Are you career conscious? How to plan your career with intention and clarity - with Louise Lapish of Gatewood Consulting Artwork

Change Work Life

Join us on the Change Work Life podcast and let’s beat those Sunday evening blues! If the prospect of yet another five days at work gives you a sinking feeling on a Sunday evening, the Change Work Life podcast is for you. Through interviews with ordinary people who have taken action to change the path of their career, and the career coaches who helped them, host Jeremy Cline explores the changes you can make to enjoy a better working life, whether these changes are small alterations to day-to-day routines, major career shifts or something in between. For show notes, resources and lots of other great content visit https://changeworklife.com/

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Change Work Life

Are you career conscious? How to plan your career with intention and clarity - with Louise Lapish of Gatewood Consulting

August 27, 2024 • Jeremy Cline/Louise Lapish • Episode 187

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#187: Louise Lapish has been working in career management for over two decades and has helped countless people find their dream job and advance in their careers. She explains the problems with traditional job searching methods, how to proactively find a new career, and shares some practical tips to assess if a job is a good fit for you.

What you’ll learn

[02:17] The differences between working with individuals and working with teams.
[03:48] The problems with traditional job searching methods.
[05:13] How many requirements of a job description you need to meet before applying.
[06:33] How to know if a job is going to be a good fit for you.
[08:06] What it means to be career conscious.
[10:57] The rise in portfolio careers and having flexibility in the workplace.
[12:49] The benefits of being conscious about the career you want to pursue.
[14:55] The first steps to becoming career conscious.
[16:57] The value of getting personal testimonials and tracking your achievements.
[18:40] What should you include in your career plan.
[21:13] What’s included in a career scorecard.
[24:33] How often you should assess your career goals.
[27:44] Practical tips to assess if a job is a good fit for you.
[29:48] What’s included in a proactive career search.
[32:36] How to be better at talking about your work and career.
[35:40] What good quality networking consists of.
[37:10] How to frame your situation when you’re made redundant.
[39:29] The amount of time you should spend applying for jobs.
[41:02] The importance of self-care when applying for a new job.

Resources mentioned in this episode
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For the show notes for this episode, including a full transcript and links to all the resources mentioned, visit:

https://changeworklife.com/are-you-career-conscious-how-to-plan-your-career-with-intention-and-clarity/

Re-assessing your career? Know you need a change but don't really know where to start? Check out these two exercises to start the journey of working out what career is right for you!

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How do you know that the job you're in is right for you right now? How do you know that you're getting everything you need either from your job or from your activities outside of work? And when you're looking for a new role, how can you be sure that it's a match for you? That's what we're going to talk about in this week's episode. I'm Jeremy Cline, and this is Change Work Life. Hello and welcome to Change Work Life, the show where we're all about beating the Sunday evening blues and enjoying Mondays again. If you want to know how you can enjoy a more satisfying and fulfilling working life, you're in the right place. A traditional approach to finding a new job might be scanning the various job boards for one which fits and firing in your CV and a covering letter. But how can you be a bit more proactive with your career planning? What can you do to ensure the next job is a fit for you? And how can you find it even if it's not being advertised? To help answer these questions and more, I'm joined this week by Louise Lapish. Louise is a career consultant and coach and the author of The Seven Steps to Career Consciousness. Louise, welcome to the show. Can I just correct? My name is Louise Lapish. Thank you. Thank you for correcting me on that, and apologies. No. No. It's fine. It's fine. I'm a great advocate of saying how you say your name, which is why I have the little thing on LinkedIn because it does happen from time to time. Thank you for the correction. So, when I look at your LinkedIn profile, I see coaching, consulting, training, and so on. At heart, what are you all about? Helping people develop. Whether that's an individual or a team, but giving them the confidence and the tools to be able to have better conversations, talk about themselves in a better way, and work better with other people. So, there's always been a great synergy between the coaching and the training that I do to help individuals and teams just be better. What do you notice are the differences between working with individuals and working with teams? I think it's really common for people to hide behind the 'we' of the team. So, we're a team, we're doing this. Where I think it becomes really difficult when working with individuals is getting them to identify what they did as part of that team and why they were valuable. I think it's really common for people to hide behind the 'we did this, we did that, and as a team we either won or failed'. And that's great, and that's valuable, and there's certainly something to that, but we are only the sum of our parts, and I think it's recognising the individuality of each of those people and what strengths they brought to that team and really harnessing that power, so then people understand why they're important. I think if people just feel like a cog, they don't feel that they add value. What are we doing if we're not adding value in our daily lives? That's really interesting because when you started to answer that, and you were talking about recognising your part in the team, my mind was kind of going to the, well, if it hadn't worked, what was my part in that? Whereas you're looking at very much from the, well, if it succeeded, what was my part in that? Yeah. Absolutely. And I've worked with project teams for over 20 years, and the number of times people only focus on the bits that didn't go right, rather than doing a retrospective and looking at the things that went well and celebrating those successes. So, I'm always talking about let's look at the wins as much as let's look at what we could improve. So, when we talk about the job search process, what's wrong with the traditional method that I mentioned earlier of just seeing an advert and firing off your CV and cover letter? So, one of the biggest challenges for most people is that the advertised market only makes up a small proportion of the jobs that actually exist. So, you see an advert, which for me is always a wish list. A company has sat down and thought about all of the things that they would want a person to have. There's a challenge with, and there's quite a lot of research around whether people look at that and think, 'Oh, there's something I can't do, so I'm not going to apply, or there's something I can do, so I will.' So, you're putting yourself into a pool of a lot of potential candidates that probably aren't going to have as many skills as you, and you might decide not to apply because actually too many people are going to apply. Or you might think, I'm going to apply for that, and then when you get rejected, it feels like a rejection for a bigger reason. The whole process is set up to tell you why you are not good enough for a position. So, whether that's the advert, whether that's the interview process, until you get that job, there is only one yes. The rest of it is no. And I think a lot of people find that that resilience dwindles as they are job searching, and most people are job searching for longer now if they're in the advertised market. It's slower than it has been in the many years I've been doing this. The job advert where there's a list of criteria that they're looking for, is there any kind of rule of thumb as to how many or how much it's worth hitting in order to apply? I'm sure I heard some statistic that, I'm going to get the percentages wrong, but it's something like men will see if they hit, I don't know, 60%, then they'll throw in an application, whereas women might be put off unless they've got 80 or 90%, something like that. Yeah. I think it was even lower than that in terms of the gender split. I think it was if man saw one thing that they could do, they would apply. But I also think that it's the way that the job adverts are published, as well. One of my bugbears is people not putting a salary range on a job advert. And you're expecting people to take the time and effort to apply for a job, but you can't even give them the courtesy of giving them a salary band. It's such a frustration of mine because I think if you're not prepared to say what that package is, then why on earth would I want to spend my time putting it all together and applying? But in terms of that, just going back to your previous point, I think there isn't an accurate number because it's going to depend on your sector, and it's going to depend on your experience. So, to kind of put a percentage on it, I think would be really difficult. But I think more importantly for me is that you don't look at the advert and think, 'Do I fit that?', but look at the company and think, 'Do they fit me?' So, I talk all of the time with my candidates and clients about working with a job search scorecard. So, what does the company have to offer you before you even apply? So, having very, very clear your own criteria and your own values and thinking about what that means in real terms for you. Because so many times now, I'm working with people, and I tend to work with mid- to senior-level execs who are saying, 'Actually, I've done the big salary, I've done the 6 figures, I've done the international travel. What I want now is a three-day week and more time at home with my kids.' So, their values have shifted. And I think potentially that's maybe one of the only positives to come out of the pandemic is people actually started to think about what the world of work should mean to them. So, I think if you're looking at an advert from the point of view of it being a transaction one way, it doesn't work. If you're looking at an advert thinking, what questions do I need to ask to make sure they hit me in terms of what my values are, that's how I would expect people to be looking at that advert and the advertised market. So, I definitely want to come back to the idea of scorecards, but broadening it a little bit, your book, Seven Steps to Career Consciousness, what does it mean to be career conscious? So, my first chapter is called Owning Up to Being a Grown-up. The reason that I called it Owning Up to Being a Grown-up is because most of us didn't know what we wanted to do, and the number of times I'm still having conversations with people in their forties and fifties who still say, 'I don't know what I want to be when I grow up.' So, the whole point of consciousness was thinking that nobody else cares about your career apart from you. And it's okay to try something different. And it's okay to try something new. And in fact, most of us have two or three distinct careers now across our working life. We don't tend to do one thing unless we're in a vocation. So, quite often, if somebody, I don't know, has that vocation, they might have that long service. But for most of us, it's going to be different things. So, career consciousness is very much about, okay, what is my plan? What do I want? What do I want to get out of the next phase of my life? So, funnily enough, people often say to me, 'Gosh, you do a lot of things', and I say I'm a trainer, I'm a coach, I'm this, intentionally. So, I set up that portfolio career because I need different things. And that was a conscious decision that actually wasn't enough for me just to be a coach, it wasn't enough for me just to do this. That's why I took on working with the university, and, you know, I think something else to my portfolio that gives me that full range of everything I need to get out of it. And I think when we start to turn that microscope onto ourselves and think about what do I actually want and need, that changes in terms of the consciousness. But one of my funniest things when I was doing the research for the book was asking people what they wanted to be when they grew up, and did they actually ever achieve that, and very few people did. I always allude to one of my friends in the book, she always knew what she wanted to do. She wanted to be a doctor. She's now a geriatric consultant. She's fabulous, but not many people have that. Not many people have that kind of ambition from being a kid and follow it through. Because if you think back, how on earth did you know? Because your world was quite small, and we only ever tend to think about the careers that we have exposure to. So, you know, I'm from Leeds. Nobody would have said to somebody from my school, 'Well, perhaps you could move to New Zealand and become a scientist and watch whales.' But that is what one of the girls from my class did. And I just think, you know, you tend to have that very small, oh, what do your parents do, what do your aunties and uncles do, maybe that's what I'm going to do, rather than actually looking at the bigger picture and thinking about what can I do. So, it sounds like, at its heart, there's quite a big element of almost giving yourself permission to do a bit of exploration, particularly if you're in a place where you're looking around and thinking, 'God, I don't think much of this at the moment.' Yeah. Oh, absolutely. One of the ladies I was working with last year left the military. She said to me, 'I just want a full-time job. I'm very used to being in this structured environment.' And I remember talking to her briefly about portfolio careers, and she said, 'Absolutely not for me. It's not going to work.' Six months on, and she's going into her next phase of her portfolio career, she's loving life, you know, and she's managed to find a balance of things that she wanted to do. We don't think about the world in the same way as we used to do. You know, my dad was in the police. So, it was very traditional, you join the police, you stay in the police until you retire. You work your way up, and you do these types of things. To talk to him about a portfolio career or some flexibility or people now saying, 'Actually, I don't want to work five days, I want to work four days and have a three-day weekend, or I want to try different things, or I want a contract and take all the stuff', these ideas around flexibility and what we can have just didn't exist. And it's going to speed up this need for change and this need for new ideas, it's only going to speed up as we start to lose jobs because of AI and different things like that. It creates an opportunity for us to look at other options, to think about what we can do if we have more time, and it not all being about work. Let's put a bit of structure to this. So, someone has started to think, 'Oh, maybe I should be a grown-up here. Maybe I should not just go along for the ride. I've been doing this for the past 10 years. I'm going to do it for the next 30 and wait until retirement.' Starting at the other end, if you like, looking at the end result, someone who has been career-conscious and has been through a process, what do they have to show for it? So, a plan. A plan of what they might want to do, but also, they go on that journey of exploration as well. Because part of it is research. Part of it is going out there and talking to people. I always say, the advertised market, that traditional way, is a very reactive approach to the job market. What I want to see is people going out there and talking to people who are useful and interesting and having a more proactive approach. So, it's turning it on its head. And the number of times I've sat with people who were saying, 'I'm stuck, I'm stuck in this business, there is nowhere for me to go, it's dead man's shoes', and I'm like, well, there's lots of things you can do. It might not be in work time, but do something outside of work to help you get to where you want to be. So, there was a very specific reason why I put steppingstones on the front of the book, and it's because it isn't straightforward. It's not always a step forward. Sometimes it's a sidestep to then move forward. You know, you have to pick the best plan for you. So, when they come out of it, it's having a plan, but also understanding what their values are, and more importantly, finding something that makes them happy. So, it's about getting the job you deserve. I don't believe that anybody should be sitting there, and I had dinner with friends on Sunday, and one of them is planning on his retirement in a couple of years, he's got a countdown calendar in his phone that reminds him that he's one step closer to retirement every single day. And that kind of stuff really hurts my heart. Because I think what a way to think, you know, is your point around, oh, how do we make something nice, bearable again? Well, by doing something that we love during the week. We're not going to love all of it. We're never going to love all aspects of our job. I love coaching; I hate the admin. I love training; I hate being on the M62. There's always going to be elements of our jobs that we don't like. But it's how we manage that in terms of balance and what that gives us at the end of it. So, we've talked about the first step to create consciousness, which is asking the question and acknowledging it. What are the next few steps? Where does someone particularly go? I'm always in favour of giving someone a tool or a starting point. Yeah. Absolutely. Everybody always focuses on the CV, and this is one of the things that people will say to me, 'Can you write a CV for me, Louise?' And I'll say,'Absolutely. I can. What do you want to do?' And they go, 'Oh, okay.' Because actually, your CV is just a document. It's not the most important thing. It's where your target is. So, whether you are using a CV to get you there, whether you're using LinkedIn to get you there, whether you are using a networking plan to get you there, it's about where you want to be. So, it isn't necessarily about just having that piece of paper, that tangible piece of paper, which everybody relies on. Because who knows what's going to happen with the CV? Who knows if it's even going to be a thing in a few years' time? You know, we're seeing more and more people creating things on AI and everything starting to look the same. And how are you special and different? And that is one of the things I talk about a lot is what sets you apart. And that isn't necessarily just about skills. That might be about the way you get customers to interact with you. That might be about the way you've coached a colleague and empowered them to do something else. There's all of these things that make you special and different. And that is one of the most important bits of evaluation we can do. I know when we've spoken before, I talk about brag books. People don't necessarily remember the good stuff people say about them. And I say, now when I'm working with somebody, especially if they've been facing redundancy, talk to those people around you. Why did they love working with you? What was your special and different? How did that transpire in terms of them thinking, 'Let me go and talk to that person, they always have the answer.' How did you become that person? Why is it important? Because it's okay, and I can pretty much write a CV for anybody, and I can write a covering letter for anybody to get them a job. But is it the job that they want? And is it the job that they deserve? So, the brag book, so this is what? This is kind of where you record people who've said nice things about you. It's almost like your sort of personal testimonials. Yeah. And I'm a big believer in sitting down each month with a very conscious career plan going, what have I achieved this month? What have I done this month that has been valuable? So, I use the STAR system, so the Situation, Task, Action, and Result. And I'll talk to people, and even if they've been a coaching client many years ago, I'll say to them, 'Well, did you sit down and do STAR examples each month?' Because it's easier to do it whilst you're in it, than do it retrospectively. So, thinking about what have you done. So, that's in your brag book. If somebody's given you some great feedback, that's in your brag book. If there's something that you've done that you think, actually, I did a really good job there, even it helps with appraisals. So, when you get to an appraisal and people are saying,'What have you achieved this year?', most people go, 'Oh, I don't really know. What were my objectives?' Whereas, actually, if you can sit there and say, 'Well, there were three key things that I think I've achieved in the last three months', that's a better conversation. It's a better conversation, and you are feeling like you are adding value. But I even do it when I'm coaching people who are starting new businesses. I even buy them a brag book and say, 'You are going to have days where it is tough, and there are going to be days of the job search where it is tough, when it is feeling tough, look at your brag book and remember that you're fabulous.' I remember coming up to appraisal time and having to put things like, you know, what was your greatest achievement this year, and realising that I had completely forgot what I'd done this year. And so, that spurred me into starting to keep a running record of things which I had achieved. You mentioned there doing this monthly and doing this in the context of a conscious career plan, which suggests to me that, well, first of all, this is something that possibly everyone could benefit from doing, not just someone who might be looking to do some kind of a job transition, but also, that there could be more to it than just the brag books. So, I'm curious as to what are the other elements of the conscious career plan that someone, maybe even if they're not looking to change jobs, change career, what else they could be doing? So, I'll go back to the scorecard because this is for me where everybody should have that, what am I actually getting out of this? Because you will take a job, and you'll look at that job advert, and you'll have the interview, and they'll tell you it's something. And when you start the job, it's something totally different. And I can't tell you how many times I've sat down, especially as a team coach or as a trainer going, are you doing the job you thought you were going to do? Who's doing what? What should you be doing and what are you doing? And actually having these conversations, because jobs shift, and jobs change, and you end up picking up the bits that you didn't want to do, and you forget about the bits that you did. So, when you're thinking about, does this job still fit me, then that's where you're checking your values. Is it as flexible? Are you getting the Friday afternoons off that you always wanted? Are you still learning stuff? And so, depending on who you are will depend on what your criteria are, because it's personal, and part of that journey is, do they offer what they say they did? They talked about their values. Does the company live up to those values? If not, then consciously start to move on. Find somewhere else that does. I can't explain how, learning new skills is one of my things, I love learning, I love reading, I love doing courses, I love watching other people train, if I was working somewhere where they didn't invest in me, and I started to get bored, that would be a red flag for me. So, I would need somebody that was really conscious about training and development of their people if I was going to go back into employment. But for other people, it's just that thing that if they need to go and watch the school play, they can go and watch the school play. It's different things for everybody. But this is why I talk about being conscious, because you're the only person, I'm going to say it again, you're the only person who cares about your career. Nobody else does. So, the scorecard, say I'm coming to you for the first time, and you're talking to me about creating a scorecard, and I'm looking at you somewhat blankly. I don't know, a sheet of A4, what is on my scorecard? What goes on it? I mean, it takes a bit of work to get there. So, I coach people, this is part of what I do in terms of the coaching. But quite often, it's like a values audit. What's important to you? What does that job look like? So, you know, sometimes for people, it's proximity. It's, I don't want to be commuting anymore. I want to be able to go into the office one or two days a week. So, these are some of the things that you'll start to see on there. But for other people, it's that actually they believe in the CSR policy, and that they really like to give back to the community. It's something, a gut feeling about a company or a product. And I always say to people, it's easier to rule things out than rule things in. So, we tend to end up with a long list of things people definitely don't want, which then helps us narrow down the things that they definitely do. And that's okay. Because it's dead easy to say what you don't want. You know? So, people can say, 'I definitely don't want to be in the office five days, and I definitely don't want to work for somebody whose outcome is this. And I want to learn something, but I also want to have more holiday.' So, a company that you can buy more holiday might be a driving factor for them. So, it's not always those salary elements, and it's not always that package. It might be about opportunity, but it's a personal thing for everybody. So, those criteria, some people have 10, some people have 15, but I do say to people, go back and check 12 months into that job that they are still meeting those criteria. Because if not, you fall into that rut. Okay. And so, those criteria, I mean, you've talked a lot about values, which, I mean, I know from my own work and from the work I do with my clients just how important that is, but presumably some more practical things like what you're paid, how long your commute is, how much of it is remote work, how much of it is in the office, that kind of thing, then that's also the things that can go onto the scorecard. Number of days holiday, those are the types of things you see. But then, there are those softer things that you can't always quantify. Because the aim is, if you have two job offers, and this is where it comes into its own, you have two job offers, which of those scores higher on your scorecard? Because I prioritise those points. And then, well, which is going to hit it? Now, we might have a conversation, and you go, 'Louise, it's only a six-month contract, and they're willing to pay me double. So, actually, for these six months, I'm going to forego those nine things, because the salary is brilliant.' So, it's not a fixed thing, and this is where the beauty of it is. But then, you have somebody who goes, 'Actually, it's not worth selling my soul for six months, because I'm going to miss this really important part. My kids are doing GCSEs or this is happening', and you hear these kinds of things all of the time. So, actually, this other one might be a better option. So, it's being able to kind of take out that, oh, I'm just getting a job offer, and I've got to say yes. It's being conscious about your choice. So, when it comes to the scorecard itself, I'm guessing this is something that may well evolve over time, which could be based on personal circumstances, like having a family or wanting to move to a different part of the country, but I'm guessing it can also evolve with self-knowledge, so you don't realise that personal freedom and flexibility was as important to you, compared with other things. So, this is one of those things that I could imagine you could be doing it almost constantly, but you've also got to be a little bit, I suppose, practical and circumspect about it. So, I mean, how often is it worth looking at it and going, is this still me, is this still relevant? Maybe every month when you sit down to do your career conscious plan. As often as that. Yeah. Because things do change. And you might go, 'Actually, it's getting all of those', and that's fine. But you might also then look and think, 'I'm missing this.' And what I don't expect is one job to hit everything on somebody's scorecard. This is where I'll say to people, 'Go join a board, go become a trustee, go become a governor. Go do something else. You want to be a coach, there's no opportunities internally, go coach a charity, go work with somebody else, get the experience that you're lacking for your next step outside of work. Don't expect work to manage your career for you. They don't care.' And if you're not actively doing some of this stuff, you are potentially limiting your opportunities. If you're really good at your job, everybody wants you to stay in your job because you're great at it. But that might not be right for you, and it certainly might not be right for you long term. There's a once-a-month exercise here. There's the brag book, which we talked about, so adding to that the stories, the things that you've achieved, the nice things that people have said about you. There's looking at your criteria and deciding whether the criteria themselves are still in point for you or whether there is anything that's changed. And then, once you've done that, there's scoring those criteria against your current circumstances to figure out what's being met and where there's an unmet need. Is that a fair summary? And it's not going to take long because you're doing it regularly. Where I find the biggest challenge is, I talk to somebody who's like, 'Well, I've been at this company for 15 years. I've done loads in that time.' But which bits did you like? It doesn't have to be which bits are you good at, but which bits did you like? Because if you're always looking just at the bits that you were good at, you might not want to do that anymore. So, let's have a look at the things that you can do and see where that takes you. When it comes to scoring, I mean, I'm someone who I know that I can drive myself absolutely potty with that kind of thing. So, I'll start with just a ticker across, and then I'll look at rankings, and then you look at weightings, and then you could go absolutely bananas. But I have also seen it the other way where if you go too simplistic, it doesn't necessarily always tell you the whole story. So, someone might look at, for example, two positions, and one scores a seven and one scores a six. But it turns out that there's one-on-one which is actually really, really important, it's a red line, it's got to be there, and that's not reflected in these individual scores. So, I'm curious as to whether you've got any practical tips so that someone can make the scoring meaningful, but without driving themselves potty about going whether, oh, is this a four or is this a five? I know, I'll give it a four and a half, and you end up with a 10-point scale rather than a five-point scale. So, I always prioritise, and we always wait. So, which is really important and how important is it? But what it also allows you to do is see where the gaps are. So, if you're still at interview stage, and you can't answer those questions about what the organisation can offer you, that's where your question has come for the interview. How do you know that you can fill in that gap? Because you don't know everything. You've got the idea about what you want, but actually, they've got a part to play in that as well. So, this is where you can go, okay, so now I need to find out this. Do they stand by this? Is this something that's important for them? And then, take it to that next step of going, okay, they're my questions, now I've got the answers to that, now I can score it. It's a guide, though. It's like anything else. Some people will spend hours and hours playing around with keywords on their CV because they're worried that this word might look too similar to that word. And I think sometimes you don't see the wood for the trees. It's just something that can take away that emotional reaction to getting a job offer. Just check and make sure it's the right one. So, in the package, we've got the brag book, and we've got the scorecard. Is there anything else that kind of goes into this conscious career package apart from those two things? Do a template CV and cover letter fit in that, or are those separate things? Yeah, of course. Of course. I mean, within the seven steps, it's about being an application sensation. So, having a great CV or filling in a great application form. So, that's one of the other steps because that's a requirement. So is having a good LinkedIn profile, they're all requirements of the reactive job search strategy. But the other part is having your proactive plan. So, knowing who you want to network with. What are you telling them? What's your message? How do you want to be known? And how are you going to get people to be wearing your t-shirt when they're out there? So, it's having a very, very clear message. So, I bumped into someone I hadn't seen for ages the other day, and we were at one of those daytime discos. So, it's middle of the day, having a bit of a dance, and I bumped into her, she went, 'Oh, CV Louise.' And I was like, 'Okay, you might as well be wearing a 'CV Louise' t-shirt.' Right? Because when she thinks about me, she thinks about CVs. Although I do the whole career thing, that for me is someone wearing my t-shirt. If you are not clear about what you do, then how do people go out there and say it? Because people will assume they know what your job is. And the number of times I've heard people say, 'Oh, my name is John, and I'm an accountant.' No, you're not. What do you do for your clients? How do you help them? Because if someone's talking to me, and they go, 'Do you know anybody who...?', they won't just go, 'Do you know an accountant?' They'll go, 'Do you know somebody that's used to working with mid- to senior-level organisations that can help save them money in tax and can do this?' And I'll go,'Yes, so and so.' But if all I got is John and an accountant, I'm not going to marry the two of those together when I hear that, 'Do you know somebody who...?' So, arm people with that. So, have your message clear. I want your people going out with your t-shirt on and say, 'This is what I do. I help people to do this.' Because if you're then sitting in a meeting and somebody goes, 'Oh, I wish we knew somebody who could come in and turn this project around because we're going to miss a deadline', I want them to go, 'Oh, I was talking to him the other day, and he does projects. And he does turnaround stuff, and he's really used to coming in. Maybe this person can fit in.' But if they don't know what you do, then how on earth can they do that for you? And I think this is where we are so reticent at saying, 'I do this. This is how I help people.' And I'm seeing this link into the brag book certainly, and to an extent the scorecard, when you're kind of presenting this whole picture of who you are and what you do. So, when it comes to doing your CV, doing your LinkedIn profile, how you talk to people in networking, I guess, if you've already done that work on your brag book, on your scorecard, so you've got a clearer idea of who you are, then it just becomes a lot easier presenting that message to the outside world. Yeah. And practice it, because the number of times people go, 'Oh, I hate talking about myself.' And, you know, that's part of our culture. Right? You don't talk about yourself. You certainly don't say what you're really good at. You certainly don't talk about your achievements, unless it's in an interview, and then we feel okay about it. But even then, we're not very good at it. But it's also this assumption that people understand what your job is. And I think that's one of the big myths. Because I might think I can help you. So, I did a LinkedIn post the other day around things you should never say to a job seeker. And the number of times people have said to me, 'Somebody gave me a job, and it's nothing like what I do.' But have you ever told them what you do? Because they might go, 'Oh, you're work in risk.' But how do they know what that means? What they need is a message they can take that'll sit on the front of their t-shirt. So, if they hear anybody say, 'Oh, actually, we help make sure that cybercrime doesn't happen', they go, 'Oh, I know someone who does that', rather than just, 'Oh, I work in risk.' So, it's helping people understand, helping people understand. And this is where you become proactive, because people are working on your behalf as well. And when you talk about becoming proactive, presumably that's things like not necessarily posting every day on LinkedIn, if that just doesn't fit with you, but at least making sure that your LinkedIn profile is a fit and having that, I'm not going to say elevator pitch because I don't think that's quite right, but having this understanding of what messages you're looking to get across to other people, having that straight in your head, then that's kind of the proactive piece. It's your story. How are you telling your story? We love stories. So, what's yours? You know, how are you telling that on LinkedIn? There's an About section. You can tell your story in that. It isn't about what you've done necessarily. It's about where you want to go. The same as your CV. They're just setting an agenda for things you want to talk about. If we change the narrative around the tools and people start to have real control over the decisions they make within their career, and it's okay to get it wrong. It's okay to take a job that you think is going to be brilliant, not like it, and then leave. That's okay, as well. We're not stuck. And I think that feeling of being stuck somewhere takes away our control. And one of the very basic things we need as humans is some form of control over our life. Counsel of perfection is going to be the person who is doing all this. So, once a month, they are going through their scorecard. They're going through their brag book and so on and so forth. Then, there's the person who, maybe this is the first time they've heard about it, and they are now in a bit of a crisis situation. Maybe redundancy looms, maybe they've been made redundant, and they are feeling somewhat time-pressed. Does all this exercise, is it still valid for the person who is feeling that extra time pressure and doesn't have the luxury of being able to spend weeks and weeks networking? Absolutely. So, just a point on networking. Networking for me is not about walking into a room full of people with a business card. It's having a very good conversation with somebody. So, it's a one-on-one thing. Networking isn't always about big rooms full of people. That's what scares people. Having a chat with somebody you used to work with is a networking meeting. So, again, it's just looking at these things slightly differently, because you are going to get further by talking to people who already know, like, and trust you. They are going to go, 'Okay, yeah, let me have a look and see if there is anything at our place, or let me do this, or let me introduce you to somebody.' People are really good at helping if they can. What they can't do is give you a job. So, it's not having a networking meeting and expecting that person to be able to give you a job. Because where we start to fall down in terms of the panic is, people will start applying for jobs that they are not qualified for, that aren't a good fit, and they will get more rejections, and they will go downhill quicker. Be strategic. Know what you want to aim for. Go for that, and then you can evaluate whether that was a good fit or not. I say to people all the time, this shouldn't be a full-time job. Go out and have a cup of coffee. Go at the shops. Go play golf. Go do whatever you want to do in the afternoons if you've done everything you need to do in the morning. Why would you not? And in terms of the exercise itself, the scorecard, the brag book, presumably, that is still a valuable exercise which needn't take all that long, and, again, will help you set up for the job search when you are searching for that job because you've lost your last one. Yeah. Well, you haven't lost your job. The job's been made redundant. You haven't lost the job. I know that probably sounds like semantics, but I'm always really militant about this. It's the role that's made redundant, not the person. It's really important that we remember that, because otherwise, people think that they've lost their job. No, they haven't. There's been a restructure. They didn't do anything to cause that. Because that way, when you're talking about it, you can talk about it in a more positive way. It's one of the things that people don't realise most people face several times now within their career. The younger generation are going to face it more than we did. The older generation didn't face it as much as we did. It's getting more and more common. So, people go through it time and time again. And if it's never happened to you, that's something you might not realise. I can honestly say when people say to me, 'I've been made redundant', I almost want to say congratulations. Because I've helped thousands of people over the years, and I honestly can hand on heart say, I have yet to find somebody who doesn't say, 'I wish that had happened sooner.' They go on to find something else that is better or gives them more freedom or just wasn't the same and open new doors for them. So, it creates an opportunity. It's hard to see that when you're in it. So, it goes into that panic. So, you do what you do, you get your CV up to date, you get your LinkedIn up to date, you're networking, you're thinking about all of these things. But that doesn't mean that you can't be thinking about what you were good at because that's your interview preparation. That's your CV foundations. That doesn't mean that you can't be thinking about what does a company need to offer me? What do I want from the next thing? Go out there and research. If you can't do it yet, then maybe do a bit of volunteering to get you into that sector. Do a bit of volunteering whilst you're off. I think that's important. I think there's a temptation to go into a beggars can't be choosers mentality, particularly when redundancy has happened to you. So, yeah, taking this time to make the most of the opportunity and making a career-conscious move is probably going to feel a bit more stressful than if you were doing it from a job, but I can see that it's definitely still worth, yeah, applying a bit more consciousness to it, rather than being the person who says, 'I've applied for a 100 jobs, and I haven't got any of them.' Well, were you qualified for all of them? But I would also say, if you're applying for 100 jobs, that takes a lot of time. If you're doing it properly, applying for 100 jobs takes you a long time to tweak your CV, do all of those cover letters, put that in to get 100 rejections. That's reactive job searching. Proactive job searching is talking to people who might be able to help you. And that, in itself, is more valuable. It might not work for this job, it might not work for your next job, but it might work for the job after that. And that's okay as well. You're planting seeds. But if all you do is scatter your seeds and hope some of them grows, you're never going to get anything flowering. And this is where, when you're thinking about, actually, I want to talk to 10 people this week, having that networking plan, 10 is probably too many, by the way, I would think probably three or four is a maximum, and I want to talk to these people about this, and I want to talk to them about that sector because I'm really interested in it. And I want to do this, and I want to do this. That's proactive. That's consciousness because you're in control of that. You can still apply for the jobs. You're just not going to apply for the jobs that you think, 'Oh, gosh. Should I just apply for that?' And you're not going to apply for that job that someone hands you because they think that you're a good fit for it, and you know that you're not. Don't waste your time. Don't waste your time. You're only going to get screened out anyway by AI and just get the auto reject. So, what's the point? Is there anything which we haven't covered, which you'd like to mention in this context of career consciousness and all the tools and approaches that you've mentioned, is there anything else which you're thinking we must just cover that off as well? Yeah. So, step seven, be kind to your mind. This is, for me, where people are really hard on themselves throughout this process. I didn't get that job. I didn't get that interview. I didn't do all of these things. There is the real importance to having fun in this time. Right? So, if you have been made redundant, go and have that coffee with that person you haven't seen for ages. Go and have a walk around the park when it's sunny. Go and do those things that are valuable in terms of your mental well-being. Because, actually, there is a lot of unkindness in the job search process. Not necessarily intentionally, but I talk more and more about people being ghosted. That can feel really personal. It's not. It's just the way the system works. It's not you. It's the structure. So, be kind to your mind. Give yourself those times where if you're sitting at your laptop, you are less likely to come up with a brilliant example of a time that you're able to do something in a really great way, it's less likely to happen while you're sat in front of a laptop. It's more likely to happen while you're wandering around the park or through a wood. So, do the things that bring you joy during this process. Because when you're back in a job, you definitely won't have the time to do as much of that. Apart from your book, which I'm definitely going to put a link to in the show notes, what other tools, resources can you suggest that people look into as part of what we've talked about today? So, there's a brilliant course on Reed courses by LifeWorks Consulting, and it's some career tools. So, there's a free online course you can go on and have a look around that. It was written by one of the guys from Reed and a career coach who I've got a lot of time for called Stephanie Ricks, and they put this course live on Reed. It's a free resource. Go and have a look at that. Brilliant. Where would you like people to go to find more of you? The book's on Amazon, as all books are. It's free on Amazon Kindle. So, go and have a look at it on Amazon Kindle. The seven steps are in the book, the process is all there. Or feel free to come along to the Seven Steps to Career Consciousness website, and LinkedIn. Always happy to say hello to people on LinkedIn. Links as always will be in the show notes. Louise, Louise Lapish, I stand corrected, thank you so much for coming on to the podcast. My pleasure. Thank you. Okay. Hope you enjoyed that interview with Louise Lapish. Now, I'm willing to bet that well over 90% of people don't do the monthly exercise which Louise suggested in this interview. I mean, do you have your own scorecard where you check that the criteria for you are relevant each month, you check whether or not those criteria are being met each month, and also, on a monthly basis, you add to your brag book those things which people have said to you by way of compliment or well done or just noting down things that have gone well? In my last job, I used to keep a regular achievements list because I realised that it came to appraisal time, and I'd completely forgotten what it was that I'd done during the year, and that was really helpful. But the idea of coming up with a list of criteria, keeping that list up to date, and then scoring where I was against that list every month, that's certainly not something I ever did, and it's not something that I'm doing now. But maybe it is worth giving a go. In Louise's experience, it doesn't really take all that long, so perhaps it's a worthwhile exercise. It's one of these things that I think I'd probably be more likely to do if I had some accountability. So, if there's anyone who would like to get together, and we can hold each other accountable on a monthly basis to do this, then get in touch, changeworklife.com/contact, that's changeworklife.com/contact. If you're interested in doing this, then let me know. I think it might be quite an interesting exercise. You'll find the show notes for this episode at changeworklife.com/187, that's changeworklife.com/187. And if you haven't yet subscribed to the show, make sure you do. It's all very well finding your dream job, but how do you make sure that you're also being paid a fair salary? Next week's episode is all about salary negotiation. Lots of useful tips and tactics. You're not going to want to miss it. So, as I say, subscribe to the show if you haven't already, and I can't wait to see you then. Cheers. Bye.