The Job Hunting And Career Success Formula

Copyright Jonathan Blain 2012 www.JobHuntingAndCareerExpert.com of 85

The New Job Hunting and Career Secret Success Formula™ Intelligent + Innovative + Results Driven

Are you interested in discovering?

Created by Job Hunting and Career Problem Solving Expert, Best Selling Author and Thought Leader,

Jonathan Blain.

Secrets That Can Change Your Career and Life Forever

This amazing FORMULA is based on the truth. It can set you free, empower you, and enable you to

achieve a breakthrough, and the success and happiness that you desire.

A no-nonsense look at what’s really wrong with Job Hunting and Careers today, how it happened, and how YOU can turn job hunting and career failure into success, despite the tough economic conditions, and your own personal circumstances which might have been holding you back. Plus – why certain people get jobs more easily more than you do, and how you can move rapidly from being unsuccessful at job hunting, to being highly successful!

Finally….a new slant on how you approach your whole life and career.


Note: Some of the images of videos,

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have hyperlinks to YouTube videos.

Mouse over them - Click them if they

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Contents A Personal Message from Jonathan Blain .......................................................................................... 4

About Me – Jonathan Blain .............................................................................................................. 16

My Journey from Job Hunting and Career Pain, to World’s Number 1 Job Hunting and Career

Problem Solving Expert.................................................................................................................... 30

Six Basic Secrets You Need To Know To Be More Successful ............................................................ 47

What is really wrong with job hunting and careers?......................................................................... 50

You Can’t Find the Cure Until You Properly Diagnose the Problem ................................................... 55

The Best Way Makes Sense ............................................................................................................. 57

Jonathan Blain’s New Approach....................................................................................................... 61

The Job Hunting and Career Secret Success Formula ....................................................................... 65

A new slant on careers and life and how you should approach yours ............................................... 72

Get More Help - Jonathan Blain’s Support Services .......................................................................... 82

84

Contact Jonathan Blain .................................................................................................................... 85


A Personal Message from Jonathan Blain

Hi There,

My name is Jonathan Blain, I am a job hunting and career problem solving expert, bestselling author

(11 Books / Over $3.8m Sales), and thought leader, founder of the Job Hunting and Career

Emergency Service, and author of the book: “Job Hunting and Career Pain Relief – How to Solve Your

Job Hunting and Career Problems.”

I am guessing that if you are reading this, you are facing one of three situations:

1. You are facing job hunting and career problems now.

2. You are worried that you might face job hunting and career problems in the future.

3. You are interested in how you can maximise your career success and happiness.

The chances are that you are most likely in situation one or two.

If you are facing job hunting or career problems now, you have my sympathy and understanding; we

are facing the toughest economic conditions since the Great Depression of the 1930’s, and this time

the recovery looks like it could take longer, in fact there is probably a 50/50 chance that things could

get even worse before it gets better. The economic conditions most probably caused your

problems; you shouldn’t feel bad, anyone can be affected, the very best people, the very worst

people, young or old, senior or junior in almost every type of role, in almost every type of

organisation.

Whether you have problems now, are seeking to prevent them happening in the future, or simply

want to maximise your success and happiness, the things you need to be thinking about and doing

for each are all related, and are addressed in my overall solution.


Preventing and Solving Job Hunting and Career Problems and Maximising Success Are Connected We are in the toughest global job market since the great depression of the 1930’s, where unemployment in the USA peaked at 25%. In Spain unemployment is already at 25%, there are simply millions of people around the world who are unemployed, and an entire generation of young people seem to be suffering the most.

In the current climate, solving or preventing job hunting and career problems is not easy for many people, although it appears easy for what seem like a lucky few, who appear to have no problems at all finding new work. Sadly people who have never before experienced any problems getting work, are finding themselves struggling to get results now, is this you? Many of things people are doing to get jobs aren’t working, many people are doing everything that they can possibly think of to get results, and are still failing. The consequences of experiencing job hunting and career problems and not being able to solve them; can be personal catastrophe, causing unbearable pain and suffering. You can only really know what it is like if you have actually experienced it, and I speak from bitter personal experience. The longer the problems continue, the greater the pain and suffering experienced.

Solving Job Hunting

and Career Problems

Maximising Career

Success and Happiness

Preventing Job Hunting and Career Problems

There Are People With No Job Hunting and Career Problems

There Are People Who Are Able to Solve Their Job Hunting and Career problems Easily

There Are An Increasing Number of People Of All Ages and Backgrounds Who Are Finding It Difficult To Solve Their

Problems


These are just a tiny selection of consequences of job hunting and career problems You don’t realise quite how related job hunting and career success is, to your quality of life and lifestyle, until it starts to go wrong. Hope can quickly turn to despair, frustration, worry, stress, depression and debt can all increase, health can suffer too, and for an increasing number of people, mental and physical health can deteriorate leading to death. If you think I am exaggerating, you only need to look to the figures in Japan where suicide traced to losing jobs surged 65.3%, during the 1990’s recession. Suffice to say the job market is tough right now and getting tougher and getting results can he hard, so what should you do, if you are doing everything you can possibly think of, and still not getting results? Are you interested in knowing, not just about what else you can do, but what are the very best things you could do, to achieve the best results? I wanted to know what the best things you should do to solve your job hunting and career problems are, and I am happy to share what I discovered with you. I had a burning desire to want to know the answers; it became an obsession, an insatiable curiosity and ultimately became literally part of my life purpose. You might have heard the expression about “leaving no stone unturned” in a search for something; I wanted to leave no stone unturned, I found gurus who offered answers, I read every book I could find on the subject, I dived into the internet to search for answers, I bought audio and video programmes, I attended events, and then I sifted through everything that I found, and by and large, I have to say that I was hugely disappointed. I discovered the same old stuff, repackaged by different people, but amongst the same old stuff lay some jewels, that stood out, that shone bright, that offered hope. It is like pieces of a jigsaw that are missing, the picture is incomplete till you find the piece and insert it in the right place, to enable you to get what you really want.

• Can affect your health and wellbeing

• Can cause depression even death Stress

• Pressure that never goes away

• Intense Pressure

• Increasing Debt / Lose Security

• Quality of Life and Lifestyle Deteriorating Hardship

• When nothing you do works, frustration builds and builds, self image and confidence is damaged Frustration


Your future success might depend upon finding and placing pieces of a jigsaw

One of the things I realised is that when you are looking for answers, your mind has to be ready to

receive them, or else you will never see them, never act on them, and never move forward from

where you are. I believe there is a tipping point, when you are ready and prepared to open your

mind to new possibilities, to see things in a different way, to think differently, which in turn will

enable you to change, and do different things or the same things differently and better.

Your tipping point might be achieved through anger and frustration, or you some event that

happens to you, or it could be that you reach a stage of enlightenment, where you are ready to open

your mind and embrace change. Often there is a point where you feel enough is enough, something

has got to change, and the thing that needs to change the most is probably you! There are still many

people who haven’t realised how tough the job market has got, who haven’t realised that solving

their job hunting and career problems might not be as easy as they hope it will be. It might be that

you need to fail and struggle first, and come back when you feel ready for something new and

different.

Have you reached a tipping where you are ready for change?

The fact that you are reading this is a good indicator that your mind is open and you are ready for

change. What do you think, are you ready for change, or are you still happy where you are, doing

what you are doing – only you can say?


Just because times are tough doesn’t mean there aren’t opportunities. There are hundreds of

thousands of jobs, there just happens to be lots of people going for them. There are plenty of other

ways to earn a living too e.g. being self-employed, or a business owner, or an investor. Billionaire

Richard Branson has predicted that the next generation of billionaires with arise from the carnage of

today’s economic meltdown. There were many who made fortunes during the great depression of

the 1930’s including J Paul Getty with oil, Colonel Sanders of Kentucky Fried Chicken, Mr Hewlett and

Mr Packard, and the slightly mad Howard Hughes, who ended up being worth $2.5billion.

At any point in human history, there are people whose personal stock is rising and people whose

personal stock is falling. If you think your personal stock is falling, you need to shift and make a

change, so it can rise again.

As with any crisis, there is a great deal of confusion and uncertainty, an abundance of hindsight, but

a great lack of foresight. I believe the future is likely to be brightest, with those with the greatest

foresight; the ability to see things how they really are, to see where things are going in the future

and to make decisions based on common sense and logic, that stand the best chance of working.

You need to have foresight to think about the future

I am not suggesting any of us need to find a crystal ball that can see into the future, but given the

current economic climate, is it really unreasonable to predict that it might take quite a long time to

get better, and that there is at least a 50/50 chance that things could get worse before they get

better? Is it unreasonable to predict that there is likely to be competition for jobs for the foreseeable

future?


When you need greener grass, you need to move, to shift and change, or else you will stay where

you are, and if where you are is unacceptable – you’ve got a problem

If the world around you isn’t likely to change in your favour any time soon, what options do you have

for achieving a better result than you are right now in your job hunting or career management? The

way I see things is that you are two key and very clear choices, with a possible third choice a

combination of the first two:

“Continuing to do the same thing and expecting a different result is insanity” Albert Einstein

1. You carry on doing what you are currently doing, and hope for a different result, which is

Einstein’s definition of insanity or

2. You do something different, either something new or something better.

I believe the great majority are carrying on doing what they are already doing, and hoping, perhaps

even praying for a different result. This is a valid strategy, it is perhaps not quite as mad as Einstein

suggests, sometimes the situation does change, and sometimes persistence does pay, and “the proof

is in the pudding”, many people get results doing the same things.


What however could be the result for you; if you decided to change, to do new things that you are

not currently doing, or to do the same things better? What if you didn’t follow everyone else, what

if you decided to lead, to stand out, to dare to be different and better, to take job hunting and

career management to a higher level? Do you think you might get noticed, and get better results?

Could you benefit from being different and doing different things to everyone else?

Probably the world’s top marketer, Jay Abraham talks about the “Curse of Conformity”:

“Look at any industry today and you’ll see why this is so crucial. Just about

every company in a given market niche does things the same way. They all

look the same and say virtually the same thing. Yet just about all of them are

hoping for better results. So they’ve quickly sized up their competitors …

figured out what they’re doing … then knocked them off.

That’s why their products … their marketing strategies … their ads and other

sales messages … are all nearly identical.

That’s why so many consumers have come to believe one company – and its

product – is as good as another’s.

And who’s to blame them?

In a copycat world, no one company or product stands out as really being the

supreme choice!

And when you join your competitors in this folly, you simply disappear from

your market’s radar screen. You blend in with the background. You become

invisible.”


In a highly competitive job market, I believe you need to stand out

Only you can decide what you think is right for you.

It is difficult to stand out if your proposition is the same, and you are doing the same as everyone

else. I believe differentiation is everything; you need to stand for something, be known for

something, and know who you are, what you are, what makes you different and how that difference

benefits the employer or others, and be able to communicate it effectively.

(Copyright Unilever)

You are better to be like Marmite that people love or hate, rather than being bland and

unmemorable

I can tell you what I have discovered, and what I think, but central to my proposition is that you have

to decide for yourself what is right for you, everyone is different and if I am totally honest, I have to

advise that there are many paths to success. I have problems with guru’s who say their path is the

only one, or even the best one.


“The majority of people will accept the need to stand out in today’s

competitive job market, but won’t make any significant changes in what they

are doing, that is great news for you, if you choose to change and stand out”.

I can help you, if you genuinely want to help yourself, but I can be of no service to you if you don’t.

We all hold preconceptions and beliefs about all sorts of things, about ourselves, about the job

market and the world around us. These beliefs and preconceptions can be either enabling or

limiting or something in between.

From the Film – The Matrix – Click Image To Link To Video

“You take the blue pill - the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want

to believe. You take the red pill - you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole

goes”.

Sometimes in life you need to make your move and have the courage of your convictions

A scientist creates hypotheses and sets out to test them to see if they are true or not, innovators

have ideas and try and bring their ideas to reality to see if they work, entrepreneurs see

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zE7PKRjrid4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zE7PKRjrid4


opportunities in business and take risks in trying to bring businesses to reality. Sportsmen and

women set out to be the best and win, to take things to new levels.

By nature, I am an ideas guy, an innovator, pioneer, entrepreneur and adventurer who sets out to

make things happen, a person who dares to dream, to create strategies and plans and bring them to

reality.

I see that most career coaches come from an HR / Recruitment / Personnel Background, with a

smaller number coming from sales and marketing, and they are all broadly doing the similar things. I

am not knocking these backgrounds at all, or what they do, I have had experience in all these areas

and think the experience is incredibly valuable and do some of what they do too, but I have had a

great deal of experience in other things too.

Would you like a metaphoric red pill?

I think now is a time for new ideas, new thinking and a new approach, and if you are open minded

and ready for change, I can be your guide and a source of inspiration and motivation.

I can bring a new perspective to job hunting and career problem solving, using the huge variety of

my experiences to provide a 360 view from all of the most relevant angles: I have been an employer

responsible for hiring hundreds of people in the public, private and not for profit sectors, for very

large organisations and SMEs too, I have been CEO of a Quoted Plc, I have been an entrepreneur

and made and lost £25m+, I have been an international bestselling author and thought leader, an

expert in leadership, sales and marketing, technology, innovation and creativity. I have also been a

recruiter, head hunter and Managing Director of a recruitment company which was a subsidiary of

a FTSE 100 company, but perhaps most importantly I have felt the pain and suffering of being a job

seeker in the current challenging job market, and achieved some extraordinary job hunting success

e.g. not just getting myself a job with a subsidiary of a FTSE 100 company, but actually going into

business with them as an equity partner.

I have achieved great success and also experienced painful failure in the real world. Nothing in my

mind, prepares you better than personally experiencing what the people you are advising are

experiencing. You feel it and understand it, because you have been there, got the T shirt and

perhaps the scars to show for it.


Professor Ken Robinson said: “If you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with

anything original.” I have been wrong so many times it has hurt, but each time I have learnt and

become stronger as a result, and I have come up with plenty of original things, I am not frightened to

lead and push back the boundaries, I am prepared to share everything that I have learnt with you, if

you would like me to.

Have you questions you need answering? Should you have questions?

If you decide to come on this journey with me, I promise to tell you the truth, the whole truth and

nothing but the truth, even if it is sometimes not always what you want to hear. I promise to tell you

what I have discovered you need to do to achieve a breakthrough, success and happiness. I promise

to take you not just to the cutting edge, but ahead of the curve, to the very boundaries of possibility.

I promise to try to lead and inspire you to create a vision for your own future that inspires and

motivates you, that fills you with excitement, and the energy, drive and determination to achieve

not just the career, but also the life of your dreams too.

I hope that you will create a strategy of how to implement your vision from the insights that I will

give you, and translate that strategy into plans that you can and will implement. I hope that you will

choose the path of greatest success, which will take you to greatness, as opposed to the path of

least resistance, which is most likely to take you to mediocrity. The path of greatest success involves

bravery, facing your blind spots, hard work, overcoming setbacks, paying the price of success, doing

whatever it takes to achieve success with integrity and honour.


If you are up for the challenge, if you want to be a winner and take it to the next level, let’s get

started.

I am giving you my Job Hunting and Career Success Formula for free, with a good heart and good

intent, because I genuinely want to help you, and as many other people as I can throughout the

world, to solve or prevent your job hunting or career problems and maximise your career success

and happiness.

Kind regards,

Jonathan Blain

Job Hunting and Career Problem Solving Expert Best Selling Author and Thought Leader

A thinker with curiosity who explores and searches for answers. An ideas guy, innovator, creator and pioneer, who continually asks; why, why not and what

if? A strategist who is able to create strategies of how to achieve things. An adventurer, who turns strategies into; plans and sees them through into action, results

and achievements. Always positive and usually enthusiastic able to persuade, motivate and inspire others.


About Me – Jonathan Blain

Hi there, I am going to tell you a little bit about my background, in as much of a nutshell as I can

manage, so you know a little bit about me the person, and where I have come from and where I am

going. I am then going to tell you about my own Job Hunting and Career Pain, how I got to become a

Job Hunting and Career Problem Solving Expert, and what drives me to want to help as many people

around the world to solve their job hunting and career problems and maximise their success and

happiness as I can, so here goes, it is an illustrative overview, but far from complete overview:

I was bought up in a middle class family in the UK. From an early age I had big bold ideas and wasn’t

frightened to try and bring them to reality. In my childhood, I was into Skateboarding, sailing and

boating.

Me going aerial out the top of a half pipe

I used to be able to do handstands on my skateboard and do aerial jumps out of the top of big half

pipes. I was always a pioneer, I was one of the early adopters of skateboarding in our town, and

created a skateboard club with friends, which got to 1,700 members, I love having a cause and trying

to make things better, we raised a load of money to buy a big ramp, we had the TV programme,

Nationwide come to our skating area, and we even managed to get the professional Hobie

Skateboard Team to visit us, who came all the way from the USA, to our little town in the UK.

I set up a number of businesses whilst at school, helped my Dad in his business, and had a part time

job as a sales assistant in BHS (British Home Stores) as it was then, which was a large department

store.


I was rarely shy – I nearly always had some ideas and something to say!

It is nice to feel like you are alive and really living sometimes – that’s me on the bow at the start of

a race from the UK to France and Ireland and back, which I did with my best friend in my mid 20’s

I loved sailing and boating, spending a huge amount of time at the sailing club, racing and trying to

win as much as I could. I was inspired by adventure, and at age 13, I set out on an adventure, and

walked 120 miles across Wales with my best friend. My mum still can’t believe she let me do it, but I

was always persuasive, and like so many other things in my life, managed to pull it off. I went to an

outdoor pursuits centre called Ogwen Cottage which I loved, and was invited back on an advanced

course. At 16, I spent six weeks in Israel, saw a small bomb go off somewhere, and worked on a

Kibbutz, starting work in the fields at 4am. Whilst at school, I dreamt of yacht racing around the

world, and particularly the single handed or two handed trans-Atlantic yacht race from Plymouth in

UK to Newport Rhode Island in the USA, which I was later to take part in.


Me as a Royal Naval Officer – “An Officer and a Gentleman”

When I left school, I joined the Royal Navy as an Executive / Seaman Officer on a 3 ½ year

commission which was my alternative to University. It really made my Dad proud. I joined Britannia

Royal Naval College in Dartmouth, which is where the Queen met Prince Philip, and just after Prince

Andrew had left in 1981. I thoroughly enjoyed my time at the college; my room was opposite Prince

Lavaka, who is now the King of Tonga. I once gave him a lift in my Renault 4 car, with its 850cc

engine and bench front seat! Underpinning all aspects of training at BRNC remains “the aim to

deliver courageous leaders with the spirit to fight and win”; this ethos has stayed with me for life,

and has been applied in helping people to find the spirit to fight and win for jobs and their future. In

early 1982, whilst under training, I crossed the Atlantic in HMS Fearless, encountering a hurricane at

sea with steady 120 mph winds and mountainous seas with 80 foot waves, which wrote off both the

helicopters, after which I went on an exercise with the Puerto Rican National Guard, and then on to

Port of Spain Trinidad, where sadly a British yacht with a husband and wife was attacked, and the

husband murdered. Years later I was to meet the lady involved, who was one of the first customers

in my wife’s Montessori Nursery School in Henley on Thames (UK); it’s a small world isn’t it.

My appointment to HMS Coventry above was cancelled on 19/04/82, and she was sunk by Argentine

Air Force A-4 Skyhawks on 25 May 1982 during the Falklands War with the loss of 19 lives.


Here’s the proof, a letter from the Ministry of Defence:

I was twice appointed to HMS Coventry in 1982, but she sailed the day before I was due to join her

for the Falklands War. She was the second ship to be sunk with the loss of nineteen lives, with thirty

people injured. I wonder if someone above was looking out for me, what was strange was that I had

one of those sixth sense moments, where I knew the ship had been attacked before it came on the

news. There have been a few things like that which have happened to me. I was driving back to

Britannia Royal Naval College late one Sunday night from a weekend at home with a friend. I was in

the flimsy car with the 850cc engine, with a friend of mine from the college. I was closing really

slowly on a big low-loader lorry, my foot was flat to the floor and I just couldn’t quite decide if we

had the power to overtake. We were doing nearly 70 miles per hour on the inside lane of the

motorway, I pulled out to the middle lane to have a go at overtaking, and in the split second I did so,

this massive bit of metal pipe fitting that was almost as big as our car, fell of the back of the lorry.


The sparks were so bright it was almost like daylight. Had I not pulled out, it was difficult to see how

we might have survived. I don’t know if guardian angels exist, but as you will learn later I have

escaped a number of potentially life threatening situations.

Being the only non-graduate of the six people on the experimental 3 ½ year commission, I undertook

accelerated training, becoming the youngest compliment officer (doing a real job) in the fleet, and

gained my bridge watch-keeping certificate, which enabled me to take charge on the bridge of the

ship at sea, and be in charge of the ship as officer of the day in harbour. One of my fellow 3 ½ year

commission colleagues went on to be Managing Director of Land Rover and Group CEO of JCB, the

digger company. The lovely thing about being an Officer in the Royal Navy was the sheer variety of

work, from hosting cocktail parties for diplomats and foreign dignitaries, to getting involved in

search and rescue operations, responding to an explosion and fire on the Piper Alpha Oil Rig before

the big explosion which later destroyed it.

Me on Left as a British Sea Fisheries Officer - Aboard a Fishing Boat in the North Sea – our ship

HMS Guernsey is in the background

I was a British Sea Fisheries Officer boarding fishing boats in the North Sea and occasionally arresting

them. I was the captain’s, secretary, responsible for: all the foreign currency and cash, for all the

ammunition and explosives and for gunnery. I lead a group of men, and had responsibility for

education, resettlement, discipline and public relations. I was trained in damage control and fire

fighting, and ended my time in the Royal Navy on the Royal Navy Stand at the London Boat Show,

which was centre stage with the Royal Naval Display Team and Sponsorship from Lambs Navy Rum,

whose pretty calendar girls adorned our stand. It was tough life, but someone had to do it.

I am now a job hunting and career problem solving expert, thought leader, and international

bestselling author, with 11 successful books published and over $3.8m sales. I am the founder of a


new generation of career related services including: the Job Hunting and Career Emergency

Service™, High Flyer Academy™, Game Change Academy™, CV For Executives™, Careers Start

Academy™, Business Start Up and Success Academy™, Career Life Cycle Academy™ and the inventor

of: Career Life Cycle Management™, Sales and Marketing For Job Seekers™, Lifetime Career

Investment™, Employer Relationship Management™ and more.

My work has previously been endorsed by nine CEO’s of UK top 1,000 companies, including the

heads of: Apple, Sony and Carphone Warehouse, The Director General of the Institute of Directors

and the First Sea Lord of the Royal Navy.

Throughout my life, I have not been frightened to take risks and push back the boundaries, I am

innovative, creative and entrepreneurial, able to motivate and inspire others to achieve

extraordinary things. I was friendly with world famous yachtswoman Dame Ellen Macarthur before

she became famous, and helped her in the early days, amongst other things, getting her honorary

membership to the Royal Southampton Yacht Club. When she became the fastest person to sail

around the world, and returned to Falmouth with the world’s media to greet her, I was the BBC’s

guest, interviewed standing on her yacht talking about the power of the spirit of adventure, which

was great fun.

Me on BBC TV Talking About Ellen Macarthur and the spirit of adventure

When I left the Royal Navy I spent three or four months travelling around South East Asia on my

own, clocking up numerous adventures, and meeting all sorts of interesting people. In the

Philippines I stumbled across a group of bandits, armed with guns, grenades with bandoliers of

ammunition, wearing bandanas, and looking like they were straight out of an action movie. I have

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ua8Tgh01Dtk


had so many adventures and experiences; I can often imagine them as a script for a film. In

Thailand, I jumped out of a moving vehicle with an American Doctor to avoid an ambush, hiding at

night-time in a plantation whilst a group of menacing looking guys were searching for us, thankfully

unsuccessfully. Twenty years later, through the internet, I tracked him down; he is now a Professor

of medical and molecular genetics. During another adventure with him, he had a motorbike crash

involving someone else, we had to bribe people to stop him being arrested, and I turned into the

doctor cleaning up his wounds. There was always some excitement, one adventure involved riding

an elephant to remote tribal villages, up and down perilously steep slopes, across rivers, staying with

local tribes in bamboo huts, showing under waterfalls. At times like this you feel you are really living

life to the full.

Me in St Helena having just sailed there from Cape Town with my daughter who is now 16

I have had plenty of other yachting adventures, including getting sponsorship and having my yacht

shipped to Cape Town in South Africa, and racing to the remote tiny island of St Helena in the South

Atlantic, taking two young 18 year old St Helenian boys who had never before been off the Island.

We came 6th out of 24, we saw the house where Napoleon was imprisoned by the British, and had

cocktails at the Governor’s residence. It was another great adventure.

I have always been a thinker, somewhat of a maverick at times, always dreaming big, sometimes

achieving the goals and sometimes not, but never through lack of effort or resolve. I am into love

and peace, harmony and friendship; I dislike hate, conflict, prejudice, unkindness and selfish

behaviour. I think we need to care about each other and our planet.


Here’s Me on BBC News 24 Talking About People Who Make The World A Better Place

I like the idea of making the world a better place, something I have always tried to do, and I am

continually inspired by my wife Jenny, who has dedicated her life to giving young children the very

best start in life. The Montessori Nursery School, which she founded, recently celebrated its 20th

anniversary.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6hQZw9QV8g


My wife and inspiration - Jenny

Jenny was nominated for the Montessorian of the Year award, was a finalist in the Sue Ryder

Women of Achievement Award, and is this year, a finalist in the national Nursery Personality of the

Year Award. Her school is rated by the government inspector Ofsted as “Outstanding”. I have

supported her for the twenty years+, and have seen the profound impact she has had on so many

lives. She is my love, mother of our three lovely daughters, and a continual source of inspiration see

www.DenningMontessoriSchool.com . Maria Montessori’s message was not just for children, but I

believe for mankind. I have tried to make a difference to childcare on a national scale and have

previously spoken at the House of Commons on Childcare Issues, and been on BBC Breakfast with

Natasha Kaplinsky and Dermot Murnaghan, and the Deputy General Secretary of the TUC.

http://www.denningmontessorischool.com/


Me on BBC News 24 talking about childcare

When you put yourself in the line, whether in the Royal Navy or elsewhere, you feel your mortality,

and I have been on the edge on rather too many occasions for comfort. In 1990 I was fulfilling a

lifetime dream to compete in the two handed trans-Atlantic yacht race with my best friend from my

school days, when our yacht started to encounter major problems, leaking so badly that the floor

boards were floating around inside the boat, the steering failed completely and the major structural

bulkhead cracked. We were repeated knocked down by mountainous waves, in an icy cold and very

big ocean – remember the Titanic? We were on the same piece of water! After a gradual worsening

of the situation and after getting as close to land as possible, and in conjunction with the

Coastguard, we put out a Mayday call. It was a major incident involving a long range RAF Nimrod

aircraft which flew from RAF Kinloss in Scotland, which by chance was affiliated to one of the ships I

was on in the Royal Navy, and had actually previously flown a sortie with them. They found us, and a

Sea King Rescue Helicopter from RAF Brawdy in South Wales, achieved a record breaking rescue,

some 200 miles off the Irish coast, the furthest they had ever been out to sea, which involved them

refuelling on a lighthouse on the edge of Ireland with a barrel and a hand pump, so they could get

maximum range. If they had stayed any longer, they would have run out of fuel and fallen into the

sea. It was quite dramatic stuff, it was all across the national news, and we have all the on-board

drama on video to remind ourselves just what happened. The wreck was eventually salvaged by the

British aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal!

The challenge didn’t end there; a forty page survey revealed significant faults in design and

construction of the yacht, the manufacturers, the third biggest builders in Europe, whose primary

selling feature was their excellence of engineering, which was clearly anything but true in this

instance, denied responsibility, and the insurers refused to pay up on the grounds of “faults in design

and construction”, and the Ministry of Defence claimed salvage for their efforts. I think it is a perfect

example of how problems can compound and get worse not better, which often happens when

people experience job hunting problems. By contrast success frequently attracts more success, look

at any successful person and you seem to find that success can compound in much the same way of

problems.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFkasXrnRHM


The lawyer we engaged was negligent, and we were eventually paid compensation by the Solicitors

Indemnity Fund. Resolution only came when I went to a specialist book shop in the City of London,

and bought a very expensive book on marine insurance law, found a suitable legal argument, which

after some arguing and pressure, resulted in the insurers eventually paying out. The manufacturers

nearly killed us and got away with it, but I believe that other people’s lives have been put at risk also.

I never wanted anyone else to go through the same experience, so I formed a “Not-for-Profit”

organisation to help others, I also wrote an article about the story and it was published in this book:

I was on the wrong end of a dramatic record breaking air / sea / mid Atlantic Rescue in 1990

“I always feel you should be judged in life, not by what happens to you, but by

how you respond”

I am quite philosophical and deep thinking, and my messages have been described by others as

deep, meaningful, career changing, and perhaps life changing too, and reflect my philosophy, my

view of the world and my life experiences. Expect to be surprised, intrigued and challenged, with

ground breaking, radical, different and thought provoking insights. Others have said, I have a warm,

caring and empathetic approach, and talk with the benefit of personal experience, not just theory.

You can make up your own mind.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Deg-JLs3mwY


I spent 10 years working for the Mobil Oil Corporation, then the world’s fourth largest company in a

whole variety of different roles; customer services, sales, investment - buying land and building /

rebuilding petrol stations, running a group of 30 petrol stations, business analyst and later a systems

/ senior implementation analyst on the implementation of SAP computer system.

Me (left) receiving the “Salesman of the Year Award” at Mobil and the luxury holiday to Jamaica

Yippee!

My life story is one of immense variety with huge highs and lows, including numerous business and

life adventures being: an entrepreneur, becoming a bestselling author with 11 books and $3.8m

sales, floating my company, achieving a record breaking IPO, making and losing £25m+, being Chief

Executive and Chairman of a publicly quoted company, Managing Director of many companies and

an owner of multiple businesses, and countless entrepreneurial ventures. I have worked in the

public, private and not for profit sectors, for small medium and large sized organisations, and also

been self-employed.

Record Breaking IPO £5.4million in Record Time – They said it couldn’t be done, but I did it!

I have been an HR Manager with responsibility for recruitment, a recruitment consultant, Managing

Director of a recruitment business which was a subsidiary of a FTSE 100 company, and been an

employer, recruiting many hundreds of people for different roles, at different levels, in different

functional areas and sectors, and run candidate assessment processes. I have also helped over 500


people as a Career Coach, Master CV / Resume Writer and Job Hunting Trainer, on a 1:1 basis, to

solve their job hunting and career problems.

I am naturally competitive, and have a talent for innovation, creative thinking, developing inspiring

visions, marketing, sales, PR, and leadership. I made arguably the world’s most comprehensive video

education resource on leadership, interviewing top leaders from business, the military and

academia, the latter of which, resulted in an invitation to attend a leadership conference in Slovenia

with the heads of Europe’s top business schools, leading politicians and seriously impressive

business leaders, like a Russian Professor who started a bank and took it to $60billion turnover.

The Leadership Master Class Series – The World’s Most Comprehensive Video Education Series

(See The Second Sea Lord of The Royal Navy being Interviewed by me on the screen)

I have always been interested in sales and marketing, as I mentioned earlier becoming an award

winning salesman, and winning a luxury holiday to Jamaica, I have owned an innovation and sales

and marketing business, and have undertaken training in psychology. I have previously spoken at

the annual conference of the Institute of Sales and Marketing Management to 1,700 people.

Me Talking to 1,700 People

I have appeared many times in the media (TV, Radio and Press) internationally, including BBC

Breakfast, BBC News 24, Radio 5 Live, Reuters TV globally, Sunday Times, Saturday Telegraph, Mail

on Sunday, Financial Times, Local TV and Radio and more.

I have always been interested in living life to the full, in trying to make a difference, in leading,

pioneering and being attracted to the leading / cutting edge, pushing towards a creating a better

future. It has led to many unusual situations, including a totally unexpected meeting with the Deputy

Prime Minister of Antigua, after which I ended up having a drink at St James’s Club with one of

Antigua’s most successful business leaders and actor Timothy Dalton, who played the part of James

http://www.stjamesclubantigua.com/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxlIq8CFAnc


Bond. On another occasion, I found myself at the Ministry of Planning and also at the University in

Baghdad in Iraq when Saddam was in power, giving my vision for their countries reconstruction for

when the United Nations sanctions were lifted. Whilst I could then have never imaged how things

would end up turning out, I was right in how I believed the reconstruction could go wrong. I have

never been daunted by sharing my dreams and ideas, or trying to bring them to reality. I have met

some incredibly interesting people along the way and learnt a huge amount about myself, life, the

world, business and people, which helps me to make sense of job hunting and careers today.

Just some of the media I have been in

I have personally experienced severe job hunting and career problems and know first-hand the

difficulty, pain and suffering that they can cause. With huge empathy and understanding, I am on a

personal mission to inspire, motivate, help and support as many people as possible, to solve their

job hunting and career problems, so they can achieve a breakthrough, success and happiness.

I am an Explorer, Adventurer and Innovator in Life and Business, and am committed to helping

others to Live Better Lives, Run Better Businesses and Make the World a Better Place.


My Journey from Job Hunting and Career Pain, to World’s Number 1

Job Hunting and Career Problem Solving Expert

The film Forest Gump, starts with Tom Hanks saying “My momma always said, life was like a box of

chocolates, you never know what you’re gonna get”.

None of us, can really know what is going to happen to us, whether we are going to end up rich or

poor, happy or unhappy, whether we are going to be blessed with good health or cursed with bad

health, whether we are going to be lucky or unlucky, whether we are going to have a great career or

a terrible career. Any of us could be struck by lightning, hit by a meteorite from space, knocked over

by a bus, involved in an accident, or be diagnosed with cancer. We all hope for good things, we can

work towards good things, but sometimes things happen that are beyond our control. We can be

careful, we can take precautions, we can wrap ourselves in cotton wool, we can live in a germ free

tent with no contact with anyone else, but for what purpose? What is the purpose of any of our

lives other than to keep the human species going? Why is it that we have been given minds to think,

feelings to experience and senses, so that we can sense? I don’t have all the answers, I only have my

opinion, which is no less or more valid than anyone else’s opinion. If we get what we think we want,

would it actually make us happy? Are we aiming for the right things? You might have noticed that I

frequently mention happiness as well as success, because I believe that having a high flying career

that is seen as successful by others, is worth nothing if it makes you desperately unhappy. Success

and happiness need to go hand in hand.

I was walking to school with my nine year old daughter the other day, and we are chatting about this

that and the other, and somehow she came out with the saying: “you are born, you live and you

die.” It wasn’t so much of a conversation as a statement of fact, why she said it, I do not know. It

somehow felt poignant; she and I had just spent the weekend with my mum and dad. My dad has

cancer; you can see it is getting worse, we all know it can’t be cured, and that there is only going to

be one ending, but then we all know that we are all going to die sometime. My daughter isn’t aware

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_M9WrTC_qM


of quite where the situation is; it seems better than way. You can see my dad is reflecting on his life,

trying to enjoy what time he has left. We went to a gathering with some of his and my mother’s

friends, which was very pleasant, but two of them had lost their children, one to a brain tumour and

another is unexplained, but thought to be accidental death rather than suicide, both these children

were younger than me. Earlier this year, a childhood friend, who I used to go skateboarding with, a

son of some other friends of my parents, committed suicide.

We are all on a path from birth to death:

We are all on a journey through our lives – are we striving for the right things?

Do you believe in the concept of destiny and fate? The idea is prevalent in classical and European

mythology. Fate is often taken to imply no choice, whereas with destiny there is an element of

participating in achieving an outcome that is directly related to itself. Participation happens wilfully.

I keep an open mind, perhaps it is true, or perhaps it is not. Have you ever found that meeting

someone, or being somewhere at a particular time, or doing something has led your life and career

down a particular path, that you could not have envisaged, maybe a good path, maybe a bad one or

even something in-between?

Is it really about the money, or is it about something more?

As you will have been able to see from my potted biography, I have done many things and my life,

and had many things happen to me to, but I have a strong feeling that some higher forces have been

at play, and that destiny has brought me to a point right now, where I am here ready to help you and


as many other people around the world as I can to achieve a breakthrough, to solve whatever job

hunting or career related problems you have, so that you can achieve the success and happiness that

you desire.

The chapter of my life that brought me to this point as a Job Hunting and Career Problem Solving

Expert was a painful one, but sadly there are an increasing number of people finding themselves in

exactly the same position. For me, it started in 2008, when the wheels fell of my career – big time,

and the headline in The Independent Newspaper on 7th December 2007 explains why:

“The storm clouds are gathering over the jobs market; the climate on the high

street is growing distinctly chilly; a typhoon of bad debt is buffeting the banks.

Could a "perfect storm" be about to hit the British economy?

The signs couldn't be much bleaker. The switchback in sentiment since the

credit crisis began in the summer has been violent. The Nationwide Consumer

Confidence Index recorded its largest drop yesterday, and joins the GFK/NOP

survey earlier this week in suggesting that a wave of pessimism not seen for

years is washing over the economy.

House prices have begun to fall, albeit slightly; commercial property is

seemingly on the brink of collapse on a par with that seen in the early 1990s.

The buy-to-let market is vulnerable. The Bank of England has,

unprecedentedly, voiced concerns about the grim prospects for real estate.

And the Financial Services Authority has warned of the "very real prospect" of


the global credit crunch getting much worse. It is that bad.” – The

Independent

Can you remember how it all started with US Sub Prime Lending, followed by the Credit Crunch, The Global Financial and Banking System Meltdown and then the Global Recession?

Sometimes in life you can find yourself in the right place at the right time, and other times you can find yourself in the wrong place at the wrong time. Unfortunately for me, I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and in hindsight it was ironic, since I thought I was in the right place at the right time.

Have you ever felt like you ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time?

As you will have gathered by now, I am a bit of a risk taker at heart, I have had numerous entrepreneurial ventures, even floated my company made and lost circa £25m and been CEO of a quoted company for nearly five years, but right then my career was at a turning point, I wasn’t sure quite what to do, and then what I believed to be a safe opportunity presented itself. My grandfather had died, and I part inherited his house, a stunning waterside property on the banks of the River Dart in Devon. It was prime real estate, favoured by rich bankers for second homes. There is a saying “safe as houses”, which means that “owning property was considered probably the safest investment of all, since the price of buildings generally tend to appreciate in value over time”. What could be safer than prime real estate in a prime location and property hot spot?

The property was in need to renovation, I acquired it, borrowed money for the renovation and converted it into a 6 bedroom (5 en-suite) luxury home. It was valued by the UK’s top agents; Savills, Knight Frank and the top local agent at between £2.5m - £3m, showing a handsome profit, enough to secure my families future for life. The renovation was complete, just as the market crashed and the “perfect storm” unfolded. The market for high end, luxury second home property for wealthy bankers with bonuses to spend evaporated. It was under offer for £2m, but the buyer couldn’t borrow money, because the banks had stopped lending. Two years later it was repossessed, and subsequently sold by the bank for £650K, despite the rebuild cost alone being professionally estimated at over £1m.


These are just some of the media coverage I got for the sale of my home

My job turned from property developer to one of salesman and marketer, I invented extreme house selling, generating more publicity for the sale of my house than any other homeowner in the UK has ever done before, full page editorials in the national papers, six page feature articles in top property magazines, I even went on TV globally with Reuters, regional TV and national radio (BBC Radio 5 Live). The website had over 250,000 hits, but in the end, it wasn’t enough. You name it, I tried it, refinancing, holiday lets, I even got myself a highly paid new job, with signed contracts of employment, but that, along with everything else disappeared, just when salvation seemed in sight.

I was broke, unemployed, and had lost everything I spent a lifetime building. When I talk about the pain of having job hunting and career problems, I know how it feels, because I have experienced and felt it. I know what it feels like when doing your best, doesn’t deliver the results you want.

It was another career turning point, but this time, not one of my choosing. Even thinking about what happened hurts, it leaves a scar, but if you turn it around and take the positive, it teaches you lessons too. I have always felt that it is possible to take good things from bad situations if you try hard enough. A good friend lost two of her children both under 11, and her husband to a congenital heart problem, enough to destroy anyone’s lives and make them bitter and twisted, but she is anything but, positive, loving, grateful for having had them all for the time that she did, and determined to make the most of her life, and help her remaining daughter to do the same. Talk about an inspirational person!

I don’t want to dwell too much on the pain a suffering of job hunting and career problems I experienced, when things go wrong with your job hunting and career there are consequences, and many of them severely unpleasant, but you have to try and keep them in perspective, hopefully no one has died, and as people sometimes say: “shit happens”. You have to deal with it as best you can, and get on with life, making the most of it.


Sometimes good things come from bad things, it is easy to be so involved and so down, that you just don’t see it, or allow it to happen.

Success is really failure turned inside out and vice versa, they are on the same axis.

.

Failure and success are on the same axis

If you have failed to prevent job hunting and career problems, and are failing to solve your job

hunting or career problems or to maximise your success and happiness, you need to take stock,

come up with a strategy to turn failure into success. You have two simple choices:

A. Continue doing the same thing and hoping for a different result. (Einstein’s definition of

insanity) or

B. Change – do some new or something better or both

I was faced with these choices.

These are some of my books – the biggest has over 1,000 pages, went to three editions and was translated into Korean!


When my career turned upside down, I was an international bestselling author, mostly then of technology books, which have the disadvantage that they are out of date almost as soon as they are published, meaning you need to keep rewriting and updating them, the bottom line was there was no money from that. I had been CEO of a Quoted Plc, and done lots of other jobs.

I’ll be honest, I didn’t know what to do, so much so that I was almost paralysed into indecision and indecision leads to inactivity. Lack of action means lack of results, and that is where I was.

Michael Wilson One of the UK’s Top Business Leaders

I went to see one of the best mentors anyone could have; Michael Wilson, who co-founded the financial services business St James’s Place, and took it from virtually nothing to £1b turnover, and the UK FTSE 250 share index. There are not many people who have achieved something as impressive as that. Michael is one of those people who just seem to have an inner wisdom; he is one of the few people I know who I would class as a great leader. I went through my options with him, he listened intently, made insightful comments, but when it came to the crunch, where I desperately wanted him to tell me what to do; he said you have to work out what is right and best for you, only you can do that. He looked me in the eyes and said something to the effect that you are clever and resourceful person, with a multitude of talents, I have total confidence you will find success again, of that I am certain, and with that I was on my own again, and full of contemplation. We always want someone else to tell us what to do, but in life there are some things you just have to work out and decide for yourself, you can take advice, but when it comes to crunch time, you need to step up to the plate, accept responsibility and get on with it. I know that really, and I am sure in your heart of hearts you probably know it too, but it still doesn’t make it any easier.

John Peck - One of The Finest Men You’ll Ever Meet

Mike has worked in the financial services industry

since 1963 and founded the St. James's Place

Group with Sir Mark Weinberg in 1991. He was

Chief Executive until September 2004 and was

Chairman of the company until December 2011,

when he resigned from the Board. Mike is a

director of the St. James's Place Foundation and

was formerly Chairman of the Mental Health

Foundation.

Web Site

John is the Founder of the

Bravehearts programme, which is

now available through the Job

Hunting and Career Emergency

Service for Individuals seeking

personal transformation, to kick-

start change and a new and better

life and career. It is powerful stuff:

see the testimonial videos.

http://www.john-peck.com/

http://www1.sjp.co.uk/about-st-james-place/the-directors/presidents/mike-wilson.aspx

http://www.jobhuntingandcareeremergencyservice.com/



http://www.csrlive.co.uk/testimonials.htm


Following my meeting with Michael Wilson two things happened, firstly a very good friend of mine, John Peck see www.John-Peck.com gave me some “tough love”, and what I mean by that, is told me to get my act together, and do anything that bought in some money to support my family, this was closely followed by a call from Morgan Lobb, a recruitment industry stalwart, who is now Managing Director of www.DiversityJobs.co.uk , whom I knew from my recruitment days. He said he knew this executive job board website / company called; The Ladders, which was looking for an executive level CV writer to work for on a freelance basis – would I be interested?

The pay was pants (sorry Ladders, but it was), totally rubbish in fact, but it was work, and it was money, and at least I could work from home. It felt like such a come down, my pride and ego wanted to turn it down, but it wasn’t even an offer, it was just an opportunity to apply. I had to sell myself for a job that I didn’t think I wanted, and that is not easy. Even for the naturally positive person that I am, it was difficult to feel positive about anything, when you have just lost everything.

In hindsight however, it turned out to be one of the best things that ever happened to me, even though it didn’t seem like it at the time, for the following reasons:

1. It confirmed in my own mind that I really like helping other people. 2. It helped me to understand what I really wanted in my career was to help people, live better

lives, run better businesses and make the world a better place. 3. It helped me to understand other people’s problems and have the sort of empathy that can

only come from having been there yourself. 4. I discovered that because I have broad and deep experience about people, business and life,

and a raft of personal experiences to draw on, it could help me to help others, with unique advice that could make a difference.

http://www.john-peck.com/

http://www.diversityjobs.co.uk/


5. It made me decide that I wanted to become the number one job hunting and career problem solving expert in the world, which in turn made me want to find out who was the number one person, so I could learn what they did and then be better still.

“Sometimes not achieving your goal, gives you your destiny” Tony Robbins

You might start up with aiming for a goal and then find your destiny, which transforms your life.

Tony Robins says: “sometimes not realising your dreams, can give you your destiny.” He tells a rather nice story about the film “Field of Dreams”. In the film Kevin Costner, plays a struggling farmer and ploughs up his field and turns it into a baseball field, which becomes the field of dreams. He meets an old guy, whose dreams of playing baseball, at the highest level was dashed. Kevin Costner says

“that must have been terrible... to be so close but not achieve your dream”.

Kevin Costner in the Film Field of Dreams

The old guy replies:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9yrupye7B0


“No that wasn’t terrible, what would have been terrible is if I had not become a doctor and come to this small town, and saved that man’s life, delivered that little girl, and had all these people as my very best friends”.

Sometimes you have a dream, something you strive towards and don’t get it, but as Tony Robbins suggests, it can provide you with your destiny. Sometimes it can be accidents, illnesses or financial ruin, can change the entire course of your life, terrible negative things, but positive things can from them. Your deepest, darkest hours may be the start of a whole new life, which is better than you could ever imagine.

Destiny is a concept that only you can decide whether to believe is valid, it is a concept that there is a higher force driving all our lives, and that some things are “meant to be”. I think destiny is closely aligned to purpose, but destiny more relates to an outside force intending you to be on a certain path, where purpose is more something that comes from within.

In my book The Business Voyage, I tell the story of a New Zealand man I met called Mike, who was a boat builder. He built a boat, and was sailing it single handed in the Southern Ocean. Mike said God spoke to him and told him to set up a mission for seamen in the Falkland Islands.

I met him in Plymouth in the UK, he had sold his yacht, bought an old north sea fishing boat, and was living on it with his wife and young family, planning to go the Falklands and fulfil his destiny.

He couldn’t afford the fuel to motor there, so had put a huge mast on the boat so he could sail there. Shortly after I met him, disaster struck, he was taking his boat out for trials, it got stuck in the mud and as the tide went out, it fell towards the quay, causing extensive damage. Mike prayed, got on with fixing his boat and he sailed with his young family down the North Atlantic Ocean, into the South Atlantic Ocean and established his mission for seaman. It was an amazing achievement.

The Late Christopher Reeve

The late actor Christopher Reeve was an actor who played superman. He was involved in a horse riding accident, and became a quadriplegic, confined to a wheelchair, with a breathing machine for the rest of his life. He established a foundation and research centre, and his destiny became being lobbyist on behalf of people with spinal cord injuries, and for human embryonic stem cell research.


Michael J Fox

Michael J Fox was a Canadian actor who became famous in the films “Back to the Future”. He was struck down with Parkinson’s disease at a very young age, and has since become an activist for research toward finding a cure.

“If you have failed to achieve your dreams, be open to discovering and

embracing your destiny, because doing so, could turn out to positively

transform your career and life.”

Whatever you do, don’t sell out on yourself.

The interesting thing about working for The Ladders was I simply couldn’t just write CV’s that I didn’t believe in, or that I thought were rubbish, in fact I couldn’t just write CV’s full stop. What I wanted to do was to help people to solve their job hunting or career problems; in my opinion the CV is just a part of that. I couldn’t not make it personal, because I know that it is only making it personal and really caring, that would enable me to make the greatest difference. I was basically doing lots of extra work, that I wasn’t being paid for, and that people didn’t expect or perhaps felt came with the service, but I couldn’t not do the best that I could. I could feel other people’s pain, I could sense their frustration and worry even more, because I had been there myself, and I could feel the impact that it was having on both them and their families. I had real, genuine empathy, but no one knew anything about me.

Being an originator of ideas and a pioneer, and also a researcher and explorer looking to make discoveries, I couldn’t help but see the big picture and the small picture, and focus on what the client’s biggest objective was. People often have more than one objective. The CV was only a means to an end, even though they had been sold it on the basis that it what the solution.

I think I had a very strong sense of why I was rewriting people’s CVs, I have since learnt that your life and career can be transformed when you have a clear sense of why, which gives you a purpose, that is bigger than yourself. When you have a why in your life and tune into it, stay in focus, everything changes, it makes success easiest, and brings inner fulfilment that is so important to all of us.

I get a real buzz from helping people and making a difference to their lives, it is fantastic, I really love my work, I care and I think it shows.

I couldn’t help but feel that the sales tactic of The Ladders, and others in the industry was somehow morally wrong. The offer of a free CV review was just a chance to tell someone their CV was rubbish, to undermine their confidence in it, and tell them they really needed a new one written by the company. I would rather not have the business, than feel that is was obtained slightly unethically. Of course everyone’s CV’s can always be improved, but when people are often desperate, vulnerable


and in need of good honest advice, I feel that there is sometimes a fine line. I have to say that everyone I met at The Ladders on a personal basis, I found to be very nice, caring genuine people wanting to do the best for the client; my gripe is with the business model, not the people driving it. I think there is a conflict of interest. If people are not getting interviews, they naturally think their CV is at fault, and often it is, but the reasons are often deeper and more complex than that.

I couldn’t help bring all my experience to the job, and use my autonomy of working from home, to go the extra mile, and to learn from each and every assignment.

500 assignments later, and following a truck load of research, I felt I had something unique to offer; my take on the problem and the solution needed, my competitive nature and desire to learn what the very best things people can do to solve their job or career problems, to prevent them happening in the first place and to maximise their success and happiness.

Slowly and almost by chance I got positive feedback, and got to see the results that I was able to help people to achieve. Testimonials are powerful, but when it comes to job hunting and careers, understandably there aren’t many people who want to go public and say “I had a problem”. It is in all of our interests to have other people think we are in demand, with head hunters continually knocking on our doors.

“Call it fate, call it destiny or describe it however you want, my purpose in life

has become to help others solve their job hunting and career problems, to

maximise their success and happiness, and in a broader context to help people

to live better lives, run better businesses and make the world a better place.

I aim to be nothing less than the world’s number one Job Hunting and Career

Problem Solving Expert – period! The interesting thing is that I seem to be the

only person who describes themselves as a job hunting and career problem

solving expert, because that is what I believe you need. I believe that

whatever any of us should do, it should excite us, and I have to say helping

you and others does excites me. The greater the result I can help you to

achieve, the greater will be my personal satisfaction.

When I say I want to be the world’s number one Job Hunting and Career

Problem Solving Expert, it is not because I want to be the big “I am”, but

because I want to serve you better than anyone else, because your career and

your future matter. Why should you have anything less than the very best

advice and support available anywhere in the world? I don’t have all the


answers, but I am prepared to take the best that anyone else has, and add to

it; my way is inclusive, open minded, prepared to learn from anyone, and to

continually push back the boundaries, and being a conduit and signpost, to

the best help that exists. I believe the biggest breakthroughs come not from

new ideas, but from the application of what is already known to mankind.

I can’t get excited unless I aim to be the best; it is like being a Royal Naval

Officer, it is impossible to strive to be anything less than the best – your life

and the lives of others depend upon it. Once you have been trained at

Britannia Royal Naval College to be a courageous leader with the spirit to

fight and win, you can’t accept anything less; it becomes part of your DNA.”

“To deliver courageous leaders with the spirit to fight and win” Britannia Royal Naval College – Dartmouth, England

I was expecting to find one Guru who shone above all the others who had the best solutions, who knew what I wanted to know, but as I have so often found in life, things are often not what you might expect. I didn’t find one Guru of Guru’s of Job Hunting and Career Management, I found many. There is considerable overlapping advice and some contradictory, and in my mind many of the guru’s advice was significant for its omissions. The more I learnt about what was available, the more I saw how confusing the situation could be to job seekers and career changers, who just wanted to learn what they needed to do to achieve the success they desire.

I became convinced that the dire economic background and changes in the

world necessitate a step change of approach, requiring new ways of seeing

the current situation, new ways of thinking, new action, and above all honesty

and realism.


I also came to the conclusion that it is not just gurus of job hunting and career management who have what you need; it is experts in all sorts of other areas including: sales and marketing, psychology, philosophy, branding and relationship management, self-development, adventure, research and exploration, publicity and promotion, personal makeovers, human achievement, communication, relationship building, innovation and creativity, leadership, entrepreneurship, technology and social media, and a whole lot more besides.

When you take it to the next level you will see things from completely different perspectives. It is like the difference between going for a run, or a ride on your bike, compared to a world class athlete competing at the Olympics, there is a chasm between the two. Top sports people might have multiple coaches and trainers, each with different disciplines and specialisations. They might have sports psychologists, physiologists, nutritionists, dieticians, strategists and tacticians, competition analysts; performance monitors etc. as well as large backup teams of medical people, technologists, administrators, organisational, operations and logistics people, representatives etc. You might still both be running or riding your bike, but professional athletes are playing a completely different game, that you can hardly comprehend, unless you are in their world.

Experience I can draw on to help you:

My Background Gives Me a Unique Perspective on Job Hunting and Career Problems

One thing that struck me was that most is that Job Hunting and Career Management Guru’s tend to come from a Career / Life Coaching / HR / Personnel / Recruitment Industry background. On the one hand it makes perfect sense, they are people who have been involved in recruitment both within organisations hiring, and within organisations whose job it is to provide recruitment services. The minority of Gurus come from a Sales and Marketing background. I noticed that many Gurus came from a position of certainty and righteousness that their way was best, that they knew what employers wanted, what worked and what didn’t work. Many of the solutions offered are an ABC, step by step approach. Most Gurus have a track record of success to back up their theories, making them ever more convinced they are right, yet from working one to one with over 500 people, I could see that well espoused strategies don’t work for everyone.

Highly Successful Job Hunter

Job Hunting and Career Problem Solving Expert

Bestselling Author and Thought Leader (11

Books / $3.8m Sales) Work endorsed by Top

Leaders

Career Coach

Master CV Writer

Employer in Large and SME Organisations in

Public and Private Sectors

Recruiter / Head Hunter / CEO of a

Recruitment Company

Award Winning Salesman and Marketer

HR Manager Responsible for

Recruitment

CRM and Sales Force Automation Expert

Delivering Services to Major Organisations

Experienced Business Leader to CEO of Quoted Plc Level

Entrepreneur

Innovator - Founder of Imagination Unlimited

and Disruptive Innovation Agency

Leadership Expert Experience With Job Hunting and Career

Problems

Experienced in Publicity / Public Relations and

Promotion


My mantra is:

“You must do what works best for you, no matter what, providing it is legal and ethical”

There is a saying “survival of the fittest”, but I don’t think that is the case with job hunting and careers today, I think it is more a case of “survival of the smartest” or even “survival of the luckiest”.

There was a song sung by Billy Ocean called “When the going gets tough”. Do you know the song? What do you think the tough people do? “They get going and they get ready.” I don’t know what the writer had in mind when they wrote the song, seems like it has something to do with love, but some of the lyrics seem like they could apply to job hunting in difficult times:

I got something to tell you I got something to say

I'm gonna put this dream in motion Never let nothing stand in my way

When the going gets touch The tough get going

You can’t do anything about the challenging economic times, about the global debt, or about the macro-economic policies, but you can do something about what you do, and how you respond to your situation. You can choose to fight for your future, you can choose hope over despair, you can choose to see your glass as half full and not half empty, and you can choose to be more determined and more effective, than you have ever been in your life before. You can choose to dig deep, to believe in yourself, to dream about a better future, to never give up, to keep trying different things until something works, and to pay the price of success no matter how tough it is to pay. I have always disliked it when people criticise others, when they are not prepared to stand and be

counted or do anything themselves. I am not suggesting that we shouldn’t criticise others, it is

probably important that we should. You might be right in blaming world leaders, politicians, bankers

and regulators for cause your job hunting and career hardship, but it is your responsibility to

respond to the situation you have found yourself in.

Most people won’t do the things they need to do to solve their problems because: they are too hard, they are too frightened, too lazy with too little motivation, they would prefer to do less and hope that something changes, rather than do more, on the assumption that the job market isn’t going to get much better for the foreseeable future.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_e2D2qsaso


It is easier to say you are doing everything that you can, than it is to search for more things that you could be doing. You are possibly being tested right now, if you are down, you need to pick yourself up, not give up. If you think you can’t you will be right, if you think you can, you can prove yourself right. Life’s not always fair, you can complain about the injustice that you are suffering, the cards that you have been dealt, but it will only harm you if you do. I was talking to someone recently, who was a self-employed manual worker, a gardener to be precise, he had hurt his shoulder and wasn’t able to work and was contemplating the need to get a job. He looked me in the eye and said, no one will give me a job, I am too old, and I don’t have any qualifications, employers will always give the job to the younger person or to someone who has qualifications, if I was the employer he said “that’s what I’d do”. He said I have had plenty of experience, so I know that is the case, and there ended the conversation. I have to agree with him, that whilst he holds those beliefs he will be completely right. Henry Ford once said “whether you think you can or you can’t you’ll be right”. I could think of vast numbers of things that he could do to compete and win, but he was a closed book, it didn’t matter what I said, he wasn’t open to change the way he saw things, the way he thought, or the things that he would be prepared to do. Perhaps you are like this person, but then perhaps you are not? The great news is that the world is full of people like this, and the best news about it, is that it is easy to compete for jobs with them and win. It is as easy as taking candy from a baby. Most people think that whether they get offered a job or not is 90-100% down to the employer, I’d argue that it is more like 75% down to them. Most people also think they know all the things that they could do, I’d argue that there are an infinite number of things that they could do, and the real issue is that they can’t do them all. If you take knowledge of anything and everything, there is far more available that any of us could possibly know. If you narrow it down to knowledge of things that could impact job hunting and career success, there is still an infinitely great amount of things that you don’t know, compared with what you do know. If you don’t know that is the case, you are likely to do nothing about it. None of us know, what we don’t know, if we really knew what we didn’t know, we would probably feel horrified. Every day, we fail to see that ignorance of things is costing us lost opportunities. Three things you can do to change this situation are to regularly start asking yourself three questions that relate to job hunting and careers:

1. Why this or that etc.? 2. Why not ? 3. What if ..?

A curious and inventive mind that is open minded, innovative and creative can change everything; you can see opportunities and threats and do something about both, before others are even aware of them. It all has to start with seeing things differently, because if you see things differently, you start to think differently and if you think differently, you have the opportunity to do things differently or to do completely new things.


You are largely responsible for your own success or your own failure, you might find that you are almost completely responsible for your own predicament, if the situation doesn’t change; you are going to stay where you are, and if that is unacceptable, you have a problem, the answer is that you need to change. It is easy to say, but often difficult to do. Getting started is often the hardest part. I am not trying to be smart and a know it all, as I have been as guilty as the next person of not seeing things, not thinking difficulty and not changing, we are after all just fallible human beings, however through my curiosity and search for knowledge, my experience and my connections of people in the know, I have learnt things that are not commonly known. I have made £25m+ in less than a year, and there are not many people who can say that, regrettably, I subsequently later managed to lose it again, but that’s a story for another time, the point I am trying to make is that seeing things differently, and thinking differently helps you to do different things and achieve extraordinary things. It might feel like mission impossible, but for most people getting a job even in today’s highly challenging economic times, doesn’t usually qualify as extraordinary. I’ll give you an example of what does. I have a business called Amazing Authors Agency, I help highly successful people who are short of time, and whose time is valuable to write a book quickly in some cases as short as 7 days. I recently helped someone to write a book, who left school at 16 with no qualifications, whose teachers thought he would amount to nothing. Today this person has an MBE from the queen, is worth £100m+ and has two executive jets, a fleet of supercars, a hundred and ten foot super yacht with a crew in the Mediterranean and a highly successful business empire. He still has no formal educational qualifications. He had no advantage in life, no silver spoon or rich parents to give him rich connections or a step up in life, he did it all himself, starting with door to door selling. There is probably nothing he has done, that you couldn’t if you put your mind to it. You have to have a burning desire within you, and a determination to get through the tough times. Sometimes success can come more by chance and luck, than it does by skill, but I would bet that the vast majority of highly successful people see things differently, think differently and do different things or things differently. This isn’t some irrelevance, it is the truth. If you want something to change in your life, if you want to solve your job hunting and career problems or prevent any happening in the first place or if you just want to maximise your success and happiness, then you must do these three things:

1. See things differently. 2. Think differently. 3. Do different things or the same things but in a different and better way. 4. Do what works best for you in your circumstances.

In essence that is your success formula.


During my quest to find out what the best things you could do were, I had an idea:

Why not look at everything again, put everything on the table and discover the truth; why didn’t I bring my own ideas, experiences and thought leadership to the problem solving; in essence the best of everyone else + everything that I could add or improve too. I once went on a sales training course and the guy running it said “when you blame other people for things going wrong and point your finger at them, there is one finger pointing at them, and three fingers pointing back at you”.

I was looking for the answer in someone else, but found many of the answers were within me

Six Basic Secrets You Need To Know To Be More Successful

Six Important Secrets I Discoveries I that you can use to shape your strategy:

Discovery Number 1#

What works for one person, doesn’t necessarily work for another, and what works for you today, won’t necessarily work for you tomorrow etc. The reason why, is that everyone is different in some


way, and has a different set of circumstances, even if they appear similar on the surface, and that circumstances, situations and employers change all the time. A one size fits all approach doesn’t always work. I know that not having a one size approach isn’t convenient, but isn’t it better to build and craft solutions around what will actually work, and which will work the best, rather than craft them around something that appears convenient, but doesn’t work in practice? One day your services can be hot and in demand, you’ll be chased by head hunters continually, and the next day your skills and expertise can be old hat, superseded by something or someone else.

Discovery Number 2#

The situation is fluid, forever changing. Professional Ken Robinson said “People are trying to work out, how do we educate our children to take their place in the economies of the 21st century, given that we can’t anticipate what the economy will look like at the end of next week? As the recent turmoil is demonstrating.” I think it is true, don’t you? You need to change and adapt when the situation changes.

Discovery Number 3#

The best things to do to solve job hunting and career problems will vary from person to person, from time to time:

What are the best ways to solve your job hunting and career problems? What are the best ways to prevent job hunting and career problems? What are the best ways to maximise success and happiness?

Everyone wants to know what the best things to answer these questions are, so that they can do them. They sometimes seek advice, but mostly they copy everyone else, sometimes without seeing it, and end up broadly doing similar things to everyone else, because they can’t see there is anything else they could do. This typically boils down to:

1. Find jobs to apply to. 2. Apply to the jobs, perhaps writing a new CV and Cover Letter. 3. Sometimes following up applications. 4. Sometimes networking with people they know.

The hope is that they will be invited to an interview and selection process and hopefully be offered the job. If people are not being invited to interviews and selection processes, they usually think it is their CV which is at fault, and if they get interviews but not the jobs, they often feel it was their interview techniques that were at fault, or that they simply weren’t good enough. Many people feel helpless, that they are doing everything that they can, and still not getting results.

Many people feel out of their depth as internet job boards and social media have replaced traditional methods used by employers to hire. People are worried about employers using automated processes to scan CVs with keyword recognition, and that job vacancies just seem to be given to other people without you even getting a look in. Many people feel passed by, rejected, unwanted, not good enough, not knowing what to do, terrified of rejection and failure. It is a horrible feeling not to be wanted.

Whatever you are currently doing to get a job solve your job hunting or career problems or to maximise success and happiness, you can always be doing more and doing better. The best isn’t a


destination where you arrive; it is a direction in which you head, and a notional scale to orientate your efforts against.

Discovery Number 4#

Innovation in job hunting and career management offers a real alternative and means of turning failure into success.

I’d like to start by talking to you about innovation, because that is what I believe is needed if you are not getting results doing the same as everyone else. Fundamentally there are two main types of innovation:

1. Sustaining Innovation. 2. Radical Innovation which is sometimes called “Disruptive Innovation”.

Sustaining innovation is the prevalent common type, which in product terms is visible with the addition of new features and functions. If you take any technology, you will usually find manufacturers making continual improvements. With the automotive industry for example, you will see that all manufacturers will bring out new models of cars with new features, which could be safety, performance, comfort, driver experience etc.

By contrast disruptive innovation, changes not just the products or services, but potentially everything about the way they are made, sold and used.

When Apple introduced the IPod they changed the way music was stored, listened to and bought, and who they bought it from. They weren’t even in the music industry, but with their disruptive innovation they went from nowhere to massive in the music industry.

When Henry Ford introduced mass production, he transformed the motor industry and made cars affordable for everyone. When Alexander Fleming invented Penicillin and antibiotics, he transformed the way bacterial infection and diseases could be treated. Low cost airlines transformed the airline industry, there are examples everywhere.

Sometimes problems get so bad that there is a critical and urgent need for a radical new approach that changes everything, that turns things from being impossible to possible. I think many people are


at that point, where job hunting techniques of yesterday and even techniques of today are simply not working for many people.

Discovery Number 5#

You have got to know who you are and what you really want before you try to get it, and make sure that what you want is realistic and achievable in today’s challenging job market.

You would have thought that everyone would know who they are and what they want.

Discovery Number 6#

If the job market is competitive you need to be able to compete and win, if you don’t you’ll only

get a job by being lucky.

It can be terrifying to think you have competition and lots of it. The situation can be likened to

playing sport, whereas unlike at school where they say it is the taking part that matters, it is more

like playing Gladiators, where you have to win, metaphorically kill or be killed, the winner takes it all.

It can really make you feel good when an employer says we really liked you, it was a very close thing

and a difficult decision, but I am sorry this time you just lost out. You are not applying for jobs, using

your effort, energy and valuable time as a recreational past time, you are doing it because you want

or need a new job.

You have to be able to compete and win. Anyone can play sport and see how it goes, and hope they

win, but the reality in today’s job market, those who win are most likely to be playing to win. That is

what you need to do, don’t satisfy yourself with being close.

You have to believe that you can win, and do whatever it takes to win legally and ethically.

What is really wrong with job hunting and careers? What is really wrong with job hunting and careers is the global economy, but there is more.

We are in an economic storm so bad we have never seen anything like it since the great depression

of the 1930’s, and its effects are wide ranging, and what is worth, it could easily get worse before it

gets better. I was looking at the IMF (International Monetary Funds) forecast for global growth and it

is down:


Source / Copyright BBC

The global economic problems and the unemployment that it creates is like a disease that spreads

around the world like a pandemic. It is contagious, it is spreading fast and it’s like cancer, everyone

hopes it isn’t going to touch them or someone they care about. As a disease it is indiscriminate, it

doesn’t care who it infects, young or old, rich or poor, it has the capacity to touch people at every

level in society.

It is a disease of careers. When it comes, it can be mild or severe, it can last a short time or a long

time. You can find yourself in one of four situations:

1. Unemployed when you don’t want to be

2. You can find yourself insecure at work, worried you might lose your job, or

3. You might find yourself stuck in a job you hate unable to move, or

4. Simply finding that whilst there is nothing terribly wrong with your career right now, you

know that if you carry on doing what you are doing, you simply won’t achieve the career of

your dreams.

If it strikes, it can be a mild inconvenience or life threatening. It can destroy your life, it can take

away everything you have worked so hard to build and create, and it can stop you living the life of

your dreams. It can affect your health, wealth, happiness; quality of life, lifestyle and choices, and

worse still affect the people around you, your family, your partner, children, and anyone dependent

upon you, or caring about you.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-19888996


Job Hunting and Careers Were Changing Before the Economic Crisis

The world is changing fast, in so many different ways including:

Globalisation is real; you could be competing for jobs with people the other side of the

world.

Communication and technology are changing the workplace and working practices.

What is hot and what is not changes very quickly.

More and more educated people are coming into the workplace.

People’s expectations are changing.

The global population is expanding rapidly

People have to work longer and harder.

What was good yesterday isn’t necessarily good today.

Skills are becoming outdated quickly; you need to be continually developing and growing,

and prepared to unlearn things too etc.

How it goes wrong at an individual level

You need to be good at getting out of trouble in today’s challenging economy

Life and careers have their ups and downs, they always have and always will, but sometimes rather

than just a little down followed by an up, the trajectory continues downwards. It is like being on a

slippery slope, gravity is only going to take in your one direction and that is downwards, until you fall


off the career cliff into the hole. Sometimes you see it coming and sometimes you don’t. Getting out

the career hole can be very hard, it is a horrible place to be, full over everything you don’t want.

The greatest problem is not lack of opportunities it is competition for the opportunities that exist.

There are hundreds of thousands of jobs available and countless more opportunities around the

world; the only problem is that there is intense competition for those jobs and opportunities. Next

the clothing store, were on TV recently saying that they receive 30 applications for every vacancy

advertised. Graduate recruiters in the UK, say they are receiving over 60 applications for every

vacancy and in some cases employers are receiving over 100 applications for every one vacancy.

Most people have no idea how to compete, they are simply not trained or educated to compete.

The old ways of job hunting aren’t working for lots of people

Many people have never had a problem getting a job in their lives until now. They are doing what

they have always done, and it’s not delivering results. The big three problems are as follows:

1. No responses to job applications at all

2. Rejections without an interview

3. Interviews and selection processes but no job offers

The new ways of job hunting aren’t working for lots of people either

You can think you are embracing new ways of job hunting; using CV libraries, job boards, LinkedIn,

Facebook and other social media and that is not working either.

When you are doing everything that you can possibly think of and it’s still not working, what

should you do?

It can be a desperate situation, when you are doing everything you can possibly think of and it is still

not working. It at times like this, that hope starts to fade, where you can disappear into a black hole,

the longer it goes on the more distant the light at the end of the tunnel appears.

Even if you have already taken your job hunting to the next level, you need to take it to an even

higher level; you have to understand why you have not been getting results and devise new

strategies that could change the status quo in your favour.

If you Experienced Job Hunting and Career Problems It Can Change Your Life

If you have not experienced job hunting and career problems in today’s challenging world, it is

difficult to imagine just how bad it can be. It can be extraordinary painful and tough.

When you experience job hunting and career problems, you can end up gaining things you would

rather not have and losing things you would rather not lose, I’ll explain...

You don’t realise how important your career is to your life until it starts to go wrong, and until you

have started to experience loss:

Loss of hope.


Loss of identity.

Loss of normality.

Loss of life purpose.

Loss of income.

Loss of quality of life and lifestyle.

Loss of choice.

Loss of self-respect and dignity.

Loss of ability to support your family.

Loss of importance.

Loss of confidence etc.

As well as suffering loss you could start to gain things that you don’t want:

Debt

Guilt

Frustration

Stress, Anxiety, Despair, Illness

Anger etc.

The bottom line is that if you can’t avoid job hunting or career problems, you need to be good at

resolving them or getting lucky, because the consequences of not turning things around that can be

dire, from plain horrible to death. Your life can even depend upon how well you can solve your job

hunting or career problems. Career related problems account for many suicides and middle aged

men are the most at risk.

Can I Help You?

Are you in need of help right now?

1. Have you got a job hunting or career problem you need to solve? or

2. Are you worried you might have a job hunting or career problem in the future and want to

prevent it? or

3. Do you want to find ways to maximise your career success and happiness?

Now is a time for radical new ideas and a new approach, based on the reality of how things are

today, and focussed on answering the following three simple questions:

1. What are the very best things you can do to solve your job hunting and career problems?

2. What are the very best things you can do to prevent job hunting and career problems?

3. What are the very best things you can do to maximise your success and happiness?

In the good old days it didn’t matter if you didn’t do the best thing to get a job or resolve career

problems, providing it worked, now you might need to do the best things just to get even modest

results.

Why settle for anything less than the best?


You Can’t Find the Cure Until You Properly Diagnose the Problem Most people’s narrative about the situation is as follows:

The economy caused the job hunting and career problems; therefore nothing to do with it is your

fault.

To fix it at an individual level you need to do the following:

1. Find jobs to apply for through networking, looking at adverts online and offline, going to

recruitment agents or job centres, approaching companies directly etc.

2. Apply for them with a CV + Cover Letter + perhaps online application

3. Hope you get invited to an interview and selection process and are successful

4. Hope you get offered the job and pass the employer’s reference checking and due diligence

The narrative tends to be simplistic and one dimensional. The narrative used to deliver results, but

for many people now it doesn’t, they can’t find jobs to apply for and when they do, they get no

response at all, they are rejected without an interview, or they get an interview and undertake a

selection process only to be not successful. Their confidence falls, they feel frustrated, stressed,

worried and sometimes angry, and frequently come up with excuses, feeling sorry for themselves,

which doesn’t serve them well.

People would be better served by thinking of job hunting and career management as a competition,

where they needed to win. When you see things as a competition, you stop thinking about yourself

in isolation; it is you versus other people. Why should an employer pick you and not one of the other

applicants? Ask most people this questions and the response is usually one of two things:

1. They don’t know and can’t tell you. Or

2. They give very much the same reasons as everyone else would give.

Many people hope that an employer will see something in them, that they don’t see themselves,

and that offering themselves up for selection is the only thing they can do. Others believe what they

offer is unique, when large numbers of other candidates are all saying the same thing.

Employers usually produce job descriptions and in their recruitment adverts say what they are

looking for. When you boil it down, it usually comes down to the following:

1. Knowledge

2. Skills including Soft Skills

3. Relevant Experience

4. Track Record of Achievements

5. Qualifications

6. Character, Reputation and Standing

7. Legal compliance e.g. entitlement to work legally and not a foreign migrant with no work

permit, not under age etc.

Employer’s requirements can and sometimes are turned into an algorithm, CV scanning techniques

with keyword tools will pick up appropriate words and candidates will be rejected for not meeting

certain criteria. Some employers put the requirements on a form or in a table and effectively tick or


cross the boxes. In the good old days, meeting the requirements was usually enough, but these days,

there are multiple candidates who can tick all the boxes and requirements.

Being able to tick all the boxes in itself is often not enough

The challenge for employers is how to best compare people. How do you say someone is better

than someone else, you might find someone’s knowledge and skills is greater than someone else

who has a greater track record of achievement and more relevant experience, if you were the

employer, who would you choose. How do you even compare track record of achievement,

someone working for a large prestigious global brand for example could show great £multi-million

sales performance and growth, yet someone else working for a small company might show no sales

growth, even a decline in sales and only delivered £300K in sales. Is the person who worked for the

big global brand really a better salesman or was it the brand and the product that sold itself?

Perhaps the person only selling £300K with a sales contraction, did an incredible job, since they

outperformed all their colleagues and competitors and delivered an outstanding performing in the

circumstances. Perhaps the person working for the global brand was actually the worse performing

salesman in their company, but their figures still look good from the outside.

Comparing different people can be like comparing apples and oranges

I believe recruiting is part Art and Part Science; it is usually a combination of both objective and

subjective elements. Employers make decisions both with their heads and their hearts / gut instincts.

If you are not putting yourself in the employers shoes, trying to see things from their perspective

and if you are not actively / pro-actively competing and trying to help the employer to see that hiring


you, rather than one of the others, is both the intelligent thing to do, but also the right emotional

thing to do too, you are missing out on a huge opportunity.

Those who get the jobs are often not the best people, but those who are best at marketing and

selling themselves. What is the best anyway? It is just a matter of opinion.

Often employers hire people for reasons that are not even mentioned in their adverts and job

descriptions. Just because an employer has provided their criteria, doesn’t mean they are going to

stick to it. Employers often find it difficult to quantify exactly what they want, but they know it when

they see it.

Research has shown that 97% of employers surveyed valued mind-set above

skillset

When you are trying to get a job and market and sell yourself, it is easy to think it is all about you,

but you would be better served by thinking more about the employer, what they really want and

need, what they are likely to think and feel, how they are likely to make decisions, understanding

who will actually be making the decisions. What are they likely to value the most and not value the

least? What are their hot buttons and turn-offs? How could you best appeal to them?

It is one thing when you have everything an employer is looking for, but quite another where you

have some of what they want, but not all of what they want. How can you compete against people

who tick all the boxes? Even if you can tick all the boxes, how do you compete with someone who is

coming down a notch who has far more than the employer is seeking, someone who brings lots of

extra added-value? These are the questions that need to be answered. What if you haven’t exactly

excelled a school or college or in previous jobs, what in fact if you seriously under-performed what

then? Do you give up, because you think you have no chance? Lots of people are facing these

challenges, they are awkward, but it is better to face up to them, and do something about them,

than to ignore them and hope they won’t affect you. I am not saying solving any of these problems is

easy, but actually there are vast numbers of things that can be done about them.

If you take job hunting and careers to the next level and step up, you will see that there are an

almost infinite number of different things that you could do, you won’t be able to do them all.

Just because you can’t see a way forward yet, doesn’t mean that one doesn’t exist. If you give up,

before you even start, the chances of success at the slimmest they could possibly be.

The Best Way Makes Sense If you have job hunting or career problems, or want to avoid them and /or want to maximise your

success and happiness, then the wise thing to do, is to do the very best things, which are most likely

to work for you.

Why accept anything less than the best way? Why not aim for it, search it out and then just do it? Is

the best way the easiest way? The answer is it might me, sometimes the most effective things are

the simplest and easiest to do, but other times they are not. The best way, is the way that works the


best, the conundrum that you have is that you won’t know for sure what is going to work best for

you, to can only try things out and see what happens.

What is certain is that what works for one person at one time, is not guaranteed to work for

someone else or even the same person at a different time, because circumstances change and

people change.

These facts are not convenient, but they are the honest truth. What is the point in kidding yourself

about anything, you might as well see things how they really are, so that you can make intelligent

decisions about what to do.

The better you are at job hunting and career management, the greater your chance of success.

I believe it is in everyone’s interest to discover the very best way to solve your job hunting and

career problems and maximise your career success and happiness.

I am interested in what are the very best things you can do to solve or prevent job hunting or

career problem and to achieve maximum career success and happiness. I don’t think you should

settle for anything less than the very best.

What is the best way to solve or prevent job hunting and career problems and maximise success?

If you were to create a scale representing the best and worse things you could do to solve your job

hunting and career problems, with the worst things you could do on the left side of the scale and the

best things on the right hand side of the scale, I am interested in the furthest point on the right hand

side of the scale, representing the very best things you could do; in fact I am actually interested in

more. When you discover what the very best things you could do, which are known today, to solve

or prevent job hunting and career problems and maximise career success and happiness, how could

they be improved upon further? In other words how can you take the best that is currently known

and make it better. It is what elite sports people do all the time, which why at every Olympic Games

records are broken.


What Things Can You Do To Solve Your Job Hunting and Career Problems?

You might be thinking why does it matter, why do you need to know the best things you can do to

solve or prevent job hunting and career problems and maximise career success and happiness?

The answer to that question, very much depends upon you and your situation. If your career is

hunky-dory, they are no problems with it and you have no worries, you are happy where you are

now, and where your career is going, and you have no aspirations for greater success, it probably

doesn’t matter, but if on the other hand you have job hunting and career problems, or worried you

might have soon, and you want to maximise your career success and happiness, then knowing the

best things to do could be very useful.

There are lots of jobs and opportunities available if you look hard enough, the only problem is that

lots of other people are going for them. It has become a more competitive world, you need to be

able to compete and win. You might find yourself competing, not just with people around your

town, but potentially people from all over the world, as we move towards globalisation, high speed

communications, outsourcing and offshoring of work.

If you want to win, you need to know what the best things you could do to solve your problems and

maximise your success are, and then just do them. Problem Solved!

Are you persuaded to go for the very best ways of solving job hunting and career problems and

maximising career success and happiness?

I hope by now, I have persuaded you that if you are in the unfortunate position of facing job hunting

or career problems, the sensible logical thing to do, is to do best things, the things most likely to

work for you. Would you agree?

Should you know the best way to prevent or solve job hunting or career success and maximise

happiness and success?

Many of the things people used to do to do to prevent or solve job hunting or career problems and

maximise success, either don’t work at all for some people, or at least not as well as they did before.

Hopefully you are OK, insulated from the problems finding the things that you do are working just

fine, and that you are confident whatever happens in the future you will know how best to deal with

it. Unfortunately an increasing number of people are Not OK, and the truth is that there is no way of

knowing for sure whether you might be next.

I don’t know what you situation is, but I have come to the conclusion that everyone falls into one of

three categories:

The Worst Things

You Could Do.

The Best Things

You Could Do.


1. People with no job hunting or career problems.

OK

2. People who have job hunting and career problems, but are able to resolve their relatively easily.

OK

3. People who have job hunting and career problems that they aren’t able to easily solve.

Not OK

The truth is that anyone can move between these three categories very easily and quickly, just

because you haven’t experienced any problems in the past, doesn’t mean you can’t experience them

in the future etc.


Jonathan Blain’s New Approach

I believe a new approach is needed to job hunting and careers, designed to achieve both career

success and happiness. With 70% of people reported in surveys as being unhappy in their careers,

something is wrong and needs to be fixed.

The key tenet behind the need for a new approach is that:

1. The world has changed and is continuing to change.

2. The things that used to work, no longer work for many people.

3. There is a need for a better way.

My proposed new approach is based on three pillars / elements:

1. An Intelligent Approach

2. An Innovative and Creative Approach

3. A Results Driven / Competitive Approach

Intelligent

Approach

Innovative /

Creative

Approach

Results

Driven /

Competitive

Approach

A New Approach to Job Hunting and Careers


Intelligent Approach

1. Seek wisdom and try not to be foolish. 2. Make wise decisions. 3. Make informed decisions. 4. Always seek the best advice and advisors you can find and afford. 5. Increase your knowledge and understanding to a point where you become enlightened. 6. Be open minded, not closed minded. 7. Do what works not what doesn’t work. 8. Don’t copy others for the sake of copying others. 9. Move with the times and change when you need to change 10. Do what is best for you, not what might be best for other people. 11. Try to be ahead of the curve, not behind the curve. 12. Have foresight not just hindsight – anticipate the future. 13. Put everything on the table that can help you. 14. Be a leader not a follower. 15. Change when you need to change. 16. Be honest with yourself and about everything. 17. Be realistic. 18. Don’t believe things that are not true, even if everyone else does. 19. Learn from history. 20. Learn from your mistakes and experiences. 21. Try never to repeat the same mistake twice. 22. Learn from others. 23. Learn to trust and follow your own judgement. 24. Continually question and reassess everything, and be prepared to change your views. 25. Be proactive not just reactive. 26. Work hard and smart. 27. Don’t be lazy. 28. Make the best use of your time 29. Make the best use of your resources. 30. Accept uncertainty and learn to deal with it being responsive. 31. Know who you are.


32. Know what you want. 33. Create a vision for your future which excites you. 34. Have something to look forward to. 35. Live your life by a set of guiding principles, standards, and philosophy and be known for it. 36. Be a lifelong learner and actively seek knowledge, understanding and new skills. 37. Look to make your future better than your past. 38. Seek continual improvement in everything that you do. 39. Don’t complain about something you have the power to change. 40. Don’t point the finger at others without first taking a hard honest look at yourself. 41. Try to create win / win scenario’s not win / lose ones. 42. Don’t allow yourself to be burdened by things that have happened in the past, you can’t

change the past; you can change what happens in the future. 43. Look for leverage where you can in everything that you do. 44. Have a sense of awareness of your career in context with your life and your life objectives.

An Innovative / Creative Approach

Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination

embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution. Albert Einstein

Innovation and creativity is the best tool of problem solving. If what you are doing isn’t working

change. The great thing about imagination is that it has no boundaries or limits.

When you look at what mankind has collectively been able to achieve, you solving your job hunting

and career problems doesn’t seem impossible, unless you want it to be impossible.

A Results Driven / Competitive Approach

As with any kind of human endeavour, it helps to start with the end in mind and stay focussed on it

until results have been completely achieved.


There are lots of “good ideas”, and things that you could do to solve your job hunting and career

problems, but you can’t do all of them, you have to choose the things most likely to get you to your

goal quicker, and to deliver the very best result possible.

The supply and demand situation in the job market, with considerably more people applying for jobs

advertised, than there are jobs available, means that it is a competitive situation. It is not just a case

of whether you have the knowledge, skills, experience and qualifications that the employer is

seeking, you need to be able to compete against other applicants and win.

It will help you hugely if you can become competitive in your approach, and play to win. The

differences are everything, you have to know why employers should hire you rather than someone

else and give the employers help to understand that hiring you is both the most intelligent thing to

do, but also the right emotional thing to do too.


The Job Hunting and Career Secret Success Formula

This is what most people think job hunting success is all about:

Typical advice might be:

1. How to find jobs to apply for ( advertised and non-advertised including using social media)

2. How to write a good CV and Cover Letter and Application Form.

3. How to follow up and keep yourself in the employers mind.

4. Improve your interview techniques.

5. Hopefully be offered a job and pass the employer reference checks.

It is obviously about these things, and the better you can be at doing them the better, but these

things represent the tip of the iceberg in terms of what can go into achieving job hunting success.

If focusing just on these things, delivers the results you want that is great, but for an increasing

number of people it isn’t. Most people are copycats and do what everyone else does, with little or

no difference and little or no originality.

If what you are doing isn’t working you have two principal choices:

1. Carry on doing the same things and hoping for a different result, which is Einstein’s

definition of insanity or;

2. Do something different, either something new or something better or both.

The front cover of my book: “Job Hunting and Career Pain Relief – How to solve your job hunting and

career problems”, has an image of two tablets on it, which also appear on the first page of each

chapter. If you have a headache, you can go to the chemist, buy some headache tablets and

hopefully they will cure your headache. The pills or tablets can often look the same, a traditional

round tablet, is just that, and one looks very similar to the other, it is the formula of what goes into it

that cures your headache. In the case of the headache drug Solpadeine Max, the formula within it is

Paracetamol 500mg, codeine 12.8mg.

Step

1

Find Jobs To Apply For

Step

2

Apply To Jobs

Step

3

Follow Up Step

4

Attend Interviews / Selection Process

Step

5

Get Offered Jobs

Step

6

Pass Employer Reference Checks / Due Diligence


What then is the Job Hunting and Career Success Formula? It is a solution to a problem;

unfortunately you can’t take an actual pill to cure it, although it would be wonderful if you could.

A number of things are going to be required to cure your problem. Exactly what you will require is

going to depend upon you and your circumstances, because everyone is different.

The success formula is to “do what works best for you”. You might need a small tweak to what you

are doing, or you might need wholesale change. Typically people will find some jobs to apply for,

they apply to them and either receive no response whatsoever, a rejection without an interview, or

get an interview and go through a selection process and either get offered the job or rejected.

If you are not getting interviews, it is logical to think that your CV is at fault and that you perhaps

need to get a new one; if you get interviews, but don’t get offered the job, it is easy to think that you

need interview skills training.

The Success Formula at its root requires you to:

1. See things differently.

2. Think differently.

3. Act differently – either do something new or something you are already doing but better.

You have to approach job hunting and careers:

1. Intelligently

2. Innovatively and Creatively

3. Be completely results driven, competitive and play to win.

In essence you need to understand and define:

1. Where you are now and

2. Where you want to be

3. Turning your objectives into a vision for your future

Having done that you need to do the following:

1. Create a strategy of what needs to be done to best achieve your objectives

2. Create plans of how to implement what needs to be done

http://www.jobhuntingandcareerpainrelief.com


3. You need to take action and implement your plans

4. You need to measure your results and make changes or improvements when needed

You need to step up and raise your game:

1. Take your whole approach to the next level in all respects.

2. Be more professional.

3. Have higher standards.

4. Do more.

5. Go the extra mile.

6. Find the best in yourself and then find ways to be even better still.

When you take things to the next level, you start to consider things you had never before

considered.

If the steps in the coloured process diagram from finding jobs to apply for through to passing

employer reference checks is classed as “An outer journey – doing broadly the same things as

everyone else”, you need to add a new dimension “An inner journey – which takes things to a

deeper, more enlightened level, which can be a complete “game changer”. At the heart of the inner

journey is the way you see things, the way you think and what you think about, and as a result of

both these things, what you actually do. It is: change, it is transformation, it is enlightenment, it can

be career changing, life changing and even world changing, the potential and possibility is both

amazing and unlimited.

You need to learn about the eight layers, which you will be invited to drill down into, which can turn

failure into success, despair into hope, and make the seemingly impossible entirely possible and a

whole lot more.

The eight layers are:

1. Understanding / Enlightenment / Wisdom Layer 2. Change Layer 3. Environment Layer 4. Personal Layer 5. Career Layer 6. Sales and Marketing Layer 7. Results / Blend / Mix Layer 8. Mastery / Improvement Layer

If you remember the analogy I made earlier about the film The Matrix, where you get two choices,

take the blue pill and you can believe whatever you want, nothing changes, you remain conventional

and not as enlightened, like the majority. This might serve you well, you might be delighted with the

results you get from it, but if you have metaphorically used it, and found that it hasn’t worked for

you, or that you see the benefits the red pill might have, they you can consider taking it and

embracing change in everything, with the only limits remaining what is legal and ethical. I don’t wish

to be associated or have anything to do with anything that is not legal and ethical, that’s my line in

the sand, I would rather be straight about that.


Take any form of human endeavour and you can divide it into two categories: ordinary and

extraordinary. The majority go for ordinary, the minority strive for the extraordinary and of those

only a small percentage are prepared to pay the price and see it through to success. My focus is on

helping people who want to be extraordinary and not ordinary, that is the niche I am interested in. It

doesn’t mean you have to set out to do something that would impress everyone, there are

extraordinary people at every level, in every role, in every type of career and profession, they are

people who know what they are and what they want, and go for it, finding the best in themselves

and then trying to better still. There are extraordinary cleaners, and shop assistants, and nurses and

teachers and doctors and engineers, extraordinary people who achieve extraordinary things, quite

often the unsung heroes who are often taken advantage of by some, but who never lose focus, who

are consistent, and who are invariable happy and content inside, and recognised by most as having

something special.

By definition everyone can’t be extraordinary; being ordinary doesn’t mean there is anything wrong

with you. People who are extraordinary, can either be hard wired to be that way naturally, or to

make a conscious decision to be extraordinary. The challenging economic conditions mean that

there is usually intense competition for jobs, whilst ordinary people are being hired every day, it is

common sense to realise that you stand a better chance of being hired if you are extraordinary

rather than ordinary. If you are not getting the results you want being ordinary, perhaps you need to

decide to be extraordinary.

Being extraordinary often isn’t easy, it might require courage and extremely hard work, but the price

you might have to pay to achieve it and deliver the results you want, whilst being high, might not be

if compared to the consequences of remaining ordinary and not achieving the results you want.

As I have been writing this, Felix Baumgartner jumps out of a balloon 24 miles high on the edge of

space and falls to earth reaching a speed of Mach 1.3, then lands safely, how extraordinary is that?

If he can do that, I think you can sort out your job hunting and career problems if you are

determined to do whatever it takes legally and ethically!

Whether you solve your job hunting and career problems or not, is largely down to you, the

economic situation might have caused your problems, but solving your problems is something that

you are capable of doing, if you choose to believe it and do it.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-19947159


The Job Hunting and Career Success Formula has ingredients which could be anything at all that

could make the difference. I have talked earlier about putting everything on the table, that is what

you do if you want to be extraordinary, they are most probably not the things that people adopting

an ordinary approach would consider. 12 key examples of things you could consider are as follows:

1. Knowledge (What you know)

2. Skills (What you can do)

3. Understanding (Cause and Effect and Meaning)

4. Focus (Where are you going to put your effort, energy, enthusiasm and resources)

5. Choices (Know you have choices and make intelligent decisions)

6. Action (Nothing happens normally unless you do something)

7. Standards / Improvement (Be better, until your best is good enough to get the results you

want)

8. Attitude (Mind-set is of paramount importance)

9. Personal Assets (What have you got to offer that employers want? How can you define it,

prove it, add to it and enhance it?)

10. Personal Liabilities (What don’t you have that employers want and what do you have that

they don’t want?

11. Purpose (What is driving you? Why do you want to do what you want to do? Is the reason

strong enough for you and powerful enough to make a difference to employers?)

12. Authenticity (How much are you being the real you, and how much are you faking it?)

You need Clarity:

Roles – whose job is it to solve your problems?

Who are you?

Where you are now?

The challenges you are facing now – what is stopping you achieving your objectives?

Where do you want to be? / What you want, reality checked to make sure your objective is

achievable – there is no point aiming for something you don’t stand a chance of achieving.

You need Honesty

About yourself

About the job market

The Way it Works

About the world

About employers

About your potential competitors – positioning versus competitors – horses for courses


You need Understanding and Knowledge

About Sales and Marketing

About CV’s and Cover Letters

About reputation and personal branding

About psychology

About philosophy

About interview techniques

About employer reference checking and due diligence

You Need to create a vision for your future

You Need to Create a strategy of how best to achieve the vision

You Need to create plans that you can implement

You need to take massive action and implement your plans

You need to measure results and make improvements / changes as necessary

You need to follow a Process and keep to a set of values:

Do what is best for you in your circumstances

Don’t copy other people for the sake of copying other people

Step Up and Take it to The Next Level

Raise your standards

Be more professional

Be bothered about the tiny details

Be organised

Follow a structure

Prioritise and do what is most important first

Make the best use of your time and resources

Seek help

Do more

Do Better


Some other ideas for you to consider:

Stand for something

Put everything on the table

Make the most of your resources

Look for leverage and competitive advantage

Aim for things you stand a chance of achieving

Work out who you are

Work out what you really want

Work Harder

Work Smarter

Be Innovative and Creative

Be Massively Competitive

Embrace Change

Have a Vision for Your Future

Develop a strategy of how to achieve your vision

Translate your strategy into plans you can implement

Implement your plans and measure your results

Make improvements and corrections when necessary.

The success formula is open ended – what works best for you is right.


A new slant on careers and life and how you should approach yours

I am a dad, I have got three daughters, the eldest turned 16 in 2012, and I worry for their future and

what the world has in store for them. My dad is going to be 80 next year, he is fighting cancer, and

we all know he is not going to recover from it, and I am in the middle part of my life, looking to the

past and to the future. There are certain times in your life when you take stock, and have time or

cause to think about it, for me now is one of those times. I’ve had my own career challenges, and I

am grown up enough to be interested in the global economic situation and changing world.

As I look around me, I see a lot of fear, uncertainty and doubt. My grandfather, who was very old

when my dad was conceived, was born in 1865, when Charles Dickens was still alive, before the

Wright Brothers had even been born, let alone aeroplanes invented. When you consider how long

man has been in this world, it is staggering to see the changes that have taken place in the last one

and a half centuries. What on earth would my grandfather make of today’s high tech world of

supersonic flights, exploration into space, and communication at the speed of light? I was born in

1963, and when I look back to my childhood, the changes in just about everything have been

unbelievable. The past century has seen two world wars, a holocaust in which six million innocent

people were murdered, and countless atrocities around the world.

There have been seismic shifts in the way a large percentage of the world’s population live their

lives. The rate of change is so great that we seem to be in uncharted waters perpetually. There

seems to be good and evil in constant battle around the world, which is full of conflict, aggression,

hate, terrorism, and suffering on one side, and joy, happiness, kindness, love and caring on the

other, with every shade of grey in between. Mankind is collectively plundering the world’s natural

resources, destroying environments and causing havoc to the natural world. The global population is

exploding; when my grandfather was born, the global population was about 1.2 billion, it is thought

to be about 7 billion today, and looks to be rising by about half a billion a decade. Global warming is

changing the world’s climate, and soon parts of the world that are currently habitable will become

uninhabitable. Some people will need to migrate and the question has to be to where? You can see


the possibility for shortages of basics like food and water; there are already millions of people

starving to death around the world every year.

The balance of wealth, and with it power and influence, is moving broadly from West to East, with

the BRIC countries: China, India, Russia and Brazil on the ascent.

Everywhere you look the unthinkable and unlikely seems to be happening, mass terrorist attacks,

wars, environmental catastrophes, natural disasters, economic crises, with whole countries going

bust, mass unemployment, new diseases like Aids / HIV and the threat of a global avian flu

pandemic, with the potential to kill hundreds of millions of people or more doesn’t look so

unrealistic, when you see quite how connected the world is right now.

Who is in charge, and how wise are they, how much are they thinking about us, our children and our

children’s children? Isn’t most of the effort going on the needs and problems of today, without

addressing the growing needs and problems of tomorrow?

In the West, despite the current economic difficulties, so many people have so much materially, but I

have to ask myself the question; does it make them and us all truly happy? Are we better off today,

happier than our potentially less well-off parents and grandparents, who went before us? I don’t

know the answers, but I have the feeling that the answer in many cases is no.

Material things in themselves don’t make us happy; sharing, having something to look forward to

and making other people happy does.

My wife was reading a book when she was studying on one of her childcare courses, called “The

Continuum Concept”, by an American Anthropologist, Jean Liedloff:

“The Continuum Concept introduces the idea that in order to achieve optimal

physical, mental and emotional development, human beings - especially

babies - require the kind of instinctive nurturing as practiced by our ancient

relatives. It is a true ‘back to basics’ approach to parenting.

Author Jean Liedloff spent two and-a-half years in the jungle deep in the heart

of South America living with indigenous tribes and was astounded at how

differently children are raised outside the Western world. She came to the

realisation that essential child-rearing techniques such as touch, trust and

community have been undermined in modern times, and in this book suggests


practical ways to regain our natural well-being, for our children and

ourselves”.

In the book is the idea of Continuum; of wisdom being passed down through the generations, how

to survive and thrive, live in balance with nature and the natural world, and each other. Have we lost

that wisdom in our age of rapid technological advancement?

How long has our concept of how things should be, and what is normal been around? Why do we

collectively as mankind and individually do the things we do, believe the things we believe, feel the

way we feel?

We have compartmentalised life into three parts:

1. Childhood

2. Working adulthood and

3. Retirement / Old Age.

In many western countries we are living longer, and with the economic conditions people need to

work for longer.

I’d like to share with you a view on how I think in the west we commonly accept life to be.

Your parents nurture you in your childhood, so you can grow up and earn money. You are

encouraged to work hard, so you can do well and buy material things, and upgrade your lifestyle and

perhaps quality of life, with ever better material things. You work hard, get promoted or advance

yourself and save for retirement on the promise that retirement will be a glorious stress free time to

enjoy life. Along the way you pay taxes, and are encouraged to take on debt, the latter of which

makes other people wealthy, usually a tiny minority. Most of us become slaves to debt and to the

lifestyle; we are on a treadmill, and in many organisations it becomes a little bit dog eat dog,

everyone looking out for themselves. We trust our governments to govern with wisdom for the

greater good, but do they really? Generally speaking, people no longer seem to trust the bankers

and the people in charge of the money or the politicians either.

We all feel like we have to fit in somewhere. Where are we all going individually and collectively,

and is it to a better place?

In the East I have seen how academic performance drives life chances and wealth, resulting in

children almost being enslaved with learning, from early in the morning to late at night to get the

grades to go to the top universities. Parents make huge sacrifices to enable their children to get on,

with the children being expected to care for their parents later on. The pressures continue into

workplaces with intense competition, it is like self-generating slavery, where life becomes about the

daily grind, where personal pleasure is hard to come by. In the Foxconn factory in China, which is

used to make many of Apple Computer related products, people are jumping out windows

committing suicide such is the negative impact.


The pressures of work or lack of it can make people not want to live – how bad is that?

Professor Ken Robinson delivered a TED Lecture which you can see on YouTube (viewed by 12

million + people), where he says “Schools Kill Creativity” and in effect don’t prepare children for the

fast moving modern world of today, where we can’t predict what the world is going to be like next

week. He argues that education holds onto its roots from the days of the industrial revolution,

where the old fashioned academic subjects and the paths of academic excellence were the goals,

where the University Professors were effectively the top. It is worth watching if you haven’t seen it.


Watch Ken Robinsons video and then another video on YouTube called “Did you know” which is on

the progression of information technology researched by Karl Fisch, but relates to education and

jobs. It is one of those thought provoking video’s that throws interesting facts at you e.g. 80% of the

top 10 jobs in 2010 didn’t even exist in 2004. It suggests that people are going to university and

having to gain education for jobs that haven’t even been invented, which will be using technologies

that don’t exist today, in order to solve problems, we don’t even know are problems; such is the

speed of change. It is a mass of thought provoking facts and figures that make you think about the

world we are living in. It is US centric, but refers to India and China e.g. if you are one in a million in

China, there are 1,300 people just like you, India has more honours kids than USA has kids full stop

etc.

http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmwwrGV_aiE


I think the title “Did you know”, is poignant, because if we all knew things we didn’t know now, our

lives could be so different and so much better. If we knew in the past, what we know today, we

could have made so many better choices, taken so many better paths. Hindsight is useful because it

is important to learn from the past, although regret is never a particularly useful feeling, other than

to try and make sure that from now on, you have foresight and the wisdom and courage to do things

and make choices that won’t give you regret in the future.

One hugely important thing that I have learnt is that just because the majority of people believe

something to be true, doesn’t mean it is actually true. For thousands of years people believed the

world was flat and early sailors used to live in fear that one day they might accidentally sail off the

edge of the world. For thousands of years people used to believe that if you were ill, “bloodletting”

e.g. cutting yourself and draining some off your blood would help to cure you; in reality it is almost

overwhelmingly harmful to you.

Mankind often collectively makes the wrong choices, believes things to be true that are not, and

doesn’t believe things that are actually true, global warming would appear to be a good example of

that. Just look at what happened with the global financial crisis, most people didn’t think there was

anything major wrong with the global financial systems because they appeared to work, world

leaders, governments, top business leaders, academics and ordinary people all went along with it,

and of course we were all wrong. At the time of writing this article, there is a story all over the

headlines of a dead TV and Radio personality, whose was generally thought to be a very good

person, raising huge amounts of money for charity and doing masses of voluntary work. He received

a Knighthood from the Queen, honorary degrees and a host of other awards and accolades, there

were tribute TV programmes to him and his good work. Now it has transpired that the was a serial

child abuser and paedophile, he wasn’t the good person that everyone believed him to be, he was

the absolute opposite, a very bad person, and of course now, the recriminations are beginning to fly

around.


When things go wrong, we all look to try and blame someone else; it is much easier to do that, than

to accept that we might have been wrong. Blame your boss, blame the politician’s, blame the world

leaders, in-fact blame anyone but yourself. How often do any of us put our head above the parapet

and say we were wrong about anything? Professor Ken Robinson says: “If you are not prepared to be

wrong, you will never come up with anything original”.

I think that we are all sold the line that we have a childhood, a working adulthood and a retirement /

old age. Our expectations are subliminally implanted during our childhood and formative years,

whether it be religious or cultural beliefs, life paths etc. For many people it sets as hard as concrete,

never to be changed, but for others it is more flexible and malleable and capable of changing in light

of new beliefs, thoughts and experiences.


Robert Kiyosaki is one of the authors of the book “Rich Dad, Poor Dad – What the Rich Teach Their

Kids About Money - That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not”.

The Book – Rich Dad Poor Dad

The book in effect explains how different outlooks, different knowledge, different perspectives lead

to different results.

Like success and failure is on the same axis, so too is what is good or bad, what is right and what is

wrong. Sometimes people will hold diametrically opposed views, a good example of this is the saying

“one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter”, and Nelson Mandela is a prime example of

this, originally the leader of the ANC’s armed wing.”

Nelson Mandela

Nelson Mandela “coordinated sabotage campaigns against military and

government targets, making plans for a possible guerrilla war if the sabotage

failed to end apartheid. Mandela also raised funds for MK abroad and

arranged for paramilitary training of the group”. Wikipedia


He has subsequently received over 250 awards over four decades including being a recipient of the

Nobel Peace Prize.

How you see things and how you think has a profound impact on your life. We are all capable for

greatness beyond our wildest imagination, most people just don’t know it, they continue to see

things the way that they do, and think the things they have always thought.

Earlier, I showed this image and quote from the film “The Matrix”

From the Film – The Matrix

“You take the blue pill - the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want

to believe. You take the red pill - you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole

goes”.

One of the most important choices we have in our entire lives, which most people are not even

aware of, is whether we metaphorically choose to take the blue pill, which the majority choose to

take, or whether we choose the red pill, that takes you to a different world of infinite possibility,

extraordinary achievement, including if you want it, wealth beyond your wildest dreams. Most

people have no idea that a metaphoric red pill even exists, so there isn’t even a choice.

There is an abundance of power and energy in the world, that we have the capability to harness,

everyone accesses it to some extent, but usually in small quantities, a small percentage of people

however access it in abundance, people like Nelson Mandela, Richard Branson, Bill Gates, Bill

Clinton, The Dalai Lama, Top Sports People like Ellen Macarthur to achieve extraordinary things, Top

Actors, Musicians, Doctors etc. in fact people in all walks of life, from all backgrounds, it is available

to us all if only we can find ways to connect with it. The power and energy can be used for good or

bad, it was used by Mandela to do great things ending apartheid in South Africa, by Hitler to doing

gross evil, and by lots of people for personal gain.

You can tap into the abundant power and energy through the power of thought and beliefs. I

appreciate that things like this can sound rather hocus-pocus, and it is understandable because our

minds have been conditioned to take the metaphoric blue pill of convention every time, it is

ingrained in us all, and is most people’s instant reaction to anything, but it is the difference between

people who achieve extraordinary things, and people who achieve just ordinary things.

If everyone achieves things that today seemed extraordinary, the achievement actually ceases to be

extraordinary, it just becomes ordinary. Roger Banister was extraordinary, when he ran a mile in

under four minutes; he received a knighthood and the attention of the world, but today, lots of

people can and have run a mile in under four minutes. When yachtsman Ellen Macarthur became


the fasted person to sail around the world in 71 days, it was an extraordinary achievement, now the

record is just 57 days.

All the time, performance in the workplace is being recalibrated, what was exceptional performance

at work yesterday, might be not just average, but even sub-standard and totally unacceptable today.

Expectations continually change.

What is good and bad is often just a perception, an opinion, therefore if you want to get on in life, it

matters how other people perceive you, your performance and character, and you can influence

that, by how good you are at spin. Politicians are masters at spin, and people hate the sound of the

word spin, but everyone does it every day both consciously and subconsciously. If you are aware of

where your bosses calibrate good and bad, and you set your calibrations above theirs, what is

average to you, can actually be perceived as great by them. If you don’t recalibrate how you see

things and how you rate your own performance in line or ahead of your bosses, you might find

yourself thinking you are doing a good job, when they don’t think you are, and it might cost you your

job, a pay rise or promotion. It really matters how you see things, versus how those around you see

things. Ask more of yourself than others ask of you and you are setting yourself up to continually

exceed their expectations, which is surely a great thing to do.

When I was at Britannia Royal Naval College, as you can imagine the military take timing very

seriously, when they say be somewhere at a particular time them mean it, in fact if you were not

there five minutes before the stated time, you were actually classed as being late and suffered the

punishment / consequences. It might seem pedantic, but it makes the point that always being well

within time is good, not turning up at the last minute, or worse still turning up late.

If you are trying to get a job competing against large numbers of other people, you need to be able

to compete effectively, recognise you are in a competitive situation and like a sports person, play to

win. With job hunting it is the winning that is important, not the taking part.


Get More Help - Jonathan Blain’s Support Services

My primary objective is to help you and as many other people around the world as I can to solve

your job hunting and career problems; to achieve a breakthrough, and the success and happiness

that you desire.

I don’t want you or anyone else to be denied help, through lack of funds to pay for it, and will

provide some help free of charge to everyone, normally in the form of training and education on my

website, and some help on the basis that you pay for it, when you are back in work and earning

money, and therefore can afford to. Register for free resources on

www.JobHuntingandCareerEmergencyService.com .

Buy Jonathan’s Book: Job Hunting and Career Pain Relief Now

I recommend that you and anyone else with job hunting and career problems, in the first instance

buy my book; “Job Hunting and Career Pain Relief – How to solve your job hunting and career

problems”. You can get details of it and buy it on my Amazon Store on my website:

www.JobHuntingAndCareerPainRelief.com . You can also buy it directly from Amazon’s website. I

would request that you buy it through my website, you are still buying directly from Amazon, they

just give me a small click through fee, which I appreciate. It doesn’t cost you any more money.

If you are in severe crisis and can’t afford to buy the book or the Amazon Kindle version which is just

£8.04 / $12.92, I can offer you access to an online flipbook version, which costs £10 on the basis that

you pay when you can afford to do so. To take advantage of this offer, please email me:

[email protected] with the following in the Email Subject: “I’m in crisis and can’t afford

to buy your book can you give me access to your online flipbook please”. In your email, please

describe your situation and include your full name and contact details.


http://www.jobhuntingandcareerpainrelief.com/


mailto:[email protected]


If you buy my book and like it, or if it helps you get a job, I would be grateful if you could complete a

review of it on Amazon and drop me an email to [email protected] with the Subject: “I

Liked Your Job Hunting and Career Pain Relief Book” telling me about what you thought and how I

have helped you. I also welcome feedback and suggestions for improvement!

Philosophy

When I say I want to help you and as many other people around the world as possible to solve your

job hunting and career problems, I mean just that, I am driven by, and focussed on, helping you to

get results you want and quickly as possible.

We might never meet, nor get to know each other personally, but the advice and help that I give,

comes from a higher purpose to serve you as an individual and to make a difference to your life. My

message comes from my heart, with good intent and a position of genuine caring, in this respect it is

always personal, me to you.

I try to orientate all the help and support I can offer, so that it serves you best, and so that I can

spread the message to millions of people around the world.

I like you only have 24 hours in the day, and I have to find the best way to use that time to best

effect.

Help

1. Books / Publications / Articles / Video / Audio / Online Webinars

2. Mentoring / Coaching 1:1 and group

3. Professional CV Writing

4. Seminars / Workshops

5. Boot Camp’s For Rapid Results

6. Keynote presentations for organisations

Services are tailored to your needs, do any of the following apply to you? 1. Unemployed and looking for work. 2. Under threat of unemployment or insecure at work. 3. In a job they hate, desperate to move jobs. 4. Finding there is nothing wrong with their job, but feel their career is not going where they want it to go. 5. People interested in maximising their career success and happiness. Typical problems you might encounter, which I can help you solve: 1. Can't find jobs to apply for. 2. Apply for jobs and get no response. 3. Apply for jobs and get rejected with no interview. 4. Get an interview and go through a selection process, but don't get offered the job. 5. Get offered a job, but find it falls through at employer reference checking / due diligence. Don’t be shy get in touch – send me an email and tell me about your problems: [email protected] I’ll respond as soon as I can.




Contact Jonathan Blain Jonathan Blain Adventure House 91 Deanfield Road Henley on Thames Oxfordshire RG9 1UU United Kingdom Tel: 0787 33 33 0 33 [email protected] www.JobHuntingAndCareerExpert.com www.JobHuntingAndCareerPainRelief.com www.JobHuntingAndCareerEmergencyService.com www.CVForExecutives.com www.JonathanBlain.com www.BusinessCreativityAndInnovation.com www.PeopleWhoChangeTheWorld.com Note: Images and Links to Videos are copyright of their respective owners. Their copyright is acknowledged.


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The Job Hunting And Career Success Formula

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