How often should I change my job?

The job for life no longer exists. Modernisation of the world of work means many employees must now work harder to turn their dream career into reality. The old career paths have disappeared and you have to take responsibility for your career and progress.

Perhaps you feel you’ve reached a career ceiling but still have the drive and tenacity to rise further. You want to move on to fresh challenges and higher levels of creativity. Keeping your career afloat may feel like you’re navigating hazardous and murky waters, especially during times of company mergers and acquisitions, downsizing, “right sizing,” and “offshoring.” If you need to reinvent your career then you need to understand your job market.

Even if you’re happy where you are it’s smart to keep an eye on what’s out there. It fosters a healthy sense of possibility and adventure. It’s a good idea to peek your head over your laptop from time to time in case some interesting opportunity is in the offing. Chances are, you’ll change jobs at some point and when you get serious about finding a new role, then being familiar with the market will give you an advantage.

Moving jobs often used to be viewed with suspicion. However, this attitude is changing and the once negative image of job-hopping is now being seen as ambitious. In some industries, if you stayed at the same job for five years, you'd have some explaining to do.

This doesn't mean the job-hopper stigma has completely vanished. If you've got too many jobs on your CV, you may be pigeon-holed as unstable, disloyal, or unable to work as part of a team, especially if these jobs are typically for terms of six months or less. You need to be able to show commitment. A pattern of frequent moves will begin to affect your credibility in the recruitment market. You can make one but not three mistakes.

If your changing roles show a steady career progression, or a series of increasingly challenging assignments, then you should be able to turn it into an asset. If you left a job for a promotion, or a position with greater responsibilities, emphasise that aspect of the transition and how it has provided you with more experience and skills.

Recent graduates sometimes worry about leaving a job after only 10 or 12 months. Will they be thought flaky? Will they get another job? But sometimes things just don’t work out and employers understand that. If you're moving into a different sector, especially if it's early in your career, an employer will appreciate your honesty in explaining your position. Take the opportunity to emphasise that you're taking charge of your career and looking for new challenges. It's better to look elsewhere to develop your career if you feel your current job is not providing enough scope.

3 P's of successful interview technique

How to improve your interview technique

Becoming an exceptional candidate is something you can do. Most people don’t take the trouble. Most interviews don’t go that well; most people are bad at them. The truth is that many recruiters are not particularly good at interviewing either nor particularly effective. So, if you prepare properly, and are a good interviewee the odds are stacked in your favour.

To put in a good performance think about planning, practice and positive psychology. An interview is an audition. You need to project yourself as the sort of the person the interviewer wants to hire; as someone they want on the team.

Be Prepared

It’s not just a question of researching the organisation. You need to understand your interviewer and why he is hiring. One way or another he is seeking a resource as a solution to an identified problem. Just checking out their website and report and accounts is not enough.

Work on understanding the organisational need and how you can add value. Look at the challenges and opportunities they face and work out how to show that your experience and expertise are relevant. Explore their marketplace, competitors and the changes taking place in the industry sector concerned.

Use your network to find information about the interviewer and his preferences, the company and its culture. Use LinkedIn and ZoomInfo to gather all the intelligence you can.

Practice your answers

I don't necessarily mean being word perfect. I'm talking about what you say when anyone asks you what you do, why you left, what you have achieved and so on. Can you talk about yourself comfortably, with confidence, concisely with clarity? Practice so that you have the right words, so that you don't get flustered, so that you talk at the right pace and, crucially, know when to stop. Remember the need for consistency between words and body language.

In an interview situation you have to know your CV by heart. None of it pops into your head at the last minute; you know what you are going to say and what spin you are going to put on it. A good interviewee has learned his or her lines in advance and is focussing much more on delivery than on off the cuff replies.

What you really need to do, though, is to make the interview interactive! People trained in interview techniques are told to use the 70/30 rule. That is to say the interviewer aims to talk for about 30% of the time allotted and the candidate talks 70% of the time, in response.

The smart candidate actually wants a 50/50 dialogue. You should aim for a conversation, directed along the lines you prefer – whereby you can play to your strengths. The interviewer can only go with what you give them. This is best illustrated by using the “what was your biggest business mistake?” question. Do you really want to tell them your biggest mistake? Really? You decide!

Positive interaction is what you are aiming for in the interview situation. Make it easy for the interviewer by saying “Have I told you all you need to know on that subject? Can I give you more detail?” Build rapport, find some commonality. But remember it’s not a monologue, you are both actors in this interview and it is a dialogue, a conversation, not a solo performance.

Positive Psychology

Henry Ford famously said “If you think you can do a thing or think you can't do a thing, you're right”. You’re motivated, you’ve done the prep and have the drive to succeed so visualise success.

Whether you call it confidence or self-esteem or self-belief, to shine at interview you need to show that you will make a good employee. Show that you are good at inter-acting and reading your situation, good at selling yourself and your ideas. Practicing your interview technique will make it so much easier to shine. There’s no need to be nervous is you believe you are a good candidate. If you believe you can do it, then you can do it. You know it because you have prepared, practiced and are ready to show what you can do.

Follow Through

After the interview send in a letter. Thank them for seeing you. Reiterate how interested you are in them and the role. Review the key points of the interview when you discussed challenges and opportunities and outline how you can help them meet these.

No guarantees but if you work at it you’ll become a better interviewee and give yourself an advantage in a tough economic climate.