Careers to Consider in 2014 – Career Consultant

by Bernadette Ontong

“The biggest mistake that you can make is to believe that you are working for somebody else. Job security is gone. The driving force of a career must come from the individual. Remember: Jobs are owned by the company, you own your career!” – Earl Nightingale 

Career Consultants are trained to analyse people, give them assessments as to what their capabilities are. Once this is done, they would attempt to point the persons in a specific career direction.

As a career specialist, you too need to have certain types of skills as well as the knowledge of the various careers that are available to people.

Your job is to give people the available options. You are not the job finder, but you do make them aware of their capabilities and present them with job niches that would make them successful employees.

Finding a Job that is Fulfilling – Is It Possible?

by Bernadette Ontong

“Work banishes those three great evils, boredom, vice, and poverty.” Voltaire

Most people today are extremely unhappy in their jobs. There is often no way out as they have also been entrapped by the familiarity of the feeling of dissatisfaction. It is therefore necessary to look for something to ensure that you are fulfilled and not just trudge through the day.

What does it mean to be fulfilled in one’s job?

A fulfilled job is one where you have a deep sense of purpose. The reason for this is that you find fulfillment is that it reflects your personality, your passion, and your values. In the end, it has to do with earning a salary, but that the elements of fulfillment are of far more importance.

The fact is also that you must understand that the fulfillment is subjective. In other words, what might seem like something unworthy of fulfillment in your eyes, might be what the other person need at the time.

Finding the Job Fulfillment

Study Hard and Play Hard – How To Get The Balance Right!

by Bernadette Ontong

“I believe that being successful means having a balance of success stories across the many areas of your life. You can’t truly be considered successful in your business life if your home life is in shambles.” – Zig Ziglar 

The start of a new year is always quite exciting. It is the start of new things such as:

• Perhaps entering a new school.
• This will, in turn, provide you with new friends
• You also have to contend with an all-new set of books with all new information to ingest.
• For some it means entering the
  • Last year of school
  • The first year of university or
  • The last year of university
• It could also mean that you might be repeating a year.

No matter what educational space you need to fill at the start of any new year, you need to make the best of it all.

Internship Opportunities for January 2014 – Check it out!

by Preston Loxton

TopCV always strive to bring  you, aspiring professionals and career veterans alike, the latest resources that will give you the

edge over the competition and ultimately get you your dream job and career.

The following resources will help kick-start your 2014 into top gear:

1. Who’s Who SA not only provides you with info about the latest internships, they also allow you to network with key individuals

– CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT INTERNSHIPS FOR JANUARY 2014 ALL ACROSS South Africa

2. Puff & Pass another valuable resource to find information not only about internships, learnerships but also bursaries

–  CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT INTERNSHIPS, LEARNERSHIPS AND BURSARIES

3. Careers Portal provides you with information regarding internships as well useful insights on how to apply and other handy tips

–  CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT INTERNSHIPS AND TOP CAREER TIPS

Ensure to take full advantage of the above-listed opportunities and if additional assistance is required to apply or prepare, feel free to contact us at topcv123@gmail.com and we will gladly assist you with our professional services.

How to Deal with Public Criticism – Even When You Are Called A Bunch of Losers!

by Preston Loxton

“Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.” Winston Churchill 

After a thorough thrashing by the Nigerian football team, Bafana Bafana (SA football side) whimpered out of the Tournament with their tail between their legs and ready to lick their wounds, only to be further given a publicly humiliating torturous tongue-lashing of historic epic proportions.

This punishment was not generously dished out by a frustrated coach but by the Minister of Sport himself – read full story here or watch statements made by Minister of Sport.

A lot of focus is placed on whether the Minister went too far with his harsh statements but what do you do when you are on the receiving end of public criticism by a superior/manager/boss?

The New Beginnings for all Job Seekers and Job Holders in 2014

by Bernadette Ontong

“Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success.” – Henry Ford 

The year of 2014 began with many murmurings of changes in people’s lives and life in general. These changes seem to have grabbed the global ether by storm and there is nothing anyone can do, but to follow the norm. These changes are directed mainly at the spiritual level. Most people are looking to find a more positive way of life and the same applies to the work environment.

If you are starting a new job in January 2014,the onus will still be on you to walk into the job environment and assert yourself in some of the following ways:

• Be Positive: This means that you are going to forgive and forget all of the happenings of the year 2013.
  • You can achieve this by being mindful of your steps throughout the day.
  • Be focused on every step you take and what you do so that you are mindful of its consequences
• Be Focused: Set up your plan for the day and what you want to accomplish. Make use of the day-planner that you have received. You could also download a day planner in Excel format. It will also give you the ability to add in the time that you spend on each task. This will also prevent you from procrastinating.
• Be Productive: This is important, as it will give you the self-fulfillment that you are in need of. When you have completed your daily schedule successfully, you will see and feel the difference
• Let Go of Expectations: It is important that you walk into your office and know that you have work to do. You cannot expect things to fall into place automatically.  Start afresh without any expectations.
• Have Compassion on Yourself: You need to look after yourself and not be overcome or overwhelmed by the situation in your office. All workplaces have difficulties, but you should learn how to work around these.

Self-compassion starts from within. You will be a better person if you do some of the following:

• By waking up early or in good time, you can get ready for work at a leisurely pace and do not have to rush. It will help you to arrive at work in a calm and peaceful state.
• Make the effort this year to get rid of all debt and start living a simplified life. Buy only what you need to make your life productive and healthy.
• Exercising is important, but you do not need to go to the gym for that. Find easy and productive ways, at home, to get into shape. The more varied your routine the more you would persist.
• Meditation is a good way of relaxation. However, many people make it into a chore. For the individual, it could mean just sitting and staring at the sea or even just at some ants busy at work, for half an hour or so.

This applies if you are walking into your old job as well. You should make the effort to discard of all that is negative and that went wrong in 2013.

It is time to place you in a position of growth, prosperity (not just financially), and the many other aspects that 2013 negated. Your focus will be on solving issues and not on what went wrong.

Why not make success permanent in your life?

TopCV recommends The Morning Ritual Blueprint – How to Wake Up Early, Energetic, and Ready to Achieve your Goals (The Morning Routine Series – Ultimate Guide to Creating a Successful Morning Ritual)

The Opportunites to Make the Best of your Studies

by Bernadette Ontong

“A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.”

– Winston Churchill

Podcast Listening (Photo credit: Frank Gruber)

The Basics Needed for your Studies

The Necessity of Hardware

It does not matter what you would be studying now or in the future, you would have to do research. For that you would need the basics:

Learning To Live For Your Future Job

by Bernadette Ontong

“Study the past, if you would divine the future.”  –  Confucius 

English: There are no symbols that represent skepticism. This is one symbol that can be used to represent skepticism in atheism, or how skeptical inquiry, critical thinking, critical inquiry, and truth-seeking lead to atheism. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

Learning to live for your future job is about learning the ways of everyday operations as an employee. The greatest asset about this learning is that it is not only meant for your job situation, but for your everyday life as well.

Some of the best skills for office as well as for life in general are:

• Lateral thinking: This is how you would go about solving problems in a creative and an indirect approach. It involves reasoning that is direct and obvious. It is solving problems through non-traditional methods. If you can, you should try to read the books written by Edward de Bono.

Is Specialization a Good Thing?

by Bernadette Ontong

“The expert knows more and more about less and less until he knows everything about nothing.” 
― Mahatma Gandhi

In the past learning centers have focused on “holistic” learning. That meant that one person had to, or could make a wide choice

English:  (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

for whatever he or she was expecting to do in the future. It is also a term used by many as “eclectic knowledge.” It was about learning about everything and knowing everything.

In the last few decades, this has changed drastically in that many have the opportunity to be specialists. For example, the teaching fraternity has given itself to Math specialists, or English specialists. The old schools had teachers teach all of the different subjects and teachers were forced to take up the challenge.

How does Specialization Affect Job Searches

How To Work With These 5 Personalities in The Office

by Nhlakanipho Vezi

“Personality is only ripe when a man has made the truth his own.”  –   Soren Kierkegaard

Smiley Rocks (Photo credit: w3i_yu)

The work environment is composed of different people from different backgrounds. It is therefore of paramount importance, that we acknowledge this fact and come to a realization that, people will always share different sentiments pertaining to different issues and, people behave differently and thereof have a different ways of reacting to circumstances.

We need acknowledgement of the ultimate purpose of being at the office ‘productivity’. In order to be productive we have to deal with the different personality traits at our utmost capability and maneuver to making the office as profitable as possible.

Personality clashes are very likely at the work environment; consequently you need cognitive readiness to deal with different personalities at a work place.

The bully – one would think that these guys died at school, but they sometimes resurrect at work. This type of people use verbal or