Writing for life

Written for the Evening Echo Career Moves section

There are all sorts of reasons why people don’t go to college straight from school. There are also plenty of reasons why, after a while, those same people feel they’d like to broaden their educational horizons and explore the opportunities a third level qualification can offer.

But making that transition back into education can be daunting. Where do you start? Do you have the right qualifications to meet the often stringent entry criteria? Isn’t there a complex application process to endure? Too many questions, when what you need are answers.

One of those answers could be a joint initiative run by Business Information Systems at UCC, CIT and Cork City Partnership. The Diploma in Applied Business Computing has been specifically designed to offer people a path back to third level education, ultimately leading to employment in the vibrant arena where business and technology overlap.

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This week’s Career Moves is a bit interwebby, so I’ve posted it over on Digital Marketing Success instead of here.

It’s the first in a series of articles I’m doing for the Evening Echo on using the internet for market research when setting up/growing a small business.

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It’s amazing how often small, seemingly innocuous words in the English language can be harbingers of much bigger things. Death, for example… there’s a small word with potentially huge implications.

Change is another one – small, unassuming, and for a lot of people utterly terrifying. We tend to be comfortable with constants – they’re safe and predictable; when things stay the same we feel secure, it’s the unknown that scares us… and venturing into the unknown is all part and parcel of change.

In today’s dynamic, high paced workplace, change is often the only real constant you’ll find. With the internet, connectivity, collaboration and interaction disrupting the accepted norms across a wide array of industries and sectors, nothing in business today seems to stay the same for very long.

The pace of change can be daunting. Sometimes it seems that no sooner have you acquired a new skill than it’s becoming obsolete. But I’ll let you into a little secret… this rapid pace of change is good for your career, as long as you’re ready to embrace it. With every change comes opportunity – to learn something new, do something different or develop in some way. If you’re willing to grab those opportunities with both hands, and you can adapt quickly to changing circumstances, then organisational change can be one of your biggest allies when it comes to career development.

As usual there are lessons to be learned from nature. Charles Darwin, the father of evolutionary theory, hit the nail on the head when he observed: “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.”

His biological insight makes a seamless transition to the workplace… if there’s one thing that will help your career to flourish, then it’s your ability to embrace and adapt to change. Yes your suite of skills is important, your experience invaluable and your education indispensable – and I’m not trying to belittle any of those things – but all other things being equal your ability to adapt to the changing dynamics of the modern workplace is often the defining characteristic for career success.

Look at some of the most successful people in the world today – are they the brightest, the most talented, the best educated? Some, maybe… but many of them aren’t.

While wealth shouldn’t really be used as a measure of success, in this instance it serves to illustrate a point. A few weeks ago the Sunday Times published its annual Rich List. Flicking through the pages reveals a wide array of people from all walks of life. Some of them are undoubtedly bright, talented and well educated individuals – but that’s probably not what propelled them into the rich list. Pick a random selection and scratch the surface, and what you’ll find that they have in common is unwavering tenacity and self belief, coupled with an amazing capacity to embrace, adapt to and thrive on change.

Take a leaf out of their book, condition yourself to embrace change, step outside of your comfort zones regularly and explore the unknown. When the wind of change blows, and opportunity knocks, you’ll be there, ready and waiting.

Photo Credit: All change, by Elsie esq.

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The Apprentice

Published in The Evening Echo on 26/05/2008

You’ve got to feel a bit sorry for Sir Alan Sugar.

Why feel sorry for a man who’s managed to accumulate a fortune of more than GB£800 million over his chequered career? A man who’s ferried around in a chauffeur-driven Bentley? A man who flies around in his own Lear jet?

Not a lot feel sorry for, you might think; apart, perhaps, from the fact that he supports Tottenham Hotspur…! But then you remember that Sir Alan has signed up with the BBC to do “The Apprentice”, which is now in the middle of its fourth series. And the poor man must be ruing the day he signed on the dotted line.

Sure, the programme has made Alan Sugar a household name, but at what cost… and does someone that successful really need to raise his profile anyway?

Never mind the fact that he comes across as an acerbic, megalomaniacal tyrant; or the fact that he’s forced to jab an accusatory finger at one hapless candidate after another as he delivers his “You’re fired!” catch-phrase every week (apparently it’s written into his contract; a legacy from the original American show format, featuring the equally megalomaniacal but frankly much more ridiculous-looking Donald Trump). No, the real blow must be that he has to actually hire one of these buffoons at the end of the series.

Why on earth would a man who obviously doesn’t need the money, and who doesn’t suffer fools gladly, decide to lumber himself with such a motley assortment of corporate misfits? Worst of all, he’s actually obliged to give one of them a job at the end of it… and based on their performance on the tasks to date you can’t help but wonder at the wisdom of that.

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Rated 4/5 on May 26 2008

Vote on Calvin’s reviews at LouderVoice

LouderVoice review tags: The Apprentice, Alan Sugar, Careers

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Published in The Evening Echo, 20/05/2008

There’s no getting around it, some jobs are just plain dangerous.

Working high up, work involving heavy lifting, working with machinery, working underground, working with dangerous animals, working in hostile environments… even dealing with the general public can have elevated risk levels. But what about your bog standard, run-of-the-mill office job. For the risk averse out there, surely that’s as safe as they come.

You might think so, but not according to scientists from the UK and New Zealand, who recently warned that office workers are at higher risk of potentially fatal blood clots. If you spend long hours sitting in front of your computer every day you double the risk of developing deep veined thrombosis (DVT), the same condition that affects passengers on long haul flights.

Researchers in Southampton and New Zealand questioned 200 patients admitted to hospital for either blood clots or heart problems, and compared how long each group was typically sitting in a given day, both in total and in a single period uninterrupted period.

“The risk of developing blood clots with prolonged seated immobility is largely unrecognised. However, this study has shown that it is at least as important a factor as long-distance air travel,” Professor Richard Beasley, from Wellington Hospital, New Zealand, told the Daily Telegraph.

“This study provides preliminary evidence that prolonged seated immobility at work may represent a risk factor for venous thromboembolism [DVT] requiring hospital admission.”

According to Prof. Beasley, both the Both total time seated at work in any given day, and the maximum time spent seated without getting up, contributed to the increased risk of DVT, which the authors say could be caused by increased pressure on the veins of the legs when sitting still. They warn that the risks can be exacerbated by sitting in overly cramped conditions, and by periods of intense concentration that tend to result in reduced muscle activity.

If your job involves sitting for long periods of time, the authors recommend that you minimise your exposure to risk by taking similar precautions to those advised for long-distance flights: periodically exercise and stretch your feet, ankles and calves, and make sure you take regular breaks to get up and walk around the office.

As if the threat of blood clots wasn’t enough of a health risk, in another study earlier this month researchers in the UK revealed that your computer keyboard is a microbial paradise. According to the research carried out in a busy London office the key’s you’re tapping away on every day could harbour more harmful bacteria than the average toilet seat. In fact, microbiologists conducting the research found the level of bacteria in one keyboard to be so high that they reportedly had it removed from the premises.

A separate study revealed that 10% of workers never clean their keyboards, while 20% never clean their mouse. So if you think you’re safe in your average, run-of-the-mill office job… think again. If the blood clots don’t get you, the bugs in your keyboard will!

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Published in the Evening Echo on 12/05/2007

We’ve all made mistakes in interviews. We’re only human after all, and no matter how careful or diligently we prepare, a stray question slipped in here or there can throw us.

We know all about researching our prospective employers; we know about preparing for key questions ahead of time; we know about projecting a cool, calm, professional exterior, regardless of the turmoil we feel inside; we know about having clever questions prepared in advance. We know all of these things, and yet occasionally we stumble. No matter, we pick ourselves up, metaphorically dust ourselves down, and we carry on. Nine times out of ten we get away with it.

But not always. Sometimes gaffes are so dramatic that they defy any attempt at recovery.

Surveys are ten a penny in the careers and recruitment world. Dig a little and you’ll unearth umpteen surveys a week, revealing this or that nugget of largely pointless insight into the latest trends in this or that industry. Many are worthless, a few are valuable, and then there are the ones that warrant a look for their pure entertainment value.

Careers website Careers.com released one earlier this year. They surveyed more than 3,000 HR professionals across the US, and compiled a list of the ten most outrageous job interview blunders; if you want to sabotage your chances of landing a job, why not try one of these?

• The candidate answered their mobile during the interview and asked the interviewer to leave her own office because the call was a “private”.
• The candidate told the interviewer that, if offered the job, he may not be in a position to stay for very long, because he was expecting an inheritance when his uncle died – and his uncle wasn’t “looking too good”.
• The candidate asked the interviewer for a lift home after the interview.
• The candidate sniffed his armpits on the way into the interview room.
• The candidate refused to provide a sample of her writing because all of her writing had been for the CIA, and was therefore “classified”.
• The candidate told the interviewer he was fired from his last job for beating up the boss.
• When offered food before his interview, the candidate declined, stating that he “didn’t want to line his stomach with grease before going out drinking”.
• A candidate for an accounting position said she was a “people person” not a “numbers person”.
• One candidate flushed the toilet in the middle of a telephone interview.
• The Candidate took out a hair brush and started to brush her hair mid-interview.

Of course, these are extremes… most interview mistakes aren’t nearly as bad. The most common ones cited in this survey were dressing inappropriately (51%), badmouthing a former employer (49%), appearing disinterested (48%), arrogance (44%), insufficient answers (30% percent) and not asking good questions (29%).

So, if you have an interview lined up, and feel compelled to attend, but have already decided that really don’t want the job, you know what to do. Simply take a leaf out of your American colleagues’ book. Study the list above for a inspiration, apply a little imagination of your own, and you should be able to come up with some spectacular ways to fail at interview. Good… or should I say bad luck!

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Who do you really work for?

It’s not a trick question, it’s not that I suspect you’re involved in some sort of shady commercial espionage. It’s a simple, straightforward query:

• Do you work for your supervisor?

• Do you work for your line manager?

• Do you work for your HR Department?

• Do you work for your CEO?

The answer, of course, is none of the above. When you break it down we go to work for ourselves. Whether we’re self employed, working on the shop floor, of a high-flying executive with a swanky corner office… we work to support ourselves, our families and the lifestyle we’ve chosen to live. Work is a means to an end, and while you might enjoy, or even love what you’re doing, ultimately it’s just a vehicle for your financial security, personal achievement and development, fulfilment and, ultimately, happiness.

Unfortunately we tend to forget all of that. We get caught up in the frantic hustle and bustle of working life. Long hours, stress, unrealistic expectations, unmanageable workloads and tortuous commutes conspire to erode the very things we’re working to secure.

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Published in the Evening Echo 28/04/2008

Do you ever feel that there aren’t enough hours in the day? Well, you’d be right. Researchers in the US recently discovered that typical middle-class city dwellers are cramming 31 hours worth of ‘life’ into each 24 hour period thanks to multi-tasking and an array of time saving gizmos.

Hands up who’s checked their e-mail on their laptop or blackberry while making their morning coffee? Or used a bluetooth headset to join a conference call on the commute to work, while listening to the traffic report on the radio and checking out alternative routes on the sat-nav?

We’re multi-tasking like crazy to try and squeeze more into our busy lives. Apparently the technology of today has allowed us, for better or for worse, to shoe-horn an additional seven hours worth of tasks into the average day compared to only a decade ago (primitive old 1998 – back when nobody had ever heard of Google).

After a flurry of activity in the morning we arrive at work – which is often a blur of e-mails, calls and meeting combines with switching between multiple tasks to meet unrealistic deadlines. But, according to the study, conducted by global consumer research firm OTX, all of the multitasking we do during our working day pales in comparison to the frantic task juggling that happens once we get home in the evenings.

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Published in the Evening Echo 21/04/2008

Telecommuting, remote working, working from home… call it what you will, the whole concept of working out of the office is an alluring one. The technology that enables remote working – a decent internet connection, mobile computing and mobile digital communications devices – is starting to become practically ubiquitous in our lives, bringing the prospect of remote working out of the realm of fantasy, and making it a very real possibility for many.

If you work on a computer, then you can do pretty much everything you normally do at work sitting at your desk at home (or even in your local coffee shop, if you prefer). Liberating yourself from the shackles that bind you to the office desk isn’t complicated or costly any more – but does demand very careful consideration. Ditching the daily commute, traffic jams and office politics may appear idyllic, but it’s not always the panacea it promises to be. Remote working comes with its own set of problems, in their own way every bit as challenging as those you’ll find in an office environment.

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Published in the Career Moves section of The Evening Echo on Monday 14 April 2008

CSR; when I first heard it I thought it was another one of those far fetched American crime dramas. Then I discovered it was an acronym for Corporate Social Responsibility… and remained none the wiser.

So I Googled it (interesting aside: did you know that the name Google was an accidental misspelling of the word googol – the number 1 followed by 100 zeroes), and was promptly presented with 4,530,000 results on everything anyone could ever want to know about Corporate Social Responsibility.

First stop, Wikipedia, that font of online knowledge, which informed me that CSR: “is a concept whereby organizations consider the interests of society by taking responsibility for the impact of their activities on customers, suppliers, employees, shareholders, communities and the environment in all aspects of their operations. This obligation is seen to extend beyond the statutory obligation to comply with legislation and sees organizations voluntarily taking further steps to improve the quality of life for employees and their families as well as for the local community and society at large.”

When I got my breath back I read it again.

CSR then is basically a commitment by an organisation to do business in a socially responsible way… to go that extra mile, to be a good corporate citizen and to look after the people and the environment it interacts with. It’s about businesses looking outside the corporate box and acknowledging their broader responsibility to society as a whole.

Which all sounds very laudable. But are businesses really doing it?

Plenty of high profile Irish organisations profess to be. That Google list I mentioned earlier contains links to comprehensive CSR Statements from the ESB, Coillte, Tesco Ireland , KPMG, Repak and others. But are they just words, or is the concept of CSR really resonating with organisations and punching through the profit-skewed view of Irish CEOs?

How many employees, for example, really and truly believe their employers are putting their best interests ahead of the corporate bottom line? Or that management would opt to go with a more costly supplier simply because they could demonstrate better environmental credentials? Would your HiPPO (Highest Paid Person in the Organisation) choose to forsake profit for the greater good? Some might answer yes, but my guess is that the vast majority would have to say no. Or at least not yet.

But that could be changing. The pressure on businesses to become more environmentally and socially responsible is growing all the time, thanks largely to the high profile of environmental issues surrounding climate change. Higher consumer and employee awareness of these issues and of how corporate entities are responding to them means that addressing them is moving out of the realm of positive spin and PR, and is fast becoming an economic imperative.

People are demanding more accountability from the companies they do business with, and the companies they choose to work for. These days if a company can’t demonstrate that its taking its social responsibilities seriously it can potentially impact the calibre of its future workforce and erode its customer base. Corporate Social Responsibility isn’t just about doing the right thing any more… it’s about staying competitive in a rapidly changing world.

Technorati Tags: Corporate Social Responsibility,CSR,Evening Echo,Career Moves,Business

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