Ms Cyprah

In a competitive job market, where it is already difficult for job seekers to get noticed, trying to convince managers in a totally different field that they should recruit you to their team is likely to be a Herculean task, but it can be done with some thought, determination and positivity. The one thing you cannot do is to use the same old resume you had for your old jobs to cross over into something else. In fact, you might not even need a resume at all, just a longer covering letter, depending on your objective.

Getting into a new field depends on whether you are merely transferring the skills you already have or are making a significant change in direction. There are two forms of emphasis when you are changing career fields: one is emotional, if the change is drastic, and the other is transitional, if the change is minimal.

1. Transitional

With a transitional objective, your skills are likely to be transferable (something you developed in your old career being applicable to a new one). There will be connecting links between the new field and your old one and you will be able to identify those links easily between the jobs and responsibilities you have had to the one you are hoping to get. For example, from being an accountant in the construction industry to being a bursar in a school. Transitional posts are often accessed through regular research into the field, networking with people from it and learning about the skills and qualifications necessary to get into it. Skills that can be transferred would include those gained perhaps from your former career, a hobby or volunteer experience, etc. For example, if you were very good in communication as a lecture or teacher, you could use that in marketing to help write press releases or persuade people to buy goods and services.

Make a list of your most desirable and related qualifications, which should be the key part of your resume, then build everything else around them. Choose a chronological, or historical, format for writing your resume where your career history will be plainly seen. You can either begin or end with your qualifications, but the actual skills and accomplishments related to the new the job should be very clear to see. It is important to mention your new career objective and why you wish to change. It means that employers won’t assume you’re staying in your old field.

A single page covering letter stating your objective of moving into the new field through your acquired knowledge and skills, and why it would be beneficial to do so, would also help your application.

2. Emotional
For a dramatic change in jobs, you would need what I call the ‘emotional’ approach, where it would be an emphasis on feelings, accomplishments and desires, especially in the covering letter, rather than actual work and qualifications. Your resume would be in the ‘functional’ style where it would downplay your former career, while drawing out the related skills from it that would be useful in your new job.

The beginning of your resume should start with your new career goal, a summary of your qualifications and then the skills you believe you have that would be very useful in achieving this new goal. You could end the resume with a brief listing of your past jobs, emphasising only the relevant ones which would match or enhance the new post. You have to demonstrate why you are particularly interested in this new field and how both you and the employer would benefit from your switching fields.



The cover letter should emphasise your knowledge of, and passion for, the new industry you’d like to enter and any related experience/training you have in it. This is where you would stress your own motivation, enthusiasm and keenness to get stuck into your new career, one that would benefit the employer’s objectives and operation. It would be mainly about your accomplishments, your need for new challenges and your need to keep up to date with new technology and skills. You would also stress your desire to learn, to enhance your own development, despite your age (if you are older) and to put all the experience and knowledge you have had to even better use.

This covering letter could be sent on its own without the resume, if you wish to give a flavour of who you are and what you are seeking first, but you have to be prepared to produce your resume if required.

The emotional approach would take the focus away from your lack of suitability for the new job and place it on your potential to contribute to the new business in a expert way they might not have envisaged. In that way, you might turn a sceptical employer into a welcoming one.

Finance is a wide field: from the basic selling insurance, to banking to investments, it is all about looking after clients’ interest and making money, so it tends to be a pretty stressful career. Most finance professionals are involved in selling insurance packages of one kind or another in order to protect people and their loved ones from the adverse financial effects of not having an income, perhaps having an accident, or even dying.

Others concentrate on the savings element for children’s education or for a special goal. The main aim in a finance career is thus to persuade people to take the services on offer. Interviewers will be seeking to test how candidates will cope under pressure and thus all questions will be geared to teasing that out in various ways.

1. Tell me something about yourself. What really motivates you?
This is the opening classic. It seeks to know more about the applicant primarily to assess whether their motivation matches with the company expectations. Whether the person is self motivated or they have to be directed. If the job involves selling financial packages, this question seeks to identify the kind of personality being interviewed, the level of confidence involved and the ability to get a particular message across to reluctant clients. A person motivated by getting results, communicating with, or empowering, others would be highly sought after.

2. What brings you to the job market at this point in your career?
People move from job to job all the time. The trick here is not to sound as though you are just leaving one job for another perhaps mainly for money but not for any great purpose. This is where you need to show that you have explored the financial field and quote a few elements in it which have attracted your attention and convinced you that this move is now right for you. Mention some specifics of what you have done before and how they would now match with, or enhance, your new role. Quote the trends in lifestyles, like older people who now have more money to spend and more time to enjoy their life with greater security which the financial services can provide, or even the recent movements on the stockmarket and the effect that could have on ordinary people’s lives. By noting the latest trends, it will help to demonstrate that you understand the financial markets much better than another candidate might.

3. What would success in your chosen field mean to you?
This question is particularly useful to interviewers to identify where you are now and exactly where you are heading. It is really about your own goals and aspirations in life. If you are ultimately looking for a secure and cosy job, finance wouldn’t really suit you. There are too many fortunes to be won and lost in this field, and more often lost, for anyone to rest on their laurels. The more ambitious you sound, the more you are likely to appeal to the company because only self-belief and hard graft work in these situations.

4. Describe how you provided great service to a difficult client after a shaky start.
This question aims to establish your level of persistence as well as your ability to get results. The answer you give will determine how fit you are for the job. If you don’t expect setbacks in the financial business, you would not be able to cope with it. There will be lots of difficult clients who will have fears around their money or are ignorant of the kind of services you might be able to offer them. Raising awareness and persuasion would be the key, along with resilience and determination in the face of scepticism. if you are not keen to try again when you hit a hurdle, if you are not determined enough to see every failure is really a temporary setback that also teaches you as much as success does, then you won’t last very long in this pressure house. How you handle others when things don’t go to plan tell far more about your character and capacity for real success than anything else. It also demonstrates that you will be more appreciative of the difficult task ahead.

5. Give an example of the approaches you have used to convince your team, colleagues or managers of your views.
This question homes in on your team skills. Working with people in the finance industry is crucial, with their being different aspects to clients’ requirements. Everyone’s input goes toward the end result. Working well with others also makes for a more fulfilling workplace and gets much more done than people merely competing against each other. This teases out your own competence in dealing with others, your persuasive skills and your ability to get results.

6. Describe two major achievements in your life.
These can be anything you think matters a great deal to you, but at least one of them should relate to your career so that you give a rounded impression of your capabilities. This is the time to really go for broke and talk about what those achievements were, the difficulties you faced in reaching them, what helped you to be successful with them in the end and the feeling you had when you did attain your goals. Finally, you should add what they have meant to your life since. Try to chose achievements that also relate to the job you are seeking, or that will give an idea of how those successes can be translated to the new job. These achievements also show what really matters to you and how you might repeat them in this job.

7. Do you prefer to work with words or numbers?
This can be a trick question because you need BOTH words and numbers in the financial field. Words have to be used to get clients on board while numbers assess their take up of the services. You may lean towards one or another, but someone skilled in both areas will make a far better employee in reaching clients and pushing up the earnings.

8. In what way do you think you can contribute to our company?
This is a very important question and your answer will depend on how much you have researched the company, how much you understand its achievements already and future goals and how you see yourself adding to their development and bottom line success. Financial companies are looking to make money, lots of it. They are looking for bright sparks with new ideas, fearless imagination and huge ambition. They have to see examples of how you would work for them, what new business you might generate and how you would help to keep those profit margins up before they are convinced you should be taken on board. It is up to you to show the confidence and skill that will be needed.

9. What do you expect your starting salary to be?
Do not be backward in coming forward on this important issue. Decide what you’re worth before the interview and stick to your guns. Be prepared to explain why you want that too, but don’t undervalue yourself. It is better to state a high figure and have them negotiate downwards than to set a very low starting salary that leaves you at a disadvantage from the very beginning.

10. What’s the main reason why we should hire you for this position?
Talk about the role and what it means to you to get it. Identify just one key reason why you wish to work for that company. Usually it would relate to the reputation the organisation has or the actual perks and conditions it offers for your enhancement and development. Whatever it is make sure that it sets the company in a good, possibly unique, light. That you would be getting, or giving something which is obviously not available elsewhere.

I guess I would. There are a number of reasons why I would leave work if I won the lottery, and most of them are practical and necessary. The main reason for quitting my job is that having won the money, why would I wish to hold on to a job that someone else could then have? That’s rather selfish. Secondly, no matter how one might pretend that winning the lottery won’t make a difference to one’s life, it will, as night follows day, no matter how ‘normal’ one will try to live after the win. Other people will make sure one has to change. 



To begin with, winning the lottery is a major gift and should be appreciated. Many people tend to suffer from guilt after winning big sums by hardly living any differently and fearing that they might appear ‘flash’ or ’stuck-up’ to their friends and neighbours. But the best thing one can do with such good fortunes is to give thanks, donate some of it to others, pamper relatives and close friends, then move away from the district to somewhere where one is not known and one can start a new life in privacy. That’s the only way one would be able to lead any kind of normal existence, living among people with money too who do not know how you got yours and how much you have. 



That action is important because money causes envy and jealousy. No matter how people try to ignore it, or pretend not to notice someone else’s good fortune, when it happens to a close friend or neighbour, all sorts of psychological effects come into being. Friends begin to worry that you might think they are now interested in your money; neighbours start watching how you are going to deal with it, and whether you will get above yourself and snooty, how much you will spend, whether you will be mean or generous, what you will give away and how you will deal with it. No matter how much you might try to act as you have always done before, having millions in your bank which other people know about is guaranteed to change their attitude towards you when they have so little. It’s human nature if you are struggling and your relative just came into money. Difficult to know how to treat them. 



So the best thing is always to give up the job within a week, without too much fuss, gather friends and families around you for drinks and presents, and get the hell out of there to a new life of comfort and fulfilling your dreams! To give thanks for your windfall by making the most of it.

All retail jobs have to do with people, day in and day out, relentlessly. Shops and superstores are there to serve customer needs. Getting on with people, communicating with them, giving value for money and keeping them happy will be the four essential requisites for such a job. The emphasis would be on customer service and care, dealing with difficult clients and ensuring the best quality service possible. The aim at any job interview is to find out whether you are the type of person who can deal with others effectively, who can cope in a crisis and who has very good communication skills. Interviewers would be trying to get to know your strengths in dealing with others and whether you are the right fit for the function you would be helping to execute.

1. What experience in retail have you had to qualify you for this position?
This is really about your career history but don’t make it into a boring autobiography. Identify things you have done which match the current job role and describe them briefly so that your experience speaks for itself. For example, if you have been used to buying merchandise or working in the after care section make sure that the one you highlight aligns well with what you would also be doing in the new job. Pointless stressing your role as a buyer if you will be dealing with customer complaints, though you can mention it briefly. Make sure you also add what you would like to learn too, even if you have no experience of it, which shows your varied interests and desire to grow. Whatever you say, honesty is of the essence here.

2. What did you enjoy most and least in your last job?
This is another very good question because it helps to pin down what makes you tick, what you really like and what would put you off. This is about self-knowledge. You need to appreciate what turns you on and off and what has helped to get you to where you are today. For example, if the things you didn’t enjoy were allied to what you are applying for now, that would rule you out because you would be getting more of the same in another form. It also helps to draw out your sincerity in what you really desire in your life. So make sure you really know how you felt about your last job so that you can identity what you liked and disliked about it in order to get more of the enjoyable bits.

3. What interests do you have outside your work?
This shows whether you are a one-dimensional person who just plays football, for example, or someone who also uses their brains and is not just tied to one activity. More important, sometimes companies promote a particular sport among their staff and would like team players for it. For example. if you are a good golfer, that could come in handy for company golfing events and would add to your appeal. Again you have to be honest here, or it could come back to haunt you!!

4. What experiences have you had in dealing with difficult customers?
The reputation of a company controls its profit margins. A bad reputation means fewer customers. If you cannot handle difficult customers, that would be a major stumbling block for you in a job where dealing with irritated members of the public will be routine. Start generally but select one incident soon afterwards and describe the outcome of that. Be very clear about the circumstances, what happened and how you dealt with it, especially how you resolved any tricky issues that arose. The main aim is to see you in action and how you would look after yourself and others in a crisis. The key words here are mutual respect, listening to the customer, being calm in the face of irritation and concluding the situation positively.

5. How would your co-workers describe you?
This is one of the most important questions about how you are perceived by others, and your ability to work in a team, not how you would like them to see you. It mustn’t sound too gushing and syrupy or too negative. A healthy balance in your personality and aptitude would go down well. Descriptions that include mainly positive observations will make you appear more realistic and human. However, stress aspects to do with your ability to do the job, not just personal things. For example, they would probably comment on your enthusiasm and keenness to learn, your knowledge of the merchandise or how you deal with customers in a very empowering way.

6. How long would you expect to work for us?
This is often a difficult one because, though most people seek security and companies do not wish to be recruiting every minute, often a bad fit leads to short stays. The recruitment process is a long and expensive one, especially where agencies are used to introduce the candidate, so companies seek to avoid that at where possible. The best response is to indicate that you expect to be with the company for a few years, noting that you would enjoy being part of any expansion which will aid your personal development. If you can reassure an employer that you would be there for a reasonable time you are more likely to be considered. Young women candidates tend to unfairly get this question more than men, because of the possibility of pregnancy later on, but that should not be a barrier to having a permanent job or be used in a bias way against them.

7. Do you prefer to have a job with set tasks and responsibilities, or where your tasks change on a frequent basis?
This question aims to separate the leaders from the followers. If you are good at using your initiative and being self-directed then you would be different in approach and appeal from someone who prefers closer direction, more routine and more regularity. By stating which type of job you prefer the interviewers would be able to see your potential development while gauging your personality and ambitions more accurately. Be clear about which would suit you so that you would then be placed in the right environment for your growth. For example, if you are easily bored, then a changing routine would be much more appropriate to motivate you. Your response here could help place you when assigning tasks.

8. Tell me about the worst boss you have had.
Be careful with this one. It is very tempting when one is feeling comfortable to rubbish past bosses to make the potential one feel better, what I call giving them the halo effect while you turn your former boss into the devil! Please resist it. This is not a time just for negativity. You are also showing your own quality if judgement with your reply. You can point out someone, nameless, say a couple of things they did that you felt hampered your development or irritated you. But the main thing to remember is to end on a positive note by pointing out other things the person did which helped you too or which you believe were fair. If you are only going to blame and accuse them, your interviewers will be wondering if that’s how you’ll be treating them too when you leave their company.

9. What qualities do you think are important to this position?
A very crucial question because the response will show your own understanding of the industry, your competence in producing those qualities and your judgement of what the job requires. The top skill is communication, both listening and dealing empathetically with customer and staff concerns. If you can reach out to others in ways which make them feel comfortable and heard, you would be a winner. A caring, helpful, inclusive and cheerful disposition is also extremely important to make people of all races and creed feel reassured and at ease. Respect for the customer, that he/she is always right, would be crucial too in crisis times. The personal qualities would all revolve around people skills and anyone who has those, especially with a very bright and welcoming smile, would be definitely favoured for such a position.

10. In what ways do you think you can contribute to our store?
Hopefully, you would have thought about your personal impact you hope to make on the new job. People will not hire just for looks and personality. It is all about getting the job done in the public service, keeping the public and your colleagues happy. If you can contribute to making that happen in some way, you would be most valued. Is there anything you could better? Anything you could introduce to make the service more effective? Anything that could be changed, especially as you are a service user too? Any suggestion would show your careful thought about the job and the fact that you would be coming in to help to make that difference and the job a little bit more fulfilling for all concerned.

Not everyone can be a business person. If we didn’t have people to clear the rubbish, for example, we would all be down with various illnesses within two weeks. However, no matter what the individual aspires to do, make no mistake about it, in any diverse society, there will be a majority group who has the power base and who dictates the standards, mores and identifiable culture already in existence. For the outsider to thrive in such an environment, regardless of their brain power or personal merit, and particularly within the administrative and political systems, they have to be given the access to do so by that majority.

People of African origin, the world over, gravitate towards the caring professions (45% of NHS staff is Black and Asian, yet they make up only 10% of this country) and in the USA, 68% of people serving that country in various administrative posts are African Americans. The trouble with those professions is that they might earn the gratitude of the public but they tend to trap their staff in low paid, low status professions, at the mercy of the government, which lack the opportunity for wealth creation, personal influence or genuine advancement.

With these professions tending to be more glory than substance, particularly when very few Black people make it to the top through persistent discrimination (the UK National Health Service being a classic case in point), and everyone unable to become a business person, the scene is set for gross inequality for those who choose this public service route.

Whatever is happening around us is not by accident. It is easy to blame laws and governments, but it is our individual actions from the lowest to the highest which perpetuate those inequalities. If we, as a nation, are happy to have one section of our community excluded from the opportunity and access which are essential for individual and national growth, primarily on the basis of colour, what is it really saying about us? Is it also any wonder that we remain culturally backward, economically second-rate and trapped in a time warp when so much talent is going to waste? Come to think of it, where is that ‘British Empire’ mentioned on all those regular gongs given out to the public?

No one likes to feel excluded, passed over, ignored and invisible, yet one section of this community is being treated in that manner, except for negative exposure when deemed appropriate, especially associated with crime. At such times, African Caribbeans in Britain are always over-represented. That is why, as I write this, 55% of all Black males in London, 18-24 years old, are out of work. If they were White, there would be a national outcry. But they are not, and every one of those youngsters idling their life away represents our future.

Racism succeeds not through the actual racists or bigots themselves, but because of the silent majority who do nothing about it, or prefer to ignore it, which sends the wrong message about its value and proliferates the very action they apparently abhor. That is why Hitler was able to harm so many minorities (Jews) until the majority decided to act - but only because, eventually, they too were being threatened by his aggressive, immoral actions. And that’s the key to anything which is unjust. Allowed to covertly take root and spread (because it doesn’t affect us all!), injustice inevitably corrupts and engulfs both the good and bad around it.

In the end, it depends on the world we want for ourselves and our children. Whether we want one in which everyone, regardless of gender, colour or creed, has the opportunity and access to thrive, or we prefer a community riddled with racism, bias and nepotism, which only favours the few. The choice is definitely ours, and every single one of our routine actions reinforces that unconscious choice in a consistently corrosive way, without us even realising it.

How to relaunch yourself more successfully

Everyone dreads being made redundant. Trying to live a decent quality of life means taking on certain responsibilities, like a mortgage and a family, which have to be continually serviced and provided for. Worse still, a job is a kind of status for who we are and wish to be. It is the anchor in our lives which emphasises our achievements, talent and potential. But in our rapidly evolving technology age, no job is for life anymore. The world is rapidly turning from a service environment to an information one, where short term contracts and temporary work are becoming an integral part of our working day. Many people now live in fear of losing their jobs as companies downsize, restructure or outsource their work altogether.

Panic sets in at times when one loses one’s job involuntarily. Those are the worst moments when every debt looms large and simply surviving suddenly becomes a major issue. But how that redundancy or firing is handled in that first week will be crucial to what happens later on, and the last thing anyone should do is seek another job immediately. There are a few key reasons for this.

1. When we are made redundant, or fired, we perceive a strong negative message about who we are. No matter how good we felt before, or were regarded by colleagues, self esteem immediately goes to be replaced by feelings of insecurity, loss of confidence and simple, naked fear. Unfortunately, fear can make us do a lot of things we might come to regret and so it is never a good thing to act from a position of fear.

2. Every change in our lives is essential for making us into better human beings. Sometimes, when we deliberately ignore the changes needed, the Universe has a way of forcing that change upon us by taking it out of or hands in the form of redundancy. It means we then have to take time to reflect on who we are and where we are heading.

3. Once you bounce from one job to another, in very quick succession, it carries an air of desperation and downgrades your own competence and desirability. It means that you might take anything at all offered to you, in that moment, in order to feel wanted and respected again. However, as not much thought would not have gone into that decision, redundancy is likely to be repeated again, or you would not really advance in the manner that you should because you confidence will never be at the level it should be to propel you forward in your new environment.

4. You need time to reflect; time to savour what you have achieved, to sort out just who you are as a person, to assess how happy you were in that position, if you were really happy. If you were not, then getting a similar position will not make you shine any brighter and only result in disillusionment further down the line.

So what should you be doing?

The very first week
In that first week, the first couple of days to be precise, you should do absolutely nothing except work out how long you can realistically stay without working. Treat this week as a well earned rest. Let the news sink in without fear. Mull over the job, think about what you liked and didn’t like. Think about why you might have been made redundant. AVOID BLAME and SCAPEGOATS. It only makes you seem bitter and unattractive to new employers. Your situation is not unique, though it’s tough. Deal with it. Do NOT think about bills and mortgages now. They will always be there. If your spouse really loves and cares for you, he/she will be very supportive at this time and give you space to sort your life out without any extra pressure.

In the next two days, begin to make a list of possible options. Be as bold and brave as you can. Dream as impossibly high as you care to dream. Then put the ones with the most possibility at the top. However, concentrate on going after the ones in the middle of your list because they would represent advancement and extra challenge for you. Look also at your own skills. Do they need updating? Could you do with a couple of quick courses while you are applying for the next job? How about that confidence, does it need boosting/counselling?

The next two days should be devoted to YOU. Who are you? What do you really want from your life? What kind of things do you really enjoy doing? What do you dislike doing at work? Are you a team player or a worker who prefers to do it alone? Where are you heading? What would you like to learn/do, if money were no object? Why can’t you head for it now? What are your hopes, your fears, the obstacles keeping you back? Are you your worst enemy? How is your self belief and personal confidence? What are your priorities now?

By discovering who you are, your priorities and where you’re heading, it will also tell you which of the job options would not really be suitable or would not give you the fulfilment you seek.

The actual Job Search
The final day is the time to start talking with your partner or spouse about your situation and the potential solutions you have worked out. Most important, all during that week, you would be telling yourself what a wonderful person you are, how talented and how capable. That this was just a temporary setback which is good for you to revamp because you WILL find something even better which will develop your talents even more.

If you do all that, you will find that the next week, when you begin the actual process of looking for a job, you will be doing it from a different mindset. You would have allowed yourself to grieve, without fear, to stock take and to examine your options with greater confidence. instead of sounding like a desperate loser making apologies for being redundant, or fired, you will sound like a winner with something to offer that new company because you would have worked out why you have what it is they might want. It would have sunk in that the more experience you have the more you have to offer. Additionally, you would have gained a fresh new perspective about your life and its possibilities.

Thus being redundant is not a time for feeling sorry for one’s self and fearing the worst, but actually a time of recovery and an exciting launch pad for even greater things.

Q. I’ve had reject letters many times over the years and often felt a bit annoyed that I wasn’t told why I wasn’t selected for interview or offered the job after having attended an interview. As a HR professional I always have the courtesy to give a reason when someone is not successful in their application, I feel it’s only common courtesy and it gives people a good impression of your company - that you actually bother to explain why they weren’t selected. But what do you think?

A. The trouble with getting ‘the truth’ is that such truth is very subjective. One company’s ‘truth’ might bear no relation to another company’s ‘truth’ about the same person! It all depends on what that organisation is looking for. You might be told that you were ‘not suitable’ for that post for a variety of reasons that could actually make you suitable for another post entirely. For example, if you are not the conforming type and do not like taking orders but interview for the military, you will be rejected because you might appear too rebellious or forthright. Yet those very qualities would be admirable for an entrepreneurial job where you have to exercise your own initiative and lead from the front.

Again, it could be a case of not being liked for your dress, appearance, personality, brashness, extroversion, introversion or anything to do with how you choose to behave. Trying to change that to suit specific employers is not really you. You will only end up feeling frustrated as time goes on when you cannot do the things you really like to do, the kind that makes you feel alive and energetic. The essence of job satisfaction is to be happy with who you are and match it to the right employer.

Unless the problem is to do with practical things like a badly written CV, personal appearance, or how I actually conducted the interview, I would not wish to hear someone else’s ‘truth’ about me. They would be judging me purely on the narrow suitability for that job, but not for anything else. I would rather take my chances elsewhere. Employers have all sorts of measurements they use to assess candidates. It is always best to shop around until you find an employer that makes you get all excited at the thought of working for them. That would be the best fit. Should you not make the grade there, then their ‘truth’ might be well worth hearing.