Your Reputation is Your Career

While career advice is awash with phrases such as ‘Earning Potential’, ‘Future-focused’, and ‘Valued Investment’, most vocational mentors will rally around the fundamental concept, even traditional or old-fashioned ideas, of building a reputation in an industry, market or workplace.

For business owners, there is no business without reputation and this is the same reason small-medium-sized businesses are extremely careful about those they recruit to the team.  It is critical to any busiiness that they project the company ethos in every facet of contact, performance, or representation.

Trainees and their Advocates

It has become apparent, through information presented at a recent conference for Manufacturing Skills, that parents of students have taken an active role in supporting and procuring training and certificate qualifications for apprentices.

This is a significant cultural departure from days gone by when parents knew little of the apprenticeship scheme, unless they were former graduates or participants, and that students (their children) were left to their own devices to manage their own cadetship/indentured arrangements/livelihoods.  Far be it now for parents not to have a firm grasp of the inner workings of the OP system, QCS examiniations, school-based traineeships, or even a dotted line to the Group Training Organisation.

News & Views

Science & Technology Executive Roles

Notice how in Seek and other web-based job advertisement facilities, there are Jobs, and then there are Executive Roles and the sub-categories for Jobs include Manufacturing, Transport and Logistics, Accounting, HR, Administration, Science and Technology, etc., yet in Executive Roles, there is no category for Science & Technology, yet there are categories for Administration and HR, for example.  Is it that organisations aren’t offering Executive Roles in Science & Technology, or is it that once in that salary bracket, the role is no longer considered to be in the field of Science & Technology?  What is this saying about science in Australia, or even globally?  Do we still wonder why people aren’t attracted to Science & Technology fields, or do we take it for granted that to avoid being monetarily disadvantaged, one must leave the field of Science and Technology?

Credit-Crunch First-timers

For those of us old enough to remember the ‘Recession That We Had to Have’, and the employment climate of the time, this ‘Credit-Crunch’ seems to be the ‘Slow Down We Were Destined to Have’. As a graduate in the early 90’s, I can attest to the fact that there were no jobs, not for graduates, not for anyone and so ours was the generation of either conforming or reforming in the workplace.

As a gentle tip for those entering the workforce at this time, be it from school, trade qualifications or university, consider your best options and make the most of that which distinguishes you from the rest of the bunch, if you want that job. Most of all, if you don’t want that job, don’t apply: the industry is small and everyone knows everyone else – even if you don’t think so.