In any organisation, one of its most valuable assets is its staff. However, the best employees often look for recognition, new challenges and room for development in their jobs. Thus, one good way to attract and retain the most capable and hardworking workers is to invest in them and their future.

By Becky Lo

Employers who invest in the development of their workers’ talents will find that they stand to gain in the long-run, as adequate and relevant training opportunities will ultimately help to increase the firm’s productivity. Here are some benefits that staff training will bring for both the employers and their workers.

Do you feel like your career is in a rut and that your work is making you unhappy? You may be suffering from a mid-career crisis. What brings about this predicament and how do you walk out of it before the resentment bleeds into the rest of your life?

By Becky Lo

Feeling the blues

You’ve heard of a mid-life crisis, but how about a mid-career crisis? Unlike a mid-life crisis, a mid-career crisis is not age-related, but is about the dissatisfaction you feel about your career.

Many working adults in their late 20s to mid 30s are facing mid-career crises, or what is also known as “mid-career blues”. It usually happens after a few years working in the same field as you feel that your job is heading towards a dead-end: Your work routine is becoming boring, you see your peers edging ahead of you but realise that you are not at all interested in catching up.

Whether you are struggling to write your résumé or attempting to answer questions like ‘Where do you expect to be in three years from now career-wise?’ at a job interview, a well written career plan is a helpful tool in addressing these ‘challenges’. Writing your career plan forces you to think tactically and strategically. It also helps you to identify your strengths and weaknesses besides your natural talents. Writing a career plan also provides an opportunity to examine your personal attributes critically. Career planning provides a chance to explore episodes and experiences in your life that impacted your attitudes, beliefs and may even have been turning points in your career.

A well thought through and effectively written career plan is an exercise no one can afford to miss in the 21st century working world. With the disappearance of job security, an annual review of your career plan can provide the much needed impetus to propel you forward and even upward in your career. In writing the career plan you will assess the past year’s events in your career. If it has been a ‘monotonous’ past year with no new or exciting opportunities, you will inevitably think of something to do to break the monotony. If you have made career gains, you will think of ways to consolidate the gain.

By Mr Tim Hird, Managing Director of Robert Half Singapore

(15 Dec) 2009 - The Ministry of Manpower today issued its labour market report for the third quarter of 2009 (3Q2009). Amid the recovering economy, employment grew 14,000 in Q3 09, offsetting losses in the preceding two quarters. Services employment rose 12,700, significantly higher than the gains of 7,500 in Q1 09 and 3,800 in Q2 09. In particular, services industries with external exposure (e.g. in terms of international trade and visitor arrivals) such as hotels & restaurants (400), wholesale & retail trade (1,300) and financial services (2,100) added jobs, after shedding workers in the first two quarters of 2009.

Over the last 12 months, many organisations have undergone varying degrees of corporate and manpower changes. With businesses now gearing up for growth amid improving overall economic prospects, they face the challenge of attracting the best people from a limited talent pool and retaining them, or risk missing the recovery bandwagon due to a lack of suitable ‘business ready’ resources.

Whether you’re a fresh mass communications graduate or if you’re still slogging away in school for that sought-after diploma, it’s never too early to start preparing for your future in the industry.

By Nabilah Husna A. Rahman

As a bright-eyed (and perhaps naive) student, you might have likened the words “media” or “mass communications” to an unrelenting pursuit of glamour, fame or, at the very least, excitement. Most graduates would smile wryly at this assumption. Three years, an onslaught of assignment, and months of erratic sleeping patterns later, you emerge wiser and stand corrected.

It’s true that when you’re doing it right, a career in the media world is ultimately gratifying. But it takes plenty of diligence, swallowing of pride and pluck to achieve that.

Yet it isn’t impossible, if you are able to start right from the basics. Before you emit another groan, reflect on your thoughts of the media industry. Three years in a mass communications course may have exhausted whatever inkling of interest you had in the field. However, au contraire, it might have injected you with the kind of passion and developed aptitude employers look for in employees.

Be it journalism, broadcasting, marketing or public relations, the tentacles of the media world are far-reaching. If you know the basics of where to look and what to do, you might be the next big screenwriter or travel show host, and truly live your dream.

Recognising your boss’ management style will enhance communication and mutual understanding, and often leads to smoother work flow. Best of all, the office will be a happier place to be in.

By Nabilah Husna A. Rahman

The word “boss” might sound intimidating, but coming under someone else’s authority and leadership is inevitable in any workplace. Bosses can cause us much joy or grief, depending on our working relationship with them. Whatever the case, understanding your boss on a professional level will make your working experience more enjoyable than it used to be.

Some bosses don’t realise that it takes mutual respect (as opposed to frightful intimidation) to create a pleasant work environment in the office. What if your boss is the sort who hurls whipping insults and demands the impossible, while making you feel slighted and unappreciated? Instead of carefully treading around your boss’ temperament for the rest of your working life in the hopes that you’ll avert any possible conflicts, overcoming the problem is a more viable option.

Essentially, there are four different categories of leadership – autocratic, paternalistic, democratic, and laissez-faire. There are no set rules or list of do’s and don’ts on how to deal with different management styles, but approaching any situation with an understanding of your boss’ unique style will bring you one step closer to a satisfying work experience.

Being out of work for an extended period can get you down. Even worse, whenever you apply for a vacancy, you know there will be many others applying for the same post, and – what the heck – many of these people are still employed!

You feel you can’t compete with them because prospective employers are more likely to favour such people when looking at applicants. (Employers don’t like idle people, you suspect.)

Thankfully, this is not true.

Saying nothing
A resume-writing adviser from ExpertResumes.com says if you are unemployed for less than a year, your best strategy may be to say nothing about it in your resume.

“Shorter time frames of up to a year or so aren’t absolute necessities to explain on a resume,” says Teena Rose. If you are still jobless after more than a year, a possible strategy is to fill the time with useful but unpaid activities such as community work, special projects or a study programme.

With new features, a bigger marketing budget, and a refreshing approach to publicity, the JobsCentral Career & Learning Fair 2009 was truly in a league of its own.

The annual fair, brainchild of online career portal JobsCentral, has gained increasing recognition since its inaugural launch three years ago. Despite a placid job market, this year’s event garnered a record number of 110 exhibitors (comprising leading employers and education providers) and received more than 50,000 visitors.

Exciting new features
This year, the JobsCentral Fair introduced three new elements to the event:
• A by-invitation-only networking session
• Free seminars conducted by industry professionals
• A job application engine on the event website

Held on the morning of the first day, the networking session was a closed-door event, exclusively for a selected pool of JobsCentral portal users. Invitations were sent based on the exhibitors’ general recruitment criteria.

Time management is a practice preached by throngs of professionals who struggle against daily deadlines, and is a prerequisite for excelling at your job. When put into place, this skill enables you to be more productive than ever before.

By Nabilah Husna A. Rahman

The emails keep coming in and your workload is piling right before your bewildered and glassy eyes. In the corner of the room, you can see a tic going off in your manager’s cheek – it’s the umpteenth time you’ve missed an urgent deadline.

When you notice that your work area is papered with Post-its, to-do lists and notices of personal deadlines that you never seem to meet, it’s time to acknowledge the problem – your time management skills aren’t the best they can be.

Stretching your time is quite unlike stretching a dollar. The former is a resource you simply can’t save and utilise on another day. Instead, you have an average of eight (or for some, perhaps ten) hours in your office to do as much as possible. Your power lies in having superiority over the unyielding clock hands, rather than letting time drag you by the navel in your hastening attempts at completing your work.

“Living life to the fullest” is one of the many adages over-churned enough to lose its true definitive value to most people. But at only 25, Celestine Chua, founder and principle coach of The School of Personal Excellence (TSOPE), aims to bring back purposeful living and help extricate others from the common rat-race towards secular goals.

“Many people have goals and dreams which they are not pursuing. One of the most common examples is people working in jobs they are not fully passionate about,” observes Celestine, who has been coaching since the beginning of the year. “They may have big goals and dreams before, but they choose to settle for lesser instead, opting for what’s already before them. Some refuse to dream as they think there is no place for dreams in the real world.”

Launched just this month to encourage personal excellence amongst its individual clients, TSOPE is a business that, in fact, settles for nothing less than the best quality of life development. Each programme is designed by Celestine’s own coaching philosophy, frameworks and tools, all unique to her own personal experiences.