Planning Your Next Career Move
Facts of gaining new employment
- Changing jobs is widely recognised as being almost as stressful as a divorce, a family death or moving house.
- According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the average time to gain new employment from the time you apply for a job is 13 weeks.
- Time spent whilst unemployed costs you and your family (I know that sounds obvious, but many don’t realise it until its too late).
- The longer you’re unemployed, the less confident you are.
- The pressure to find employment to support your family compounds things and then your ability to take advantage of a good opportunity when it presents is greatly reduced.
What happens to job seekers in most cases:
- You start thinking about changing jobs within the last 12 months and have a vague idea of what to do.
- Look at getting qualifications in the last 2-6 months before leaving your current job, or do it afterwards.
- You have no influence on your career progression as its too late to change things.
- One month out you start thinking about a CV/Résumé and you piece something together yourself.
- You send your CV/Résumé to many advertised job vacancies.
- You get frustrated when you get little or no response to your applications.
- Your confidence suffers because your ego has taken a hit when you get the feeling that your skills aren’t wanted.
- Stress starts to build on you and your family.
- You lower your expectations and feel that you will have to settle for a lesser job because you can’t break into the new job market.
- You blame other factors for the dilemma you’re in.
- You are losing money fast because you are unemployed.
- Some will then seek professional assistance to get a quality written application to get to a job interview.
- Even less will engage a Career Coach to reduce the stress and gain meaningful employment quicker.
- How long could you live off your savings? Is this what you wanted to use your savings for?
The optimum process of gaining a new job:
- Start thinking about changing jobs 2-5 years out and have clarity around it.
- Identify what qualifications will make you competitive in that market and seek to gain these.
- Find a role with your current employer that will align to good career progression to the new job you want to target.
- Start to populate your CV/Résumé with achievements.
- Seek professional assistance to construct your written application and know how to best promote yourself to win the job you’re after (write for the reader).
- Start canvassing your network 12 months out.
- Start looking at job vacancies 4-5 months out.
- Rehearse how to promote yourself and negotiate a great starting salary, without pricing yourself out of the market.
- Choose which job offer you will accept.
Benefits of the above:
- The stress involved with changing jobs is almost nil.
- The time taken between jobs is at your discretion (you can start straight away or decide to take a break between jobs).
- You take advantage of gaining the best possible salary to provide for and support you and your family.
- The job you end up with is satisfying and fulfilling.
In our experience, over 90% of all ex-Defence people could have acquired a better job on a higher salary if they simply invested in some of our professional career transition services
Redundancy
For those who have been made redundant (for whatever reason), all the above will be compounded even more (timeframes and emotions). The emotional toll this process takes (in almost every case) is far worse than anticipated.
In most cases the best person doesn’t win the job!!! It’s normally the person who can best ‘play the Job Search game’. This is where proper external help is critical.
This isn’t a sales pitch to use our CV/Résumé and/or Career Coaching services. It is designed to highlight that if you do things right from the beginning, it doesn’t have to be stressful and it can not only save you money by getting into a new job faster, it can potentially make you money by knowing how to promote yourself better and get a higher starting salary as a result.
Its not too late to get help.
Contact us to explore funding options for our CV/Résumé and Career Coaching services through Defence, or DVA, or RSL, etc.
Other resources to help in your transition are available free in our Members Area or browse our Transition Services.
Phone us on 1300 366 104, or email info@transciv.com.au