Welcome to viewpoint

Careers & workplace advice from Hays

Recorded: Thursday 22nd October 2020

Due to the pandemic, professionals across the world have had to adapt quickly to a new way of working, including working remotely or as part of a hybrid team. As a result, it can be difficult to maintain visibility, leaving many unsure about how they can really shine and progress in this new world of work.

So in this podcast, we’re joined by Transformational Wellbeing Coach, Rosalyn Palmer, who is here to share her expert advice, to help those that are looking to increase their visibility and secure their long-term career progression in the new era of work.

1. To begin with, please could you quickly introduce yourself to our listeners?

(01:06) I’m Rosalyn Palmer, and I’m a Transformational Therapist and Coach, I bring the two together. I’m skilled in advanced, rapid transformational therapy, which combines clinical hypnotherapy, NLP (Neuro-linguistic programming), CBT (Cognitive behavioural therapy), and psychotherapy.

My own book is called Reset because I’ve had to reset my life and emotional wellbeing many times over. I have a background in PR and marketing at a very high level, so I know what it feels like to be on that career path of being in a busy agency life, trying to shine and really trying to get it all right by being happy and balanced as well.

Great, well that’s fantastic to hear, I’m really looking forward to listening to the advice that you’ve got for our podcast listeners.

2. We mentioned in the introduction that some of our listeners have been working remotely or as part of a hybrid team during the pandemic. What impact do you think this new way of working is having on career progression and development?

(02:21) 15% of our communications is verbal and 85% is body language. By being remote and by being put into positions now where we are connecting via Zoom, Teams or online and effectively spending lots of time remotely, we’re missing all that nuancing, all that non-verbal communication that gives context and depth to communications. And often they’re the ways in which somebody can shine, in which you get spotted and you can really enhance your career. Certainly, from my own point of view, that was very true. I was always that one who shined, turned up, had that energy around other people and would come with the ideas into the meetings which led to lots of promotions, and that’s very difficult when you’re behind a screen.

3. I’d imagine for younger employees; remote working will be more difficult by the fact that they’re unable to learn from colleagues without that face-to-face guidance. Is it possible that it’s impacting generations differently?

(03:38) Absolutely, you’re right because particularly for the younger generations, that is the time that you learn by osmosis. I’m old enough that I was put into the world of PR and marketing back in the days before it was even really understood to be a career. I went for an interview for a PR position and didn’t even know what PR meant. And so, I learned on the job by watching others through osmosis, by picking it up and running with the ball. And if you’re not around lots of other people in an actual team environment, all under the same roof, a lot of those clues, that learning on the job, absorbing and seeing what other people are doing is going to be so much harder.

So, they are going to potentially miss out, but there’s going to have to be new ways to bring in younger employees. People may be starting out more in their career, without having the benefit of literally being absorbed and surrounded by their peers.

4. I’d imagine it’s quite a unique problem that companies and individuals haven’t had to face before, the prospect of not being able to learn from people face-to-face.

(05:06) Absolutely, we’re all in a very new place in the world of remote teams, semi-remote teams and the world of working practices, companies and organisations who effectively are all disparate and everybody’s behind their computer in their own lounge, living room or kitchen. It’s a new place between presence and absence and it’s here to stay. And so, we’ve got to find the way to navigate that space.

5. With the reduction in face-to-face visibility, it can understandably be very difficult to prove your value in your role to your team and to the wider organisation. Do you have any tips to our listeners on how they can successfully prove their worth?

(06:01) So, if a lot of the interaction is going to be in remote team working and meetings, then you’ve obviously got to treat those meetings the same as you would if you were in an organisation and walking into a big boardroom, and you need to go in there, shine and have everything ready.

So, some of the tips and there’s many around, are about making that medium, making this new online presence work for you. Clearly taking a few minutes before you click on that start button to just settle yourself, get your attention and to arrive on time is important. Just because you’re all remote doesn’t mean you can’t connect, so take the same time and trouble to greet whoever’s in the room with your full attention as you would, if you were literally physically in the room with them, because people like people who are present and who engage with them.

And everybody worries about the impression they’re making and they’re so busy in their head worrying about that. That’s why many people go into meetings and they can’t remember the person’s name because they’re not present at that moment about when that person actually says, “Hello, I’m Roger”, and back in the olden days you’d actually shake their hand. It’s the same. So be present, turn up, settle yourself, and really take time to greet the person there.

Obviously, there are things about how you look, but one of the big issues, again, on Teams, Zoom, is resisting the urge to multitask. I network a lot and I go to a lot of networking meetings and I can just see everybody’s head starting to drop and they’re on their phone, they’re checking their emails, they’re doing something else. Now, I suppose, behave the way you would if you were sat around a board table, you arguably would not do that and it wouldn’t be very career-enhancing. Also multitasking in that way, particularly you’re having a lot of Zoom or team meetings is really draining, it really would lead to Zoom fatigue because you’re having to turn up in a new way. And if you’re then multitasking and not even concentrating on what’s being said, you’re just pulling yourself in so many different directions.

So really just behave in a way that you would, if you were walking physically into a boardroom, I know we only really have to look good from the waist up if we’re on Zoom, but, do make the effort and really turn up in that way. Don’t hide behind your avatar, be present and be visible.

That’s some great advice and good habits when we’re all back in the office. You don’t want to slip into any of these bad habits and take them with you once we’re working back in the office three days a week.

6. How can our listeners go about communicating success and progress on projects to maintain visibility whilst working remotely?

(09:17) So again, how you turn up is telling more than anything about who you are and your attitude. So, all those points that we’ve previously discussed, be present, be prepared, turn up, be engaged, be engaging.

So being engaging, bring ideas, don’t be afraid to have your voice. And if you don’t really feel that you’ve got something amazing to add then questions are the answer. If you’re asking a question that shows you’re engaging, it shows you’re thinking about it, it shows you’re wanting to learn more. So you don’t have to think that you have to turn up and be able to say something stunningly exciting because you maybe don’t truly understand what’s being discussed or you don’t have that much to add, but you can always help the person leading the meeting or the rest of the team by engaging them and being engaging. And questions are the way forward, and that is a way to shine, asking good questions.

7. Video calls and virtual meetings are our primary form of communication at the moment for a lot of people. How do you think this type of communication is impacting professional relationships and how is that affecting career development?

(10:48) Well, it’s a two-way street, isn’t it? I mean, leaders and managers need to be very aware of engaging their people in many different ways to bring out the best in them and if you’re somebody going up the career ladder, you need to be asking for all those points of interaction. So along with team meetings, have one-to-one meetings, have smaller groups have breakout meetings because different objectives within the business or within your own career path, aren’t always going to be met in the same way, just as within an organisation, you wouldn’t always go into the boardroom with thirty people to discuss a very specific, small part of a project or a small part of what your career enhancement is. You’d probably have a one-on-one meeting with your line manager or with a peer or with a mentor.

And so again, replicate all these good business practices, but find ways to do them, even if they must be done virtually. It doesn’t mean that all virtual meetings must be a great big overwhelming Zoom or Teams meeting with lots of people on them, set those one-to-ones up, set all those special mentoring sessions. And it’s a two-way street. If you’re the one who wants to progress, speak up and say, ” I really feel that because of our present situation, I’m not really learning through osmosis or learning through being around people. How about we meet for a virtual coffee every other day, and maybe we can just talk about some issues that turn up within the business or how you would tackle things if you’d have been at my stage in my career?” Perhaps something a little bit more informal like that. And again, for the manager or the leader, you need to be aware of bringing your people on in all these ways.

I like the idea of a virtual coffee and making it a little less formal. I like the idea of that and might incorporate that myself.

(12:52) Yes, I have a lot of virtual coffees with people and sometimes it’s about just turning up. Back in the office days when I worked in agencies in the nineties, we used to call it the photocopier moment or in America, they’d call it the water cooler moment. And it would be that time often that you’d come away with some gem, that a formal agenda or meeting wouldn’t do.

When I was running my PR company, I had a lot of clients who were other agencies. I was an agencies agency, and so there would be ad agencies, direct marketing agencies, sales promotion, you name it all the leading ones of the day. And I often found I wasn’t getting the information I wanted, or I’d go to meetings and people will be quite distracted.

So, I got in the habit of just turning up at their office. I used to just go unannounced. So, they’d let me in, obviously they knew that I was the PR person and I’d just literally wander around in the same way as if I was working there. And I’d walk past somebodies’ desk and I’d go, “Oh, that’s really interesting, what is that?”, and they’d go, “Oh, well, that’s the campaign we’re doing for Land Rover and we’re filming it, and it’s going to be ground-breaking because we’re using this new technology” and I’d be thinking in my head, nobody has told me this and I’d go, “Have you got 10 minutes. Could you just tell me about that?”, and so, it’s that if you can create these virtual coffees or these water-cooler moments, they’ll be really helpful.

That’s a great point, I’ve had this conversation with colleagues in the past few months about that water cooler moment. You find out information just by someone passing by the desk and going “Oh, actually, this might relate to you”, and that it’s something that they wouldn’t think about picking up the phone and speaking to you about, but because they’ve passed you in the hallway or they’ve passed your desk, they thought to mention it.

(15:07) And it’s about, consciously engineering these things that maybe we took for granted. The story I told you, I did engineer it and it had a great effect. So, it’s consciously engineering some of the less formal, more nuanced, learning through osmosis nonverbal communication. As I said, it’s missing lots of nonverbal communications in those moments that give context and depth to everything you learn and all of that is important for career enhancement.

Yes, so it’s about adapting to the new situation. And I really like that, I’ll definitely be adopting that myself going forward.

8. Now, video calls aren’t the only way to communicate. How important do you think strong written verbal communications is to succeed when working remotely. For example, is how you communicate via email and instant messaging platforms, just as important as verbal communications?

(16:12) Yes, I mean it is, but they can be a bit of a minefield. Email in particular, what email lacks is the tonality of voice because it’s just words and I’m sure that you have probably sent emails and it’s caused offence for somebody who’s taken it the wrong way, and you absolutely didn’t mean to do that, or you’ve received them.

You miss that nuance; you miss that context and it can be very easy to get offended or to cause offence on emails. So, you must be very careful about not trying to be nuanced in email, or you must literally spell it out. To literally say, “I am really delighted with what we’re doing” – and also never used the word ‘but’, it’s a ‘but’ free zone – “and I would just like to drill down a little bit more on the following five points. Why don’t we jump onto a virtual coffee and do that?” So, you can use that communication. Of course, emails are great, you’ve got a record of something and you keep on top of it because it’s written down. But more than any form of communication, email can be an absolute minefield.

Great, thanks for those insights. I’ve been guilty of that myself and I’d be surprised if anyone said that they hadn’t been guilty of sending a message that had been read the wrong way.

9. We’ve spoken about adapting to this new world. Do you think the way in which performance is measured is changing or do you think if it hasn’t or isn’t already, we can expect it to change with more employees now working remotely?

(18:10) Again, the needs and reasons of doing that are the same, and there’s good and bad practices within that. The medium, the way that it’s going to be done is maybe different because people have to social distance and they can’t get together, so you can’t be in the same room together, but all of the principles of it stay the same.

I heard somebody speak recently about the big little chat, which I quite like. And so, the big little chat is about when you turn up and you’re having quite a big chat, it’s about something very important, but you make it very little. So, you say, “Right, we’re going to have the big little chat and we’re going to just set three to four priorities and we’re going to talk about those”. So, chunking it down a bit more because of Zoom fatigue or Teams fatigue, and just being overwhelmed now with everything that’s going on is more endemic and more dangerous than ever before.

So, some of the things that within an office environment, you could go, “Okay, well, I’ll do this extra meeting” can seem really overwhelming when it’s just you at your kitchen table. So, chunk it down those big little chats, be clear we’re dealing with these three points:

  • I want you to progress in this way, do you see yourself progressing in this way?
  • Why do you think your progress is stalled? What could we do to help it?
  • What are the three turn points that we can do here?

So, chunking down more is going to be a helpful way.

10. What advice would you give to those who may have been on a promotion path before the pandemic and have perhaps found that progress has stalled?

(20:04) So there are ways that you can shine or ways that you can go, “What’s good about this?” Okay, I would have hoped that I was promoted to the next level by now, but all promotion is frozen for three months, six months, I can’t do that. Had I been at that level, what would I be wanting to do afterwards? I would actually like to add X,Y,Z skill to my portfolio, so I’m going to speak to my line manager, and I’m going to really act as if I’d already had that promotion and I’m already going up to the next level.

So, you might not be immediately getting that reward, but you can keep planning. There was a saying, when I worked in agency life, back in the nineties, dress to the level you want to be promoted to. Now, that’s really old-fashioned to be honest because you don’t have to look exactly that way, and we’re a lot more relaxed today thank goodness and we embrace individualism, but in a way, it’s really about behaving in that way. That’s what it’s saying, behave in that way as if you were already there.

So, if you’re a middle manager, but you want to be the top manager or higher, how do they behave? How do they turn up? What do I notice about them? Oh, they always turn up ten minutes early for every Zoom, they always come prepared, they always do these things. So treat any stall in your career path as a time to actually look and think about adding even more skills to your skill set, even more tools to your toolbox, because you could probably even jump frog and go up two promotional points next time when we hopefully go back to some sorts of normal. And people always want good people, so you want to be the best person you can be.

11. I imagine that advice applies to people who would like to be considered for a promotion as well, but maybe aren’t at the moment. For those people, how can they go about sharing their career goals with their manager? Because obviously the playing field is going through quite a bit of change, with economies across the world struggling and priorities possibly lying elsewhere for businesses and managers at the moment.

(22:28) You have to be realistic that you might be going to have a conversation with a line manager who literally is wanting to jump out the window themselves because of all the pressure on them, and that their hands are tied at the moment because of all of this uncertainty and difficulty.

So, go with the grace of saying, “Look, I realise at the moment, this probably isn’t possible or I realise that at the moment we are not in an environment where me being promoted and having a pay rise is even tenable, and I do want to say that when we do return to some normality or when things do change, or even if this becomes our new normal, I’m ready, I’m absolutely raring to go. I feel I have all of this to offer, and I’m actually going to use the time until we can have this conversation again. And I’d love to have this conversation again in two to three months’ time, please. I’m going to use that to even add more skills and make myself even more valuable to this organisation. Therefore, I was thinking could I be trained in x or could I be trained in y? Or could I have a virtual coffee with you? Or could I have a virtual coffee with your boss once a month?”

So again, it’s about showing that you are such an asset and you’re valuable, but you do understand the realities of the situation. So, you’re not putting more pressure on somebody who possibly has their hands tied.

The insights that you are sharing today are really valuable and I hope our listeners follow them to help with their career progression while we’re operating in this remotely or in a hybrid model, depending on where you are in the world.

12. For many a big part of feeling motivated and engaged at work is the positive reinforcements that you receive throughout the day, interacting with colleagues for example. Do you think this shift to remote working has led people to feeling like that they’re lacking their work mojo, and why do you think this is?

(24:27) Absolutely, a lot of people have felt that because it’s hard to always be totally self-motivated on your own. I mean, if you look at athletes, the Tour de France, and the Peloton, they look out for each other as a team.

I heard a very interesting anecdote about Michael Jordan, that he was a brilliant player, but he had to understand that he was part of a team and not every shot was his. And when he understood that he became more successful than pretty much anybody else in that sport. And the team won pretty much everything because he had to have a shift from it’s all about me or I’m that person to, I’m part of that team. Conversely, if you’ve been used to being around that team and take benefit and take support from that team and you’re on your own, it can be a hard struggle like the loneliness of the long-distance runner. Every day, it’s about me having to get up and do this.

Also, extroverts within an organisation, they get energy from being around others. Whereas introverts typically need that time alone to build energy, to face the group situation. And neither preference is right or wrong, it’s just that some of us function in some way, some of us function in another way. So, I know quite a few introverts, who are quite enjoying the new ways of working because they don’t have to go into those big meetings, which they used to find draining. But if you’re quite energetic and quite an extrovert, you can find it quite difficult because you lose that sense of connection. So, of course, that’s important.

So again, find all those ways to connect that you can, the virtual coffee, but here’s the most important connection – You. Your connection with yourself is the most important connection in the history of everything and that’s where I went wrong, that’s where I got burnt out and that’s where a lot of well-performing people get burnt out because they’re very busy being brilliant and connecting with everything, everybody and turning up, but there’s nothing left within them. They literally go home, and they feel like an empty vessel, they’re spent. And so, they fill themselves up often with all sorts of not terribly healthy things to just fill it up, that could be food, it could be a drink, who knows, but often they turn into quite destructive behaviours.

So, you must connect first and foremost for yourself. So, every day, more than ever, particularly because of the potentially draining nature of being in front of a screen or in online meetings repeatedly, how do I connect with me? What makes me feel good about me? How do I fill up from the inside out? For me, I live right by the river, I go for a walk on the river. I literally just look out the window sometimes and watch the swans and the ducks, or I walk along there. And a few months ago, I went Blackberrying one day, literally between two clients, I was like, I’m going to go blackberrying. I went out and got a load of blackberries and I thought later I’m going to make a blackberry and apple pie because I find cooking quite therapeutic. I find yoga therapeutic. At the end of the day, I find having a bath and reading a book therapeutic. I have good sleep habits, I switch off. Fill yourself up, connect with yourself first. This is your chance. This is your time to really connect with yourself.

I did a relationship counselling course and they said, the number one thing people want in relationships is intimacy. And intimacy means into-me-see. What we truly want is somebody else to say, I see you, I see into you, I love that. And that must start with you. Into-me-see, see into yourself and go, “Okay, I’m maybe not going to physically see anybody today, but how do I connect with myself? How do I nurture myself? How do I fill myself up?” And that is good advice, not just for a career but for life.

13. Talking about not being able to interact with colleagues and perhaps losing your work mojo. What impact do you think this could have on your career progression going back to that point?

(28:51) I wrote an article for a new hub, which is a redundancy hub. The sad reality is it could just be bad luck at the moment that you get a setback. Not because you’re not good, not because you’re not invaluable, not because you’re not bright and committed and all those things, but just because your company has maybe hit a bad financial situation. So, through no fault of your own, you might face yourself even facing a career change that you haven’t chosen or facing that stalling in your career.

So again, you’ve got to fill yourself up, you’ve got to keep your faith in yourself. You’ve got to keep those words, “This too shall pass”, because I’ve been through a couple of terrible downturns and redundancies. In my career, I’ve been made redundant three times believe it or not. The third time was the best because then I started my own PR company and I would never have probably done that otherwise. But if you’re in that situation, the first thing to always think about is what are my transferable skills.

Restrictions around what we can do due to the pandemic are constantly changing around the world, and it can impact someone’s motivation or engagement. For instance, we’re based in the UK and we’ve just had fresh restrictions put in place towards the end of 2020. Prior to that, we were starting to make our way back into the office and myself included, I’d started to go back in, and then these new restrictions were brought back in and I was a little deflated by that experience because I was reminded of the value of the workplace and seeing old colleagues again.

14. How can those suffering (from changing restrictions) combat that?

(30:54) Yes, because it would be easy to let it really get on top of you. So I did a big presentation this week on resilience and there’s many factors in resilience, but the thing you have to understand without spending ages now is that a lot of what affects you emotionally, affects you physically as well. Because I like to say we’re cavemen in posh clothes.

And a lot of our primaeval instincts, the way we survived and the way we got through things, because they are dictated by a part of the brain called the limbic amygdala, are still there and they’ll release cortisol into the body because I’m feeling threatened, I’m feeling stressed, I’m going to run away, survive. And of course, that happens repeatedly and when the body’s flooded with all these things, because it’s a stressful situation, you’re worried about your job, you’re worried about paying the mortgage, you’re worried about what the future’s going to bring. Unfortunately, it triggers the same physiological effects within the body as back in the day when we were literally running away from a sabre tooth tiger, it’s really draining.

And so, stress and overwhelm is emotional and physical and then it can lead to dis-ease, disease in other words. So, it’s important to just take care of yourself and some of them that you can improve your resilience are obviously mind hacks and mantras like “This too, shall pass” or what else could this mean? Ways of getting over overwhelm is by writing everything down and then deciding what’s important and what’s crucial. I’ve got lots of those exercises on my website and I’m sure lots of other good coaches and therapists do too, all free that people can avail themselves of.

And take care of yourself, eat even better than you normally would. Now is not the time to be having a Domino’s Pizza or any other pizza every night. Now is the time to be having more of the good stuff. And again, you can have like the 80/20 rule, you can have some of the bad stuff, but make sure you’re having more of the good stuff. Studies recently have shown that healthy people and longevity is from people who don’t necessarily always have the perfect diet and never go near, anything bad, but they just have a lot more of the good stuff. They eat a lot greener leafy vegetables, they have a lot more fruits, whole foods, grains and all the good things. So just be good about that.

Obviously, mindset, you need to relax, get sleep, make sure you get the right environment for sleep, relax, yoga, meditation, mindfulness, a walk along the river, lose yourself in a book. All these fantastic ways.

Breathing is important. If you’re starting to feel really overwhelmed, maybe you’re facing a difficult meeting or you’re really worried about your job and you don’t know how you can tell your partner, you can do, what’s called square breathing where you breathe in for four and then you hold it for four. You breathe out for four and you hold it for four and you imagine you’re drawing a square with your breath. And just that can bring the whole parasympathetic system of your body down a couple of pegs so that you just get over that anxiety.

There are other ways, there’s some that seemed like crazy ways that you can reset the vagal nerve, which really help again, your parasympathetic system. And you can do that by humming or having cold showers. There’s a great guy called Wim Hoff who suggests having an ice bath to trigger the body’s natural responses to get it back into balance. So, there’s lots and lots of ways.

Now, more than ever before, when I was pushing on through back in the days in agencies in the nineties, we didn’t talk about a lot of this stuff. And heaven forbid if you said, “I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed or depressed, or my mental health is threatened here.” It really was not a badge of honour. Whereas now we live in better times for that, so now more than ever is the time to be good to yourself.

Great advice, and personally speaking, prior to the pandemic my diet wasn’t the best and exercise was probably running for the tube. But since the pandemic began, I have been eating healthily. I’ve been exercising and the effect it’s had on my mental health. Honestly, I don’t know how I would have coped otherwise, it has worked wonders. So, any of our listeners that haven’t tried that yet, I really would recommend it. It really is effective.

Definitely, it’s proven science it absolutely is.

15. For those that feel their role has become redundant in the new era of work, what’s the best way to address this and find the value that they could bring to the organisation?

(36:11) If you’re worried about actual redundancy, there’s a couple of things. One is you tend to feel very angry when you get made redundant. Certainly, I’m speaking from personal experience here because it’s like, why me, this isn’t fair, or I’ve been cast aside. One thing to know is that anger is a secondary emotion, it’s like a shield of armour and anger always covers up hurt. So if you’re feeling angry, just sit with it and say to yourself, I am angry because I’m hurt and I’m hurting because, and then you can list it and look it might not be fair or right, but actually just getting it all out is often really helpful.

If you feel that you have no voice because nobody’s listening to you and they’re not going to listen to you because maybe you’ve already been made redundant or the stress is over you, or you don’t have a very empathetic or sympathetic line manager, you again can get it all out on paper, put it into a letter, but don’t send it, just get it all out. Again, it’s very cathartic to just get it all out.

If you’re within an organisation and you’re really worried that you are going to be side-lined or your job or your role is starting to be the one that if they’re going to have another round of cuts, it’s going to be the one that they don’t think is so essential. You’ve always got to think, what do they value within this organisation? Now, arguably every organisation values the bottom line, who brings us the money, but I’d like to think that there are enough organisations today and places of work and enough good work practices and good people to work for, that they maybe value other things.

So again, what could I bring to the table that could add that, that maybe I haven’t even been allowed to show in my current role, again, the questions or the, “Can I have a virtual coffee with you? I was thinking, and one thing we’re not doing in our company is X and Y. I noticed that other companies are doing that, and they’ve been effective. I noticed the other companies have got round restrictions and the pandemic that no longer can people come to our restaurant by setting up incredible takeaway services. And we haven’t fully explored that. Could I maybe do a project and investigate that?” So again, it’s what is going to add value to your organisation and that’s going to add value to how your organisation sees you.

15. The pandemic has opened the need for new skills and skills gaps have appeared in organisations or within Teams. And there’s been the need to plug those gaps. How important is it for our listeners to upskill to demonstrate their willingness to learn and how could they go about this? Do you have any advice around that?

(39:19) We touched on this already, treating even temporary setbacks or periods when your maybe not being able to do everything you normally do or see everybody you normally see is an opportunity. And using that time to learn and upskill, that’s a mindset thing.

The other thing is if you’re not commuting and you mentioned you’re not, don’t just switch your commute for more work, don’t go, “Oh, well, I’ve saved two hours today, therefore, I’ll just beaver away for two more hours”, use that two hours to work on you, to up-skill you. And again, what skills are going to take you to where you want to go. Now that might be within your organisation, or it might not be, it might be external to your organisation. Again, that depends on your ultimate career path, your goals, and maybe the way your organisation treats you.

I was talking to Wanda Goldwag, who was a former client of mine. She was the Managing Director of Air Miles, and I was reminded that I was quite shocked when I went to their offices in the nineties because they had a recruitment policy, which was, we’re going to recruit the best and we’re going to give you all the training you want. In fact, we want to train you out of your job. And if you’re still in your job in two years’ time, we’re going to ask you why, why are you still here? And I’ve not come across that in any company, that was quite radical for the nineties to think that way. And that was their philosophy that they trained people to go and have whatever career and future next step they wanted.

Obviously, some people remained within the organisation, but a lot didn’t, but they didn’t see that as a problem. They saw it as a win-win situation because they were giving people all those skills and upskilling all the time. They were there at an exciting, dynamic job and giving them a springboard to go and get a job that they couldn’t have even imagined before they’d had that one.

So again, make that your purpose again, if your company isn’t so forward-thinking, how can you upskill. There are so many great courses available. I mean, a lot of them are expensive, but a lot of them really aren’t and I’ve put three online courses together this year, and they’re inexpensive. And the market has never had so many. So, for anything arguably between thirty pounds and several hundred obviously they go higher, but you could learn some great skills. So again, treat it as your trajectory and an opportunity. The other side of what seems to be difficult is what’s my opportunity. I’m not commuting two hours a day, let’s spend those two hours learning some amazing skills.

Very true, there are lots of tools, webinars and training courses online that people can use, and they’ve increased during the pandemic as there has been a need to up-skill. I’ll take this opportunity to say that Hays has got stuff that people can listen to if they choose to, even this podcast to be precise. So, I’d encourage people to look through our pandemic episodes and learn about how they can upskill.

16. I’d imagine that now is a crucial time for our listeners to be building their personal brand too to maintain visibility. Do you have any tips on that which you can share about how listeners can effectively do this and build their personal brand out?

(43:10) I feel passionately about this. Very soon after qualifying as a Therapist myself, I became a trainer for therapists, and of course, I had this background in marketing and PR. And so, I would take breakout seminars on things like elevator pitches and how to get yourself across, and one of them was personal branding. And I always would say to people, you are your brand, you are your walking talking brand, it is you. Or if you think of the traditional seaside rock, the lettering in the rock, but you could get one and it would say the word all the way down. And so, you must have consistency about who you are because you are your brand. And the important thing about any brand is what does it stand for?

So, what do you stand for? So, it’s not just about how you look, be consistent, again with Zoom and Teams and all those things, consistently turn up, be professional. Again, we can be more relaxed, but still be professional because that’s the world we’re living in. And again, that dress or behave or look the way that you would like to be, maybe the level above where you are now.

Keep your word about the little things and the big things. So, if you say you’re going to do something, do it absolutely before and ahead of time, explain why not, turn up early, always let people know you’re the reliable one, be consistent in what you say and do. That’s important, that creates a brand. I like buying certain brands. I don’t expect to open a tin of beans of a certain brand because I expect it to taste and look in a certain way and it looks completely different. So, show up, lettering in the rock, you are your brand, be consistent, be good, and keep your word about the little things and the big things, and obviously present yourself in such a way as you wish to be known.

That’s great advice. And as we have discussed, effective communication is always a great way to be an expert in your field too, so thanks for sharing all those examples with us.

17. And we’re on to our final question now, which is a question we ask all our podcast guests. If you had one piece of advice to help our listeners navigate their careers through the pandemic and beyond what would that be?

(45:57) Always keep the balance. And if you’re always keeping the balance and you know that maybe today is a bad day, but it’s not a bad life, you can always go back. And to have balance, it’s more than just your work, it’s more than just your career. We’ve touched on all these things during our great chat, but I have this philosophy where I say that a life of balance is based on five ‘F’s’. So, if you stretch your hand out while you’re listening and then think of each of these fingers, and to have a balanced life, you need five ‘F’s’:

  • You need faith, you need faith in yourself or faith in something beyond yourself, it could be nature, it could be God, but really that faith in yourself.
  • You need fitness. We’ve talked about that. Both body and mind, the mind controls the body, the body controls the mind. Do things, meditate, hypnotherapy, eat well, sleep well.
  • You need friends. We are tribal people, and this is what’s been very difficult about remote working in the pandemic. We are connected beings, we used to sit around campfires and tell each other stories and be absolutely connected with the tribe. So, call in on your friends, make time for your friends, be a friend, even if it’s only virtually.
  • Family, again, it’s your tribe more than family. You might not have a family you particularly like, but these are about your very close tribe, your very close connections, the people who are around you, who support you, push you on.
  • And then finance, which is effectively your career in a way, because obviously you get remunerated and reciprocity as you turn up and give great stuff and you get remunerated and rewarded back. It’s give and take.

And so, a balanced life is all of those. So never lose sight of that because the people who crop up are the ones who really, overly focus on one of those or two of those. And they neglect the other ones and it doesn’t lead for a life of balance and joy.

Did you enjoy this podcast? Here is some related content that you may be interested in:

 

Listen on Apple Podcasts

The life sciences industry has, unsurprisingly, grown exponentially during 2020 because of the impact that COVID-19 has had on the sector. The demand for IT skills has also increased within life sciences to support the industry to keep innovating, tracking and pursuing a vaccine to COVID-19, as well as other diseases and conditions. These IT skills have been crucial in the development of the potentially promising vaccines developed so far but have a much bigger part still to play in the testing, monitoring and roll-out of these going forward into 2021. Continue reading How your tech skills can help change lives in the medical science sector →
  • Perhaps you had been working hard towards a promotion before the crisis hit, only for those plans to be put on hold, leaving you feeling deflated. Or maybe, you’re concerned your learning and development is stalling as you deal with the ‘here and now’ implications the pandemic has for your role and the wider organisation. Or you simply feel stuck in a job that you don’t like, resigned to the fact that now isn’t a good time to search for a new one.
  • Feeling stuck in your job can be extremely frustrating, particularly in a difficult labour market like the one we’re experiencing now. The good news, however, is that there are some proactive things you can do to help you feel as if you’re moving your career in the right direction, instead of standing still.

Nine actions to take if you feel stuck in your job

1. Find your self-confidence again: Working remotely, or at least in a hybrid way, can leave you devoid of all those positive reinforcements and small ‘confidence boosts’ that you would ordinarily experience throughout the day – often without realising – when working in a buzzing office. This may have left you doubting your skills, denting away at your ‘work mojo’ in the process. Perhaps imposter syndrome has started to creep in, knocking your self-confidence even further.

If this sounds familiar, stop and take a moment to reflect; something you probably haven’t had a chance to do much of if you’ve been working non-stop throughout the pandemic so far. Take some time to reflect on all that you have accomplished in your career so far and realise that your success is down to you – no one else. Write down your accomplishments and what you’re proud of, and refer back to them when you need a confidence boost. It might simply be that your growing lack of self-confidence and constant negative self-talk is what’s really holding you back from giving your career forward momentum and adding to your feelings of being ‘stuck’.

If you show the classic signs of ‘imposter syndrome’ – such as crediting your career successes to mere luck or ‘being in the right place at the right time’, instead of your own capabilities, skills and hard work – be sure to remind yourself that you aren’t alone in suffering from this, especially right now. Learn how to accept compliments from others on your work performance and achievements, and take the time to celebrate your successes.

2. Create your own career strategy: While you might share this with your boss, often the greatest value of putting together your own personal career strategy for the next one, two or even five or 10 years, might be in how strongly it motivates you to drive your career forward and pull yourself out of the work rut you’re experiencing.

Detailing what you want to learn and where you want to get to can give you a greater sense of ownership of your own development – ultimately putting the power in your hands – especially at a time when the world is so full of uncertainty, with many feeling a lack of control.

After all, this is your development, and you’re the only one that can really drive it. If you’re feeling stuck because you’re not clear in your mind as to where you want to go or which routes are an option for you right now, creating this personal development strategy will help you crystallise your thoughts. Then, once you do have a plan, stick to it and break it down into manageable steps.

Brendan O’Donovan, Group Data Marketing Director at Hays, has outlined the key features that your career strategy ought to have, including:

  • Your ultimate goal: This can obviously vary from person to person, but can include: reaching a certain level of seniority, to work for a specific company, to earn a certain salary, to have a specific impact on society at large, to attain public recognition or to achieve a healthy work-life balance.
  • Clear insight into the context: Ask yourself questions on your internal and external context including:
    • Internal:
      • What skills and capabilities do I have?
      • What are my strengths and weaknesses?
      • What types of work have most energised me over the last year?
      • How have I grown and developed professionally over the last five years?
      • What professional network do I have (mentors, colleagues, contacts)?
    •  External:
      • What are the typical intermediate career steps to get to my goal?
      • Who are the people whose career I’d want to model my own on?
      • What are my strengths and weaknesses compared to people I compete with for promotion or a new job?
      • How are technology trends changing the types of opportunity available to me?
      • How are my potential employers performing in their market?
  • Your route to success:
    • An action or attribute which everyone who has succeeded at your goal has in common (and which sets them apart from everyone who has tried and failed at the goal).
    • Something that nobody you’re in competition with is doing, but which would be highly valued by an employer of choice.
    • A new area of employment which is emerging or growing, which you could get established in before anyone else.
  • Plans and actions:
    • What skills do you need to develop? Can you develop them at work, or do you need to learn outside?
    • What is your ideal next career step? Is there scope for promotion at your current employer right now, or do you need to look elsewhere? Is it realistic to achieve it over the next year? If not, how can you begin to take on those responsibilities early and volunteer yourself for stretch assignments?
    • Imagine yourself at the end of next year, talking an interviewer through an example of something you’ve done over the past year that makes you perfect for your ideal next job. What is that project or performance, how can you ensure you’re involved and able to make that example a reality? What are the barriers you’ll need to overcome?

3. Proactively upskill: There are many ways you can proactively add to your skills in your own time, which in turn, will help drive your professional development and keep your career progression on track. Committing to adopting a growth mindset and your own lifelong learning, including staying up-to-date with trends and developments in your industry, will help you feel that you’re moving forward productively in your career, even if COVID-19 unfortunately means you may not be promoted as quickly as you’d like.

As much of the world goes through continued lockdown and reopening cycles to help limit the spread of the virus over the coming months, you have a lot of options for upskilling even if you aren’t in the office all of the time at the moment. Those could include – as Hays Australia Director Jane McNeill has suggested – learning a new language or two, training or mentoring someone else, keeping an eye out for relevant webinars and podcasts, and accessing any training or development resources your employer offers. The key thing is to keep your upskilling going even in these strange times, instead of leaving it on pause, which will only add to your feelings of being stuck in your job.

If you’re interested in upskilling, I’d recommend that you take a look at My Learning, our free online training portal.

4. Regain your passion for your profession: The challenges, disruption and stress brought by the pandemic may have left you feeling as if you’ve lost your ‘work mojo’, the fire in your belly, the passion you have for what you do, leaving you feeling deflated and stuck. Now is the time to regain that passion. Take some time to reflect and think about what it is that you love about your job. But not only that, also ask yourself what your own personal purpose is.

One great way to summon up some of the old passion is to remind yourself why you took on your current job in the first place. Also, as I said earlier, give yourself a pat on the back for all of the progress you have made in your role so far. Make sure you break out of your usual daily routine from time to time – perhaps shaking things up by volunteering for different tasks, which I’ll touch on in a bit more detail later in this blog. Learning a new skill or reading about new trends in your industry will also help you regain the passion for what you do.

And if all else seems to fail, remind yourself that you’re far from the only person who’ll be struggling to regain their ‘work mojo’ right now. These are bizarre and difficult times, and a lot of people are more despondent about the situation than they’re necessarily letting on. But as Dr Maggi Evans has previously explained, simply being honest and kind to yourself, as well as taking small steps to adjust your energy flow, can greatly help you to feel better about your life and career.  

5. Turn to others for inspiration: Explore what experts or those you look up to are doing in their careers and how they got there. Expand your network to include those you aspire to be like and learn all you can from them. This will give you the motivation, inspiration and knowledge to really drive your career forward.

A great way to do this is to find a career mentor. By ‘career mentor’, I’m referring to a confidential advisor who can help you to overcome the challenges that may currently be preventing you from achieving your longed-for professional goals – here are four key steps that will help you to find and nurture your own mentor-mentee relationship.

6. Optimise your personal brand: Opportunities for a promotion may or may not be available to you at the moment. Either way, it’s important that as part of your personal ownership of your career development, you take steps to optimise your personal brand and perfect your online presence. This will position you as an expert in your field, and the very act of doing so will give you back an element of control, making you feel less ‘stuck’.

The development of a strong personal brand online is a gradual and multi-layered process, encompassing first steps such as Googling your name to see what the rest of the world currently sees, and checking that your various social media profiles are consistent in how they represent you.

Catherine Gutsell, Global Head of Content and Social Media at Hays, has previously gone into greater detail about how you can clean up your act on such key social platforms as LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

7. Have an open and transparent conversation with your boss: If you feel stuck in a job with no progression in sight, and you’re comfortable with the idea of having an open and honest conversation about it with your boss, then do so. Your manager’s role is to help you succeed, and they can only do that if they understand what your career goals are and what barriers or blockers you’re experiencing.

Where possible, it’s in the best interests of not only you, but also your employer, to have these open and transparent conversations about the future. It helps to avoid both of you sailing blindly into the future, perhaps with very different expectations of what that future is likely to look like.

To help ensure you can plot the right path forward for your career as a result of these conversations, be sure to ask yourself certain questions in advance. Those might include what you do and don’t enjoy about your current role, how you see your role progressing in the coming years, and what kind of work you would love to do in an ideal world. This information will help your manager understand your situation and agree on steps forward.

8. Stop ruminating on how stuck you feel: Your job and your professional development absolutely should be part of your focus. Of course, your career deserves careful consideration and should occupy your thoughts, to an extent. If, however, your frustrations are consuming your mind, then it’s time to find some more balance and focus on other aspects of your life. This will help you gain some perspective and ultimately take the most effective approach to alleviating those feelings of being stuck in your job with no way forward. So, pick back up on a once-loved hobby, spend time doing the things you enjoy and make sure you’re getting enough rest – instead of working unhealthily long hours in a desperate need to prove yourself or pull yourself out of your rut.

9. Look for a new job: If you’ve done all of the above and you feel your career progression goals won’t be met at your current organisation, or are continuing to feel increasingly ‘stuck’, it might be time to explore another role. Before you start your job search, talk to a recruiter and take time to reflect on exactly what you want from the next stage of your career. Also be sure to update and optimise your CV and LinkedIn profile, and tailor each application where possible.

Feeling like you’re stuck in your career is frustrating to say the least, even in non-pandemic conditions. In current times, when it can often feel as if so much of ‘normal’ life is effectively in suspension, it can be all the more agonising. By following the above tips, however, you can regain some control and take steps to ensure you’re still moving forward in your professional life, pulling you out of your career rut and back onto the right track.

Did you find this blog useful? Here is some related content that you might find helpful:

The COVID-19 pandemic has substantially impacted the B2B marketing industry. According to research, 78% of marketers believe that communicating value is an essential priority this year, making it absolutely crucial for leaders to innovate and come up with new approaches, in order to guide their businesses and employees through this difficult time and beyond.

So today, we’re joined by Stacey Danheiser and Dr. Simon Kelly, Principals of Shake Marketing Group, and co- authors of the book Value-ology and forthcoming book Stand Out Marketing. They’re here to share their expert advice on how B2B marketing leaders can support their teams and organisations to thrive in the new era of work.

1. To begin with, please could you introduce yourself to our listeners? Stacey, if we could begin with you, that would be great.

(01:25) I’m Stacey Danheiser, I’m the founder and CEO of Shake Marketing Group. We help organisations become more customer focused through customer research value proposition development and customer centric marketing strategies. Prior to Shake Marketing, I spent 14 years in corporate marketing, working for several Fortune 500 companies in both B2B and B2C.

2. And Simon, how about you? Could you let us know a little bit about your background and your current role?

(01:57) Yes, I’m (Dr Simon Kelly) the Principal of Shake Marketing, where I help primarily B2B organisations grow by helping them develop more powerful value propositions that help them stand out for their customers and ahead of their competitors. I’m also a lecturer in marketing sales at the University of York so, I call myself a pracademic. I’ve got about 35 years’ experience in working in the industry and with businesses. In the past I’ve led B2B marketing at BT, and I’ve worked in the US, running North American marketing for a telecoms company there.

3. Do you think that customer expectations and behaviours have changed fundamentally for good because of the pandemic, and how is this impacting marketing functions?

(02:47) Yes, that’s a great question. We started to contemplate this question around three or four weeks into the pandemic when we were getting bombarded with all this ‘new normal’. And we really wanted to understand more of what it really felt like for marketing and sales leaders in this COVID world and their thoughts about what the future might hold for B2B marketing and selling.

So, we went out to do some research. We did in-depth interviews with sales and marketing leaders, a survey, and we also talked to our clients and ex-colleagues and friends who are marketers and salespeople. To a large extent, our findings amplified the need to go back to marketing basics or marketing 101, because customers have become even more intolerant to irrelevant communications from companies. Everybody’s on Zoom calls or team calls the whole time, and it’s really amplified the need for companies to develop marketing communications, products and solutions that are relevant and differentiated, so that customers can easily see what’s going to help them. So, it means that marketers have got to deeply understand what it is that customers value and what they’re looking for.

During this time as well, I think we also witnessed the rise of Black Lives Matter and other movements. And marketeers that we spoke to really think that this has put a premium on authenticity, you must be able to walk the talk. For example, a Vice President of FinTech who we spoke to said, “You can’t just slap something on your website any longer and expect people to believe it, if you don’t live it.” And you may have seen this quite well-known case where a university Social Media Manager resigned his position, because he felt the university were putting images of their support for Black Lives Matter, which weren’t authentic. So, the days of greenwashing, claiming you’re green when you’re not, or claiming that you support a thing that you don’t are gone as far as the marketeers are concerned. So, it’s all about authenticity.

4. And what specific challenges do you think that B2B marketing leaders have faced over the last few months and how have they overcome these?

(05:20) Well, I think they’re still living through some of this, but the first thing that they’ve probably found out straight away is that different customers have got different fortunes. At one end of the extreme, you can talk about airline companies and you can contrast those with cloud communication, video communication companies, or even people that supply PPE whose fortunes really clearly were on the rise because of this misfortune.

The contrast is clearly mirrored on the supply side. So, if you’re a CMO for an airline company, the world looks very different to that of the CMO for a video communications company like Zoom. So, if you serve more than one different customer sector or segment, we think gone are the days of treating everybody the same, what’s sometimes called the ‘Spray and pray approach’.

And so again, we use this word amplifying, we think it’s amplified the need for better segmentation. So, I think this has really led to three main things that we’ve found marketers have focused on:

  • Firstly, refreshing the message to be COVID relevant. And in some cases, tailored to segments or sectors, depending on how their fortunes were shaping up.
  • I think focusing on being more relevant and authentic as we began to discuss.
  • And finally, a focus on customer value. As you rightly said in the introduction, 78% of survey respondents said this is a priority, which necessarily means understanding the customer deeply, and quite frankly doing more customer research to understand how the customer’s world and their attitudes and beliefs have been changed due to COVID.

5. Now Stacey, how do you think the crisis led B2B marketing leaders to re-evaluate and reconfigure their marketing strategies?

(07:30) Yes, well, we were really interested as Simon said, in figuring out how marketers were responding to this. And we found that there were three large buckets that marketers were focused on right from the beginning:

So, the first one as Simon alluded to was tone and messaging. So, 73% of the marketers that we talked to and surveyed said that they had updated their messaging to reflect new sentiments and customer themes. This is great, it basically forced B2B companies to think about the human side and individuals. Obviously, we were all going through this pandemic together and it made B2B brands a little more relatable during that time.

The second is the marketing and sales approach. So, the main driver of this was that we couldn’t meet in person. Sales suddenly weren’t in person meetings which forced marketing teams to be creative and drive customer engagement, conversations and more momentum on that side. We heard from marketers that suddenly, the sales team is calling them, responding to them and asking them for help in ways that they had never done before. Of course, on the marketing side, this largely meant that moving everything offline to online. So, we saw a huge spike in digital tactics, specifically marketing events that suddenly weren’t happening and then they all went to virtual webinars or online. So, the other piece to that was a lot of marketing websites were created landing pages, resource centres that addressed the COVID situation and just how the company was responding to that.

And then the third big area was around products and services. So, 40% of the B2B marketers that we surveyed said that they had developed a new pricing or packaging strategy. So, just taking an existing product and packaging it in a different way or being creative with customer service or financial terms. And only 33% said that they had launched a new product or repositioned an existing one. Largely the barrier was that the internal organisation got in the way, that the marketing team wanted to create something and respond to a customer demand or a customer need. But because of the complexities internally and having to work with so many different departments across the product organisation, it was difficult to get something launched. We saw this happen much quicker in B2C organisations with restaurants offering to-go food and beverages.

6. And do you think there’s been a shift from reactive firefighting at the start of the pandemic to more strategic long-term thinking within marketing teams?

(10:18) Yes, definitely, I think that’s been an exciting outcome. For a long-time marketing has been largely focused on tactics and execution. So, we’ve started to see the shift toward more strategic activities. At the beginning it was all about creating this messaging; “We’re here for you or we’re in it together”, but there’s still a lot of room for improvement. So, for example, only 22% of the marketers that we talked to said that they had done any real customer research. This really has led to what Simon already called the sea of sameness problem, where everyone is saying the same things about working from home, we’re in this together and we’re here for you.

So as a customer of B2B and B2C, this has led to a lot of fatigue with messaging and a lot of starting to ignore it and tune it out as it relates to messaging. And the same thing is happening on the tactical side. So digital fatigue is real, both customers and employees are really just tired of being on video calls all day which hasn’t really made anybody excited to sit through an eight-hour virtual event or concert. So, this all in all is forcing marketers to be more strategic, creative, and more in tune with ways to cut through the noise there.

7. How do you think marketing budgets have been affected since the start of the pandemic and how will this impact B2B marketing in the future?

(11:47) So this is a question we were really interested in when we talked to marketing leaders. No surprise, but about 74% said that there was a negative impact short term to their marketing budget. So, budgets were frozen, some of them were cut, some of them operated in an environment where they had to get approval for everything, but it’s not so bleak on the long-term outlook. 66% said that they believe there’s going to be a neutral or positive outlook in the long term, which is great. So, I think we’ll start to see the shift to more useful and higher quality content.

For example, one of the trends that we’ve seen in marketing over the past several years is around this soundbite marketer, where we all have extremely short attention spans. And so, marketing has been getting shorter and shorter, but what we’ve found during this time is that while that’s initially true to grab somebody’s attention, people want the option to dive deeper.

So, producing longer forms of content, for example, podcasts have spiked during this time and whitepapers where there’s more in-depth knowledge. People are looking to get educated and that’s something that we think will continue that will allow companies to stand out and demonstrate their expertise.

And then the other piece is more on the tactical side, that marketers have told us that they’ve seen their organisations finally see value in some of the programs that they had been trying to get approval on for years. So for example, marketing automation, social media, or doing a social selling program, all of a sudden the rest of the organisation is finally seeing the value in that, and is now approving those budgets to do those programs that will start to continue.

8. And Simon, do you think the perception of the marketing department has changed internally within organisations because of the pandemic, particularly from senior business leaders.

(13:49) Well, yes, if you can claim there to have been any upside for COVID, it’s the fact that it’s elevated the role of marketing in B2B organisations. And I think Stacey mentioned that 62% of our survey respondents said that their role is now perceived to be more important. We’ve always felt that marketing is about much more than just marketing communications or increasingly as it’s been seen, digital communications, but it really surprised us in some of our interviews, the organisations that were still saying, we’re now seeing much more than just events because we can’t have face to face events anymore.

Real-life blue-chip companies where the B2B marketeers were still feeling that they were the events guys. So now’s the time to elevate yourselves if you’re a marketing leader, if you’re a CMO or if you are leading a team of both, with collateral and events to become more than that feigned colouring in department, which B2B marketing teams are sometimes known to be. So go beyond tactical execution, as Stacey said to a much more strategic place, because after all it’s the CMO and the marketing teams that are supposed to drive the decisions around which customers you serve, in which marketplaces with which products and services and with what competitive advantage.

So, that’s the strategic place they need to get to. And many marketeers have said, yes, we’re getting much more engagement from our senior leadership team and much more attention to what it is we do beyond the basic tactical things. So, good news from that respect.

Click here to pre-order their new book, Stand-out Marketing

9. Stacey, do you think that the role of the B2B marketing leader has changed because of the pandemic?

(15:45) I don’t think it’s necessarily changed. If we would fundamentally look at what the role of a B2B marketer is, it’s identifying which customers should be served, helping to clarify which offers and products should be served up to them and then how to communicate and deliver that value. Marketing has historically had to fight for a seat at the table and so, as Simon just mentioned, all of a sudden, it’s now being elevated, and the perceptions internally have changed.

So, this is all really good news for the B2B marketing leader. COVID has amplified the need for marketing to have a pulse on the customer, the changing needs of the customer and what they value. And what we found working with clients over the years is the number one way to get a seat at that table is to have an understanding of customers based on first-hand knowledge. Not on calling through data or looking at websites statistics, or hearing about it from the sales team, but really having authentic conversations with customers and trying to understand what their world is and what’s happening, so that they can ultimately connect better and create programs and content that will resonate with that customer.

So, the biggest thing that’s obviously changed with the role is just managing and engaging both employees and customers that aren’t in the same room and connecting with customers in a whole new way. So, we’ll continue to see that evolve. But I think fundamentally as Simon alluded to, it’s back to the basics for the B2B marketing leader, and it really does start with that deep customer understanding.

10. Simon, have any brands really stood out for you in terms of their B2B marketing strategy and their ability to cut through the noise?

(17:33) As Stacey said earlier, I think we’re all very familiar with lots of great B2C instances now from gin distillers that flipped to produce hand sanitiser, clothing companies that have moved towards face mask production. And there’s this funky service I’ve seen where there’s a pen which you can touch to your wall and use it for colour matching services to deal with a spike in demand for home decorating. So, some of the things we’ve seen there have been very innovative and responded to big changes in the market.

But we’ve seen some things in B2B, which does show that there’s not always a direct correlation between size and agility. For example, we know that IBM quickly developed six key offers out of their massive portfolio that would stand out as being most relevant in the COVID world. And this included helping turn up services for some organisations who, believe it or not, have never worked remotely before this thing kicked in.

Organisations like Palo Alto Networks who by their own admission, because they provide cloud services, were very fortunate because people are talking on a video and wanted to do it on a big scale. So, people needed their services even more, but they quickly set up a resource centre to help customers easily interact with Palo Alto and find out how they could help them move into this new environment. And I also like the US company that we spoke to who their prime business was tracking people into big events with QR codes. So they know who’s in an event, who’s moving around and they changed the offer and quickly developed a solution for a Boston construction company to help them keep track of employees who are coming in and out of the construction site to keep it COVID safe. So, some good examples from different sectors in B2B we’ve seen.

11. Now we’d like to end this podcast with a question that we ask all our guests, what do you think are the three qualities that make a good leader and crucially, do you think these qualities have changed as a result of the pandemic?

(19:58) Well, I don’t think the qualities have changed. I think I’d say some of it has been amplified and I think some have needed to shape to fit the COVID context. For example, and this sounds trite in some ways, but leaders should lead the company, not just manage it. So, in the context of COVID, this certainly to me includes having a vision for how things going forward could change, how these changes could then be used to the advantage of the company or could affect the customer or your own organisation. And then going beyond that, providing direction on which opportunities your organisation needs to exploit and where to change focus, like in some of the examples that we’ve heard already. I think if you’re a marketing and sales leader, then the responsibility to be the voice of the customer has been heightened because certainly on the sales side at the beginning, there were less face-to-face interactions.

So, now it’s up to sales and marketing leaders to bring the voice of the customer back inside the organisation and make sure that the organisation is not just too internally focused or obsessed with their internal world. And we’ve had some companies that we spoke to lately who have been very honest and admitted that they feel they’ve turned a little back inwardly and have been a bit internally focused.

Finally, authenticity. The thing we talked about authenticity earlier applies to leaders and to organisations. You’ve got to have empathy with a customer, as a whole person in this current climate and for the teams that are working in your organisations. So, this has been brought to the fore, so this authenticity looks like to me having empathy about how COVID has affected the customer’s business, and offering real help, not just buzzwords on your website.

So, if you’ve got a customer sector that’s struggling, then you might want to relieve the payment terms or do something flexible on that side. And then you need to take account of how customers employees have had to live their lives during COVID. We spoke to one organisation that gave us really great insight to the fact that in upstate New York, where quite a few of the people were working from home, in a high rise apartment block in this very small room were having lots of discussions on video.

So, empathy and authenticity, walking the talk as well is really what it’s all about by not just communicating things, but showing through your behaviours. That’s important in this environment and they’re the three for me in truly leading the company, the voice of the customer and authenticity or empathy wrapped into one.

12. Stacey, finally, the same question to you, what do you think are the three qualities that make a good leader? And do you think these qualities have changed since the beginning of the pandemic?

(23:10) First of all, I don’t think the qualities have really changed. I think to Simon’s point, these have all just been amplified. They’ve maybe been in the background as a need for a long time. And now it’s finally coming to the front that this is really needed to help lead in this new era.

But I would say first and foremost is courage. This is something, especially in the marketing function, that the marketing teams need to have the courage to be bold, creative, and do something different. We’ve seen this sea of sameness problem happening in a lot of different industries. We’ve seen it now with COVID and really it’s a result of the fact that marketing teams are not feeling courageous, that they can do something different and that they’re willing to take a stand and try something or suggest something that might be out of the norm for that industry or for that company.

The second I would say is clarity. So again, it’s marketing’s job really to set the vision for the organisation and to help set the stage for strategy. And this includes prioritisation that not all customer segments are created equal. So, it’s really marketing’s job to help get the company focused on a set of customer targets. And, we joke that the Seth Godin quote, “Everyone is not your customer” but we see this over and over in organisations where they are actually operating that everyone is their customer. They’re so nervous to exclude somebody or to declare that they only work with certain industries or certain types of companies. And this really needs to be addressed from a marketing standpoint because when the content, programs or conversations are happening and they’re not really addressed to a specific person, then it doesn’t feel authentic, it doesn’t feel like the marketing team or the sales team really understand the customer. And so, this goes back to just having real clarity on who that customer profile is, the ideal customer and prioritising that.

And then third, I would say context. This is again the marketing function understanding the business. This is something that marketing can have a stronger seat at the table by understanding on the one hand the customer, but also the connection to the business and how they can help create strategies that will take somebody from that 50,000 foot level, all the way down to connecting at the customer level and making it relevant to their world. And so, this is marketing spending more time, understanding the financials, and what the business is trying to achieve. We’ve had conversations with marketers, asking what the profitability is of certain customer segments or what the revenue stats are for certain products. And the marketing team just doesn’t know the answer to that. And so, I would say context there and just understanding the businesses is critical. So, my three are courage, clarity, and context.

Did you enjoy this podcast? Here is some related content that you may be interested in:

 

Listen on Apple Podcasts

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a dramatic impact on the B2B marketing industry. According to research, 69% of B2B marketing functions have changed their marketing approach by returning to basics such as communication, value add, relevancy and empathy.

So today, we’re joined by Stacey Danheiser and Dr. Simon Kelly, Principals of Shake Marketing Group, and co- authors of the book Value-ology and forthcoming book Stand Out Marketing. They’re here to share their expert advice on how B2B marketing roles have been impacted by the pandemic and how they may evolve in the new era of work.

1. To begin with, please could you introduce yourself to our listeners? Stacey, we’ll begin with you.

(01:10) Yes, absolutely. Well, firstly, thanks so much for having us on the show today. I’m Stacey Danheiser, the Founder and CEO of Shake Marketing Group located in South Florida in the US. We help B2B organisations become more customer centric and focused through customer research, value proposition development, and customer centric marketing strategies. Prior to founding Shake Marketing, I spent fourteen years leading a variety of corporate marketing functions for several Fortune 500 companies in both B2B and B2C.

2. And Simon, how about you? Could you give us an introduction and let us know a little bit about your background and your current role?

(01:51) Yes sure, thanks for having me. I’m also a Principal of Shake Marketing, where I help primarily B2B organisations grow, by helping them develop powerful value propositions to help them stand out in their marketplaces for their customers and ahead of their competitors. I’m based here in the UK, and I’m a lecturer in marketing and sales at the University of York. In the past, I’ve led B2B marketing at BT, and I’ve worked in the US running North American marketing at Level 3 Communications, which is where Stacey and I met.

3. And do you think customer expectations and behaviours have changed fundamentally for good because of the pandemic, and how is this impacting the role of the B2B marketeer and the work that they do?

(02:46) Well, that’s a great question, and it’s a question we started contemplating just a few weeks into the pandemic when we were hearing all about this ‘new normal’. So, it triggered us to want to do some research, to find out more about what marketing, sales leaders and practitioners lives were like, to understand the changes in customer expectations that we were witnessing and how they saw the future.

To a large extent, I think our findings amplified the need to go back to marketing basics. Customers have become even more intolerant because they’re on the screens all the time to irrelevant communications from companies, which has amplified the need for companies to develop communications, products and solutions that are relevant and differentiated, as you mentioned in the introduction. And so, this means that marketers need to deeply understand what customers value, both from an emotional and rational perspective.

During this time, we also witnessed the rise of Black Lives Matter and other movements, which many marketing leaders we’ve worked with and spoken to believe has put a premium on authenticity, meaning you’ve got to walk the talk. For example, a VP of a FinTech marketing company we spoke to said, “Gone are the days where you can just slap something on a website without living it any longer.” There was a particularly well documented case about a social media marketing manager for a university in the UK who left his job, because he believed they were portraying their support for Black Lives Matter, which had no substantial basis.

4. Stacey, how has the crisis led marketeers to re-evaluate and reconfigure their marketing strategies?

(04:44) Well in our conversations with marketers and just working with clients, we’ve found that there are three big areas that marketers have shifted.

The first is around tone and messaging, 73% of the marketers that we surveyed said that they had updated their messaging to reflect new sentiments and customer themes. It’s really forced B2B companies to recognise, not only how organisations are reacting during this time, but also the individuals within those organisations and how they’re feeling. So, for example, work suddenly merged with home life for many of us, which means trying to find a balance between being on video calls for work and then helping kids in the background with their online schooling.

The second is this marketing and sales approach. So, since sales has not been able to meet face-to-face with customers, this really put a premium on marketing to help drive customer engagement and conversations. At the beginning, this really just meant moving everything from face-to-face, offline events and tactics into a digital format with a much bigger focus on social media for example, and there’s basically a need to continue that creativity. How will marketing and sales evolve? How do you build the relationships in a virtual environment for example? So, all of that will continue to evolve.

And then the third area is around new products and services. So, 40% of the marketers that we talked to said that they had developed a new pricing or packaging strategy. Some of it was just being creative with financial terms and being more lenient, potentially spacing out payments over several months versus requiring upfront deposits, as well as packaging different features of their product set and creating either a new product, or just pulling things in and highlighting features that may have been underrepresented or not as important before the pandemic.

On the other side, 33% of the folks we talked to said that they had launched a new product or repositioned an existing one. So, we saw this happen a little bit more quickly in B2C organisations. Specifically, in the US, restaurants started offering their famous cocktails in a to-go container in an effort to bring in some revenue, but also give customers access to their beloved margaritas while they sat at home.

5. Taking all these changes into consideration, do you think that the basics of marketing will still hold true in the new era of work or will they need to be revised to ensure that businesses are able to thrive?

(07:25) Yes, as Simon mentioned, we think the pandemic has just amplified the need for marketing basics. We typically work with clients that have skipped part of building the foundations, in a seven-step framework, let’s say step seven is execution, a lot of marketers start with step seven. This means they don’t do any customer research before developing products or launching new marketing campaigns. They don’t test messaging, they treat every customer segment the same, instead of understanding what makes them different.

So, really this is amplified during this time. Building a solid foundation and having a marketing platform that is solid within that company is going to be even more critical and customers will rely more heavily on relevant content, communications and interactions as Simon mentioned. Especially in B2B, they’ve been tolerant for a long-time receiving stuff that’s irrelevant. This just means that marketing’s job is going to be growing even bigger and more important. So, you can’t just produce one piece of content that is expected to talk to five different departments and five different types of decision makers. You really must understand the nuances of each of these audiences and then create content that is relevant to help each buyer get educated and move forward in that journey.

6. Do you think that there’s been a shift from the reactive firefighting which we saw at the beginning of the pandemic to a more strategic, long-term thinking within marketing teams?

(09:06) Yes, we’ve seen marketing start to be more strategic and proactive. At the beginning, it was very reactive, pushing out we’re here for you messaging or getting everything moved online, but there’s still room for improvement. For example, only 22% of the marketers that we talked to said that they had done any real customer research, and this led to a sea of the same problems, where everyone was saying the same things about working from home, we’re in this together or we’re here for you. And when you first received a couple of these emails from companies, that might’ve been a nice gesture or sentiment, but when you got the twelfth or the fifteenth email, you just started deleting it, and this is leading customers to tune out and putting a premium on relevant communications.

7. And how will customer value change and impact the tactics that marketers use?

(09:59) B2B customers have long been frustrated with vendors and salespeople not listening to them or understanding their needs. So, now is the time to dig deeper and understand what’s changed in the customer’s world and how your company can deliver value.

On the tactical side, the first is really recognising that digital fatigue is real. So, customers and employees are just tired of being on video calls all day. It really hasn’t made anyone excited to sit through another eight-hour virtual event or concert, and yet I keep getting invited to two-day events that feature forty plus speakers. And on the one hand, that’s great because it’s now a global audience, you have access to people or events that you might not have previously had access to. But on the other hand, a two day back-to-back eight-hour event is just unrealistic in today’s business climate.

So, this is going to force marketers to become more creative, to cut through the noise to keep somebody engaged on a webinar. How do you make things more interactive and fun? Marketing specifically has been specialised and siloed over the last several years that the tactics don’t always seem integrated or cohesive. So, remember, the customer is interacting with your brand in a variety of formats from the web, to virtual events, to sales presentations and customer service calls. And all of this really needs to feel seamless and like it’s coming from the same company.

8. Simon, do you have any examples of brands who have done this effectively?

(11:27) Yes, so from my perspective, we’re all very familiar with some of the type of examples that Stacey talked about in the B2C world in our private lives. From gin distillers that flipped to producing hand sanitisers, clothing companies making face masks, and there’s a real funky paint colour matching service that you can get by touching a pen against any particular wall and matching it to a colour, which was part of the growth of home improvements during lockdown.

And some of the things we’ve seen in B2B are quite interesting, although they’re not always a direct correlation in size and agility. For example, IBM quickly developed six key offers that stood out for their customers in this time as the most relevant for the COVID world, and now including turning up services for the first time for organisations that have never worked remotely before. Palo Alto Networks is an American cloud company, and they quickly developed a resource centre to help customers to move into working in post-COVID environments to help with flexible working.

In terms of development of a brand-new offer. I also like an example that we found in the US that a company called Chappell who are a software company that track movements in big marketing events, using QR codes, et cetera. Well, they quickly developed a solution for a Boston construction company to help them track who was coming in and out of the key construction sites. It’s called Health Screener and that showed a great deal of agility. I think the warning here is for every company we saw moving with agility to respond to new needs, we found a frustrated marketeer working in a company where they knew customers wanted new solutions, but the company just couldn’t get out of each other’s way to get the new solution over the line, because it was just too cumbersome.

9. What do you think have been the key challenges for B2B marketeers’ as we transitioned through this pandemic?

(13:43) As we’ve hinted at, the challenges faced by B2B marketeers would have been very different depending on which sector they were in or which segments they serve. So, they would have found that the customers had got dramatically different fortunes at different ends of the extremes.

We can contrast, for example, the airline industry, which obviously came to a very rapid shutdown with organisations that provide technology like cloud services or video communications technology. And this contrast obviously mirrored on the supply side. Now, unfortunately, some people were furloughed, including people we know. For example, a marketeer that we know worked in an agency whose core business was serving UK pubs, a friend who actually looked after the trade side for a paint company, which just shows you that, you can’t take everything as being in one lump because while there was a boom in home decorating, obviously all the sort of building sites and the trade side of the companies work just came to a grinding halt.

So, while the B2C business grew, the B2B business was shut down almost overnight. So, if you serve more than one different customer, sector or segment, gone are the days of treating them all the same, and this amplifies the need for better segmentation and treating customers differently. As Stacey said earlier, we found that three main things came through, that companies started refreshing the messages, companies now need to focus more on being relevant and authentic to customers which could involve developing new offers, and finally, to focus more on customers value. I think that for individual marketeers, they probably need to be a lot more flexible about the roles that they would consider taking on and maybe move to create more skillsets.

10. What do you think will be the main obstacles for marketeers over the next year or so, as we continue to navigate through the current crisis?

(15:57) I think depending where they’re at, again you could contrast, but one of them could be budget. We met one person who said their company was going back to zero based budgets, which as you probably know, is a situation where you have to bid for every single pound or dollar that you’re looking to get to help take marketing initiatives forward, which is just a reflection that some organisations could be struggling. The other obstacle we think we’ll face is often what happens to marketeers, is they just get driven to try to deliver lots and lots of activity. You know, there’s activity illusion whereby the more you do the more you must be being productive. And they’ve had a lot of demands placed on them because as Stacey said, it’s harder for the salespeople to meet face-to-face with the customers, so they’re looking for more and more tactics to be developed. So, trying to step away from that and becoming more strategic is going to be the challenge.

11. Stacey, which skills do you think will be most important to ensure a successful career in B2B marketing in the future?

(17:09) Well, this is a great question, and one that is near and dear to our hearts as we’ve spent the last year researching and writing a book called Stand Out Marketing, which is due out in December about this very topic. So, we cover in this book five key competencies that marketers should seek to develop to get ahead and help their companies stand out.

They represent an acronym for value as that’s really the primary role of the marketer’s job, to create and communicate value for customers:

  • So, the first one is visionary. Having your pulse on the broader business environment to develop new products, insights, and ways of doing business.
  • The second one is activator. This is a bit broader than just the standard execution where marketing typically lives. This involves getting buy-in to initiatives and being the force that activates the team to help drive growth.
  • The third one is learner. Everything is changing all the time, so learning is an ongoing process. Whether that’s learning a new skill, like how to do Google Ads, learning about your competition or the changing world of your customers. This is really a mindset and something that we feel strongly that marketers need to continue to grow.
  • The fourth one is usefulness which is really about being relevant, practical, and differentiated in the programs, communications and products that are being launched and obviously you can’t really be useful unless you have your pulse again on the customer. So, that kind of ties back to being constantly in tune.
  • And then the last is evaluator. This is what’s working and what’s not, what insights can be found. There’s a plethora of data out there. A lot of technology and companies that are talking about big data and intent data, but really the skillset here is about how you evaluate that data and what you’re going to do with it. How do you interpret it? And then how do you take action against it?

Great, thanks Stacey. So, it’s obvious that marketeers need to look at their skill sets just to make sure that they’re covering as many bases as possible.

Click here to pre-order their new book, Stand-out Marketing

12. How can marketers go about effectively upskilling to learn or demonstrate some of these key traits that you just mentioned?

(19:24) Yes, well, for one, listening to podcasts like this are helpful to continue to upskill and learn new things. We’re going to have a deeper dive podcast with Hays to go into the competencies and give you guys some action items around each of those, but for now we really urge marketers to do some self-reflection and understand where they may have gaps. There’s always room for improvement and many marketers just don’t always want to admit that.

So, we have conversations with marketing professionals all the time and on the surface, they’ll say, yes, we’re doing all of this, everything looks great and everything is working well but if you peel back the onion, one layer down, there’s a lot of depth missing there. So, I think, part one is just really being self-aware and doing some reflection as to what is most important to them. Where do they really want to see their career go? And then developing a framework and a plan to get there.

13. And Simon, do you think certain marketing roles will become more important in this new era of work?

(20:28) Well, I think point number one here is, as we’ve probably already drawn out is the good news. If there can be any good news in this day and age, it’s the overall role of marketing seems to have been elevated in B2B as a result of the pandemic. Well, we’ve always found that marketing is more than just marketing communications or increasingly digital marketing communications. And what really surprised us in our interviews was the kind of organisations who were saying, “What we’re seeing now is much more than just events because we can’t have face-to-face events anymore. I mean, it’s just rarely some of the big blue chips that were saying that to us.

So, now’s the time for marketing departments to elevate themselves above just collateral and events and to become more than just the colouring in any department. So, go beyond tactical execution to a more strategic place where marketing drives what customers you serve, in what marketplaces, with what products and services and crucially with what competitive advantage.

So, while in the short-term companies like Hays, saw a big uptake in demand for digital skills as more marketing moved online, also seeing jobs like project management, becoming more to the fore as some of the leaders we actually spoke to held the view that maybe there’s going to be a need for more generalists, as projects come together quickly to deliver specific new propositions or campaigns. We’d also say that if you’re in an execution role, just elevate yourself and don’t just execute. For example, if you’re the social media marketing manager, think about the overall strategy you’re trying to deliver against. Think about what’s relevant and specific to your customer because if you don’t, you could be in trouble.

14. I’m just moving on to the last question now, which is something that we ask all our guests. If you had one piece of advice to help our listeners navigate their careers through the pandemic and beyond, what would that be?

(22:39) Well, I think keep your eyes and ears open to how things are developing. Make time for yourself to develop new skills and competencies in tune with these trends. Step out of your comfort zone and ask for assignments that will test you.

In B2B marketing, it seems to be more and more the case, especially in bigger companies that if you’re going to start in a very narrow silo role, like say digital communications, but you’ve got an aspiration to become a Vice President or a CMO, you’ve got to be able to demonstrate strategic understanding.

So, as I said earlier, apply that kind of thinking to your role as of today, give yourself time to learn and don’t use all your time executing. Also working in companies of different sizes can also broaden your competencies because contrasting with working in a big company, if you’re the marketing guy in an SME, you might be it. So, you got a full spectrum of the roles you’ve got to develop and deliver against.

15. Finally, the same question to you too Stacey. If you had one piece of advice to help listeners navigate their careers throughout the crisis and beyond what would that be?

(23:53) Yes, well, I will end with a story. So, one of the companies that I worked for had a lot of ‘Type A’ personalities. When we would develop a marketing campaign, everyone would want to share their opinion on the messaging, look and feel. Product management, inside sales, field sales, brand marketing, everyone would sit around the table and basically argue about what was most important to the customer. This was very frustrating and unproductive as everyone had a different perspective.

So, one time my team decided to bring in a third-party resource that specialised in customer research for our industry. And after they shared their key findings related to customer sentiments and motivations and goals, do you know what happened? Everyone stopped talking. They were all wrong. And it was a very important lesson for me that when you have real unbiased customer feedback, nobody can argue with it, after all you are not your customer.

So, my advice is really to earn yourself a seat at the table by presenting real customer input. You know, the data is good as we’ve talked about, but you need to have conversations with real customers to make it even better, and to be able to deliver growth constantly, reiterate on your marketing programs and be successful.

Did you enjoy this podcast? Here is some related content that you may be interested in:

 

Listen on Apple Podcasts

If you’ve experienced redundancy, it’s easy to be concerned about how it will affect your future opportunities. However, you shouldn’t be afraid to communicate it clearly on your CV and in interviews.

Remember, you’re not the only person who’s been made redundant, and there are several reasons for it that don’t reflect poorly on you as an employee.

As you start your job search, it’s time to decide how best to explain your redundancy on your CV and in interviews and own the narrative. Here are some ways to acknowledge your redundancy as you search for a new role. 

Your career can bounce back from redundancy

If you’ve recently been made redundant, you may feel as though you’re facing an uncertain future. Once the initial shock subsides and your thoughts turn to the job search.

However disheartened you may feel, know that you can make a difference to another employer. Many people have been through redundancy and you shouldn’t feel ashamed of your current situation.

How soon after redundancy can you start a new job? 

Once your employer makes you redundant, the terms and conditions of your contract and redundancy package will determine when you can start a new job. If there are no restrictive clauses, you can start a new job once your redundancy notice period ends. 

Explaining your redundancy to a new employer on your CV

Does being made redundant look bad on a CV? No. Companies make such decisions on commercial grounds. Redundancy is never a personal reflection of you, your skills or your value. When addressing your redundancy on your CV, make sure you follow our guide: 

1. Include the start and end dates of your previous employment 

Be honest and succinct about your redundancy on your CV. Include the start and finishing dates for your last period of employment. Showing how long you worked for your employer will help you appear open about the situation.  

2. Clearly address your reasons for leaving 

In one or two lines, explain how your employment ended. Discuss this in the context of broader organisational or economic changes. Then you can use the rest of the space to talk about your skills and experience.  

3. Highlight any key achievements from your last role 

Try not to dwell on your redundancy on your CV. Your main focus should be on any recent achievements or projects that you are proud of. Learn how to enhance your CV with quantifiable evidence of your skills, competencies and results. 

4. List any activities you’ve been involved in since being made redundant 

Talk about how you have been spending your time since being made redundant. Mention any upskilling in the professional summary section of your CV. You can also add any voluntary work to the work experience section.  

How to explain your redundancy in an interview

If you feel nervous about the interviewer asking for more details, prepare and practise your answers in advance. You can also try taking into account the below strategies: 

1. Take the opportunity to explain the circumstances of your redundancy 

If the interviewer asks you to expand on the circumstances of your redundancy, be ready to elaborate. Specifically, mention whether there were multiple redundancies in your department. You may also want to discuss how you responded to the risk of redundancy, to demonstrate your proactive attitude. 

2. Reference your successes from your previous role  

Your accomplishments are no less valid simply because of your redundancy. Talk about the achievements that best demonstrate your suitability for the job. 

3. Talk positively about your previous employer 

Don’t blame or speak negatively about your previous employer. Any discussion should be in the context of your learning and achievements during your tenure. Explain how you are refocusing on your new career goals and exciting next steps.  

4. Explain why this particular role is a good fit for you 

Don’t give the impression that you are looking for a short term solution for returning to work. Make it clear that you are interested in this specific opportunity. Describe why this is the logical next step for you and why you’re the right choice for the job.

Turn your life after redundancy into a rewarding new chapter in your career

Employers are going to understand your situation. Addressing your redundancy clearly and in a positive manner won’t damage your chances of securing a new role. In fact, many employers appreciate an immediately available candidate who doesn’t have to work a full notice period.

Keep focusing on the positives in your life and career. Try to apply a growth mindset to your situation. You will learn a lot from this experience, even if you can’t see it right now. Good luck!

What to do next

Once you’ve finished the first draft of your CV, it’s time to review. Discover how to replace overused clichés here, or return to our full series on writing a CV.

Meanwhile, if you’re preparing for an interview, learn how to explain any gaps in your CV.