View from the Hill

Well, isn't it a lovely day...

... as Gorky's Zygotic Mynci once sang. And while my patio isn't quite on fire, the sunshine is looking pretty tempting today.

Being stuck in an office, staring at the sun out of the window and knowing you're going to be inside for the entire day is incredibly annoying, particularly if it's forecast to rain at the weekend. Four out of five respondents in a BT survey described themselves as 'unmotivated' knowing that they will be stuck indoors while the sun is shining, and 65 per cent even claimed that the lack of exposure to sunlight made them 'depressed'.

So what can you do to stay motivated when the sun is shining? The most obvious thing is to use your lunch hour to get a bit of vitamin D. Go for a walk or a run, go and sit in the local park for a bit or head to a cafe with outdoor seating. It never ceases to amaze me how many people stay at their desks with a sandwich when it's a lovely day. It may go against prevailing long-hours office culture but getting some fresh air and a proper break is more likely to make you more productive in the afternoon and any boss who can't see that is a fool. 

BT were actually encouraging their workers last summer to take advantage of the growth of remote and mobile working technology and work outside. While that's quite appealing it seems to me to have a number of problems: finding a safe and secure location to work in with reliable wifi; keeping track of employees; covering the phones or the enquiry desk; getting a headache from squinting at your laptop screen. Also, it seems that mobile working is currently on the decline, as fears over possible redundancies make workers want to be "seen to be doing their job" in the office.

So while wifi and an ice-cream on the beach seems to be unrealistic for most people, a lunchtime stroll will have to do. Go on, if last year is anything to go by, it might be the last bit of sun we see all year!

Lazy, bad mannered or just plain selfish?

Just every now and again I could scream.

Every day we hold interviews to enable people who are job seeking to register and come and present to us not just their credentials (Passport, ID checks etc) but also to chat about what they want so we can make a good match.  We offer Saturdays too as we know not everyone can get here during the week.

You would be surprised how many people don't bother to turn up and can't, don't or won't make the effort to phone, email or wite to let us know or to apologise.  If my team are prepared to give up a Saturday they expect people on the list to show.  Last week there were three who couldnt be bothered.  Particularly annoying as there was a waiting list.  How selfish is that?   Could we trust those people to turn up at a job interview?

On the day the snow was deep and crisp and even and not even London's buses were running, we had an interview candidate arrive on time who had walked to get here.  Good to know the world isnt totally going to pot.

On that note I am off for a little r&r.

Is your CV ready?

You’ve probably heard it said before but it bears repetition, ‘treat your CV as a marketing document’, and what is important about all marketing?  It’s current.

I have told many people how essential it is to have an up to date CV ready to roll and recently I was required to practise what I preach when I was required to submit my CV as part of a tender with a tight deadline.  I hadn’t updated my CV in almost four years and had in fact lost it, so with a sigh of resignation I was faced with a blank A4 page and the problem of trying to calculate what year I graduated.  I was pleasantly surprised to discover that half an hour later I was done!

Keeping on top of your CV is important but it doesn’t have to be tedious or time consuming. We recently helped someone find a new job at a government agency.  When we spoke to her about the job the deadline for application was the following day and her CV was nowhere near current; ‘I will send you an updated version in a week or so.’  Luckily she was persuaded to bring this to the top of her to-do list (a subject close to Fiona’s heart) and a week later rather than sending us an updated CV she had already been offered the job.

Time management and to-do lists

I confess, I am a to-do list addict. At the start of each day, I optimistically list everything I need to do and then I'm generally disappointed to get to the end of the day to find that not only have I only achieved about half of what I had planned but that I've accumulated several new items as well. I then add everything undone for that day on the next day's list and so it feels like my to-do list is never-ending.

What to do then, work harder or give up the lists altogether? I was delighted to read these simple suggestions on to-do lists in This Column Will Change Your Life by Oliver Burkeman in the Guardian on Saturday. I am hopeful that they will finally enable me to get the lists under control...

• Keep two lists a "master list", which you should never expect to "finish", and a daily list, created by selecting tasks from the master list.
• When making the daily list, pick the three or four most important things, and really commit to doing them, even if you think they'll take you only a couple of hours.
• The daily list should be a "closed list": new work floods in constantly, but don't add it to the current day's list unless it's an emergency: keep that list "closed" and add the incoming items to the master list.

Happily my favourite activity - adding tasks you've already completed for the joy of ticking them off - is allowed!