Simon Howard consults a career counsellor for some free advice on the best way to find the right job

How often have you heard someone say (or said it yourself), “Oh, I’ve had enough of this, I’m going to get a new job”? Sadly, such a knee-jerk reaction isn’t the best start to a job search - not least because, in the drive to get out, you may well not consider all the options open to you.
It seems obvious, I know, but you’d be surprised how many people fall into that particular trap. So your job search will be far more successful if you sit down at the outset and analyse exactly where you are and, most importantly, decide where you can realistically get to.
Geoff Thiel is a consultant with RightCoutts and spends most of his days counselling and coaching people in the management of their careers.
“I passionately believe that if you fully understand yourself and the world of work, you will be able to make informed choices, set realistic goals and live the life you want to live.
“And you start that process by conducting a personal audit, which includes taking stock of your skills, competencies and experience while also identifying what motivates you and demotivates you.”
Thiel advises that you should record this in much the same way you would any business exercise. “Imagine that you are the boss of ‘Me plc’ identifying your assets and deciding where and how you are next going to invest them.
“A useful process here can be conducting a life-mapping exercise where you record the highs and lows and then try to make sense of them. Identify which skills you were using at which time, what motivated you and what didn’t. All of these will give you pointers to setting future objectives.”
Another part of this audit should be considering your life balance - are you spending the right time with the different aspects of your life or are there other activities you would like to make time for in future?
It’s also worth remembering that we all give of our best when we’re at ease with ourselves. The French have a great expression for this too - content dans son peau - happy in your skin, and that’s practically impossible if your job grates on you every day and leaves you feeling unfulfilled or eating away at your confidence.
“We also have to understand that at different stages of our careers our priorities will change,” say Thiel. “So you need to think through in detail what you want from your next career move.
“This is about identifying a career focus and thinking through what you want in terms of role, company/sector, culture/ values, prospects, location, full or part-time, security/risk and financial package.
“If you next review these aspects and identify which are essential and which are desirable, you are well on the way to teasing out an appropriate set of career goals.”
Setting objectives for a career search might seem obvious, but many recruitment consultants will tell you that when they ask candidates why they applied for a particular job and what they want to achieve from their next career move, they receive very woolly answers. Someone who is clear about what they are trying to achieve will always present better as a candidate.
So having conducted an audit and set objectives, what next? “You have to find your routes to market,” explains Thiel, “and everyone finds their next job through one of four ways. First, a job could be advertised, and with the internet this is a huge market to research and be active in. Second, you might make a speculative application direct to an employer - again requiring upfront research on your part.
“Alternatively, contact with a recruitment company might land you a job or, lastly, networking could be the route for you.”
As Thiel points out, creating a strategy does not have to be a laborious, time-consuming exercise but, as he says, “time and again we find that people who set out a with a well-founded job-searching strategy are those who are most successful in finding what they want”.
So if you’re heading off on holiday, why not rip out this page and think about some of the issues that Thiel raises. After all, most people pay for his advice - and you just got it for free.
n Simon Howard is a founder of Work Communications and writes the Jobfile column for The Sunday Times