By Meridith Levinson | Tuesday, September 22 2009

Don’t dwell about losing a job you loved, it’s important to realise that something better can come along.

What’s one positive outcome of the recession? It’s leading people to consider a career change. Though the process of figuring out what to do next can be overwhelming, it’s also empowering. Taking stock of one’s skills, strengths, interests and experience makes an individual realisee how much he or she knows and has to offer. Investigating career options also helps employed professionals extricate themselves from dead-end jobs. For people who are unemployed, a layoff can be the catalyst for pursuing a professional dream.

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Does your CV look like a list of all NZ companies that currently employ IT professionals? This is a common problem, especially among the “Gen-Y” group who don’t seem to stay employed in the same job longer then a couple of years - gone are the days of working your way up from the tea-boy/girl to CEO over the course of a 40 year career at one company! A CV without at least one long term role on it however can pose problems when you are looking for your next role. It is true that many clients will discount a candidate immediately because they don’t want to take the risk of hiring someone who may move on again within a year or two. Click on ‘Read More’ to see the full article  on how to deal with this problem from today’s CIO magazine.

As recruiters we wouldn’t recommend including just the years and not the months as the dates worked in a position, and I certainly wouldn’t suggest removing entire jobs from the CV (you will still need to explain the gap) - total honesty is the best policy. Manyof the other tactics are great advice though. And if you are using a recruiter then even better -  it is their job to deliver all your details to the client in the best possible light.

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If you want to land a good job and be happy, it’s really important to ask the right questions.
With job opportunities so scarce these days, job seekers are under tremendous pressure to impress hiring managers during job interviews. In fact, they’re so caught up in making a good impression that it’s easy for job seekers to forget that the job interview remains their opportunity to assess a prospective employer’s corporate culture and to determine whether that work environment will suit them, says Vanessa Hall, author of The Truth About Trust in Business (Emerald Book Company, 2009.)

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