Interview Techniques: Watch Your Language

What you say will stick with your interviewer, so watch your language.

 

Do you call people ‘bro’, ‘dog’, or ‘dude’ in conversation? Do you use the word ‘like’ as a transition to fill in where other, better words should be? Do you have a habit of saying ‘I don’t know’ as you trail off a sentence? Do you feel like fist bumping? These and other behaviours are what works with your friends and people who know the excellence with which you’re made. With those you meet for the first time, you might come off as informal, coarse, indecisive, and too familiar. Age has a lot to do with the words we use. Younger candidates use different language signs than older candidates. You can always be yourself, just watch what you say, and you can grow a closer rapport with your interviewer and come off as the sophisticated baller you are. Here are some obvious word choices and saying and things you can avoid right off.

‘Bro’. Don’t call your interviewer ‘bro’ and you might as well not reference your ‘bros’ a ‘bromance’ or anything with ‘bro’ at all in it.

‘Dude’. Unless you left your car somewhere and you’re Ashton Kutcher, don’t play the dude card. It works in The Big Lebowski, and it probably works with your friends, but there are no ‘dudes’ in the interview room (unless, of course, you are The Dude. Then you’ll be forced to).

Like’. Like I went to the like job interview and they were like I think you have the experience, but, like, what’s with all the likes? Likes are good for things you like (‘I like flowers’), to compare one thing with another (‘They act like clowns’), or liking a post on social media. But, other than that, keep your likes, like, to yourself.

Swearing. This is usually something you should avoid, even if your interviewer throws the odd ‘f-bomb’. Even if others swear, they might not be as aware of it in themselves as they will be when it comes out of your mouth. Even mild swearing is wise to avoid.

‘Babe’, ‘bae’, ‘boo’. These are all nice things to say to someone you know well or love, but not so cool when you’re interviewing for a job. A lot of interviewers won’t know what you’re saying anyway (most people don’t know what ‘bae’ even means) so pet names for others should be left for those others. Never call your interviewer ‘boo’ unless you really mean it and they know it.

Shake hands, no fist bumps, no secret handshakes. It’s cool to do the exploding fist bump with friends, or have your hands fly away like a bird after a complicated handshake, but you should leave this for your friends when you get the job. Otherwise, shake hands and look your interviewer in the eyes.

Don’t use complex or complicated words you don’t really know the meanings of. I meet a lot of people who want to seem smart in interviews who use the wrong words for simple concepts. If you don’t know what a word means as your mind grasps for something smart to say, choose a simpler word instead. Simpler and direct responses or questions are always the best, so keep it concise and use the smaller words. They are most powerful anyway, and you won’t mistakenly say something that points out you don’t actually know what you’re saying.

These and other simple tips will at least get you through the interview and not rejected from the list right off. Professionalism, manners, watching what you say, and reading your interviewer are keys to greater interview success. It’s, like, really, like, important.

Do you have tips for interviewing? From the practical to the unusual, we’d love to hear what you think makes interviews successful or unsuccessful.

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My Secrets To Never Giving Up

keep walkingFinding your way alone is tricky. Here are some things I’ve learned about navigating life.

 

Another year come and gone, a new year to look forward to, and an old year to reflect on, but only a little bit. Reflection on our past is important for self improvement, but it can be easy to go down the rabbit hole on the past: regret, things undone, a feeling of weight, on your mind and on your person. The thoughts of the past can burden us going into a new year if we let them. Here are some of the things I do to refresh myself for the New Year.

I don’t think about the past with regret. Or at least I try very hard not to; I used to spend hours looking back, wishing I would have done things differently, and lingering on the thoughts, the feelings and the regret of the past. I have learned that the past cannot be changed, and that when we linger on it for too long, it can bring sadness, depression and it can keep us feeling stuck from moving forward. The so-called ‘bad’ of the past, through another perspective, can become good, it can be opportunity for learning. It’s a mental training that’s lifelong that helps you find the courage to not see obstacles as barriers but as things to overcome.

I let go of old things and embrace change and new things. An old friend of mine from New York once said the best way to let go of your problems is to imagine them as helium balloons, you let them go and they float away. She taught me this visual exercise and it works. Imagine your problems as floating balloons you’re holding onto, and you let them go, one by one, until they float away and disappear. It’s worth trying.

I have a vision that leads me. If we don’t dream, we die, inside and out. When we lose our vision for ourselves in the future, or our purpose in life, then we lose the excitement of the future. Think about why you have lost your vision, why you are feeling lost or stuck?  What are you missing inside you that you need to heal or to focus on.  Are you burnt out? Are you in a bad relationship or a bad job? As I coach my clients in career sessions, every part of your life affects another part. You need to have balance in your life to feel energized and positive. If you’ve lost your vision for yourself for whatever reason, it’s time to find it again for this next stage of your life.

I stay open hearted and open minded. Always be kind is a motto I’ve borrowed from Kurt Vonnegut, and it might be the simplest reminder and the hardest to do, on a day by day basis. It’s easier as we age to become narrower in our interests, but your own youthful longevity depends on being open to new things, to change, and to situations. Resilience, curiosity, imagination, energy are built on the things we love, and what we love is so much less than what there is. Being curious every day about new things will remind you how much there is to feel in the world, and how much you are the one to build your own experience of the world. I like to be  curious and to stay open to the possibilities that come into my life; instead of saying ‘this is impossible’…I choose to to be open to it and treat it as a gift for consideration for my future direction. Neurologists will also tell you it’s good for you, which seems obvious to me.

I believe in people and my own future. Cynicism is our basic culture these days, to the point where we ourselves don’t realize how cynical we’ve become. Cynicism is a disbelief in people and potential, and if there’s anything I dislike the most it’s cynicism. It’s a low frequency emotion or intellectual stance, and it drains you and everyone of vital energy. Sure, some cynical humour can be funny, but are constantly cynical people funny? They are the hardest to be around because they drain you of thinking or feeling the potential in you for the joyful expression of your born talent.

While life can be tough, and we all experience this, I see only one option.  That option is survival, thriving, overcoming obstacles, learning and never giving up. I believe we are in the place we are supposed to be whether it is challenging or not, so be thankful for the space you are holding, learn what you are supposed to and simply BELIEVE.  Believe and trust…trust that you are being looked after and that you will be directed down the path that is best for you. My mantra….”Failure is not an option”.

 

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The Heart Of The Holidays

marshmallow man
What does it all mean?

 

Do a Google search on ‘the heart of the holidays’ or the ‘meaning of Christmas’, and you’ll find no end of listings and links from the religious to the non. There are a lot of movie titles along these lines, recommended for you, along with holiday gift ideas and putting the ‘Christ’ back in Christmas. As we near the centre of the holiday, it’s a time to reflect, for each of us, what the true meaning of the most important day of the year, aside from your own birthday, really means.

Whether this is a religious holiday for you or not, the spirit of Christmas, of the holiday time, is a spiritual feeling that comes over most of us. You might feel more inclined to be charitable to people you don’t know, you might even choose to be kinder to the family that gets under your skin any other day of the year. You might even choose, the hardest of all, to be kind to yourself.

The best gift of the year, it seems to me, is the gift we give ourselves when we put family and good feelings before all. Everyone has struggles and the struggle for peacefulness continues and even gets magnified over the holiday. This is when the most people feel the most lonely, when those without might realize the lack more keenly, and might fall down the well of depression over the way life is now, for you, and how it’s been over the last year. It’s an easy trap to fall into, being an Ebenezer through the holiday.

I was re-watching A Christmas Carol last night and I was struck by two obvious things: Jacob Marley really held the firm together (Ebenezer seems to have always been the weak link in the company, based on his general attitude), and the person harmed the most through hate is the hater, which is Scrooge himself. The crust of cynicism had grown so thick with Ebenezer Scrooge that his own self hate made him hate all things, even the spirit of Christmas. The hater is harmed most. Marianne Moore once said in her poem In Distrust of Merits, just as the Roman playwright Plautus had said many centuries before her, “Man is wolf to man/And we devour ourselves.” Wolf may be mankind’s nature, but it’s also true the nature of mankind is the dove, in a juxtaposed tension of choices. Or as Bukowski put it once in a poem, “The bluebird inside of me.”

It may also be that people aren’t good to each other, as Bukowski also once said. But it’s also true that the dove is important in our history as people around the world; the dove helped Moses discover land. Land can be read as both a physical place, of terra firma, and as the metaphorical guide to a metaphoric landing: of peace after turmoil and conflict, wholeness after days of rain and storm, and the final resting place we call peace, or peace-of-mind, or home. The heart of the holidays is our own heart, the home of all, the dove, the bluebird, full of the spirit of mankind, in a state of fullhearted giving without thinking.

Love where you are right now, who you’re with, and what you’re doing. And don’t stop the habit. It might actually be the easiest and best New Year’s resolution you’ll ever make.

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Overcoming Holiday Depression

santa underwater
The best advice? Forget it!    | Photo: Diego Azubel/EPA

 

Holiday depression is common, but being happy is easier than we think. Watch this short excerpt from “Did you used to be R.D. Laing?” a documentary portrait of Dr. Laing by Kirk Tougas and Tom Shandel. It just might make you smile.

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‘Tis The Season To Tipple Something New – 6 Classy Drink Recipes Guaranteed To Get You (And Everyone) Into The Holiday Spirit

SANTAWhat’s on your drink list this holiday? Our favourite recipes from across the web.

The holiday season is known for a lot of happy things, including festive drinks. We’re all familiar with the traditional eggnogs, hot chocolates, and punches. When it comes to giving yourself the gift of some good cheer, make it memorable with some of these twists on the traditional and all-time classics. Here are some of our favourite holiday drink recipes from across the web. Sweet memories are made of this….

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The Classic Snowball
From BBC Good Food

Made with advocaat, lemonade and ice, the BBC describes the Classic Snowball as “the ultimate retro cocktail to celebrate the festive season.”

Candycane Hot Chocolate
All Recipes

Whether you make your cacao from scratch or from the pouch or can, this is an easy way to add a lot more zing to your hot chocolate. Better than Starbucks.

Pub Nog
Parade

You might like it plain or with your favourite spirits, but have you tried your nog with beer? This pub recipe from Parade is what happens when you combine eggnog with beer: wonderfulness.

Christmas Punch
Sugar and Soul

Take it with spirits or without, the secret to a great holiday punch is three (or more) ingredients. Sugar and Soul recommends this recipe for hard or soft punch that packs a punch either way.

The Sneaky Grandma Cocktail
The Daily Meal

Give grandma one of these while she’s unwrapping gifts and you’ll have a very merry grandma, indeed. The Sneaky Grandma sneaks up on you, so be gentle with your ingredients, or not, depending on your grandma.

Bloody Mary or Caesar (with clam instead of tomato juice)
From Liquor.com

The Bloody Mary or Caesar is a classic and classy vodka-based drink, which doubles as a nutritional breakfast and hangover cure all in one. Too many of the classic Bloody Mary or Caesar cocktail can make you very unclassy, so bloody well take it in sips.

Do you have any favourite drink recipes? Send us your favourites here.

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A Conscience This Holiday Season


“…you’ve got to be kind.”

 

In the book God Bless You Mr. Rosewater, or Pearls Before Swine, the millionaire Eliot Rosewater develops a conscience and dedicates his fortune to helping anyone who comes to him for help. The founder of The Rosewater Foundation and volunteer firefighter goes against the wishes of his family, who then hires a lawyer to prove that Eliot Rosewater is crazy in order to serve the lawyer’s greedy ends and the self-preservation of the Rosewater family. The Rosewater clan accumulated their fortune basically through forced labour at low wages. Being rich, they accumulate great wealth and a great name, but it’s wealth and a reputation built on the lives of the working poor they’ve take advantage of for generations. Eliot Rosewater’s conscience creates great problems for the standing and the fortune of the Rosewater family.

One of Vonnegut’s most famous quotations comes from God Bless You Mr. Rosewater:

“Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. On the outside, babies, you’ve got a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies-‘God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.’”

To me, this is where true greatness lies. Be kind, dammit, is a great reminder that we lose sight of this basic principle in our day-to-day interactions with people. As the American poet Charles Bukowski says in The Crunch, “People are not good to each other/one on one/people are just not good to each other.” It’s a grim reminder of the truth of this statement, one we can recognize in our news reporting, in what we observe in situations around us, and even in our own lives. Kindness is not a universal habit, it’s safe to say. But what if it was?

If God Bless You Mr. Rosewater teaches anything, it’s that a conscience, being kind, is not the way of the world, to the point the world wants to prove such kindness is craziness. We tell ourselves in our everyday lives that being kind matters, but how often do we truly live it? Kindness is more than charity and charitable giving; Eliot Rosewater gives as much time to the so-called town kooks as the serious representatives of his own family. He listens intently to their troubles and commiserates with them. He asks them what they need, and then he gives it to them. Basically, everyone thinks Eliot Rosewater is mad. The fact is, he just might be, because such basic caring looks mad to a material world: why on earth would you give away everything? Why would you give an audience to the most down and out? Why would you ruin your family’s great name by making a mockery of the institutions they’ve built? Eliot’s basic answer is it makes him happy to make other people happy. So, he becomes a kind of Christ-figure in the book: anyone can make an appointment with Eliot and his Rosewater Foundation, for whatever they need. Eliot pays a reputational price as Mushari, the lawyer, and the Rosewater family try to brand him as insane and try to get power of attorney over Eliot. Meanwhile, he continues to give away his time and his fortune to the disadvantaged.

So, is kindness crazy? No. Do we sometimes, in real life, make excuses for being less than kind? Yes. How can we all be more kind in our everyday lives, even if we don’t have the millions of Eliot Rosewater? Well, I think what we can really do is listen, be present, and understand how what we do, or do not do, has consequences. If we care about and we’re kind from the most ‘down’ to the ‘highest’, it helps us become higher ourselves: more present and understanding at every interaction. People who have hard times might need food, shelter, clothing, a job. Those of us with more, might need to remember how lucky we really are, how accidental that luck is, and that we need to be kinder to everyone because that kindness is also our gift to ourselves, our own being, and how we become more, instead of less, human.

Kindness shouldn’t be random. Kindness is a state of being, a state of self that everyone can achieve if you put your mind, heart and soul into living it and giving it to others. Happy holidays everyone!

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Your Words Are Your Power

words have power
From runes to modern language, there’s always been magic in words.

 

What you say to yourself, even what you write down, tends to come true. I know that sounds strange, but there’s power in words, the ones we say to ourselves and to the world. And I’ve found in my career that writing down my goals, for myself, my business, and my life in general, helps bring those goals true. I don’t know why, or even where it comes from, but I’m not the only one to whom this happens. Even all our modern gurus, from Eckhart Tolle to the late Wayne Dyer, say the same: the way to connect with intention is to make it real, to bring it into being. The very act of doing that brings something new into the world, and it’s like dowsing rods moving to a water source: part of the equipment here for finding the wellspring of your life is your own words, since words are intentions and they have power.

When I start every year, I choose a new word for myself. Something I feel connected to, or respect, and want to attract abundantly into my life. So, my tradition for myself is to find the word I want more of in my life in the next year. I’ve made it a tradition to find that word engraved, etched into stone, which makes it more real for me. And I keep it with me to remind myself what my intention for my life this year will be.

If you follow our YouTube channel, you’ll know what that Power word is for me in 2020. And if you haven’t seen my video on this yet, I encourage you to watch it as I go into greater detail about the importance of setting your intentions for yourself. You don’t have to do what I do, and have it etched in stone; others I talk to write their goals for themselves. Simply. Even financial goals, written and said, seem to have a greater chance of happening. But for me the attractors are the words that help me grow as a person in the world, from which, I believe, everything else comes.

So, set some goals for yourself and share them into the world. You don’t have to tell anyone else. You only need to tell yourself. Write it to yourself, or carry a reminder of that word, like I do.

Dreams have a better chance of happening if they are given a chance to be real. The first step, for me at least, is to make real a resonant connection that draws me to the paths of opportunity, self realization, and meaningful relationships. For me, my intention in stone is like a compass. Without one we don’t know where we are going. With a negative word on that stone, my power is taken from me. With a powerful and resonant and intentional word, I feel empowered, like I’m always more ready to take on new challenges, to overcome new obstacles, and overcome my own automatic negative thoughts. Words are power, that’s something to recognize. And putting your own power into the world makes you more powerful, and more able to let you get from where you are now to where you want and deserve to be.

What’s your Power word for 2020?

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Your Life Is What You Make It

sunshine
Power vs Force In 2020.

 

One of my favourite books of all time is the book Power vs. Force: The Hidden Determinations of Human Behaviour, by David R. Hawkins M.D. Ph.D. The book is a meditation on the evidence that the emotions we choose for ourselves determine at what level we resonate inside of ourselves for our own growth, and how our choices towards negativity creates sickness in us, and decides our fate in our relationships to everything in our life. The choice towards higher powers, on the other hand, is available to us all, says Dr. Hawkins, who presents us with the range of human emotions and their effects on us from the lowest to the highest, and some of the historical and near history people who exemplify, in their behaviour, the highest regions of human potential. He shows by example that while there are only so many Buddhas, everyone can aspire to become one, because aspiring changes the individual and the community around them. The climbing up or down is the thing. Down is hate and fear, which weakens the individual to their core, and impedes their growth to harmony and beyond that. Lower emotions keep you down. On the other hand, choosing love heals and empowers the individual, and sets them on a higher path, somewhere. The opportunities come with the choices. Professional efficiency, being good at your job, would resonate below a basic happiness line, according to Dr. Hawkins. But your work life happiness can be improved by choosing joy instead of resentment, for example; or compassion over anger. Love, being somewhere in the middle of the pack of human potential, lifts you up, and leads to that web effect or network effect, I alluded to moments ago. It’s a hard thing to do, conjure love, as an example, judging by today’s divorce statistics, or even the dehumanization of the modern workforce, layoffs of real people in favour of more automation. The modern world makes it hard on the individual to rise above. But, then again, maybe not so. The change does happen on the ground floor, with you, and me, and within each of us. For most of us, a basic and fundamental change in attitude would be a good start in completely changing our personal fortunes for the better, exactly by how we really interact with the world. In a brief introduction on Amazon, Dr. Hawkins’ book is described this way:

“David R. Hawkins details how anyone may resolve the most crucial of all human dilemmas: how to instantly determine the truth or falsehood of any statement or supposed fact. Dr. Hawkins, who worked as a “healing psychiatrist” during his long and distinguished career, uses theoretical concepts from particle physics, nonlinear dynamics, and chaos theory to support his study of human behavior. This is a fascinating work that will intrigue readers from all walks of life!”

This description hardly does justice to Dr. Hawkins’ important work. Within, what you’ll find is a guide who’s created a kind of guidebook to recognizing that our feeling emotions are the most vital part in achieving our ultimate selves, which means transcendent happiness in every human person, in higher spiritual, emotional, intellectual and physical health and resonance.

Dr. Hawkins notes that there are very few individuals on the planet who have ever resonated at the highest levels available to people, beyond even the high resonance of love, well above, in fact. It’s these individuals whom billions follow and idolize down the centuries and forever since. These people, like Jesus and Gandhi, become spiritual guides and gods, or virtual gods, to the billions. This doesn’t happen by accident, says Dr. Hawkins. Down the line from the top of the truly illuminated few, there are then the many well-known and famous people, known for their intellectual giftedness, who have changed the way the world thinks; people like Rousseau or Voltaire, he says, resonate at high intellectual levels and we remember them and idealize them for their high achievements. But we also don’t revere them, in the way we do the truly Enlightened Ones, the luminous prophets of the world.

Then there’s you, and me, reacting in our lives, every day. Life is hard. Things happen. And I know It seems just automatic sometimes in our day-to-day lives to choose fear before hope, jealousy before acceptance, hate before love. Yet it’s these very choices, down or up, that become our mental habits, that then become persistent physical and spiritual weaknesses or strengths. Our reality is shaped by our choices. There are a lot of health benefits to thinking healthily. The way up is the hardest, because started a new habit is always the hardest, but the way up is the only way. The world is full of negative thinkers, negative words, negative feelings, which means it’s easy to find a way of thinking that will bring you down, if you let it. The choice begins with each of us, and it’s a reflected habit that becomes, as Ovid said, character.

The most negative emotions, like fear, hate, jealousy, control, and envy, resonate at such a low level that these emotions make us sick if we choose these levels or stay at these levels for long.

The choices we make daily affect ourselves and our lives so radically, argues Dr. Hawkins, that it’s in everyone’s interest to work on evolving into the powerful emotions, the positive ‘Power’ emotions from his title, and away from the negative ‘Force’ emotions that keep us down, keep us weak, unhealthy, and disable our relationship to others and the world at large. If you sit around all day hating everything and being jealous, you can expect the quality of your life, your relations, your health, and even your understanding of the meaning of life, to be very impaired. You will feel weak because force emotions create weakness in us. The higher emotional resonance we achieve, the more powerful we become in all the ways we admire in others who show these qualities. We stop forcing control over our lives and the lives of others and instead accumulate the positive powers that give us understanding, more happiness, presence, more ability to help those struggling and, ultimately, our highest enlightenment.

If you’ve ever heard the fable of the sun and the wind, you will get the gist of this important book. In the allegory, a man is walking with his jacket on. The sun and the wind have a bet as to which of them will be able to get the jacket off the man the fastest. First the wind goes. The wind blows and blows, first blustery, then gale force. The harder the wind blows, the tighter the man clutches his jacket around him. The wind tries and tries, harder and harder each time, to get the man to remove his coat. The wind finally runs out of air and gives up. The man has his jacket on, buttoned to the throat, collar up around his ears.

Now it’s the sun’s turn. The sun comes out and shines on the man, warmer and warmer and warmer. Not hot but unhurried. The sun keeps shining on the man steadily, bringing warm rays down. Pretty soon, the man, getting warmer and warmer, decides to remove his jacket. The sun wins the bet easily. That’s the difference between power and force, and why power, like the sun shining, is more profound than the blustering force of the wind, which as strong as it is, can’t equal the awesome, persuasive and easy power of the sun.

If you’re looking for a good gift for yourself or someone you love, think about getting them Power vs. Force: The Hidden Determinations of Human Behaviour. It’s easy reading, engaging, and useful map to have on you journey towards being your most powerful self.

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“I Really Feel Like I’ve Lost 10 Years Out Of My Life”


The career grieving process. When you lose your career, how to cope and recover.

 

One thing that doesn’t get enough attention is how it feels when you lose your career. Losing a job is hard, but I’m not talking about job loss here, I’m referring to outright loss of career, and the requirement to start again in another direction. Just like the death of a close loved one, your career is precious to you, and it comes with all kinds of gratifying benefits. Your career makes you feel purposeful, gives you professional and personal esteem, provides you with a circle of friends, and it’s what keeps you swimming in the stream of meaning, relevance, and value. When a person loses their career, often it’s because of reasons outside of their control, like a sudden accident or prolonged illness, either their own or a family member, which means they are forced out of the market for a period of time. Being away from your career for any length of time can mean falling behind or outright forgotten, with the only options being trying to climb back to where you ‘were’, or starting something else altogether. Either way, the loss of a career is the loss of identity, value and purpose. It’s a grieving process that must be acknowledged and addressed, the same way mourning the loss of a loved one must be processed. There are stages to career loss, too.

I was thinking a lot about this over the weekend after reading the story of Leslie Ash, who lost her acting career because of a superbug. Her long stay in the hospital took a huge toll on her health and her career. Having gone from ‘well known and on her way up’, Leslie Ash disappeared into obscurity. And once she was well again, she had trouble finding work, from the same community of producers and directors who once lauded her.

“I really feel like I’ve lost 10 years out of my life,” she tells the Guardian.

Her recovery following her illness saw her in physiotherapy, doing Pilates, and stopping alcohol, even while her doctors “kept upping the doses of painkillers until I actually felt like a bit of a zombie…. I thought: ‘God, this is terrible! What can I do?’ When you’re on those pills, they are antidepressants, you don’t feel any emotion at all.”

After years of recovery, learning to get her body back to its normal function, she found herself ignored by the industry that was the source of her career. She couldn’t find work, though she needed it badly, and despite her long illness, she was still a skilled actor with a following of fans. It was disorienting, she says, and demoralizing, and made her recovery harder. Why make a life comeback when there won’t be any career comeback?

Ash said to The Guardian: “In those days…if someone broke a leg during filming, the director would say: ‘Let’s shoot around it!’ But in fact, I was quite amazed at how I got dropped. Completely. It was just … it was quite suffocating…It’s like the rug being brought up from beneath your feet. No one wants to know you … I thought, I have to start again.”

She’s asked by interviewer Paula Cocozza, did your industry friends check on you, to see how you were? “Erm. No. Not really. I can count on one hand how many people checked in. No. I was quite remote. I think a lot of people thought: ‘Give her space to sort herself out’. And then years turned into a decade. You go through a grieving process when you’ve lost your career. You know. And it can catch you at moments where you just feel like shit.”

“You know what,” Ash continues, “no one likes to speak to people when they’re not doing well. When you’re not in the limelight anymore, it’s true. People don’t particularly care.”

After all she’s been through, Ash believes she is a better actor now. All she needs is a chance. “I am going to do it again,” she says. “Even if I have to make the shows myself.”

Join us here for more on ways to recover from career loss and move forward into a new and exciting and prosperous life.

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What I’ve Learned (So Far) From 7,300 Days As A Recruiter And Career Coach


As Terri Davis, CEO of ProFound Group of Companies, prepares to launch new initiatives in 2020, she discusses what
has changed – and what hasn’t – in her 20 years as an executive recruiter and career coach.

 

Have things changed? Are things better or worse today? These are some of the questions I get asked about my 7,300 days in recruiting and coaching (and counting). These are difficult questions to answer. What’s changed in recruiting and coaching in the last 20 years? Very little and quite a lot. The old ways to recruit people are still standard, transactional, and silo-ed by department. The technology revolution has taken a wide berth in the recruiting space, leaving the sector behind in revolutionary ways to create better customer experiences. Companies more than ever need people and can’t find them in some sectors, even while other sectors are seeing huge layoffs, like BMO in Canada, with only some of those terminated people finding their way into the job market, aged out, packaged out, retraining for something else. The recessionary conditions today are different than the recruiting heyday of the 80s, 90s and early 2000s, which means the “old jobs” in some sectors don’t even exist anymore, like in some manufacturing where robots are traded between companies and people aren’t required any more. More people with fewer traditional sector positions available means more people are retraining, or they are living below their previous income levels in jobs they are overqualified for, maybe even in the ‘gig economy’ space. The divide between a technocracy and those who aren’t part of it is widening. In the way reading and writing separated the literate from the illiterate, driving the wealth divide in the information age, the internet age widens the chasm considerably.

While recruiters have yet to catch up with the market changes, so too have job seekers fallen behind the knowledge curve that grows exponentially under us. The Internet Age of Value is underway, and with it come huge challenges and huge opportunities.

As recruiters, we still live in a transactional world, where everyone wants it cheaper, faster, and better, and procurement has assumed an even bigger role in retaining recruiting firms for search, which destroys opportunity for smaller firms to get a break, their chance, in an ever hyper-competitive market.

I see three major recruiting and career trends going into 2020 and beyond:

More layoffs in 2020 in government, banking, manufacturing, and other people-centric businesses. More “help services” and manual services served by specialist bots, which will have mixed customer service reviews, but will serve the driving bottom line. Even if it sounds like a person but you know it’s not, how will that make people feel? And will that meta quality be something that affects us in ways we can’t yet know or see that’s beyond economics and at the root of interacting with human beings?

Specialization. The roles of the past are over. At the very least everyone will be a hybrid, knowing how technology works (adaptation) and skill specialization in their field. Where robots don’t completely replace people, people will have to know how the robots work. Programming knowledge will become very valuable as a service and skillset.

The interconnectedness of things via blockchain technologies and integrated AI solutions will mean a lot of things, including an information/surveillance culture. It will also mean the technology for creating and sharing information and content will be easier than ever to do, and the mass of new information to be catalogued, sifted, shared, sold, will grow exponentially. The revolution next will be The Content Age, the age of the connected (decentralized or not) databases, your information DNA, collected throughout our lifetimes, there as long as we live, changing the ways we consider privacy, connectedness and the indelibility of personal information. All human activity will be an infinite catalogue of information now, no archeology needed, content made for us, by us, about us, and against us, analyzed in ways that are already underway. This integrated IOE will transform civilization further, and our relationship to technology and ourselves, culturally, inter-personally and personally. Some suggest that the more technological and technologically dependent we become, the less human we become. We maybe shouldn’t be so worried about the robots taking over completely, but instead be afraid that technology dehumanizes the environments in which it works, even now (see layoffs). In the process, we become less than what we were meant to be, can be and should be, in our interactions with others, for others, and within and for ourselves.

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