Surviving the New Year Resolutions

Do you have "thank God it's Monday" pinned above the desk? Not many people do. And yet research shows that for many of us the job we do is bound up in the people we are. We use our job to provide feelings of achievement, self-worth, feedback and friendship, not to mention gossip opportunities around the coffee machine. When our jobs are not going well this affects many other aspects of our lives.

Very few people change their jobs in the run up to Christmas but if you think that your return to work in the first dark days of the New Year will encourage thoughts about what you want to do for the rest of your life (or at least until you've saved up enough for that trip to the Caribbean), you should limber up now and get your CV out of the bottom drawer.

Of course, if you employ staff, then your priority will be to make sure they leave their CVs in the drawer and don't change jobs. So it could be that this is the right time to set some 'corporate' New Year resolutions and make sure your employees have no desire to leave by looking at work life balance issues in your organisation. Remember that happy employees make happy customers.

Even if you don't plan to move, it's worth remembering that ambitious people always have the components of their CV ready in case an interesting opportunity comes along.

Here are a few suggestions to help create a professional CV and make it easy for someone to choose you.

Most job advertisements will be drawn up using a person specification which sets out the competences (the skills, knowledge, experience and personal qualities) expected from the person doing this job. A careful scan of the advertisement will produce 5-6 competence areas relevant to this job. Use them as headings to sort out your own experience into categories which make it immediately obvious that you are ideally suited to the post. Under each heading:

Don't make the selectors search for key information and never, never, NEVER get lazy and use the same CV for more than one application. Reorganising your career information is a simple matter using modern word processing - why not use that quiet period between Christmas and New Year to create your own CV database under some likely headings? Aren't most companies you know looking for flexible, innovative leaders of change and enablers of people?

Having seized the attention of the selectors by showing them how perfectly you fit their person specification, re-assure them with a little chronological information which illustrates how you have planned your career path.

And, finally, remember that over 70% of jobs will never be advertised. If you really want to change your job, you should be looking at networking opportunities and using the New Year to talk to contacts and colleagues about the job changes going on in their industries.

If you'd like to think seriously about understanding your own job preferences, updating your CV, developing or changing your own career path, you can get further details of 4-consulting's programme of individual career workshops from ros.southcott@4-consulting.com She can also help you to ensure your employees are not the ones dusting off their CV's and looking for work somewhere else.

Ros Southcott is a director of 4-consulting, click here to view her profile.