Wherever you are in your career, it can be difficult navigating alone. This is where a career mentor can help. “A career mentor is someone who shares their knowledge and expertise with you in order to help you set goals, fix problems, and make good choices along your career path,” says thebalancecareers.com/ The non-profit careers organisation [Read more…]
Nearly two thirds of us believe that who you know still matters more than what you know when it comes to career success. But just because you don’t have the right old school tie, that doesn’t necessarily mean your career path is blocked – after all, we can meet people and make connections throughout our [Read more…]
Tidying up has become a craze, thanks to the Japanese guru of de-cluttering, Marie Kondo, and her KonMari method. Her Netflix show and best-selling book have encouraged millions of people to chuck out the old and settle into a calmer, more organised way of life. If you’re reading this surrounded by mounds of paper at [Read more…]
A study undertaken by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills suggests that engaging in continued education can have multiple benefits, impacting many different areas of life. Continuing learning into your adult life doesn’t necessarily have to lead to a formal qualification to be valuable – in some cases, removing the ‘pressure to achieve’ can [Read more…]
Ever wondered if you could escape the monotony of the same desk, the same coffee mug and the same old faces every day? A lot of people like the security of a permanent job, and there are many advantages, but if you’ve found yourself daydreaming of working from the Bahamas, you may well be after [Read more…]
Middle age may once have been a time for coasting into retirement, but no longer: workers are increasingly looking for work that stimulates and stretches them throughout their careers. This is likely to be one of the reasons why thousands of apprenticeship starts in the UK come from over-50s, and why research shows that 40% [Read more…]
Personal recommendations are one of the most powerful influences on employers’ hiring decisions. One survey found that after the interview and your CV, references have the biggest impact on whether you get the job. But many of us treat references as an afterthought, perhaps assuming that they rarely get checked. In some cases, your past [Read more…]
Many of our students go on to start their own businesses, perhaps no surprise when you consider that small businesses now account for about 60% of the employment in the UK private sector (and around half of the turnover). The internet has significantly opened up the possibilities of starting your own business and marketing it [Read more…]
One unfortunate fact of life is that the more you succeed in your career, the more likely you are to bring work home work and all the stresses that come with it. A University of Toronto study found that professionals “with more authority, decision-making latitude, pressure, and longer hours” were the most likely to find work [Read more…]
When it comes to brushing up our expertise, for many of us it’s digital skills that are top of the list. No wonder IT courses are one of the most popular choices. More than three-quarters of businesses have some degree of shortage of digital skills, affecting the bottom line in 29% of cases, a survey [Read more…]