Career Advancement

 

 

Career Advancement is important. Being a valued and able to perform at your highest level delivers recognition, along with a financial reward.

The issue is, if you are feeling you lack social skills and don’t have the confidence to speak up in meetings and simply in conversations, you can be left behind. Lack of confidence impacts in so many parts of our lives, at work and even on our private life with making friends.

The Career Advancement program presented by Adrienne McLean, The Speakers Practice, and Sam Lee, Connect with Confidence, addresses the issues that professionals face.

When English is a second language, the issues around social skills and confidence can even be greater. Our programs are very supportive to professionals across the world to help with the social skills, presentation skills and confidence.

Our Career Advancement Program has three levels:

Level 1 : The Ultimate Personal Development Journey for Career Success 

This is a 1 hour session with Social Skills for Career Advancement discussed by Sam Lee. The important points are raised to develop your social skills and help you to feel more comfortable interacting at work or in social situations.

Adrienne McLean discusses “Engaging with Professionals and Speaking with Confidence. These two presentations help professionals with communication skills so they can feel confident to participate at the same level as their peers.

To book in for this complimentary webinar – go to The Speakers Practice Events

Level 2 : Social Skills and Strategies for Career Success

In this 2 hour session, you are asked to invest in yourself to build your career.

You will be developing your social skills and guided by Sam Lee to build your confidence. Sam has navigated this journey and has tools and techniques to help you in the workplace and in your personal life. Feeling that you are not connecting socially can be lonely and there are ways to address this. Sam shows you how.

Applying for jobs, going for interviews, answering all the questions can be daunting and rejection can be so hard to handle. By understanding the interview process and practicing interview questions can help to make you feel you are in control. Also, preparing a resume that showcases your work is important. Adrienne McLean goes through the important parts of going through the interview process and demonstrates with how important presentation skills are.

Your investment, in yourself for 2 trainers for the 2 hour workshop: $110 – to book in go to – The Speakers Practice Events

Level 3 – Professional Skills for Career Advancement

This is a 4 month program with 16 sessions and 6 hours workshop with our experts Sam Lee and Adrienne McLean.

By going into our Level 3 program, this means that you are serious about getting ahead. You are wanting to raise the ranks of your profession even though you may at the moment feel socially uncertain and lack confidence.

The way forward is to be supported by professionals who have been along a similar journey, who have developed their social skills and built confidence with presenting to groups, selling themselves to get jobs and overcome nervousness to get a head.

This program is personalised for each individual client to maximise the benefits and return for you. You are your greatest asset, investing in yourself will bring the greatest rewards personally and professionally.

To find out more, see: Professional Skills for Career Advancement 

Interview techniques for getting that Job!

photo-1459499362902-55a20553e082Interviewing is one of the most stressful activities imaginable for many people.  It’s a long process – you have to find the right job to apply for, then go through quite a process to get your resume to the key people, get short listed and finally if you’re lucky get onto the interview list. So by the time of the interview , it can be quite emotionally challenging already before setting foot in the interview room. One thing is for sure, by feeling more confident with interviewing skills this will help.

Most people don’t feel confident because they are not adequately prepared.  Here are some easy tips to help you become more prepared and to nail every interview you go to.

1. Research the company

  • What does the company do?  What are their major products and services?
  • Who are their competitors?
  • What opportunities and challenges are ahead of them (and how you can help)?
  • What is the press is saying about them (a quick Google search or search in your local paper can tell you that).
  • What is the “word on the street” about them?
  • What is their financial position?


2. Research the interviewer

  • Do you know someone who works in the company?  Find out what you can about the interviewer and drop little hints throughout the conversation that shows you’ve done your research.
  • Look them up on Linkedin to familiarise yourself with their background.
  • See what Google has to say.
  • Look at their Facebook account (if it’s public).


3. Know how to answer their questions

  • Statistics show that people who “win” interviews take between 30 seconds to 2 minutes to answer a question.  Anything less than 30 seconds is not thorough enough, anything more – you’re waffling – no matter how interesting you might think you are, an interviewer loses attention (and patience) after about 2 minutes.
  • Prepare your answers in advance.  Get a list of Behavioral Based Interviewing questions from the Web (there are loads out there and most interviewers don’t put a lot of thought into their questions so you’ll find 80% of what they will ask you from one of these lists of questions), choose 10 questions that you might ask if you were interviewing you for the role and write out your answers. 
  • It’s very important to write your answers out so you can recite the details comfortably in a stressful situation.
  • It’s also important to answer these questions with real, live examples of what you’ve done in the past and not what you would do.
  • Know your strengths and your weaknesses and don’t try to spin your weaknesses into strengths.  There is nothing worse than drawing a blank to this question.  It’s one of the most common questions asked and being unprepared for it demonstrates a total lack of preparedness.
  • Don’t try to spin your weaknesses into strengths.  Very few people do this well, it’s trite and inauthentic.  After all, everyone has weaknesses, no one is perfect. 


4. Know how to ask your own questions

  • Companies find out as much or more about you by the questions you ask them than by how well you answer theirs.
  • Challenge yourself to ask questions no one else may have thought about.  Business related, thought provoking questions.  Pre prepare based on your research.
  • Ask the interviewer about their background, people love to talk about themselves.  It may also give you insight into the company culture.
  • Determine the qualities you want in a boss and ask them questions about how they would handle situations.  Interviewing is a 2 way conversation.


5. Don’t let nerves get the best of you!

  • Prepare the night before so you know what to wear, where you are going and where your notes are.
  • Make sure you’ve got the name(s) (spelled correctly!) of the people you’re meeting!
  • Show up early!
  • Make sure you ask for a glass of water (don’t bring your own bottle) so that you can stall or pause as you’re structuring your answers!


6. Make a great first impression

  • With a great smile, direct gaze and firm handshake.


7. Follow up

  • Ask for the job (even if you don’t want it, you can always turn it down later!)
  • Send both Email and Snail mail thank you notes.
  • Give detailed feedback to your recruiter including positives, negatives, your interest on a scale of 1 – 10 and how the opportunity compares to any others you may have in the pipeline.
  • Follow up with the company 1 day after they tell you when they will make their decision or take the next step.

Adrienne McLean DTM – SpeakersTrainingCamp International Instructor and the Founder of The Speakers Practice – Adrienne specialises at The Speakers Practice helping clients to confidently deliver presentations for maximum impact. You can contact Adrienne on adrienne@thespeakerspractice.com.au or ring on 0414 367 960.