"In order to be irreplaceable, one must always be different." The next time you're on the way to a job interview, remember this quote.

Stay Informed, Volunteer, Network, Invest and most importantly, look after yourself.

Imagine you’ve had a lay off - this is not a deal breaker when applying for a new job. This is more the reason to write a cover letter where you can put this in to context, how you used the time, the skills you developed, and so on.

Making sure you have ticked all of the boxes when applying for a role, and sprucing up a CV with a relevant cover letter before application.

An example of a parallel job to a primary job might be something like a “side gig” or a “side hustle”. But how are these viewed by a potential employer?

Careers have their ups and downs. Often this can be driven by changes in the macro market, but this is generally personal. Many of us rely on our identity from work. Work provides us with a sense of social interaction and productivity that we desperately need - and remote work may not give us that full requirement. 

Everyone has been guilty of under or overusing bullet points and getting the balance right can be the difference between engaging the hiring manager in your accomplishments or having your CV swiftly left to one side. Remember, it’s your CV and you need to be comfortable with it and should ignore any advice you don't like.

You have your name staring back at you, your address, your email address and your telephone number (will address why this shouldn't be here in a later article). What goes next?

You have to start somewhere

Internships are a great way of getting appropriate, invaluable and best of all, paid work experience. But competition for places is very high usually, especially at larger, better-known companies. Internships can also be quite expensive for those who are having to move location in order to work in said role, and as you can expect to not be earning as much as a full-time employee, this can cause problems of its own.

Whether you are looking for your first job or looking to change the one you are in, you always want to maximise your options, and applying for as many jobs as possible is the way a lot of people tend to go about that. Logically, the more jobs you apply to the greater your chances are of getting hired but, is this a flawed approach?

It is important for any person to have a full comprehension of what our individual strengths and weaknesses are, as a person. Now of course, it’s easy to identify somethings with hindsight, or with helpful and constructive feedback from others, but what is far more difficult is trying to identify your strengths and weaknesses yourself.