This is a concern for the affected individuals as well as a problem for our country and unfortunately there are no easy answers. Going from unskilled to skilled is not a swift and simple journey and meanwhile our knowledge employers are struggling to find the people they need. The wider the gap between the haves and have nots the more unpleasant society becomes. There are thousands of families for whom the choice is unemployment or low paid work and the forthcoming changes to the benefits system will increasingly make life without work more challenging. I firmly believe that it is better to have a job with the structure and self-respect that this brings however for many the types of job available to them will not make for fulfilling employment.

I don’t believe there are solutions to the bifurcation. The Luddites demonstrated the futility of taking on technology and markets. However go to any UK town and there will be a college offering free training. Meanwhile the quantity and range of online training is vast.

It is easy to stigmatise the unemployed and there are certainly many who abuse the system or make no effort to help themselves. However I believe the majority simply meandered through education and early adult decisions and then found themselves in a position where options were few and employment choices bleak. I don’t want to trivialise the challenges of up-skilling or being different in a community where unemployment is the norm, however the more I think about it the more the solution is with the individual and not society. Government can enable however each person has to make his or her own choice as to what discomfort will be endured in order to bring about personal change or change for one’s children.

I will write about my observations on a future post.  If you think it will be useful to meet whilst I am in these cities please do get in touch.  My email address is richarda (at) myworksearch.co.uk.

My company is expanding and we are hiring new people.  This means we need new computers.  For many years I have bought Dell PCs.  They may not have been the very best computers or value however one could rely upon them being towards the top end of quality and value and combined with ease of purchase and good support this made them an excellent supplier.

My last three orders have all suffered from two week plus delivery dates.  The latest computer has a quoted one month delivery date.  To add insult to injury one has to complete the online purchase process, including payment, prior to discovering the delivery date.

I have now discovered the extent of my brand loyalty and having reached the end of it, my next order will be from someone else.  This is a real shame.  I do hope that Dell get their act together.  However if my recent experiences are typical we may be reading of business problems at the company.  Indeed if I was a Dell shareholder I would be selling!

I will make sure my next blog is on a more positive subject.  Rant over!

However our success has been based upon the very large number of people who are unemployed.  Yes, we console ourselves, we are helping our customers be the ones who swiftly secure new jobs.  However to be a customer in the first place the individual has first lost his or her job.  As a business, rising sales are a good thing yet each additional subscription is an unemployed person who is inevitably experiencing a very challenging time.  This goes with the space we operate in and I feel great that we are providing a sufficiently good service that people choose us.  But it is a sobering thought that must temper our celebrations of commercial success.

And this brings me to the future of MyWorkSearch.  I don’t believe the economy is out of trouble and high unemployment will remain a problem for some while.  However a recovery will, I hope, come and with it greater employment prospects.  The future of MyWorkSearch will be in helping people far more actively manage their careers.  Instead of relying upon a buoyant economy providing opportunities I hope that the majority of those who wish to work will actively manage their careers.  They will think about the working life they want and what they need to do to achieve this.  Our service will be the resource that helps them define their aspirations and then manage the activities that will realise these goals.  If we get this right our service will be usefully available 24*7 for as long as it is required whilst also being affordable to all.  Working on this plan is inspirational for the team.  If we get it right it will make life better for huge numbers of people.  Meanwhile we will build a great and sustainable business.  And if we don’t get it right we hope that at least we inspire someone else to do it properly and effect this necessary transformation.

I then reflected upon a meeting I attended yesterday that was rather important to me.  As I drove away afterwards I knew that I had missed some rather important points, had failed to effectively communicate ideas that I felt were key and had made some incorrect assumptions about what would be covered.  And today, as I watched the video, already angry with myself for my poor handling of the meeting, I realised that I had failed to follow good advice that I was very happily dispensing to others on how to prepare for and conduct a meeting.  Not just incompetent – but also a hypocrite!

As I mull over the meeting and the likelihood that the outcome will not be what I want, it makes me realise how big the gap can be between knowing and doing.  And worse still, how one can deliver good advice and yet not follow it oneself.

I know that many people who read my blog are job-seekers.  It is easy to regard one’s activity as preparing yet another application, yet another conversation or yet another interview.  A piece of advice that I will endeavour to follow is: if it is not important, don’t bother doing it; if it is important, make the maximum effort to do it properly.

And if you spot me not following my own advice please feel free to remind me and call me a hypocrite!

All the best

Richard

Since I am not yet fully back in work mode and whilst I am on the subject of money I hope you’ll forgive a personal rant. I used to travel a fair bit and it always struck me as odd how much hotels marked up phone charges. It simply encouraged guests to use phonecards or mobile phones. Once wireless and 3g cards became cheap and commonplace, services such as Skype became easy alternatives. Surely the hotels would have made more money through having a modest mark-up and this way encouraging far greater usage? Overall a small profit from each of very many many customers would add up to more than a large profit from a handful.

Last year was my first holiday since losing the benefit of a corporate mobile phone tariff and I learnt the hard way just how expensive a couple of weeks of calls and push email could be. It appears that the same ill-considered model seems to apply to mobile phones and international travel. In most countries one can now buy pay as you go sim cards for mobile phones and 3g data for not very much. Yet with the honourable exception of Vodafone, UK operators charge massively more for roaming calls and data. Knowing this one feels ripped off when contrasting the local cost versus the one levied by the UK suppler. Not only does this do damage to the customer relationship, one has to wonder whether it really does generate that much extra profit. Surely the vast majority of customers will either limit their usage or purchase a local pay as you go solution; in either case avoiding spending large sums with their UK telecoms supplier. Don’t the companies know that stinging their customers in this way just creates resentment and erodes brand loyalty?

When it comes to reputation and trust people have long memories. Over the years I have always tried to conduct my business affairs in an honourable and fair manner. I have made far more money through long term relationships and repeat business than would have been the case ripping people off and churning through customers. This applies just as much to Mynewjob.me and MyWorkSearch.co.uk as it does to my previous company. O2 are you listening?

Rant over!

Have a great Bank Holiday. Back to business next week.

All the best

Richard

Life may not have been perfect however people had dignity and could make plans reliant upon their income. The recession has changed this for approximately 1 million people. A huge number of people who have seen employment as their normal situation are now suddenly unemployed and facing considerable uncertainty in finding a new job.

Despite the recession there are still jobs to be had. There are just far fewer than there used to be and far more competition. Where once a new job application would pit a candidate against perhaps half a dozen other job-seekers, now one hundred or more is commonplace. With these odds it is hardly surprising that the future looks bleak. Even with economic recovery it will still be at least a couple of years before employers are hiring again to the level required to create sufficient opportunities. And meanwhile the ESU’s face all of the hardship that comes with unemployment as well as the risk of a lengthy period out of work making them unemployable in the eyes of many employers.

My team and I cannot change the number of available jobs. However we can help users of Myworksearch and Mynewjob.me become far more effective job-seekers. At least in this way some people are able to get back to work far sooner than would otherwise be the case.

All the best

Richard

In talking to job seekers it is apparent that there is a new and growing category of unemployed people that we are calling ESUs. These are people who have been comfortably ‘Employed for years, now Suddenly Unemployed’. They are facing the double whammy of an expensive lifestyle and poorly developed job-seeking skills. In the current very difficult labour market they are not finding new jobs and are getting into an increasingly difficult position. We are developing new modules for our http://www.myworksearch to specifically address their circumstances. The ESUs are a group that fall between the stools of Jobcentre Plus provision and the services of high-end outplacement companies. Hopefully Myworksearch can make the difference.

All the best

Richard

The past fortnight has been exceptionally busy but at the same time extremely rewarding. Many, many months ago my colleagues and I embarked on a vision to create a highly practical and useful resource for the job-seeker. From this emerged a plan and the creation of a business. We went through numerous phases from the initial idea and blank sheet of paper through to crystallising our ideas into system specifications to where we are now: a complete, comprehensive and well-received system. Myworksearch now has real life job-seekers using it and we are getting superb feedback. I struggle to convey how thrilled this makes me.

The philosopher Lao-tzu said that “the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step” and in many ways creating a business is this way. There is so much that needs to be done that it can appear overwhelming. Sometimes it is better to just take the first step and, Forest Gump like, just keep going. With a technology business it is tempting to see the launch date as our thousandth mile. But what becomes apparent is that there is no destination stopping point.

We are already full of ideas on ways in which we can enhance our offering, adding new features and content and entering new markets. I cannot think of a recent day when I have managed to tick off every item on my to do list. But the buzz and sense of purpose makes this all worthwhile.

All the best

Richard

It is many years since I launched a business from scratch and I had forgotten quite how busy one gets. The main issue is the sheer number of small items that need to be dealt with by a small team. There just aren’t enough hours in the day. And since most of what we do is in some way customer facing every mistake has the potential to be embarrassing. So the incorrect statement on the website, the browser incompatibility issue or the broken link are all minor and easily corrected; but it takes time and meanwhile other necessary tasks are stacking up. I know from experience that we will soon get past this. However for the moment it makes for challenging days!

The really positive news is the feedback we have had from people using our system. We had a few volunteers when we were beta-testing prior to launch and we have issued several accounts since. Without exception the response has been excellent. Users are finding the information that we provide valuable and easily followed and the software tools are making their job search that much easier. At the end of the day, this is what counts.

All the best

Richard