Motivation Monday

There is always something that we are wondering how to do, a skill we would like to master, or something we wished we knew more about and today’s Motivation Monday is a call to you to use this week to learn something new.

Whether it is using a new cooking recipe, mastering the settings on your digital camera, learning a new craft or just brushing up on skills that you haven’t used in a while, there is nothing better for boosting self-esteem than getting to grips with something that we want to know.

There are lots of places that offer tutorials such as Pinterest, YouTube, WikiHow or Skillshare that offer really useful and enlightening step by step tutorials or you could get together with a friend that already has skills or knowledge that you would like to learn and have a skill swap day where you both can learn something from each other.

I recently hosted another Crafternoon with my friends, we all got together and another friend taught us all about buttercream icing and we got to decorate our own cakes with different piping attachments and I was amazed to learn that the nozzles we used, while all looking similar, produced vastly different effects.  We had a really fun day and raised some funds for Mind along the way!

What are you thinking about learning?  What sources are your favourite for tutorials?  I’d be really interested to hear all about them so let me know in the comments!

My Perfect Job

Since taking part in Blogtober and coming to the conclusion that I need to find ways to bring more elements of things that make me feel enthusiastic into my life I have been thinking about work and my job.  I spend a great deal of my day in a job that I have come to realise drains me of energy and feel that a change of job could be one way to inject some much-needed enthusiasm into my life.

I am in a really lucky position, where I am already employed and can take time to really explore this idea before I even start to actively look and apply for anything.  Today I thought I would take some time to think about what my perfect job would be.

I would really like a job that would allow me to do some of the things I really enjoy like art or photography or painting and decorating.  I think I need something that can tap into my creative side and encourage and connect with those skills.

I’d love some kind of job that would make use of my writing skills, maybe something that involved researching and writing articles.  Blogging would be a brilliant job as I could utilise skills that I have learned while letting me learn even more along the way.

I have so many qualifications in art-based subjects and would really like to be able to put those skills to work in a job and not just at home as part of my hobbies.  I’d love to be able to use all of the things I learned in my Degree and Foundation Degree, as well as the self-taught skills that I have mastered.

I would love to be able to create and keep an eye on statistics and be able to report on where things are headed and what I can do to improve on them.

I’d like to have a job where I am appreciated, feel like part of a team and to be included in team chats and outings.

I’d like to work in an office that understands and has respect for each member of the team, where the individual matters as much as the rest of the team.

I’d like to be heard and have my concerns listened to and to be taken seriously.

I don’t have a job role that I am aiming for anymore, most of the “job roles” I have searched for in the past, even working as a member of bar staff, all have so many different requirements, that, now, I am looking at job requirements first rather than job title.

What would your perfect job be?  What would you look for in the perfect job?  I’d love to know your answers so let me know in the comments!

Words on Wednesday

Today, this post is going to be about something I have been thinking about for a long time – qualifications and skills, both of these things have been on my mind since I decided to update my C.V a few weeks ago.

We all have qualifications, G.C.S.E’s, A-Levels or the equivalent, some of us have N.V.Q’s or City and Guild’s qualifications, some of us have degrees and these are things that employers look at when we apply for jobs.

The other thing that we all have, that prospective employers are super interested in are the skills that we have obtained through different job positions we have held, these are listed under our “Work Experience” section on a C.V and often will be a brief description of what we do on a day-to-day basis in our employment.

But what about other skills that are self-taught and we have learned on our own?  Those skills that have no qualification tied to it, nor any referee that can vouch for those skills?  I have a “Hobbies and Interests” section on my C.V and have several things listed there but no real explanations of anything as, not only would it take up space but I have always been taught that professional qualifications and skills are the things that most (if not all employers) are most interested in.

I have always given a list of hobbies and interests on every C.V that I have ever handed out, but in the interviews that I have attended have never really been questioned in any depth about these topics.

It has all got me thinking…I have gained some really valuable skills that have been learned and self -taught because of my hobbies and interests, shouldn’t these skills be as important as those gained in work or educational establishments?  In fact, in some ways, shouldn’t these skills be even more important and nurtured by employers?

We spend a great deal of time with our hobbies and interests, they are things that have piqued our interests and things that we want to spend time doing, learning about and honing our skills in, and that we have taught ourselves these things should be an added bonus.

For example, through blogging, I have learned a lot about WordPress, websites, SEO, layout, design, content creation, content writing, time management, scheduling, attracting and engaging readers, social media, Canva…the list goes on.

Every single hobby and interest has its own unique skill set which should be given the opportunity to be showcased and shown off to prospective employers.  A covering letter used to be the go-to thing for being able to explain why you are interested in certain positions and any other relevant information that may be of interest to the employer when considering you for the job.  Unfortunately, many companies don’t even want a C.V any more, everything is done by generic application forms which give no space to list any other skills you may have outside of the work environment.

And that, the lack of interest in any other skills, is where my frustration lies.  I am more than just qualifications and stats that can be proven, used in a massive game of “Top Trumps” in order to single out the best candidates for the job.  There is more to my skill set than I am ever given the chance to say, and I think that goes for most people.  How can employers know that they have the best person for the job without taking into consideration us as whole people with skills that come from our “Hobbies and Interests”?

And more to the point, how can we detail our skills and experience outside of the jobs that we have had?