Building a real network for your job search

Last week I was able to represent Liftstream at the AstraZeneca’s Career Fair, aimed at helping people impacted by the closure of their Sodertalje site in Sweden. It was revealing to hear how so few people truly understood how to work with recruitment companies and get the best out of them. Maybe this was because they previously had little reason to interact with recruitment companies, and recruitment has certainly changed a good deal in recent years. One of the big changes is the emergence of Social Media in recruitment and a lot of people were keen to know how they should coordinate the two.

Patience is a virtue in career planning

Looking for a job needs patience. Understandably, losing your job or the likelihood of such an event, is likely to put considerable pressures on anyone. These pressures can be severe in cases as the uncertainty of the situation is often very unsettling, and patience is not a behaviour most prominently displayed. People are given to frustration, indecision, optimism and disappointment, while being patient just feels unnatural. You feel compelled or driven to make things happen. But this should come with a cautionary note. In almost every walk of life, from professional sport, to expeditions and discovery, to an office job, everyone is quite clear that under pressure situations, decisions take a different complexion and the judgements you make are often influenced by these circumstances, often to the detriment.