Insights

to Supercharge your career

Give yourself the edge

Make sure you stand out from the crowd and tip the odds in your favour

If 50 people apply for your dream job, how will you stand out from the crowd?  What can you do well before the interview to make a good impression?

The good news is, there are a few things you can do.  

Make contact with the recruiter, meet them if you can.  Find out what is important to them, what their values are and what keeps them awake a night.  If you know someone else working there, quiz them too.  If you can arrange a site visit, that is a great investment of time.  


Use these opportunities to influence and inspire.  View them as the interview before the interview and make a great impression.  If you manage to meet face to face, treat it with respect and think about what you’ll wear and ensure you are punctual.

Influence & inspire

Whatever you can do to influence & inspire before the interview is highly valuable.

Impressions

Leave a good impression - listen well, make notes and ask great questions.

Victory in vulnerability

Do you have any faults, any areas to improve and any gaps to address?!

If you have answered ‘no’ to that question, you are either lying or have never asked the right people the right questions!  All of us have areas to improve, but very often we haven’t taken time to consider them or asked those that know us best for feedback.  Asking for feedback makes us feel very vulnerable but is the gateway to rich information that we can use to set us on our way to victory.  Find some trusted, honest people and ask them:

  • What's my greatest strength?
  • When am I at my best?
  • When did I perfom well?
  • What's my blindspot?
  • What would be 'even better if'?
  • What do I need to work on?

Edison never failed

Viewing 'failure' as feedback is a vital shift in mindset

Thomas Edison was an American innovator, inventing many things including the light bulb, the phonograph and the camera.  A vital factor in his success was how overcame things going wrong.  Edison once said “I have not failed 10,000 times – I have successfully found 10,00 ways that will not work”.  

 

‘Failure’ is feedback and plays a significant role in helping us continually improve and grow.  Let ‘failure’ shape and mould you, we learn the best lessons from when things don’t go to plan.

Forwards or backwards?

'Failure' should drive us forward, not drag us back.

Valuable lessons

We learn our best lessons from when things don't go to plan.

Write it down

Supercharge your goals by writing them down.

To really supercharge your career and give yourself the best chance of progressing and developing, you will need to identify some goals.  These need to be realistic but create a stretch.  Too tricky will demotivate you and too easy won’t stretch you.  

 

Successful people write their goals down.  There has been lots of studies on this, with some stating that people with written goals are over 40% more likely to achieve them, compared to those that don’t.  There are other benefits too:

  • It focuses you
  • Increases accountability
  • Improves motivation
  • Engages the brain
  • Easier to track
  • Helps prioritise