And the best part is that your employer already thinks that it could be.

While you’re trying desperately not to do anything that will change their minds, you may be paralysing yourself from performing at all.  So, consider the following:

Are you prepared for this workplace?

• Have your own pens, pad, diary, calculator, whatever you used to take to class, on hand (in satchel, whatever).  If nothing else, it will make you feel a bit more comfortable;
• Make sure you are listening and participating in induction.  This stuff could save your life if not just your job;
• Get fitted for your PPE (Personal Protective Equipment): shirts, trousers, gloves, glasses, or lab coat: make sure it’s a comfortable fit and make sure it’s yours before you decide to personalise;
• Go slow at first: your new co-workers expect it.  This will ensure that you won’t break anything through carelessness or rushing.  Remember, don’t break anything that you couldn’t reasonably afford to pay out of your day’s wage.

Is this workplace prepared for you?

• In an organised operation, your co-workers should be expecting you.  If they weren’t, take it easy: they need time to adjust;
• You may be assigned to a specific workspace, shown the lunchroom, even offered a locker for your things.  Make sure that you keep these in pristine condition: they are only a long for the duration;
• While you are new, take every opportunity to get involved in the workplace.  The organisation is a social organism and by putting you on the payroll, it has mutated.  You are now part of the whole.

Most important tips:

1. If you’re not sure, ask;
2. Think before you speak: it’s all very well for people to think that you’re stupid and undeserving, because you aren’t saying anything.  It would be a shame to open your mouth and remove all doubt;
3. Be yourself: there are many reasons that the manager or team leader selected you.  Don’t make them regret that decision; and
4. Have fun: welcome to your new life.

• What do you need? Be very clear about your requirements.
• Are you looking for someone who will solve a problem you have identified , or are you looking for someone who will assist you in identifying and clarifying a problem?
• With that in mind, what are the objectives of the project?  What are your expected results?
• Do you have a required completion date?  Is it realistic?
• What resources are you able to commit to the project in terms of time, budget, administration, and equipment?
• What level of involvement and interaction do you want from the consultant?
• What’s your budget?

Defining your project is a critical first step in the consultant selection process helping to create a positive project experience.  Determining the scope and objectives of the project enables you to establish a clear framework for your project within which you will expect the selected consultant to work. If during this process you’ve identified an ongoing need for your business, this is an ideal opportunity to test how effectively this need can be met within a specific period. It may help you view your perceived needs in a new light. Being clear about how you want the project to look from the start allows you to embark on the selection process with a clear mind, clear goals and important knowledge for selecting the right consultant for the project.

Want more than a new job?  Have you considered consulting?

If you’ve accumulated experience, competencies, an industry network, and a reputation that is valued, it might be a good time to set up on your own.  Many businesses, have divested their specialised staff, or not employed those advisors to begin with in order to manage overheads in the start-up phase of their operation.  To this end, with attrition, or tighter purse strings, specialty advisors may not be on hand to offer assistance to an organisation, nor their clients, in the way that they once had.

There appears a shift in the face of a proliferation of natural disasters for businesses to consider their exposure on Intellectual Property, Data Recovery, and to ‘Future Proof’ their organisation with a more long-term strategy.  Consultants tend to be a mechanism to support this type of future-proofing.

So, what kind of consultant might you be?  What specialty have you developed in your career?  What makes you different from other individuals offering services?  If, on paper, your credentials, years of experience, project and client list, and industry representation looks worthwhile, and that with a desire to master your own business, you should investigate establishing your name.

But be warned, scavenging clients from an existing or recent employer will bring you undone, as will contravening any contract stipulation that is still in place, or entering a partnership with another consultant who is less than reputable.

How do you know that you should be considering a consultancy?

How do you know that consultancy is not for you?

1. Am I enjoying my current role?
2. What do I want to achieve career-wise this year?
3. What are my longer term career goals?
4. How does my current role fit with these goals?
5. Do I have study plans I would like to pursue?
6. Are there other life events which will be taking center-stage this year?
7. What will I need to support these life events (in terms of time, finances and well-being)? Will my current role support or hinder me in this?

If after contemplating these sorts of questions, you’ve determined that a new job is in fact what you’re looking for, there are some further points to consider…

The Catch-22 about hiring new people is that the process can take precious time away from doing the things that make you money, which is the reason you decided to hire in the first place. So what do you do?

1. Consider the type of tasks that you need done to free you up (What are the critical processes?)
2. What processes need special skills?
3. What processes can be learned quickly?
4. What type of person is usually attracted to your employment advertisements? Do these people work out? If not, why not?
5. Is there a logic to the grouping of responsibilities in your organisation, or are they allocated according to the talents of the person in the role?

Before you tear your hair out, or something equally drastic, consider forming a planned checklist:

Now imagine your business or department operating with your new recruits; imagine going home on time and being able to focus on the task to get it done and meet those deadlines.  Feels good, doesn’t it?

Before you dive in head-first, work through your checklist for new jobs:

1. Is this an organisation that faithfully represents what your industry is about?
2. Is this an industry that you want to remain a part of in your next move?
3. Does the job seem too good to be true?
4. Why is there a vacancy that you’d not heard about?
5. To whom will you be reporting, and what is their reputation like?

1. Make sure your name is the focal point – you’re selling yourself and prospective employers need to know who that is.
2. Construct your resume so that the visual layout guides the seeker to your qualifications and strengths – employers tend to skim and scan resumes rather than read every word, so design your resume to maximise this.
3. Have consistent and polished formatting – use clear titles and headings, use one typeface in no more than three styles or sizes and ensure there is plenty of whitespace or use of contrast to enhance readability.
4. Align left or justify your paragraphing – it’s important that the reader’s eye has clean lines to follow.

Resume design alone won’t ensure you the job, but it will make sure your resume gets a closer look. Stay tuned for how to write about your career strengths and how to devise a career summary.

As this activity isn’t isolated to periods of downturn, and that it is important for organisations to conduct periodic market reviews, it is heartening that manufacturers are taking the opporutnity to recognise that their technical staff should be valued, based on performance, experience, competence and, let’s face it, rarity.

Many organisations will find that graduates in technical fields are fewer, and that as a consequence replacing their technical resources in time is going to be that much more difficult.  It is expected that the trend toward rewarding loyalty with salary will continue until these roles become monetarily attractive to perspective students of the field, and this is likely to take a while for the industry to catch up and outstrip other professions requiring a thorough grounding in science fundamentals.

So, for those in the rare position of holding degrees in science and particularly those from the ’old-fashioned’ branches: Maths, Chemistry, Physics and combinations thereof, consider yourselves in the box seat for the first time in nearly a century.

The grip of anxiety is strongest when we are at our most vulnerable: at a career change, significant life event, or approaching uncharted territory, and we are thrown.  To this end, there is an association of this fear with change, and so a behaviour develops that we face all change or challenges with the same queasiness.  Through analysis we can ease the feeling by falling back on innate abilities: research to understanding – it’s what geeks do.  The fear is not a result of pending change, but a fear of the unknown.

So, new tips for facing the career unknown:

• research roles, industry, company, city or whatever unknown is top of your list;
• identify the aspects that require more information such as role criteria; industry associations or standards; company policy or culture; or if you’re between roles, navigate the facts:
• what are the key factors for high performance in the field,
• what attributes do you have that can be maximised to present a unique investment opportunity for an employer, and
• what unknown would present with your arrival in a company: how can you minimise the unknown for others?

Give those around you the comfortable feeling of confidence in you, by removing the unknown for them.

Good luck, and let me know how you go…

Word on the street is that some sectors of the workforce and society-at-large are confused about the differences between Gen-X and Gen-Y.  The similarities are that they are younger than Baby-Boomers, have different perspectives about work and have a broader appreciation of technology in comparison with their older counterparts.  However, the groups are very different in their motivations, values, and experiences which needs to be made clear.  Here is a rough guide:

X-ers are those in their mid-30’s to late 40’s (sometimes a bit older), generally well-educated, well-travelled, conscientious and diligent at work, with a no-nonsense perspective in life.  They are adaptable to changing technology and are often change-agents in a business.  Your boss is likely to be from Generation X, so named for its enigmatic or indefinable attributes.

Generation Y, however, so named because it comes after X (read: equally indefinable) have ridden the X-ers coat-tails.  These are the much younger siblings who’ve grown up with technology and the belief that it was always there.  When Nirvana wrote “Smells Like Teen Spirit”, they were X-ers writing about the next generation who ‘are here now: entertain us.’  While Y’s have their attributes, there is an undeniable quality pervading their culture which reflects their having grown up in affluence: constant access to technology, media communication, short-cuts, and a more disposable way of life than all other previous generations.

In the workplace Gen-Y’s are likely to be in regular communication with friends and colleagues while on the phone or in meetings; they will look for short-cuts to execute a task usually by employing some application of a technology with which they are familiar.  This method may not be company approved, nor replicable by other staff, and may cut across other aspects of operation.

Gen-X will be those reviewing the tasks completed and explaining all the ways in which near enough is not good enough and the benefits of learning operations from first principles.  They know this, because they have assimilated all the old ways and adapted the new.  Gen-X are old before their time: they grew up in recession, graduated around a stock market crash, and earned degrees because there were no jobs to go to.  Gen-X have paved a high-way for Gen-Y to travel indiscriminantly, earn and spend at will, and enjoy (financial) freedoms to which they, themselves, had no access.

If you’re a Boomer and a little confused about who is who, ask yourself: which of these kids behave more like my parents (that’s X), and which do I relate to more (that’s Y)?