The fruit of a full Career Assessment will be a Career Objective. It provides the direction you need as you plan your job-search campaign. It takes into consideration four Factors – your strengths, needs, values and the market-place.

 Your Strengths. The best way to assess your strengths is to look at your Career Achievements and identify the Business & Technical Skills, the Market Knowledge and the Characteristics you deployed on each occasion. Select a minimum of 20 achievements where there was a Situation you were presented with, where you took Action and where there was a quantifiable Result.  Make sure the achievement took place within one year.  Examine each achievement and pull out the dominant strengths which contributed to your success. Gather all Strengths together and you will be amazed at how several of these occur time and time again.

Your Needs. We all have needs. For example, all of us need to eat and have some form of home to live in! The majority of us need to earn money. Without an independent source of income, we have to earn a salary to pay for what we need and to put aside for when we are too old to work. Many of us will be responsible for others. Maybe we have wives, husbands, partners, children, parents or friends who we need to consider when deciding on our career objectives. You should think in the medium / long term and list what your needs are. You must choose a career which satisfies them!

Your Values. It is a poor person, indeed, who does not live their life by a set of values. We all have values whether they be spiritual, moral, political or concerning the quality of live. List the personal values that are important to you. You cannot successfully do anything which conflicts with these. The checklist in the link lists some values to choose from and you might include others. Your final list should not exceed the four which are most important to you.

The Market Place. Your Strengths should be directed towards satisfying a need in the Market Place. Conversely, your target market should satisfy your needs and values. Researching and identifying suitable scenarios is an ongoing process and never really ends. 

Make your Deductions.  Study all fours Factors.  Compare the needs of the Market Place with the Strengths you can offer. Juxtapose your Values against your Needs.  Start to draw your conclusions in preparation for the Second Step - Determining your Career Objective.

Whether you have recently lost your job or want to move on anyway, you may be wondering what to do first.  Do you write a CV, fire off some applications, contact the recruiters or what?  It can be overwhelming.

Do not be overwhelmed.  Take reassurance that there is a logical sequence of events and a structure to securing your next job.

There are four steps which anyone – consciously or unconsciously – with or without a career consultant – will need to take:

1. Assessing the key Factors which will help you decide on your future.

2. Determining your Career Objective. The Five-Year Plan.

3. Preparing for your launch into the Market-Place.

4. Conducting the Job-Search Campaign.

Over the next fortnight, we will examine and discuss each step.  Watch out for our Blogs and take part in the discussion by responding or by asking questions.

The 2011 Job Market is changing each month and has its own dynamic.  As career management consultants and currently providing outplacement to hundreds of people in both the public and private sectors, we are interested in your own experience and views.

Web networking is no longer a new subject but the practice will certainly grow during the year ahead.  Executive search recruiters are definitely using the web to build lists of potential candidates for their assignments.  As Louisa Peacock, at the Daily Telegraph, writes: “Use web networking to get employers to come to you”.  Our readers might have realised that we are great fans of Louisa’s articles and occasionally we like to alert people to a particular gem:

 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/jobs/8240912/Careers-advice-use-the-internet-to-attract-headhunters.html

The important message is to build up your profile online.  Sign up to professional networking sites like LinkedIn and join the LinkedIn groups.  Become an active player on several sites, starting discussions, responding to other users and building relationships with people in similar disciplines.

As career management and outplacement consultants, we talk to recruiters.  We know that they look at LinkedIn and similar sites to identify candidates.  Read Louisa’s article and she will advise how to become “searchable” and what keywords to use and avoid.

We strongly recommend everyone to make this a New Year resolution.  Build your Web Profile and get noticed!!

 The Spectator had a great leader article on the 1st January which is worth sharing.

http://www.spectator.co.uk/politics/all/6576518/leader-winter-sunshine.thtml

Every day, during 2011, 200,000 people will be lifted out of extreme poverty.  This is not driven by any government development or charity outreach.  It is driven by global capitalism, just like the transformation of India, China and other emerging markets.  As the Spectator says “we are living in a golden age of poverty reduction, yet we seldom hear about it”.  It’s not all bad news and The New Year is a good moment to take stock.

In the UK, government spending is only being cut by 4% over the four years.  At Cepec, we are working with a wide variety of public sector outplacement clients whose jobs have recently been made redundant.  We know how tough it is for them.  Nonetheless, the cut to the government payroll is not likely to exceed 400,000.  Meanwhile, the same forecast envisages 1.5 million will be created in the wider economy.  Believe it or not, this year is predicted to be the third most prosperous – ever – for the UK.

Our environment is improving.  Britain is becoming cleaner and the level of unpleasant chemicals in the atmosphere has tumbled by a 25% in ten years.  We emit 20% less carbon than 50 years ago.  The technology we employ is cleaner and greener.

The globalisation of commerce is bringing prosperity to countries, whose poverty rates have fallen as their economies grow.  The proportion of the world population which is malnourished has halved since 1970.  The tally fell by 10%, only last year.

Medicine has made great strides.  Worldwide infant mortality has halved in a decade.  HIV infection and death has reduced by over a fifth in ten years.

The Spectator argues that the world is becoming wealthier, cleaner, healthier and fairer.  It suggests that few of these sweeping advances are thanks to the action of governments but, as the Queen said at the United Nations last July “because millions of people around the world wanted them”.

So free people, co-operating through a free market, are creating jobs at home, fighting poverty abroad and nurturing innovation, without imposing a mortal threat to Mother Nature.  It’s going to be a tough one, but let’s wish each other a really Happy New Year.