londonHiring.com Career Centre - Jobs in London.

Who are you & What do you want?

I suppose that we all go through a period of soul searching when we try to determine exactly what we want from a job, career or from life in general. Sometimes we set our expectations too high and on other occasions too low. This leads to some frustration. Frustration within a working environment can arise for many reasons too many to cover here. Suffice it to say that people seek jobs or career change for a number of reasons.

It is important to be clear on who we are and what we can do. Equally, it is important to challenge ourselves but not to overstretch ourselves such that we are no longer compatible with a job. Many jobseekers are driven by a need to achieve more money, gain exposure to more working environments to broaden experience, gain promotion or to gain the trappings of success. Obviously all of these assume capability.

There is really no shortcut to being successful other than hard work but most successful people are well aware of their strengths and weaknesses and use them to seek opportunities and to avoid threat. It is always useful to try to set down what your strengths are, your weaknesses are, what would constitute an opportunity and what would be a career threat. These come in useful at interview stage in the job-hunting process.

You can do this quite easily by setting a "T" account - basically listing all the strengths you have on one side of a page and the weaknesses on the other half. Concentrate on your positive side, your strengths.

Likewise you should list all the jobs or areas that would constitute opportunity or achievement in your life on a page and those that would constitute a disappointment or threat also

These lists are useful when it comes to determining what you want to achieve. To assist this you should prioritize things a little. Try to condense things to your top 5 or 10 in each area and go for them. This is covered in goal setting.

Of course for some this is old hat, for others it is a new experience and well worth repeating from time to time.