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074: Managing your career admin
1.7k Plays1 year ago
In this episode, we interview executive coach and recruitment expert June Parker.
June Parker is an executive coach, people strategist and facilitator with 20 years of experience working in recruitment, HR consultancy, career coaching and technology development.
She has been a general manager, a business owner and now heads up the career coaching and transition practice at CLA where she leads a team and provides executive coaching to a range of clients from individual contributors to CEOs. Her clients span a broad section of private, public and not-for-profit organisations.
We loved chatting with June Parker in this episode about all things career. The topics we covered included:
- June’s experience that peace of mind is vital for her in her role, which is a fast-paced and intensive job. She attributes her peace of mind at work to being organized at home and emphasises the importance of finding work-life balance.
- the changing dynamics of the job market during the pandemic and how people are reevaluating their career paths, leading to questions about job satisfaction, work expectations, and potential career changes.
- when considering a career change, the importance of understanding what career means to each individual, considering life stage, financial commitments, and personal aspirations.
- the importance of self-awareness in identifying your skills, passions, and values.
- using skills assessments and seeking feedback from others to recognize your strengths and potential career options.
- how to manage the administrative aspects of changing jobs, including CV formatting and keeping track of job applications.
- creating a master CV that includes all career accomplishments and achievements to easily tailor CVs for different job applications.
- the importance keeping records of professional development and any positive feedback or commendations received.
- the significance of LinkedIn for networking and job searching.
- not spending excessive time researching each company before applying and focusing on quality applications tailored to specific roles.
- reaching out to recruiters for assistance and maintaining connections through networking.
- how job selection processes have evolved, with an increased focus on cultural fit, behavioral assessments, and personality profiling.
- practicing cognitive tests to feel more comfortable during assessments balanced with the importance of not over-researching and stressing over the process.
- the need for continuous adaptation and learning in today’s job market, where individuals may have multiple careers and various jobs over their working lives.
LIFE ADMIN RESOURCES
Your Career – Government website
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Transcript
Introduction and fresh produce guarantee
00:00:00
Speaker
You know that fresh produce is the best produce. That's why at Kroger, we invest in local farmers to bring you seasonal picks that taste fresh from the farm good, like sweet corn, refreshing watermelon, and juicy peaches. So whether you're a delivery lover, a picker-upper, or you shop in-store, your local produce always tastes 100% fresh, or you get a 100% refund guaranteed.
00:00:27
Speaker
Kroger, fresh for everyone.
Meet Diana Roberts and Mia Northrop
00:00:42
Speaker
I'm Diana Roberts, an operations manager who has an epic master CV after working for more than 30 years across three continents. I'm Mia Northrop, a researcher and writer who has maybe two decades left of paperwork and want to make this final stretch count.
Interview with June Parker on work trends
00:00:57
Speaker
In this episode, we interview June Parker, career coach, HR consultant and transition specialist. Hello and welcome to Life Admin Life Hacks.
00:01:06
Speaker
This is a fascinating era when it comes to our relationship with work. There are future of work trends that are impacting all of us, from the great resignation to remote work, to the rise of the gig economy, priority tech skills and soft skills, and the focus on diversity, equity, inclusion and employee wellbeing.
Impact of work trends on careers
00:01:24
Speaker
It's steering many of us to reconsider what paid work would be most meaningful and rewarding at this stage of our lives.
00:01:30
Speaker
Ultimately, that might lead to seeking out a new role or a career change. And like most life events, that change involves life admin. So in this episode, we chat to June Parker, who reveals the series of questions to ask yourself to steer into a new direction, the career related documents worth keeping to refer back to in the future, and the importance of nurturing your LinkedIn profile amongst many other important topics. If you're considering a job move or a career change, this episode's for you.
June Parker's career expertise
00:02:01
Speaker
Karine Parker is an executive coach, people strategist and facilitator with 20 years experience working in recruitment, HR consultancy, career coaching and technology development. She's been a general manager, a business owner and now heads up the career coaching and transition practice at CLA, where she leads a team and provides executive coaching to a range of clients from individual contributors to CEOs.
00:02:24
Speaker
the clients ban a broad section of private, public, and not-for-profit organizations. June, thanks so much for coming on the show today. Thanks for having me. Before we dive into the life admin to manage your career, we'd love to hear from you when it comes to life admin. What's most important?
Managing life admin for work focus
00:02:40
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Is it peace of mind, saving money, saving time, household harmony? What's in it for you in terms of optimizing your life admin?
00:02:48
Speaker
Yeah, I think for me, it's peace of mind. In my role, it requires me to be really cognitively aware all the time. So I jump from coaching to planning to client meetings to designing programmes. So it's really quite heavily intensive and quite fast paced. So if I'm organised at home, then it gives me peace of mind to just focus on what I need to at work. And I'm really lucky because my husband and I share that life admin. So it works
Pandemic's effect on work-life balance
00:03:18
Speaker
Oh, so glad to hear that. We love all the stories of successful sharing. And it's totally relatable when things are humming in the household and your personal life feels like it's got some regular rhythm to it because you've got your life out and under control. It does free you up to sort of think about other things and take on other challenges. And in the last few years during the pandemic, you know, it's brought people's relationship with work and expectations of work into sharp focus.
00:03:46
Speaker
And people are asking themselves some big questions about the kind of work they're doing. You know, what would they find rewarding? How much they want to work? Where they want to work? You know, is it at home? Is it in an office? Both? And for all kinds of organizations or even for themselves.
Career planning insights from June Parker
00:04:02
Speaker
So, you know, if someone wants to change direction in their career, but they're not sure what to do, where should they start?
00:04:09
Speaker
Oh, that's a big question. And I think you should start by thinking about what is career in the first place. So career means different things to different people. And, you know, for some people, it's very structured, you know, they want to climb the hierarchy and progress from where they are to where they want to get to in BC over an organisation for others. It's just about, you know, enjoying the roles and trying new things and exploring. And as she said, thinking about maybe setting up their own business.
00:04:36
Speaker
So, I think, you know, thinking about career planning is taking that all into account and also things like life stage. So, you know, what you want to do in your 30s is very different to what you might want to do in your 50s. And then layering with that, there's their reality around finances and commitments and
00:04:55
Speaker
So you might want to go off and travel around the world as a blogger, but actually, you've got kids at home. You've got to look after. So there's some reality around that. So in terms of career planning, there's a process, there's steps that you would go through, and they're not linear. So it's things like, think about why you want to change careers first. So is it because you're
00:05:19
Speaker
dissatisfied with something or you're reaching for something else. So I often put those career triggers or decisions into two buckets, like what's the positive and what are the negatives?
Understanding career triggers
00:05:29
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So the positives are around career growth or development or having a new passion and thinking, oh, I want to move into that area or finishing some qualifications and wanting to use those. Or the negatives are more around
00:05:44
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You know, I really hate my job. I'm dissatisfied. I can't progress anymore. The culture is terrible, stressed or burnt out. Or even now, you know, organisations want people to come back to work and they don't want to do that because it doesn't fit in with their lifestyle anymore. So, you know, it could be redundancy. So I guess there's just triggers around what those are that then influence how you plan your career. And it requires a lot of self-awareness. Yeah. What was interesting over the last, you know, the pandemic especially is that
00:06:13
Speaker
For some people, as you said, you might get to a certain life stage. And I'm thinking midlife, like a lot of people start questioning their choices at that time when you're like, realized, oh, I've only got 20 more years of working left. Have I been enjoying how I've been spending, you know, eight hours a day or 60 hours a week, depending on what you do? And they start asking themselves those questions.
00:06:35
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But it feels like that came a lot earlier for a whole bunch of people because we were just forced to think about things because of our circumstances. Yeah. Yeah. And I guess you're right. So what you said is correct. That self-assessment is the first piece in any career planning. So you've got to really think about, you know, what are you good at? What do you enjoy? And, you know, where do you have experience? What transferable skills have you got?
00:07:01
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you know, what are your values? You know, what's important to you? And also, what don't you want? You know, it's really equally important to say, I don't want to work in this environment for this type of manager anymore, or I want to, you know, work in a sustainably positive environment or, you know, something that's giving some organizations giving
Skills assessment and LinkedIn's role
00:07:21
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back. So understanding what you want, as well as what skills you have to offer.
00:07:26
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is really important before you can even start to think about exploring some of those options that might be available. And I know some friends who have been out of the workforce for some time, and they're coming back, and they're either coming back with quite different interests, or they're coming back into industries where things have changed a lot, and they genuinely ask themselves, what am I good at? I don't actually know what my skills are anymore. How can you qualify, quantify what you are good at?
00:07:55
Speaker
But I think it's what people come to you for. You know, so sometimes people come to you and ask you to help them with certain things, or you just know that you're getting to flow and your time passes and you're engaged and you're just doing something that you love. It's a bit of that. And there are also skills assessments that you can take that can help you. And the government's got a great one, you know, yourcareer.gov.au, where you can go in and, you know, find, talk about the skills that you have. And then it spits out some examples of
00:08:25
Speaker
careers or jobs that you might like to pursue based on your skills. So there's lots of different options. And even just asking people, you know, what am I good at? Like, where do you feel are my key strengths? And what types of roles do you think would take advantage of those? Yeah, brilliant. I worked a bit in roles where there's been lots of research around the future of work and the way workplaces are changing and the new jobs that are out there
00:08:54
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I think everyone, anyone listening, who's thinking, I don't know where I should best put my attention, but I might be good at, there's just so much interesting opportunity out there. I think tapping into those flow states, what really lights you up and taking advantage of resources, the one you just mentioned, June, is a great place to start. Yeah. And I think also being open, like you said, to taking some risks. So there's a whole lot of, you know,
00:09:19
Speaker
opportunities to retrain around cybersecurity or you know getting into AI or you know there's lots of even the government you know is investing I saw some of the day investing a billion dollars in recreating those
Career documentation essentials
00:09:35
Speaker
vocational and TAFE places for this year that are free for people who want to move into different industries so there's lots of opportunities for people to explore and and I also you know given the
00:09:46
Speaker
the tenure of jobs as well. When I started work, my first job was for quite a long time. My dad worked for 30 years in his company, whereas now I think the average is what, just over three years across all age groups. So you need to expect that you're going to be changing roles and changing careers and develop those skills so that when you do it, it's a bit easier to do.
00:10:10
Speaker
Yeah, great point. Yeah. So I think that one of the things that is really interesting when it comes to like the administration of all of this stuff is if we are going to keep changing roles, we get a whole lot of records and paperwork, including, you know, CVs and job descriptions and performance reviews and letters of offer and, you know, you name it, we've got it. So what do you think are the records that we, the absolute must keep and, you know, what do we use them for? And, you know, how do you refer back to them?
00:10:39
Speaker
I guess it really helps you think about the things that you absolutely must keep in some sort of orderly fashion, as we would recommend in some sort of cloud storage system. Yeah, great. So you must keep your CVs without a shut of a doubt. I always recommend that you
00:10:54
Speaker
create a master CV, so to save time and be organized. And your master CV has everything that you've done in your career going back from day dot. And that has not only what you've done, but also the achievements that you've
00:11:11
Speaker
obtained within those roles because that's really important. And then when you're applying for roles, you can just pull from that master CV and tailor your resume depending on the role that you're applying for, given that you might have worked in retail, but now you're applying for a role in, I don't know, technology. So you just pull some of those duties or responsibilities or achievements that are relevant to the role that you're applying for. Other things like
00:11:36
Speaker
if you've got any certificates or rewards or emails that come internally from organizations or customers or clients that say how fabulous you are or any sort of commendations and those kinds of things you can then pull
CV tailoring and networking tips
00:11:50
Speaker
and put into your CV as well.
00:11:52
Speaker
or your applications. What else would you have? Things like any records of professional development that you've done, because we forget. You might go on a LinkedIn course, or you might go on a two-day course, and you just forget. So keep all of those records in your file. So again, you can pull those into your CV as and when you want them.
00:12:07
Speaker
I started my career in like consulting environment and one of the things we had to do then was we actually used to record every project we worked on what we did because then when we're preparing proposals we can easily pull from it and it's such a good discipline to have to not only look at the jobs that you worked on but if there's particular projects at your job and to think about like writing down the five things you achieve because often
00:12:30
Speaker
can be so useful. So yeah, I've got one of those kind of master documents, it's got lots of bits and pieces in it. But I also use my LinkedIn for that kind of stuff as well, which I think is a good way. Yeah, on top of it.
00:12:42
Speaker
LinkedIn is so important. It still amazes me the number of people that don't use LinkedIn to its full capacity just to keep up to date with industry trends and contacts and build their brand online as well. It's so, so important today and will continue to be important. It's not something that's going to go away. Let's talk about that because I'm one of those people who-
00:13:06
Speaker
So for me, what I think about employment, there's a number of ways to craft a career and to secure work. It's not just applying for roles. So nowadays we know that
00:13:21
Speaker
the majority of roles are filled through networking. We know that that's a fact. So one way to be able to network more easily is to be found on LinkedIn, because LinkedIn is a professional networking site. And the beauty is that all of the recruiters and search consultants that will be looking to place jobs are all on LinkedIn.
00:13:42
Speaker
And they often have a different license or users sort of access than we would have as a blade person, just paying your subscription or having the free account. So they can basically find the people they want in LinkedIn if you're there. So the more you update your profile, the more you are active on LinkedIn, the more people who know who you are, the more job offers you're going to have. And if that's what you're looking for and you want to develop your career, then it makes sense.
00:14:10
Speaker
So even even from a branding perspective, you know, if you're looking for speaking gigs where you want to promote your book or your courses, those types of things, then your audience is going to be on LinkedIn. So you're reaching out to people who would be people you can help. So I think get on it. I'm there. I'm there. And I, you know, I see the level of activity that some people
00:14:34
Speaker
you know, the effort that they put in. And I just struggle to think about how to prioritize that time. I feel like it's, I only pay attention to it when I am
00:14:44
Speaker
like actively looking for other opportunities. Most of the time I'm sort of in that passive stage or just sort of idols away. So from a time saving, it's really effective because if you think about finding a role or developing your career, a lot of it's through networking. So people who know people, who know people and keeping in contact with those people. And you can do that really quickly on LinkedIn. So if you're connected to people and you just share a post, then, you know, those people may see that. So they feel like they know what you're doing.
00:15:14
Speaker
So you don't have to pick up the phone or meet them for coffee. Now, I suggest you do that as well to key people, but not everybody. So, and even in terms of, you know, you can shoot them a little note just to say hi, just thinking of you or saw his article, thought you might be interested just as a way of keeping in touch. You know, you can copy, paste, copy, paste, copy, paste on LinkedIn. So it's quite time efficient. You just need to reframe the time as networking time, not social media time. That's what you need to do. Career networking, maybe that will, or professional development,
00:15:43
Speaker
I really like networking in person and I think sort of at the start of the middle of my career, I used to, I was a member of a lot of, we're cutting down a real tangent here, but when I was a member of a whole bunch of different groups, we'd go, we'd have actual meetups, people would talk, maybe drinks and whatever, and I loved all that, at that sort of stage.
00:16:01
Speaker
of life. And if I think about it, it was before I had kids that I had more time to go and do those kinds of things. Now, you know, I struggle to see my close friends, let alone go and try and keep business acquaintances alive. So, yeah, it's I think a shift in thinking about how I make that time. And yeah, it's also a time of life, as June said, it's like what's important to you right now and maybe career is not at the top of your list. And so just accepting that is also OK, I think.
00:16:31
Speaker
Having said that, the role I've been now, I got because I was chatting to somebody up with him. Oh, by the way, do you know anyone who'd like to do that? And I'm like, I'd like to do that. Okay. So if we get back to the questions for today, changing jobs is a life event that triggers so much admin. So how do we keep on top of what CV format or templates appropriate?
00:16:57
Speaker
for our industry and what are the trends there that we should be aware of? You just need to keep on top of your CV. I mean, some industries like legal practice, or if you're applying for a role at a university, the CVs are clearly different. But the majority of CVs, they all look different, but they give you the same information. And for my view, it's about tailoring it for the job that you're applying for.
00:17:24
Speaker
And so just making sure that you don't spend a lot of time.
Optimizing CVs for recruiters
00:17:30
Speaker
So my view is all about quality, not quantity of application. So to save time, find the one job that you know you're really suited for and then tailor your application for that.
00:17:41
Speaker
rather than applying for lots and lots of jobs and keeping tabs on those as well. So having a system or a process where you know that you have sent an application or you have spoken to somebody at a networking event so that you can follow up, that's really important. And even if you didn't get a job through somebody but somebody helped you again maintaining that connection, I think so you have to have a system.
00:18:06
Speaker
Otherwise, you know, you can sort of things can fall off the table and then that becomes really rude. So a lot of the people that I speak to who do help others and are happy to reach out from a networking perspective get really irritated that they've done a good deed and nobody says thank you at the end of it or even circles back to say what happened, whether it was positive or negative.
00:18:26
Speaker
So you actually do more damage to your brand than not. So I just think being really clear about, you know, allocating some time, not letting it be all consuming because it can't be. We have a life, you know, allocating some time to focus on that, just focusing on what's really important, tailoring your application and just keeping track of where you where your CV is going.
00:18:50
Speaker
And I guess also reaching out to recruiters. So if you've got some great networks with some recruiters, they'll do a lot of heavy lifting for you. And I guess that's one of the ways of streamlining.
00:19:02
Speaker
the whole search and applying for jobs is working with recruiters. Are there other things we can do to make finding a new job more efficient? I think just not going down the rabbit hole. So often I talk to people and they might be applying for a role and they'll spend hours and hours researching the company and looking on LinkedIn, reading the financial reports.
00:19:26
Speaker
Even before they apply and I just think gosh if you get an interview really that's when you need to spend all of that time there's surface research that you need to do of course to make sure it's the right organization but not at the beginning time and I think you know having a pro forma or a format of a resume that you're quite comfortable with.
00:19:46
Speaker
that you can just tailor is the way to go. And not spending my view, and it's not everyone's view, but not spending hours on a cover letter. So again, I read people who come to me for career advice and I help them with that. They showed me, like yesterday I had this, read this cover letter that was two and a half pages long. And the content was extraordinary. And what this person had achieved was amazing. But people are busy. They're not going to read two and a half hours, two and a half pages. And it would have taken hours to write that.
00:20:16
Speaker
So, you know, Mike, again, my advice would be think about what's really important for the job you're applying for and just call it out and perhaps dot points on that cover letter and save yourself the time, you know? Yeah. I mean, I do a lot of recruitment. I must admit I don't read many cover letters unless I read, then unless I shortlist the CV and then I might read the cover letter because you just go straight to the CV's first. Because, you know, particularly for roles where we get, you know, sometimes hundreds of applications,
00:20:45
Speaker
I think there's some evidence to say that people might look at your CV for less than 10 seconds or something like that. June, you might know the answer. I think it's six seconds, they say. Yeah, six seconds. And from a psychological perspective, people tend to scan. We're also busy, right?
00:21:01
Speaker
If you're scanning a resume, what's important is you'll read dot points. You won't read big long paragraphs. So if something's really important to get across, then you want to have a dot point on your resume. And what I notice is that people put some great information in the cover letter and then don't have it in the CV. And if the CV is the only thing that's being read, there's lots of information that's been missed out. So I would always say on your cover, on your CV, just have a section that says, you know, suitability for the role or key
00:21:30
Speaker
key points of interest or value I can add, and then just dot point those really important points. And then kind of from a saving time perspective, copy that and stick that in your cover letter and add a little bit more. So just do it once and use it twice.
00:21:43
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. And it's worth keeping in mind that a lot of the time your CV is being imported into some applicant tracking system and that technology really focuses on the CV. You can access the cover letter, but when you like go into someone's application and their details pop up, it's scraped out a whole bunch of info and formatted it in some consistent way so you can easily compare people. And the focus really is on the
Trends in psychometric assessments
00:22:07
Speaker
CV. So yeah, don't be spending too much time on those cover letters.
00:22:10
Speaker
And just on that, those, depending on the system that's being used, now a lot of the algorithms look for recency. And in the olden days, it would look for the number of times, for example, say it was cyber or data analytics as the keyword that they would search for. Now they want to see that in the most recent role. And it's the number of times it's repeated throughout the organic resume. So it's important to do both of those things.
00:22:38
Speaker
if possible. Yeah. I love it. Now we need to do some search engine optimization. Yes.
00:22:45
Speaker
So, and also a lot of recruiting processes now ask you to do some kind of exercise as part of the selection process or part of the application process often too. So you might be, you know, you have to submit a portfolio or do some kind of coding exercise or a role play or depending on what industry with a whole bunch of different things. What trends are you seeing related to this and how can people prepare for those activities?
00:23:08
Speaker
Yeah, so more use on psychometric assessments. What we've realized is that you can almost teach people the technical piece, but you can't teach them the behaviors. Behavioral change is very different. So there's much more focus on culture fit in organizations now.
00:23:26
Speaker
So the technical piece is often what you're talking about in terms of the case studies or, you know, can you code this or even running through an assessment centre? We've seen that as well for very senior and executive roles, more use of assessment centres to really unpack technical and behavioural capabilities. But there's more personality profiling that we've seen occurring to get that fit right. So in terms of the personality profile, you can't practice, you just know who we are, who we are, that's it.
00:23:55
Speaker
I'm an ENTJ. I'm an ENTP. But I think for things like if you're, if you're doing some cognitive or, you know, maths or science or mechanical or abstract reasoning or, you know, language, you can put the more
00:24:14
Speaker
The more of those tests that you practice, I feel the more comfortable you become and then you start to see repetition in some of those tests. So again, some people say you can't practice them. I kind of think you can because the more you know, if I did a maths test now and they asked me to do some percentages in my head, I wouldn't know how to do it. I'd have to go back and think, how do I do that? You know, so I think just becoming more familiar means that you're less stressed and a bit more relaxed when you come to take them. Yeah. OK, really interesting.
00:24:42
Speaker
Oh, thanks for all that advice. You talked about one resource, careers.gov.au, that we could use. Are there any other resources or supports that can help people build confidence or help them decide what they should be doing in their career? There's a lot, to be honest. The government website is as good as any. I mean, we have a tool that we sell called Careering, but there are so many others and so many others that are available just to be honest and SEEK has some great
00:25:11
Speaker
stuff online that's free as well. For me, the best advice I can have around thinking about career is talking to somebody who's in the position that you want to move into and asking their advice and how they got that role and what worked for them.
00:25:27
Speaker
and talking to recruiters and other people who are professionals in that field rather than talking to your mum and expecting your mum to give you advice about a career or your best friend who is in a completely different industry. So my view is there's so much happening at the moment in terms of different types of roles and different pathways to get that, that you just kind of have to take a leap of faith
00:25:55
Speaker
and put yourself out there and go for it and then craft it yourself because really that career is going to take so many different pathways. And I think the stats are now what people entering the workforce now would have up to five separate careers and something like 16 or 17 different jobs. So it's a skill that we have to develop for life, really.
Conclusion and resources from June Parker
00:26:15
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. I feel like I'm taking a few pivots and circles and yeah, it's a fun journey. It's also a work at seek, for example.
00:26:25
Speaker
Pards leave everywhere. Okay. June, let's finish up there. It's a great place to finish. Thanks so much for sharing your experience and ideas today. It's a pleasure. You're very welcome. Love to chat to you both. And where can our listeners find you if they want to hear more or learn more about what you do?
00:26:41
Speaker
on LinkedIn. I'm very happy to connect on LinkedIn and obviously at CLA, so CLA solutions. So just jparker at clasolutions.com.au. And we provide a variety of career coaching for individuals, as you said before, organizations and helping people to move within their career. So succession planning is also part of that. So feel free to reach out.
00:27:09
Speaker
Thanks for listening. Show notes for this episode are available at lifeadminlifehacks.com. And if you're a fan, please subscribe and share the love and tell a friend or review us in your podcasting app. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.
00:27:28
Speaker
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