Category Archives: Employability

Employability, Employability Skills, Leadership Development, Life Plan, life success, personal development plan, Personal Vision, personal vision plan, plan for personal success, yes for success

Who’s in control of your development?

 

Handing over 100% control for your personal and professional development to your employer is flawed. In our current world it doesn’t work. Not any more.

Yet that is the place that many of you are in. You rely 100% on your employer to develop you.

According to Mark McCrindle you are likely to have at least three different employers over the next decade. The reasons will be varied but will include you deciding to shift jobs and/or your employer no longer requiring your services. This is the world we now live in. Jobs for life are a rarity. Just ask the folk at Shell, Ford and Target in Geelong in regional Victoria, and Ford in Broadmeadows in the Melbourne’s northern suburbs. Over the next two years more than 1,900 people will be losing their jobs, many of whom will have worked for those companies for decades.

plan for personal success, Gary Ryan, Organisations That Matter, Yes For SuccessImagine if you were one of those workers. In good faith you had trusted your employer to develop you. After all you were part of their ‘big family’.

When the economy tightened, what was one of the first budget items to get cut? Traditionally, the budget item is training and development. Let’s consider some logic.

The reason the budget is getting cut is because the company is earning less money through sales. Should that trend continue then people’s jobs will be cut at some point in the future. This isn’t rocket science! Yet, if you were one of the employees in these circumstances, the writing is on the wall – at some point in the future you will be looking for a new job. It is with some irony that it is under these circumstances when you, the employee needs to be developing yourself more than you ever have before. Yet, when you have handed 100% of the control of your development to your employer you are getting less. Does this seem like a good formula for security and success?

If you, the employee have handed 100% of control for your development to your employer, then you are facing a situation where your employability is going down, when you should be aiming to have it go up.

Some more logic. When you are a job seeker is it safer to be more employable or less employable? Not a hard question, is it!

“My organisation provides wonderful training and development Gary, this isn’t relevant to me!” you might say. I’m sorry, but this is relevant.

Treat the training and development that your organisation provides as a bonus. If they are a decent employer they will understand that it is in their interests to keep developing you. That said they’ll limit their development to what they think is good for you, not necessarily what is good for you, your talents and your future. I’m not suggesting that companies are bad for having this view. It is understandable and reflects how the world actually works. The important thing is that you need to understand how the system works and you need to be in control of your development.

My message is simple. Keep your development 100% in your control. Don’t hand that control to your employer. Use whatever development opportunities they give to develop your talents. Be the best employee that you can be. But don’t limit your development to what your employer provides. Do online courses, join Toastmasters (as an example if you need to improve your public speaking), do whatever you need to do to keep developing yourself.

Right at this moment what are you doing that indicates that you are in control of your development? Your security and future depend on it.

Learn about the Yes For Success Platform here.

Gary Ryan enables organisations, leaders and talented people to move Beyond Being Good.
Ball of Light, Customer Service, Denis Smith, Employability, Employability Skills, Leaders, Leadership, Leadership Development, Life Plan, life success, OTM Service Strategy, Passion, personal development plan, Personal Vision, personal vision plan, plan for personal success, Professionals, Service Excellence, Success, What Really Matters, yes for success

Passion and Success

 

Passion is the first principle that underpins the Yes For Success Platform. Several years ago Denis Smith held a high pressure sales job, was drinking too much and suffering from depression.

His life lacked passion despite all the trimmings of a successful sales career.

Published with permission

Fortunately he knew ‘something’ was missing from his life and he went on a search to discover his passion. He quickly found photography and realised that he was somewhat of a natural with the camera. Upon uploading his photos to sites he discovered that his ‘good’ photos were the same as everyone else’s. But he didn’t want to be the same as everyone else.

So his evolving passion took him on a journey of discovery where he came across the concept of ‘light drawings’ through photography. With passion comes innovation and he decided to ‘play’ with the concept, creating surreal ‘Ball of Light‘ images in his photographs.

Today Denis has turned his passion into a business. More importantly he is living a life full of positivity and energy. View this short video to learn more about Denis’ story.

Personally I feel energised when I hear about stories such as Denis’ and I thank my good friend Andrew Scott (an amateur photographer himself and a friend of Denis’) for sharing the story with me.

How present is passion in your life?

Learn about the Yes For Success Platform here.

Gary Ryan enables organisations, leaders and talented people to move Beyond Being Good.
career, Career choices, Career Success, Employability, Employability Skills, Interview, interview skills, Life Plan, life success, Resume, Storytelling

Your Stories Matter For Career Progression

If you are looking to prepare yourself to take on a new career challenge, how do you capture your experiences in a useful way?

Your stories are important in the context of both creating your resume (The Essay Expert’s specialty!) and preparing for an interview.

Are you the right fit?
Once you are in front of your prospective employers, your goal is to communicate that you are the right fit for their organization. The interview is largely about testing your personality. The interviewers already know that you have the right technical skills or a demonstrated ability to learn them. What they don’t know is whether or not you will fit in their company culture.

This is where your stories about your employability skills kick in.

95% of interview questions are behaviorally based. This means that you will be asked questions that require you to provide an example about how you have demonstrated your employability skills in the past. If you haven’t prepared your answers, you will likely fumble your way through your interview.

Tell us about a time…
As an example, imagine being asked, “Please tell us about a time when you had to work with a difficult person.”
This question is meant to elicit how well you will interact with your fellow employees. Will you be a good team member to have around the office?
If you have prepared stories about teamwork, communication, leadership and problem solving, you will quickly be able to modify one of your existing stories to provide a succinct and coherent answer to this question.

If you haven’t prepared your stories, your face could turn white, the blood draining from your brain: “I’m not sure. I can’t think of one right now. I know that I have worked with difficult people before but I can’t think of one right now. Sorry.” It is not unusual for these sorts of responses to be heard in an interview.

How do you think the interviewers will judge your organizational “fit” with this kind of response?

A structure to rely on
Now here’s the good news: Interviewers have formulas that they listen for with regard to how your answers are structured. If you know the formula, you can prepare so you don’t get caught off guard.
One common formula is the CAR (Challenge / Action / Result) method. When answering a question such as the one above about working with a difficult person, you might choose a CAR story that you had prepared.

Let’s break down the components of a CAR story so you can create some of your own:
‘C’ is for Challenge or Circumstance. What situation sets the scene for your story? What was the context? Who were the players? What goal were you (as a team or individually) trying to achieve? What roadblocks stood in the way?
Although the first place to look for CAR stories is in your work experience, some of your best examples might come from family, recreational, or other extracurricular activities. This is especially true if you are a new graduate, but might be relevant even if you are a seasoned professional. If you planned a wedding, for instance, you learned skills that will apply in any paid position where you might be asked to organize a project or event. And if you get along well with your family, that’s a great sign that you will be a great person to have in the workplace!

‘A’ is for Actions. This is where you differentiateyourself. What did you do that made a difference? Be specific and include the most pertinent actions that you undertook. In the example above, you may have recognized that part of the reason for the “difficult” person’s behaviour was that you hadn’t been clear in your communication. So you may have stopped talking and just listened. Perhaps you discovered that they had misunderstood what you said—enabling you to communicate your message in a way they could comprehend.

‘R’ is for Results. This is the “So what?” part of your story. The results you have produced are some of the most important employability skills you can demonstrate. In the above example, your effective use of communication through improved listening may have resulted in a clearer understanding for the entire team of what it was trying to achieve—which in turn created a high level of focus and ultimately a successful project. You might even add that a big lesson from this experience was that through effective communication, you realized that the “difficult” person in question wasn’t that difficult after all. By sharing your results, you emphasize the positive impact you can have on an organization.

Reap the benefits of preparation
Preparing your CAR and employability skills stories, complete with results and lessons learned, provides you with flexibility when answering questions. You will be able to simply listen to the question and then select the most appropriate story to answer it. Your answers will be well-thought-out and evidence-based, and will make your interviewers engaged and favourable toward your application.

The power of telling your stories through a structure such as CAR is that it enables you to shine and reveal your personality, in addition to demonstrating how well you prepare for important meetings (yes, an interview is a meeting!). Your interviewers are then in a position to objectively judge how you would fit in the organization.

If you’d like to learn more about how to prepare yourself to be a successful interviewer and Young Professional, including another powerful formula for creating your stories and examples, then access What Really Matters For Young Professionals!

Gary Ryan is the Founder of Organisations That Matter, author of What Really Matters For Young Professionals! and creator of the Yes For Success online platform for creating and executing a life of balance and personal success!

Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com
career, Career choices, Career Success, City of Whitehorse, CV, Employability, Pauline Bennett, Recruiters, Resume

Creating Winning Resumes Audio Download

This is a recording of my recent interview with Pauline Bennett, Manager Organisation Development from the City of Whitehorse.

Pauline shares key insights from an employer’s perspective about what you should, and most definitely shouldn’t include in your resume if you don’t want to be rejected within the 15 to 30 seconds that a recruiter will be reviewing your resume.

Either play or download this terrific information.

Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com
Communication, effective communication, Employability, Employability Skills, Leaders, Leadership, listening, strategies for communication, WRMFPD Podcast

You’re Not Listening to Me! Audio Version

Gary Ryan from Organisations That Matter explains five key steps to enhance you’re capacity to listen.
Visit here to learn how you can enhance your communication skills so that you are more effective in your workplace.

Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com
Employability, Employability Skills, Leaders, Leadership Development, Peter Senge, Problem Solving, Systems Thinking

Systems Thinking Explained by Dr Peter Senge

Peter Senge, Senior Lecturer at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Founding Director for the Society of Organisational Learning explains, in simple terms, what “Systems Thinking” is and how to use its principles for solving complex problems.

According to the Employability Skills for the Future report by the Australian Government (2002), Systems Thinking is considered a critical leadership skill. Yet it isn’t being taught to leaders.

Understanding this skill and developing it as one of your leadership capabilities is a high leverage activity that will enahnce your career. This short video is a terrific way to commence your understanding of this topic and you can also access other articles I have posted here.

Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com
Career Success, ebook, Employability, Employability Skills, High Performance, High Performing Teams, Leaders, Leadership, strategies for success, What Really Matters

Ebook for Senior and Developing Leaders Released

This complimentary ebook is for Senior & Developing Leaders who share our view that organisational success is created through enabling people to be the best they can be, was created from a selection of articles published on the OTM Academy from May 1st 2012 through to August 31st 2012.
The ebook includes articles to help you move from ‘good’ to ‘high’ performance.
Please feel free to join the OTM Academy – it’s free!

In the ebook you will discover:

* What ‘Truth to Power’ is and how it affects performance

* Why communicating via multiple channels matters

* How Virgin Australia handled a brand damaging event

* Why change management is an oxymoron

* How to use three steps to bring organisational values to life

* How to be free of problems within your business

* How to use five steps to connect strategy to action

*And much, much more!
Order this free ebook to download here.
Contributing authors include:

  • Gary Ryan
  • Ian Berry
Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com
Ambassadors, ebook, Employability, Employability Skills, Monash Pharmacy, Monash University, Student Ambassadors, Student development

Monash Pharmacy Student Development in Action eBook

Throughout 2012 I have had the pleasure to work with student Ambassadors from Monash University’s Faculty of Pharmacy and Pharmaceautical Sciences.

The eBook provides evidence that Generations Y and Z do care about their community and displays the woderful passion of these students to make a positive difference to their community.

Please take a moment to view the output of their projects from start to finish.

Gary Ryan provides Student Development programs to several of Australia’s leading universities.

Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com
career, Employability, Employability Skills, Leadership, Leadership Development

Leadership – It’s more complex than ever!

Google the word, “leadership”. How many hits did you get?

507,000,000 was my number. That’s a lot of hits. It is also a lot of thinking and theories on the topic.

Maybe too many.

When I facilitate leadership programs (including corporate and co-curricular programs at universities for both undergraduate and postgraduate students) very few people are clear about their approach to leadership. While folk are able to list books and thoughts on the topic, most people haven’t worked out what guides their approach to leadership.

For example, what is your approach to leadership? What theories do you do your best to apply? What models underpin your approach because you find them useful? What quotes do you find helpful?

How are you consciously putting these theories and models into practice?

The challenge with so much thinking on the topic of leadership is that it has become confusing. For this reason I strongly recommend that you take charge and develop your own approach to leadership.
If quotes, theories and models work for you, then use them. Keep using them until you discover something more useful, and then replace them. This approach, of course suggests that you should never stop assessing and re-assessing your approach to leadership. Or even more simply, never stop learning.

What is your approach to leadership? How would you describe it to someone else?

Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com
Business strategy, Customer Service, Employability, Employability Skills, Leadership, Leadership Development, OTM Service Strategy, Service Excellence, Strategy

Is your People Strategy aligned with your Service Strategy?

Your organisation’s People Strategy includes everything from recruitment, to development and the way people exit your organisation. People are fundamental to the implementation of your Service Strategy so the way that you approach your recruitment, development and exit processes are examples of that strategy in action. 
How do you recruit, develop and exit people from your organisation? 
Are these activities performed in a way that reflects a service approach toward your people?
Copyright Gary Ryan 2011
Research Participant
The way people are exited from an organisation is a true test of its approach to service. When the company had to reduce staff numbers through no direct fault of its own and it did everything it could over a 12 month peeriod to help to prepare the exiting staff for their next job, I thought to myself, “This company really cares about people. I hope that their next company cares as much.”
Why not use this article as a catalyst for Conversations That Matter® within your workplace.
 
The OTM Service Strategy includes 7 key elements and 50 attributes that provide synergy for an effective service strategy. Find out more here.


Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com