. 

‘That was Anna from Budapest University’, breathed the apparition, murderous intent now also appearing in the eyes.  ‘We are exactly the same age.’

(Staff room falls silent, apart from the gasps and sudden intakes of breath).

‘Well, ermm’, I lied, ‘I must be mixing you up with someone else.’ 

 Too late.   I was now a marked man.   A social faux pas even worse than the famous ‘and when’s the baby due?‘  Classic.

 Career coaches report that clients present with a great variety of problems looking for a solution, but in a large minority of cases it is not the role itself that needs changing, but one or more specific variables affecting the job.

One of the most significant variables is work environment. Sadly, many people experience a range of management failures than can cause a debilitating lack of ‘feel good’ factor around turning up to work. In the worst cases the loss of confidence brought about by such a negative environment can result in people giving up years of experience and training just to escape from an unhappy environment.

Another pressure point is work-life balance. A poorly organised workplace or one in which employee wellbeing is given very little priority can turn work into drudgery, hold back promising careers and demoralise talent.

Because of other pressures on their time, employees often need increasing flexibility from employers to help them to cope with their busy and eventful lives, but unfortunately many employers seem less not more capable of supporting flexible working, and this is a cause of considerable strain.

Often the cause of unhappiness at work can be related to mission creep or shifting goalposts in terms of the specific job that an employee is asked to do. In this and many other cases, the answer is often to look around for an organisation that is more leading edge, or more in tune with desired professional values.

It is difficult sometimes for people to see the wood for the trees in circumstances where one’s career seems to be stalling. This is when individuals might consider getting help from a coach as well as peer advisors and mentors.

Workoco groups provide the ideal setting for the consideration of career factors and potential pressure points, and coming up with a considered and evidence based solution, rather than embarking upon a transition which may be more radical than necessary.

Firms like Microsoft have made a pledge to create new jobs in the UK (4,000 in the case of Microsoft), but many of these are earmarked for the young unemployed job seeker fresh out of school or college.  Newsnight looked at case studies of how former public sector employees were coping with losing their job, and fixed them up with ‘interviews’ with business people, so-called ‘Job Market Mentors’ including Dragon’s Den’s, Deborah Meaden.

Despite yet another sideswipe at public sector values by a Dragon’s Den-type jurors including, there were some interesting and valid points raised by the ‘mentors’.  Each one expressed concerns about public sector expectations around salary and working conditions, possible lack of flexibility, being a  ‘box ticker’ and the dangers of a lack of private sector experience, especially if the individual concerned had been dealing exclusively with public sector stakeholders.   

Nicola Horlick, CEO of Bramdean Asset Management spoke quite creatively with her mentee.   She recommended that she should take out her ‘contact list’ and think who she could talk to and use her contacts to convince businesses that she can fulfil her dream of being a corporate social responsibility consultant for them.

Stephen Uden, Head of Skills and Economic Affairs of Microsoft UK spoke of the particular challenge for a man of 57 if he wanted to pick up new skills.   His mentee said in his interviews he was suspected of being on the ‘wind down to retirement.’  He was advised not to undersell himself as employers are not prepared to allow people to ‘trade down’ to a job which is beneath them.   Fortunately, the mentee was interested in food and food service, so he too was interested in a start up business like a craft bakery.

Whereas there was recognition from the mentors that passion is key, they were very quick to suggest jobs and roles to their mentees, and not all the suggestions were on target, for example the youth worker was visibly underwhelmed at the prospect of working in ‘HR’.

The Workoco 6 Steps programme involves the energy of passion, but allows the work on career options to be driven by the group member so that they feel their decision making is entirely under their control.   Many successful people, like the Dragons are used to telling other people what to do, but perhaps not so hot at giving them the room to find out what’s best for them.   However, for those who are interested in Deborah Meaden’s top tips on job hunting, they can be found on the Newsnight Website.

Outside PizzaExpress in Wardour Street

The smell and the taste had me hooked at the time, and I still look forward to going to PizzaExpress because I know their offering is consistently good.  Of course, this consistency is not achieved by accident.  I recently had a chat with restaurant manager and restaurant opening trainer Vasken Jermakian in which Vasken explained how he likes to build a team for a big opening day.

 Vasken told me that he has an area support remit for PizzaExpress as well as running his own restaurant.  Team development is part of his responsibilities along with managing the opening of a new restaurant, making sure that everything is ready, making sure that they open on time, etc.  His role ends when he hands over the restaurant to the new manager.  Once the team members are hired, they are trained by PE restaurant trainers in various restaurants as well as in the restaurant where Vasken is based.  The hiring process starts 3 to 4 months before the opening date and the new hires are trained in several restaurants to give them exposure to different patterns of trade.

 What is so interesting from the Workoco perspective is that to do his job effectively, Vasken helps to bring out their ‘Passion for Food and Life’ as they call it in PizzaExpress; this passion is found in the way they treat their customers, and the way that they make their food.  It is a passion that’s infectious and that’s why PizzaExpress is regularly featured in the ‘Top 100 Places to Work’.  

 This is part of Vasken’s approach.  He opened a new restaurant 6 months ago and took on about 30 people a mix of new hires and of experienced team members already working for the company.  As he told me, a new team do meet each other in the various training days but their interaction is limited as they need to follow the various training schedules.  ‘On this occasion I thought it would be a nice to get the whole team together, so for this group I thought I would take our group to visit some of our oldest restaurants, including the one in Wardour Street which was the first restaurant which opened in 1965.’

London is fast and busy.  Most of the team have probably been to PE restaurants or seen them, but few realise that probably there is a PE in their neighbourhood or that they may walk past one on daily basis without giving it any attention.  ‘We made a day of it.  Afterwards I took them to PE Greek Street and onwards to the PizzaExpress Jazz Club / restaurant on Dean street.’   (This was a fascinating reveal!  I’m dying to go there.)

In front of the PizzaExpress Jazz Club in Dean Street

‘We ended the day visiting a couple of other establishment which I like.  One of my favourites is ‘Princi’, an Italian Bakery owned by Alan Yau who also owned the noodle chain Wagamama.  Hakkasan is also his and is amazing!’

 ‘I let our people engage with the staff who are working there, so they can connect with them.  This is a role reversal where they see what it is like to ask questions from the customer point of view and how important it is to get an authoritative answer full of product knowledge.  They really bombard the staff with questions, like finding out about the ingredients, how food is prepared, etc.  It is an eye opener for them to witness quality at work and to see how things do not stop.’

 Vasken will go back there sometimes when he has new team members or someone who needs re energising.  He shows them the restaurants and tell them a bit of their history, invariably ending up visiting several restaurants and trying food in several establishments, having a chat with the waiters and managers of the places visited.  Just listening to Vasken reawakened my passion for food and life; I realised it’s high time I retraced my steps with my own children and took them down to PizzaExpress in Wardour Street.