Category: job; career; money; raise; pay; increase

business, career, culture, emotional intelligence, job; career; money; raise; pay; increase, relationships, self improvement, society

How to get a ‘radio voice’

bruceandholly

I am with Education Secretary Lucy Powell when it comes to teaching young people how to be better communicators.

How you speak defines who you are. It defines how everyone else in the world will react to you. I’m sorry if I’m sounding a little old-fashioned. Perhaps a little too much of the ‘My Fair Lady’. But it’s the truth.

Yes I know that it’s cool to speak like Ali G. 20 years ago every young person in the UK aspired to speak like Ali G. Even some radio and TV presenters spoke like Ali G. But I’m sorry to tell you that Ali G is a pretend character. Sacha Baron Cohen doesn’t talk like Ali G when he is speaking to his agent. And speaking like Ali G is never going to get you that job in the City

It’s also why being ‘well spoken’ was so important to my parents when I was growing up in Essex. Particularly to Lilian, my late mother. Perhaps it was something to do with London’s East End, where she grew up and where any affected accent was deemed ‘la di da’. It was all to do with social mobility. But being well spoken isn’t about being la di da. It is about being clear, articulate and grammatically correct. Pronouncing the ends of your words. Not the Tony Blair glottal stop. In other words ‘sounding educated’.

Many years ago, a former line manager told me that my accent was ‘neutral’. He said it as a compliment. That it would be accepted anywhere. Years later, someone commented that I had a ‘radio voice’. Again, it was said as a compliment. So how do you get that elusive ‘radio voice’. Here are my tips:

  • Listen to yourself. I guarantee you’ll be shocked. I certainly was when I heard my 999 telephone call to the police being broadcast to Uxbridge Magistrates, when I was appearing as I witness for the prosecution in a case where I had seen a woman being attacked in the street. Did I really sound like that?
  • Get in the habit of using voice dictation in your work. Just as I am using voice dictation in the writing of this article. Voice dictation is fickle. If it can’t understand what you are sayng, it will just refuse to transcribe. It might even respond to you with a mouthful of abuse. When you use voice dictation you have to emphasize every vowel and consonant.
  • Look for every opportunity to speak in public. Learn the art of public speaking. Read my article ‘How to be a Great Speaker’. Join a speaker’s club where you can practice your skill week in and week out. Learn to think on your feet. Not like Trump’s new press secretary. If you can communicate well you will gain self-confidence. It will change your life
career, interview, job; career; money; raise; pay; increase, jobs, Law, Uncategorized

Your First Job: Key Tips for Young Job Seekers

bruceandholly
Aurora Department Store building with large glass windows and people walking outside
Shoppers enter and exit the illuminated Aurora Department Store during evening hours

With more than a million young people in the UK not in employment, education or training (NEETS), getting your first paid job has never been more difficult. But hasn’t getting your first permanent paid job always been difficult? When you have nothing to offer but a few paper qualifications and your enthusiasm? Yes – but it’s never been as difficult is it is today. We start by explaining the reasons for this sad state of affairs before looking at what you can do about it. Here are the reasons:

  • The modern trend of referring to our 16 and 17-year-olds as ‘children’ to be mollycoddled. Mixing them in with 11-year-olds. Banning under 16s from social media instead of making them streetwise. And then wondering why they act stupid. I was 14 years old when I bought my first packet of Players No 6 from a cigarette machine in a fish and chip shop. Just to look ‘big’. But it never did me any harm and I gave up smoking 5 years later. In other cultures it is different. Elsewhere in the world young people are not held back. They are encouraged to ‘grow up’, take on the family responsibilities and contribute. Maybe we can learn something.
  • Language illiteracy. The fact that learning foreign languages is not prioritized in the UK. Instead we expect everyone else in the world to accommodate us. The one thing I remember about learning French at secondary school was that I never actually met anyone who was French. In fact you were more likely to be taught by the woodwork teacher. Has anything improved since? I don’t think so.
  • The regulating away of the Saturday job. Forget paper rounds. No one gets their papers delivered anymore. It was the Saturday job which for many young people provided the gateway to paid employment. Unpaid work experience or internship is no substitute for a wage packet. The fact is that there are now many administrative hurdles for any business thinking about taking on a Saturday worker. If a person is under the age of 16, application has to be made to the local authority for a child employment permit, otherwise employers and public liability insurance might be invalidated. Young people require supervision at the till if they are serving restricted items like alcohol or cigarettes or lottery tickets. For most employers it is just not worth a hassle. Recruiting a Saturday person now requires more than just a 20-minute interview and a gut feeling
  • When you apply for your first ‘proper’ job, you are asking a prospective employer to take a ‘punt’. Because you have nothing to offer but a few paper qualifications and your enthusiasm. But the stakes for a prospective employer are much higher when everyone has day-one ‘rights’.

So what can you do to improve your prospects of getting that first job? Here are some tips:

  • To apply for a job vacancy, you first have to know about it. So you register with agencies. Look around to see what his advertised. Speak to people. But don’t get scammed, If someone asked you to send payment up front or to provide your bank details, you know it is a scam. Or if it is just too good to be true? Like becoming a crypto millionaire.
  • Don’t use AI to write your CV. Chances are it will filch from someone else’s CV. And you want a prospective employer to know about you and not your computer. So it’s got to be original and interesting and packed with examples which only you can talk about. Even using AI to check your spelling or grammar can be dangerous as it will default to American English. So maybe best to refer to an old-fashioned dictionary.
  • The likability factor. No one is going to offer you a job unless they like you. And first impressions count. So you throw away that hoodie and cover up those tattoos. Take a genuine interest in the job which is offered and find out as much as you can about it in advance so that you have something to talk about if you are called for interview. Buy a copy of Dale Carnegie’s ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People’ and read it. Likability can be learned. It’s the basic stuff like taking an interest in people and the world around you; taking the trouble to remember somebody’s name; treating everyone you deal with as ‘important’, even if they are sweeping the streets. Not breaking eye contact to look at your mobile phone.
  • Be presentable. The good news is that it is not expensive to look smart. So go to Primark or order off Amazon. Nobody is going to look at the label.
  • Think about learning another language. Because it will give you work-mobility. If you can speak some of the biggest languages, you can work anywhere in the world. Yes I know it’s difficult. Even though there are excellent programs like Duolingo. Problem is, it’s a solo activity. Everything is online. When you really need someone to practice with.
  • Polish up your communication skills both written and face to face. Remember that most of our communication is non-verbal. Hence the importance of eye contact. Don’t – don’t – don’t look at your phone when you are being interviewed. Switch it off and keep it in your pocket. Even if you don’t like football or cricket, at least listen to the sports news, because you need it for the ‘small talk’. Talking about sport is not going to upset anyone. One of the best ways to improve communication skills is practice. So join your local Toastmasters Club.

In the final part of this post, I’m going to introduce you to the world’s most exciting profession. Here it is

business, culture, job; career; money; raise; pay; increase, self improvement, society, Uncategorized, writing

Selling Your Writing in a Changing Market

bruceandholly
Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com

Ever since the first words were written many thousands of years ago, writing for publication has been about knowing the secrets of selling.  It’s about knowing how to grab a reader’s attention in the first line.  How to interest your reader in what you are about to say.  How to keep them reading.  And to provide your reader with a call to action.  In other words, something for the reader to take away.  Being a successful freelance writer is also about studying changes in the editorial markets and adapting to those changes by changing your own business model.

30 years ago there were always opportunities for someone who knew their subject and could write to a publishable standard, to earn a good second income writing for professional and trade journals.  There was also the excitement of receiving money through your letter-box.  But no-one writes cheques any more.  And editors no longer have to pay freelancers to fill their pages, because they receive so much quality material free of charge from businesses wishing to promote their goods and services.  But even promotional material has to be professionally written.  And someone has to be paid to write it.  Why not you?

Forget expensive newspaper and TV advertising.  The most cost effective way to promote the sale of goods and services is on the Internet.  It’s about drawing the casual Internet browser to your website and to the goods and services you are offering.  Today, the ‘keyword’ is king.  It is about trying to anticipate the words and phrases which your prospective customer is going to type into their search engine, when they are looking for the type of goods and services which you are offering.  It is those critical keywords which must be incorporated within your promotional material to draw those prospective customers to your website.

So what about artificial intelligence (AI)?  Is that going to make freelance writers redundant?  If your computer can write your promotional material, why do you need to pay a copywriter? 

They said the same thing about secretaries when word processing was invented at the end of the 1970s.  But it didn’t happen.  Instead, the amount of paperwork ballooned.  The issue with any piece of written work generated entirely by a computer is that it lacks originality.  I learned that when I asked my computer to generate some promotional material for a book I had written.  Instead, it repeated back to me the promotional material which I had already written.  I’m sure that if I asked my computer to compose my next Eurovision hit, it would come back to me with a mishmash of every successful Eurovision entry which had ever been written, including words and music from ABBA’s ‘Waterloo’.  Is that going to convince anyone?  I don’t think so.  ‘United Kingdom – Nil points.’

Just to show you how modern marketing works, I have included at the end of this article, a link to my book, ‘Write Quick.  Get published.’ I’m not asking you to buy it.  Just to notice it.  And if you do notice it, please take a moment to look inside.  If you then decide to buy a copy, I’ll be raising a glass.  Cheers!

business, job; career; money; raise; pay; increase, Law

Told you have failed an examination which you have passed

bruceandholly
Photo by Sora Shimazaki on Pexels.com

According to the Law Society Gazette, 174 students were wrongly told that they had failed the Solicitors Qualifying Examination, when they had in fact been successful in those exams.

It happened to me half a century ago with the old Law Society Finals.  In those days, the results were published in The Times newspaper and later confirmed by letter.  If your name was not amongst the published list, it meant that you had failed. So, at 6.30 that August morning I rushed out and bought my copy of The Times.

Yippee!  My name was on the list.  But my jubilation turned to disappointment later that morning when I received through the post a letter from the College of Law commiserating me on my failure.  What was that all about?

It turned out that it was all a mistake.  The examiner had mixed up my name with someone else when posting out those important letters.  So I had passed after all.  Phew!