Happy New Year Everyone!
To kick start 2013, we have a guest entry for our blog from Steph Cutler, founder of Making Lemonade. Steph is an employment trainer and coach, who works with visually impaired people, helping them to achieve meaningful employment and raise awareness of disability issues with employers.
Goal
Setting and Job Seeking
It’s
that time of year when talk turns to resolutions. This year as I looked ahead
at what I want to achieve in 2013 it struck me how the principles of setting
successful goals and seeking employment have a great many similarities.
As a
coach I regularly work with people who achieve their goals. One thing all these people have in common is
that they will all tell you it wasn’t easy. Let’s face it, if it was easy you
wouldn’t need to set it as a goal or a resolution and there would be far fewer
smokers, overweight people and more people exercising. Looking for and gaining
work is also not easy, especially if you are blind or partially sighted. I know
this from personal experience, I found it disproportionately difficult finding
work after experiencing sight loss, and I know the visually impaired job
seekers I regularly work with rarely find it easy.
From a
coaching perspective, there are five questions which can help you set a resolution
that you are seriously going to strive to achieve.
Ask yourself:
2. Do I
have a written plan and does my goal have a deadline?
3. Am I
sufficiently passionate about achieving my goal?
4. Do I
strongly believe I can achieve my goal?
5. Do I
have the absolute determination to see my goal through regardless of what other
people say, think, or do?
As you
would expect, I am going to say that you
need to be able to say ‘yes’ to all of the above questions to give yourself the
best shot. However, let’s take a minute to look at these in a little more
detail AND apply them to job seeking.
It is
important that you have a clear picture of what it is you want to achieve and
you maintain your focus on this. I know this can be hard if you are not exactly
sure what you want to do work wise. Spend some time eliminating what you don’t
want and being as specific as you can about what you do. The reason I say this
is that working towards something vague is far harder than when you have
clarity about what it is you want to achieve.
2. Do I have a written plan and does my goal have a
deadline?
In
1953 Yale University carried out some research on goal setting! They sampled a
group of final year students and found that 4% had goals that were written
down. 20 years later the researchers went back to the sample group to find out
how they were doing. The 4% who had written down their goals were streets ahead
of the rest of the group when it came to indications that might suggest
success. Each individual within the 4% group was financially secure; indeed as
a group they were worth more than the other 96% - who did not write down their
goals put together.
3. Am I
sufficiently passionate about achieving my goal?
Passion puts action into your plans and intentions.
Without passion you will struggle to motivate yourself to achieve your goals,
regardless how worthy your goal is or how workable your plan. This can only
come from you, so you should feel excited about hearing you have been the
successful candidate.
4. Do I
strongly believe I can achieve my goal?
Sorry to sound
harsh but….if you don’t believe then why would anyone else? Keep reaffirming to
yourself that you can do this, you are capable and you have what it takes. You
are going to have to persuade a potential employer of this and it is WAY more
compelling if you believe it too.
5. Do I
have the absolute determination to see my goal through regardless of what other
people say, think, or do?
You will need to develop a strong determination to follow through on your plan. Actively seeking work can be a thankless task and you will very likely experience knock-backs along the way. The people who succeed into employment are the ones that persevere and are determined. Unfortunately, many capable and talented people, sighted and visually impaired, do not achieve their employment goals because they lose the determination to keep applying.
I’m not going to wish you luck, as I am not a big
believer in luck when it comes to gaining employment or keeping resolutions
(note the absence of luck in my top five tips). I am going to wish you the very
best for the year ahead, whether you have made a resolution or not. Hope 2013
is fulfilling and fun.
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Steph Cutler
Twitter:
@Steph_Cutler
