THE CAREER DOCTOR COMING HOME

So essentially, you are looking for a job that pays a €60k full-time salary, with some kind or work-around on it that grants you the work-life balance that you need. While you are obviously highly specialised and massively qualified, I am inferring that you do not have solicitor or barrister professional qualifications.

Given that you probably don’t want go the impecunious student route when you get back to Ireland to gain those professional qualifications, that immediately suggests that you should be examining an industry role or the groves of academe. The first thing you need to do is banish any thought of “Beggars can’t be choosers” for your approach. You are the most important person in your world, you are hugely qualified and you would be a valuable asset to any employer. If a potential employer can’t see that, you don’t want to work there … (Plus, with young children, whatever job you take on needs to leave you with sufficient energy to do your job as a mother to your satisfaction.)

If you know where you are going to be living, you can place a geographical constraint on your thinking. Get a map of your vicinity and draw a amoeba-shaped blob around your locale. Anywhere inside that blob is an acceptable commute, beyond that gets too unwieldy.

Next constraint – organisation type. Private sector or public service? Indigenous or multinational? Large or small? There are a number of distinctions you can draw in this regard; to start with, you should be picky and narrow your ideal down to a shortlist of a dozen or so organisations and start your research on those.

Research, research, research. Obviously, the web – the organisation’s website, its competitors and Google the names of any people you learn that work there. Online newspaper archives are valuable for expanding on this base information. Less obviously, trade magazines (try a big library or a representative organisation to get hold of back issues). These will give you a flavour for the issues and gossip of the sector. You should also track down and meet the head of the sector’s trade organisation or equivalent to talk about the big picture and the shifts and trends.

Ugly fact – job-hunting is all about them. Who matters in the process? Not you! If you accept that hard fact and behave accordingly in your approach to the market, you will be head, shoulders and torso above the competition. In job-hunting, knowledge is power and clarity is everything.

Start with a knowledge of what you want, what you are prepared to tolerate and where your ‘line in the sand’ is. Move on by developing a macro and micro knowledge of the ebbing and flowing of your desired organisations/sectors and build from there. That groundwork will enable you to present yourself as a focused, ‘clued-in’ individual who is aware of the dynamics of the organisation you are applying to and as a potential solver of problems rather than just another (yet another!) needy, self-centred job-hunter.

Rowan Manahan is MD of the career management firm Fortify Services and author of Where’s My Oasis? Visit www.fortifyservces.com or telephone 01 230 1313.

Irish Independent, Jobs & Careers supplement, June 9th 2005.

If you have any job problems you would like answered by our panel of Career Doctors, please email: careerdoctor@whitespace.ie or write to Jobs & Careers, Career Doctor, Whitespace Ltd., Top Floor, Block 43B Yeats Way, Park West Business Park, Nangor Road, Dublin 12.