All About Jobs

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Wherever you look these days, there are stories of staff cutbacks, mergers and job losses. It’s certainly a bad time to be looking for a job.

According to The Australian, in the USA, “Initial claims for jobless benefits jumped 32,000 to a seasonally adjusted 516,000 in the week ended November 8, the Labour Department said. That’s the highest since September 29, 2001. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires had expected claims to only rise 4000.

In Australia, the situation isn’t much better. Westpac Banking Corporation is taking over St George Bank and the Finance Sector Union has warned the job losses could be … up to 5000 positions under threat. (Read more here.)

I’ve had a voluntary redundancy, but despite experiencing five or six organisational restructures, have never been made redundant. Have you been through a redundancy? How did you survive? We’d love to hear about your experiences.

Robin
“Think success - Achieve success”

How many times have you had a couple of months to prepare for your new job? Never, right? You simply rocked up, signed a load of paperwork, were introduced to your work team, attended a couple of orientation sessions and put your head down and bottom up and got to work.

Barack Obama, president elect of the US has won the job, but doesn’t take over until January. What do you think he’d be doing now? My guess is he’s getting up to speed with current policies and procedures and deciding who will take place in his new government and cabinet. Then, in January, he’ll be able to hit the ground running. It’s not the orientation program most of us experience, is it?
But then, none of the jobs you or I have held were as large as this one.

Let us know what you think Obama will be doing between now and January? We’d love to know.

Robin
“Think success - Achieve success”

Given that a firm’s largest expense is employing staff (around 80%), it’s no surprise that when the going gets tough, workers are the first to get ditched from their jobs.

In today’s news media are reports of just two of dozens, if not hundreds, of organisations that are sacking staff to reduce their operating costs:

Optus restructure to cut 115 jobs
Razor gangs eye more cuts as universities shift focus

Additionally, other indicators are that there has been a fall in retail sales and a subsequent reduction in the number of staff employed in that sector.

Now is the toughest time to be unemployed and of course, if you are one of the lucky ones who has a job, there is often the stress of knowing that it might be gone tomorrow or the week after.

Today’s question is: do you have a back-up plan should you be one of those to lose your job? What alternatives are there for you to put food on your table? How can you reduce your living costs to accommodate a lower income?

Robin
“Think success - Achieve success”

Your free professional SEEK Direction report is waiting for you at SEEK, one of Australia’s largest employment agencies. Get it online today.

According to SEEK, “SEEK Direction is a sophisticated assessment tool prepared by trained psychologists, that’s simple to use and easy to understand. It has questions in six sections covering ability, experience, skills and your ideal job.”

When you finish answering the assessment questions, SEEK will provide a comprehensive report in Word 2002 format that you can download and read.

These types of self-assessment instruments can be very handy in helping you understand yourself and your career preferences. If you haven’t done one before, I highly recommend you take advantage of this opportunity today.

Click here now to commence the assessment process.

Robin
“Think success - Achieve success”

PS: Check out the oil industry/offshore jobs now, Click Here!


These days it’s not only mothers who work and care for children. There are also many fathers who are single parents, so the article I found by Alyson Preston at Monster.Com will be of interest to both groups, irrespective of its title.

Particularly if you are a supporting parent, it’s well worth a read. You’ll find the article here.

I’ve emailed a copy to my daughter as only yesterday were we discussing why my grandson won’t make his bed, clean his teeth and get his bag ready for school like clockwork every school day. He’s six going on seven and at that age the mind tends to wander (Good God, it wanders at MY age!).

Let me know what you think of this article?

Robin
“Think success - Achieve success”

Most employment agencies and many other organisations with job vacancy sites have a job alerts feature where you enter details of your email address, the job types in which you are interested and then they send you alert messages.

Instead of having to search for jobs, the job information comes to you.

Here’s a couple of examples:

http://www.careerone.com.au/my-account/get-jobs-by-email

http://jobs.tas.gov.au/email/index.php?Jobs_Session=0312b9f4e2866c03019ca47761a52443

This is a really useful feature you need to use as part of your job searching strategy. If you aren’t using it, do some surfing today to find out where you can access job alerts.

Robin
“Think success - Achieve Success”

Technorati Profile

It’s always smart work to carry out at least some level of research about your prospective employer. There are numbers of ways you can do that and some are mentioned here.

Keep your eyes on the media if your prospective employer (PE) is a big name firm like Coles, KMart, or it’s a public organisation like a council or government department. News items about staffing problems, industrial strikes and other PR can provide excellent insights into an organisation.

If that type of public information is not available, start looking for such things as Annual Reports. Annual Reports are a great source of information about expenditure on training, staff turnover and other stats that can provide excellent intelligence. Some will also include details of their future plans, eg, to increase or reduce staff.

An organisation’s Internet site will usually have some useful information and might also include downloads such as copies of Corporate Plans, Capability Statements, staffing documents and so on.

There are literally dozens of ways you can check out a prospective employer … you can even ask existing staff what the firm is like to work for.

Make sure you do your homework both before you apply for a job and after you have been offered a job. Do it before you accept the offer.

Robin
“Think Success - Achieve Success”