My col­league across the pond, Bill Boor­man, thought it curi­ous that I was hav­ing a dif­fi­cult time not mak­ing food analo­gies in my blog post com­ments today and told me he wanted to bake me a vir­tual cake. Thank you Bill for being my first guest blog­ger ♥

Now here’s Bill!

I don’t know if any­one has noticed, but Karla has an obses­sion for food. Could it be that it’s a diet phase, and hunger is bring­ing food in to all her writ­ings. Barely a blog goes by with­out a men­tion of an éclair, bun or other pas­try prod­uct. We were dis­cussing this on twit­ter recently (it was a Sat­ur­day) when I com­mented on two things: 1) Being a Sat­ur­day I should really get a life & 2) that I talk about “cake mak­ing” in my train­ing. Curi­ous about this, and desirous to dis­cuss food fur­ther, invited me to add a guest blog.

If you bake a cake as badly as I do, the rea­son is because I get bored of recipes and guess the ingre­di­ents. For­get the scales; chuck in a hand­ful of this and a hand­ful of that. Mix it in a pot, drink a beer then stick it in the oven. Sur­prise, one hour later I take out the smok­ing stodgy mess and then rush to the shops to buy a real cake made by an expert baker, so that we don’t have to spend another of my children’s a birth­day singing happy birth­day whiles they blow out can­dles stuck in a potato cov­ered in tin­foil. (This is true!) And a wife express­ing an opin­ion that makes Gor­don Ram­sey sound like a priest.

Where did it all go wrong? Despite my blam­ing the cooker and bang­ing the ther­mo­stat, I know in my heart of hearts I should have really paid more atten­tion to the tra­di­tional recipe handed down from grand­mother to grand­mother, before decid­ing that actu­ally I knew bet­ter than those that had gone before, and wing­ing it. More prepa­ra­tion to get the ingre­di­ents and tim­ings right, fol­low­ing the words of the wise and I would have ended up with a cake to be proud of.

O.K., that’s a wise culi­nary les­son but what has this got to do with a blog aimed at job seek­ers? For me, it’s sim­ple. While putting together Career Car­ni­val, I col­lected over 30 expert blogs and twit­ter tips on every aspect of the job seek­ing process. This is the recipe you need to fol­low in your search for your next big step. From read­ing all of this mate­r­ial I can give you my 10 com­mand­ments for the job search. Be sure to fol­low the recipe!

1. Before you start any­thing define what you want. Be clear what will be right for you, why you want it and use this to define your search. Check with peo­ple who know if you are being real­is­tic in your expectation.
2. Cre­ate an on-line pres­ence that includes a linked in pro­file fully com­pleted includ­ing ref­er­ences. Check Face­book etc., and see what it says about you. Change it if you think it wouldn’t look good to hir­ing managers.
3. Col­lect ref­er­ences from past man­agers and cre­ate a brag file that illus­trates your achievements.
4. Con­duct at least 4 mock inter­views with friends who you trust to be critical.
5. Apply for one job at a time, make each resume and cover let­ter per­sonal to that job and keep a track on a spread­sheet of every job you apply for and where you’re up to. It’s not impres­sive to say “Sorry, what was the role again?”
6. Make friends of recruiters. They are not the enemy and your rela­tion­ship with them will deter­mine where you are in their think­ing. Be pro­fes­sional and cour­te­ous, and always ask for (and more impor­tantly accept) feedback.
7. never be late for an inter­view and spend time prepa­ra­tion. The right ingre­di­ents for the inter­view are 80% preparation,20% presentation.
8. Dur­ing the inter­view take notes and ask 3 types of questions:
   1. Ques­tions about some­thing you’ve been told by the inter­viewer. Shows you have lis­tened and are interested.
   2. Ques­tions that show you have done your own research about some­thing you haven’t been told.
   3. Qual­ify what the next step is, and if you want it, ask for it.
9. Make sure you close for any job you want by stat­ing that and ask­ing for reser­va­tions. If there are none, ask for the job.
10. Always plan and fol­low the plan. An old cliché but “Fail to plan, plan to fail!”

This is my recipe for suc­cess. Fol­low the instruc­tions to avoid end­ing up hud­dled round a burn­ing potato rather than pulling out a mas­ter­piece, tes­ta­ment to your ability.

Good luck!
Bill

You can fol­low me on twit­ter: @BillBoorman (I highly sug­gest you do ~Karla)