It’s my birthday tomorrow, so I’ve decided to give a present to all my subscribers.

Are you wondering about what career is right for you? Would you like to understand yourself more?

The Career Discovery programme can really help you and I get great feedback from people who go through it.

This is sold on my web site for £35 but as my birthday present to you I’m offering it at a 25% discount until midnight on Sunday 31st August.

To read more http://www.amazingpeople.co.uk/career_discovery.htm

And when you pay you will want to apply this coupon - BIRTHDAY SPECIAL to ensure you get the discount!

Best wishes

Denise xx

Last year I revised a number of my leaflets - you work so hard on getting thing just right and then, if you are like me they are put to one side and they are not looked at for ages.

I do like to re-read through my material, every now and again, to ensure I remember everything I have included and also to see if they can be improved.

I’ve been making some minor changes to material including the one that explains about The Gold Career Programme.  Myself and my amazing graphic designer, Lori were feeling good as all done. Then yesterday a new client pointed out an error:

Finding out your natural abilities is a fundamental step towards a fundamental step towards a satisfying and successful career.

Can you see the mistake?

This is the sort of mistake I regularly see on CVs for people I am interviewing. We see what we want to see not what is there. This really emphasises the need to be careful as we check through material.

I’ve now gone even more carefully through everything else and passed them on to someone to review them.

When a client chooses to apply to university they need a reference.

I help a number of my clients by writing a reference for them. I know a lot more about them than many other people and, if they have completed the Gold Career Programme I have the results of all 3 assessments.

So I can use the Highlands Ability Battery results to describe their natural abilities and how these support the particular career they are going to study towards.

The Myers Briggs Type Indicator helps to discuss the persons personality characteristics.

Then as I’ve drawn together the results of all 3 assessments and the other work we have done together we can be clear as to why the particular job is a good match.

Admissions staff also want to know how this course matches with their career aspirations and I’m able to carefuly describe this.

I’ve recently completed forms for Rachel and Jenny - my very best wishes to you both

Clients work with me as they are unhappy in their job – but they get benefits even after just one session.  

A recent client was saying that since she started on the Gold Programme she has felt much happier in her work as she now understands the reasons why she doesn’t enjoy the job. With her, the job isn’t a good match for her abilities and her personality and we now have a number of jobs for her to explore which are a much closer fit.

There was an interesting article in a recent addition of Time Magazine. It looked at which jobs people are most happiest in  and which jobs people are least happy in.

If you visit this link you can see where a range of occupations fall:

Priests and Science Technicians score high, vocational counsellors score quite low! But I’m very happy in my job. How does your occupation compare?

For most people this is a very difficult question.  What people tend to do is to concentrate on what they can do, or the job they think that they can do.

What you need to do is to understand yourself – your strengths, your personality and your abilities. You also need to take account of what you want out of a career.  What is it that drives you – money, relationships, freedom or what?

So before you start looking for a new job, make sure that you know who you are and what you want to do.

One of the most popular assessments I use with clients is the Highlands Ability Battery. Clients love it because it is an objective assessment rather than a self report. They get objective data on what they can do well and what will be less easy. The assessment is published by The Highlands Company and is based on the work of Johnson O’Connor.

 Finding out your natural abilities is a fundamental step towards a satisfying and successful career.

Real career success is rarely down to money and status and much more to do with finding a job which ties in with what you can do with ease.

We all have talents and abilities we are born with. These give us a special ability to do things easily and a reason why we can find other things difficult. We develop this ability through heredity and in childhood and our abilities can be measured from age 14.

 Because they are hard wired they do not change. Practice won’t make them stronger and ignoring them won’t mean we lose them. They differ from skills, which we can develop, but which we can also lose, and interests which can change. However, both skills and interests can enhance our abilities.

We are happiest and most satisfied when we make maximum use of our abilities.

An individual may develop the skills to practice law, for example, but if she doesn’t have the inborn talents which make the practice of law easy and satisfying, she will find her work unrewarding (and, even, as in the case of many lawyers, frustrating). When we apply our abilities to our study or work, we do our tasks better.

 Knowing your abilities and natural talents can help you to

• Understand where you are naturally talented

• Know how you solve problems and make decisions most effectively

• Understand in black and white why you would be happy in some fields and not happy in others

• Choose the best option from a group of study/ career/ job/ business choices

• Know how to study most effectively

• Know what other jobs within your organisation you would be better and more fulfilled with

• Use your true strengths more effectively and more consistently

When we study and work in line with our natural abilities it is like driving along a brand new four-lane motorway. Working against your natural talents is like trying to make your way along a narrow, muddy, footpath. You can get there either way, but working with your natural talents is a lot easier and you will find much greater success.

 Sometimes people ask for more detail about this battery and you can read the history at the Highlands Company website. You can also read details on the validity and reliability of the assessment.

When I help people make a career choice, I use assessments to help to suggest jobs that the client may want to explore based on the results of 3 assessments – the Highlands Ability Battery, Myers Briggs Type Indicator and the Strong Interest Inventory.

I need to help my clients see beyond the list of jobs that are suggested and remind them that these are just suggestions – if being a florist is suggested it is an indicator of running a small people orientated business and in doing something creative so you can’t take assessment results at face value.

Jobs also change, and what we think about a job may not be correct.  The content and type of person needed to undertake a specific job may have moved on. So looking at a job in an older version of an assessment may not be assessing you against the new elements of this job.

The fire fighter is a really great example. Being a fire fighter is not all about fighting fires. 20 years ago when a fire fighter was not putting out a fire they would wait around the fire station. But they realised that prevention was really beneficial and fire fighters are now heavily involved in community fire safety work. They give talks to groups and visit people at home checking that smoke alarms are working etc.

To be a successful fire fighter is much more than saving lives and buildings, and I guess they still rescue as few cats. It’s also about being able to communicate effectively with different groups and quickly building relationships with people such as old people who are often nervous when someone knocks at their door.

So the skills and personality needed to be successful in this role have changed, and this may encourage some people to take on the role, but others to realise that they need to develop themselves to be a successful applicant.

When you do find a job that interests you, it is important to do the research so you really do understand about the job.  

There are a number of myths round computer science degrees, Ed Lazowska, the Bill and Melinda Gates professor of Computer Science at the University of Washington recently dispelled 5 of them when he spoke at the National Centre for Women in IT.  

Myth 1: the only job that a degree in Computer Science  leads to is as a programmer.

As with all degrees, you get a lot of transferable skills which can be applied to a range of professions and the ananlytical problem solving skills will be desirable by lots of employers. There are the obvious careers such as bioinformatics and  multimedia but it can also be used in ther arts, social change and more.

Myth 2: the work of a computer professional is isolating.

It might have been once – all those techies in their own little world but now there is a much greater need for communication and team working, with colleagues and clients to find out the problem and develop solutions.

Myth 3: there are no jobs in high tech since the economic downturn and all the new jobs are being offshored.

Yes a number of jobs have gone to India etc but there are so many new technological changes that jobs will continue to be created.

Myth 4: student interest in Computer Science  is lower than other science disciplines .

Ed Lazowska says that student interest in Computer Science is as high as the other science disciplines.

Myth 5: you cannot make a difference in society through a computing career.

Computer and technology are used exptensively in social change. Technoological intervientions make things easy for people with disabilities, such as braille tutor technology, a web 2.0 site connecting women in developing countries, a medical device that saves lives, a program that teaches autistic children etc.

So don’t write off computer science as just for the geeks, there are so many ways you can use the degree and it can have an impact on social change and you could be part of this.