I was kindly offered the chance to write this article and it’s been published this week.
It gives a solid summary of my own experiences, good and bad.
If you’re in the market for a new career and cyber has caught your eye, read on.
And if you’re not a coder, even better.
My career journey has been an interesting one.
My mate Matt has got the best out of me here and dug a bit deeper than the usual stuff these videos contain.
Lots of good stuff in here if you’re on the path to a cyber career, or really any kind of new career and find yourself in transition.
Placed an order yesterday for some new insights:
Daniel Kahneman – Thinking, Fast and Slow: I’m aware of economic theory but it’s a long time since I took steps to go a little deeper. This will be my jumping off point on that one.
Scott Galloway – The Algebra of Wealth: Personal finance strategy affects us all but most of us spend hardly any time thinking about what we are doing, let alone taking action.
The First 90 Days – Michael Watkins: I’m starting a new job in a couple of weeks. I like to go into anything with some kind of plan, however rudimentary. Similar books of this kind are on my shelves and this one could add a new angle.
(I don’t do affiliate marketing and don’t want to automatically send anyone to Amazon so this is why there are no links.)
Weekends are precious. They are the time to relax, recharge and have some fun. But they can also be the time to get things done and learn some new skills.
How can you have a productive weekend without feeling overwhelmed or stressed?
Here are some tips:
Give these tips a try. New skills take some effort but the payoff is real.
Just because something’s easy doesn’t make it right. A career you find easy might not be the ideal path over the long term.
One of my big mistakes from the last 35 years is not getting stuck into a career I enjoyed. I didn’t have a trade, a skill I could develop over time. I could get by without certifications and additional study. I made good money but the ceiling was low. Once I hit it, all I could see was 30 more years of the same. No thanks.
When the pressure is off, motivation is hard to come by. Skills get stale. Money flows but the drive to improve disappears (or at least it did for me).
I’ve now gone deep rather than wide in the area I work in – cyber security. It involves study to improve and the bar keeps getting higher. I wanted a career where some study effort would pay off. There are endless study paths, and it can take a while to find the right path for your own interests, but I’ve found it now. Doors are starting to open.
My purpose for this effort is to grow skills and rise through the ranks. As always, studying on your own time is a pain, but if the purpose is clear and you’ve got that motivation, good things happen.
When you’re making plans for the long term, keep this in mind. Economic security and a skill you’ve developed over the years will keep you on the up.
This much-used sentence is one that I heard a long time ago but still resonates with me on an almost daily basis. It’s a rare skill but it stands out like wearing bright colours or dying your hair pink. It gets you noticed.
Being interesting is something that those who have travelled the world or have years of experience can rely on – sometimes a little too much. Their stories can become repetitive. That time they swam with sharks in the Bahamas or wrestled a bear in the Dagestan mountains was a jaw-dropper the first time around, but, after a few more mentions, its impact is lost.
All it takes to be interesting is to know what you’re about and be prepared to talk about it. It’s about standing for something and having opinions. It’s having an identity and being able to explain what it means to anyone in basic terms.
The interested part is about asking questions and actually listening to the answers. It’s about your follow up questions to go deeper and find out more. It makes conversations flow and lets people focus on their favorite topic – themselves.
I always remember the people who ask me questions. They’re normally the ones with an interesting background. Isn’t that funny? Maybe they’ve worked this game out.
I met Paul (not his real name) a couple of years ago. He came up to me after a talk I gave at UTS here in Sydney to one of the Marketing masters degree courses. He was looking to start his own marketing agency and wanted me to mentor him. I think he was 21 at the time.
We stayed in touch and had a few excellent conversations. He was full of positivity and extremely well-researched in all aspects of personal development in a way that really impressed me – he knew what it was all about and was putting the pieces together.
Paul messaged me after our last conversation about six months ago to say he’d been made redundant from a role at a company that didn’t match his values and I gave him some straightforward advice on what path I felt would work for him to follow long term.
My sense at the time was that he didn’t take this well. I went against the course that his passion was suggesting was the right one. The route I mentioned would take much longer timewise but would be a real win for him in the long term based on my own experiences and knowledge.
But I’m not him, right? And I’m not in my twenties, champing at the bit to get paid the big bucks and make my mark on the world…
I took a call from him yesterday to say that my suggested path was the one he was now taking and he had started his dream job yesterday. This made me so pleased for him after a tough time mentally getting this point.
But the thing it highlighted more than anything is that the man with a plan is the most dangerous kind.
I had the feeling that Paul was going to struggle to get his life on track as the ‘follow your passion’ brigade was blowing their bugles and calling out to him, but he stuck with his plan and landed the right opportunity in the end.
And his call to say thank you for my help made my day. The fact that he did this means I’ll always keep him on my radar and look out for more ways I can help him.
Well done, mate.
We can’t avoid the problems that this COVID-19 situiation is causing for us all around the world and the pain of the families of those who have died or are suffering at this moment can’t be understated.
Taking a few practical steps to stay active, physically and mentally, right now is a good place to start if you’re feeling significant stress or have lost your source of income, for example.
But there are also some specific things that you can do in this period to come out on the other side of it in a strong position, especially when it comes to your business or your own personal brand online.
Do everything you can to help those around you in your online community in whatever form that takes. Zoom calls, Facebook messages, phone calls, whatever. As much action spent on this in the coming weeks will be remembered by those who needed a pick-me-up or a happy face on the other end of the line.
Posting helpful tips and advice to your community also makes a lot of sense. Demonstrate your expertise and the depth of your skills and experience as much as you can.
Take some time to audit every profile you have online today. Does it accurately reflect who you are and what you do? If it’s LinkedIn, are your contact details correct? Do you need an updated profile pic? Go through every one you have and make sure they’re all tip top.
It’s a great time to do some learning. Courses from top universities around the world are free on sites like Coursera so take the first step and sign up for something that can take your skills to a new level. And if you are looking to make a career change or have hit a roadblock in your career, this is the time to road test a few new subjects.
We will all come out of this process in a different way, but be sure to do all that you can to move yourself forwards during this time and keep a positive frame of mind. Let’s hope it’s resolved soon enough!
The process of making change is one that can add levels of frustration, anxiety and straight-up fear to lives that are already highly stressed and this isn’t always a good thing. Illness can follow very quickly behind if the change isn’t properly managed, whatever it’s context, so avoiding this has to be a top priority.
Our move to Sydney is still in progress as the container carrying our belongings is not yet with us and, so far, we have thankfully had few problems. But Katherine did get sick after only a couple of days in the country and this was very likely due to the scale of the change we had undertaken and the unsettled nature of what was ahead of us over the next few weeks of looking for accommodation, settling into a job and a new city, etc.
The frustration around the change I am going through at the moment is about the pace of it. Life in Australia does go a whole lot slower than it does in the UK and this can be difficult when you have little patience and are ready to start something new. A phone call or email not being returned seems to increase the overall level of tension and the ability to stay patient pays huge dividends.
I try to solve these little problems by thinking of all the things that have worked out well over the last few weeks as we have moved our lives and there are lots of them. It’s always beneficial, to me, anyhow, to keep a focus on the good stuff and the positives that are around me instead of the negatives and this does seem to do the trick. The negatives come easy and are always there without looking too hard, but make an effort to see past them and the dark clouds will start to lift a little.
It’s been a few weeks since I have written anything here because it’s been a time of big change. I’m now writing this from Sydney, Australia after moving here one week ago and the lead up to this change has been very hectic. House rented, belongings packed, plane tickets bought and accommodation secured does make it all sound very simple but I can assure you it isn’t!
Anyway, this time of change is also a big opportunity for growth in many ways. A new country – well, I was here 20 years ago and it has changed a lot since then – that is so far from the culture, weather and lifestyle that we had when in the UK will take some getting used to but that is part of its attraction.
I’m looking at getting back into employment so doing lots of research and adapting my mindset to being part of team again, even leading one if the opportunity presents itself. I’ve also got some time to think about doing some fresh learning in a new area and I haven’t drawn any conclusions from this yet.
Basically, every option is still open and this time of change is going to give some amazing opportunities for growth that will be fabulous as time goes by. There’s a lot to be very grateful for.
As a sidenote – current reading:
Chaos Monkeys – inside the Silicon Valley money machine, Antonio Garcia Martinez
The Inner Game of Golf – W. Timothy Gallwey
Homicide, David Simon
Race schedule for running:
Bay Run 7km this Sunday
City2Surf (CBD to Bondi Beach) on 14 August
Western Sydney half marathon on 1 October
My latest post from LinkedIn:
Many CVs are full of errors and this is something that is easy to fix. Check your document, get others to proofread it, then recheck it to make sure there are no mistakes. If it’s a straight choice between two applications for a role and one of the CVs has no spelling errors, who do you think gets the invitation to interview? It can really be that simple.
Make sure your address details, telephone number (mobile only) and email address are clear and correct at the top of each page. If you’re in the process of relocating to a new area, it can also help to add to any covering letter or email what your plans are, otherwise it can cause real confusion and lead your application to the trash.
Check all of your spelling, grammar, punctuation and layout on the document. Think of the reader and what they are going to think of the way your document has been prepared – it really does make a difference when you are looking at lots of these every day.
And be sure to check your facts, statistics and data. Don’t be caught out by an employer doing their standard due diligence on you as a candidate and identifying a glaring exaggeration of sales figures or project details. If they decide to interview you, which would be unlikely if you make this kind of mistake, they are sure to ask you to justify your version of the facts so avoid this potential banana skin.
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[If you need any help with your resume/CV, please check out my other site https://realjobsearchinsider.wordpress.com/]
“The vitality of our network will determine our professional fate.” From The Little Big Things: 163 Ways To Pursue Excellence (2010)
The work of Tom Peters is well worth getting to know if you are interested in learning how to improve your work life and, if you are a manager, get the most from your team.
Mr Peters learned the basics in the US Navy, collecting his postgrad qualifications following active service in the Vietnam War. He also spent some time in the White House in the 70’s as a senior advisor to the Nixon administration. But the experience for which he is most renowned is his time with McKinsey & Co in the late 70’s/early 80’s – with his co-writer Bob Waterman he wrote ‘In Search of Excellence’, one of the most popular books on organisational effectiveness there has ever been.
Nowadays, Mr Peters writes and speaks extensively on getting the most out of yourself and those around you in the workplace. The quote above is taken from one of my favourite books and it’s one I highly recommend for some true pearls of wisdom on how to achieve excellence at every level and in everything you do.
It’s all about being helpful, caring about people, doing a great job no matter what and about delivering excellence in the face of whatever you are confronted by. Reading this book also makes you immediately get off your backside and take some action which is one of the main reasons I love reading his work so much.
If you’re someone that loves to learn and finds that taking action is the best way to effect some kind of change, make sure you add this one to your shopping list.
Here’s a list of things that are worth finding out and thinking about as you go through the decision making process of deciding to take a new job or stay where you are. Got any additional ones? Please add them in the comments.
A quick list for you from the King of Madison Avenue:
“The qualifications I look for in our leaders are these:
1 – High standards of personal ethics.
2 – Big people, without prettiness.
3 – Guts under pressure, resilience in defeat.
4 – Brilliant brains – not safe plodders.
5 – A capacity for hard work and midnight oil.
6 – Charisma – charm and persuasiveness.
7 – A streak of unorthodoxy – creative innovators.
8 – The courage to make tough decisions.
9 – Inspiring enthusiasts – with thrust and guts.
10 – A sense of humour.”
All of these are highly prized commodities in the workplace and something I spend a lot of time looking for in people. Sadly the package is not found in all that many but those that do possess it are rare birds who fly very, very high.
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Ian Mountford is a Strategy Coach providing motivation and guidance to entrepreneurs, wannabe or fully-fledged. He draws from his own experience of building businesses from the ground up and spending many years helping clients to consistently achieve their goals and aspirations. Ian works with clients face-to-face and internationally.
I had a conversation with someone yesterday about their career goals and the target for their next role. I read their CV in advance of the call and the divergence between the two positions was just massive. It transpires they have been leading a double life in fear of their current employer finding out as they try to develop a new set of skills in another area that they now want to spend more time working on.
After talking this over it seems that the reality is they have nothing to fear by being more open about what they really want to do. Sometimes these crossroads come to us when we are not expecting them and it is clear this person has reached a huge one. I also felt very sad that this person felt that they had to suppress their real desire and motivation to be X instead of Y and it cannot be doing them any good at all holding all this negative energy inside.
My opinion is that you should make your goals and aims clear in the simplest way possible when it comes to your career. Make sure you have good reasons for your choices and be able to demonstrate why this new path is the right one for you. If your current employer cannot work with you to help the change happen it’s a sure sign that it is time to move on, too. A good employer should realise that people change direction every now and again and assist where they can – it’s a big step to take for an individual. Keep everything simple and really go for whatever it is you are trying to achieve. Make it happen!
Ian Mountford 