Suky talks about how recruiters feel at the end of the year and goes through a couple of tips on how to re-evaluate your career options and prospects during the holiday season.
Transcription
Hi everyone I’m Suky from Professional Selection. As you can tell it’s that time of year again. Where are we? We’re a couple of weeks out till the end of the year so it got me thinking: what do we do now as employees? Well a lot of people are beginning to slow down and do I actually think that’s the right thing you should be doing? Hey it’s your choice, you can do it if that’s what you want to do, but let me give you a couple of alternatives.
As an employee – if there’s those projects that you’ve been working on, delaying executing, get them done. Meet that deadline. If you’re a salesperson, pick up the phone and close that extra deal. After all, January credit card bills are guaranteed mid to the end of January, so hey get ahead of that one. But what could you do as a candidate in terms of just using this quiet time effectively and to think about your career? Well here’s a couple of options.
First of all, I would take this time to do some self-analysis. The promises your company, your employer, made to you. Were they kept? But not only that, did you keep the promises you made to your employer? So for example let’s say you don’t meet deadlines on time you’re always pushing deadlines forward. That may have been one of the things your employer had asked you to work on. Did you do that? Sit down, be really brutally honest here because I’m sure what I said earlier about assessing your employer, whether they kept their promises or not, you made a really really long list. But get real, do some self-analysis. Only you are gonna see this list because that’ll help you understand how you’ve contributed to the situation you’re in. Now also, did you keep the promises you made to yourself and your family? It really could be something like if you’ve got young children you could have said: “you know what? I want to get home before bedtime for the kids, or you know what I’m gonna make sure I get to the gym at least twice a week”. That work-life balance, whatever that means to you.
Now then think about it who really is a roadblock for your success now? Is it your company? Is it your line manager? Or is it just yourself? Are you not really keeping your side of the bargain? So sometimes it just helps to talk it through with a recruiter. Now what I’m going to say is talk to a recruiter that specializes within your niche. In fact talk to a couple of them because you want to get a couple of different opinions and see who it is – who you’re able to gel with, and you know it’s all relationships and what-have-you at the end of the day. so why should you do that? Well they’ll be able to tell you market comparison, you’ll be able to benchmark your salary, you’ll be able to talk about other competitors within your company, you’ll be able to talk about what other projects other companies might be doing, what kind of work-life balance they have.
So this will all give you enough information to when you do go back to speak to your current employer, you’re armed with information. So for example if you really feel you’re due a pay raise or promotion, you are armed with market intel and knowledge. If you feel you you should be promoted to another position, having spoken to a recruiter will actually help you analyze whether you really do have a skill gap and hence that’s why you’re not being promoted. But you think you have that knowledge, so what can you do? Then you can go back to your company and ask them for some more training and coaching and what have you. Also talking to a recruiter, again it’s also going to help you decide whether you know what, this is the company I want to stay in, or whether you want to leave and go to another company. Having worked with the recruiter will help you answer all of these questions. Now I always say this: build relationships with a select few recruiters before you need them.
So again, this time of year is a great time to be talking to recruiters and just starting to build those relationships. In other words being proactive instead of reactive with your career. As always I’m sure there’s many different opinions, would love to hear them, but thanks for listening.
