Never Give Up On Your Dream

By Christmas 1977 my sister Joanne still had a job, but it was winding down and she knew it. She was already working evenings and weekends at what she considered to be her ‘real’ job, and she desperately wanted to be self-employed, but she needed just that bit of extra money to make it happen.

I’d been in the United States for three years by then, but I was at home that Christmas and over the course of a couple of days (and nights!) Joanne and I talked ourselves into trying to make some Christmas money the hard way.

We were too late for craft fairs and any other kind of fair that might have done the trick, but as one of my many, many, part-time jobs before I left England I’d been a door to door salesperson - encyclopaedias, double-glazing, and burglar alarms. In fact I was the person you never want to see on your doorstep.

The only real advantages to that particular job were that I didn’t have to watch the same movie so often that I could recite the dialogue (and if you want to listen to my rendering of the ‘The Blue Max’, do give me a call) or take off all my clothes and stand in a freezing room in front of a one-bar electric fire so that people could draw a naked me touching my toes, but I thought the experience would pay off sometime – and it did. After all, if you can sell double-glazing, burglar alarms and encyclopaedias you should be able to sell things that somebody actually wants. So we bought a load of the stuff that people do tend to want - and often forget all about until it’s too late - and set out on Christmas Eve to work the streets and tower blocks of Birmingham.

We began at seven o’clock that evening and worked until after two on Christmas morning. It was a whole-family effort. Joanne and I walked for miles in the cold, saw the inside of an awful lot of lifts, got a glimpse of an awful lot of parties, and sold an awful lot of stuff, and Dad sat in his old green Austin 7 guarding the stock and reading Isaac Asimov by torchlight. I think he thought we were potty at the time – and it’s to his credit that whatever we wanted to do, he would go along with it – but as it turned out, we weren’t so potty after all.

It’s amazing how many people are still up and prepared to buy tights, knickers, see-through baby-doll panamas, wrapping paper, rolls of Sellotape, boxes of chocolate and packaged nuts in the middle of the night.

A few months later, Joanne was made redundant, rented office space in the centre of Birmingham and became very successfully self-employed. It took a lot of courage -the economy was very bad then, too, and in fact while Joanne was looking for office space she was doing the rounds of the agencies as well - but she did it, and never regretted it.

Never give up on your dream. Try to make it a reality instead.

Emily - http://www.therapypartnership.com

Sometimes Bad Times Can be a Wake-Up Call

In November 1972 I was 25, and living by myself in London. Like practically everyone else I knew I had a very small bed-sit and three or four temporary and/or part-time jobs. At one point I was simultaneously a legal secretary (5 days a week), an usherette at the Odeon Cinema in Leicester Square (6 evenings a week), an usherette at The Prince Charles Cinema (Late-Late Saturdays), a telephonist in various hotels (Sundays), and an artist’s model (Saturday afternoons). They all paid peanuts.

Then we got the three day week, and suddenly “We don’t need you next week” or “We don’t need you on that shift” became more and more often “We don’t need you tomorrow”, or just “We can’t use you anymore” – and I finally got the message that I had a lousy lifestyle, no leisure time and no prospects.

In those days you could get a Green Card and go to the United States if you were a stenographer – they wanted 60 words a minute typing and a minimum of 100 words per minute shorthand. By June 1974 – thanks to Speedwriting I’d learned all about how to gt a gd jb & mo pa, turned myself into a stenographer, filed all the papers, taken all the tests, and was gone into another life.

It was a very frightening experience in many ways. I knew no one in America, nothing about the place, and nothing about the rules. But it was worth the gamble. I found friends there, and I learned the rules, and I’ve never regretted taking that step into the dark.

I was lucky, of course, because I had no ties, but having ties doesn’t mean that you can’t make a decision to learn something new, or change direction.

I don’t think that this is a good time to find a job, but I do think it might be a good time to think about where you want to be this time next year, and make plans to be in a better place - even if it means taking a step into the dark.

Emily - http://www.therapypartnership.com/

You Don't Need Unproductive Emotions - So Get Rid of Them

We all know that this is the Season of Peace on Earth and Goodwill to all Men, but it can be hard to keep that in mind when someone jostles you unmercifully in a crowded store, crashes into you and sends your packages flying, gives you a filthy look because (for reasons beyond your control) you're holding up the queue at the check-out, or cuts you up to grab the last parking space that's anywhere near where you want to go.

The people who do all those things are, of course, as interested in Peace on Earth as you are and feel as much Goodwill toward all Men as you do, and at any other time would probably not do any of those things. They're just over-stressed by the Season and - if you allow it - they'll make you over-stressed, too.

Try not to replay the bad or irritating things that happen to you over and over in your head until you can't think of anything else, and the bad things push all the good things out of your mind.

Get your feelings of hurt or anger off your chest by calling a friend and talking about what happened, posting a message on Facebook - either one of which will definitely get you some sympathy and understanding - or just by writing out what you want to say on a piece of paper and throwing it into the bin or putting a match to and burning it up in the sink. You don't need unproductive emotions!

Emily - http://www.therapypartnership.com/

Revitalising Breath

The oxygen you take in whenever you breathe in revitalises every cell in your body - but you can help that process along by imagining and visualising it actually taking place.
By using your imagination, you can send energy-giving breath to wherever you like - anywhere that feels dull, or painful, or sluggish. Try it out!

1. Take a deep breath, and bring your arms slowly out in front of you and slowly up over your head.
2. S-t-r-e-t-c-h as you breathe out and slowly bring down your arms to your sides.
3. Breathe in again, bring your arms slowly out in in front of you, and slowly up over your head. Imagine your breathe revitalising your whole body, filling it with energy. Try to feel your body becoming alive with the oxygen that is spreading through all parts of your body.
4. Exhale slowly, bring your arms down to your sides, and imagine all your tension flowing out through your fingertips.
5. Repeat that sequence three times - and try to notice any sensations you may feel. You might experience warmth, tingling - or just a feeling of relaxation.
6. Now focus on an area where you feel tension or pain, and take another deep breath, and imagine/feel it moving into that area. Imagine that breath massaging that tension/pain away - and exhale.
7. Take another few deep, invigorating breaths - and imagine your whole body full of energy and vitality.
8. S-t-r-e-t-c-h your whole body, palms up, toward the ceiling. Rock your body from side to side by switching your weight from your right foot to your left foot, right to left, right to left.
9. Bring your arms slowly down to your sides, and take a few moments to enjoy the sights, sounds, colours around you and the feeling of being very, very alive.

Emily - http://www.therapypartnership.com/

Crying Your Heart Out is Pretty Good For You, Too.

And if you really, really need to do it on the bus - then you should.

On the whole, we're very bad at crying, and the fact that we're very bad at it, and persist in keeping 'a stiff upper lip', is very bad for us.

I mentioned a couple of days ago that everyone is a chemical factory - and that's true. The problem is that some of the chemicals people produce when they are over stressed, miserable and unhappy constitute the sort of garbage that a 'green' person would refuse to dump in landfill.

The ability to weep is a uniquely human emotional response. Only human beings of all living creatures are able to cry – and with good reason; the human body produces a great many chemicals in response to stressful situations, and some of them are very, very toxic indeed.

Tears produce protein, which helps rid the body of toxic chemical waste; they encourage the body to produce a natural painkiller called Enkaphalin - and they free pent-up emotions that might otherwise create physical problems.

Tears comfort and calm, cleanse the body, relieve pain and sorrow, get rid of tension and defuse stress.

If you feel the need to cry, then you should cry no matter where you are – and if you feel that you can’t cry immediately, then it’s very important to do it later on because if you don't you're going to be storing some very unpleasant garbage.

We all have to repress tears sometimes because it isn’t always possible or appropriate to cry when we want to, but letting tears out after the event is easy enough to manage; it's not hard to find a weepy movie - and, of course, writing about whatever it was that upset you earlier in the day will often make you cry, because the memory of it will make you shed the tears you felt like shedding at the time.

Better to cry later than not at all. And the method you use to make yourself cry is immaterial; the important thing is to cry, and go on crying until the crying stops of itself – which means, of course, no 'stiff upper lip', no admonitions to 'pull yourself together', and no smoking cigarettes to try to stop the flow.

Emily - http://www.therapypartnership.com/

It's Good to Talk To Yourself. Just Don't do it Aloud on The Bus.

When people are over-stressed or when bad or unpleasant things happen to them, the unconscious mind automatically causes the body to react to compensate - and the first line of defence it’s likely to come up with is an increased need to talk.

Verbalizing what you’re thinking or feeling about yourself or your situation or the unpleasant things that happened to you today, or yesterday, or even long ago, will allow you to achieve several very important things:

• You can clarify, realise and understand what EXACTLY has made you so upset, so stressed, or so angry.


• You can get things out of your system.


• You can neutralise unpleasant situations.


• You can turn your internal pressures down - or off.


• You can dissipate your anger and avoid negative mental activity.

And no, you don’t need a therapist or even a friend to talk to in order to get the benefit of saying everything you want or need to say, because the essential element of the ‘talker plus listener‘ equation is the act of putting thoughts and feelings into words, and not the fact of having another human being to talk to. Listeners – even (and perhaps particularly) professional listeners - are comforting to have, conducive to communication, and encourage the development of ideas by asking questions, but they aren’t essential to the defining, cathartic process of verbalising thoughts and feelings.

The cheapest, most efficient, and most private way of talking is to talk to yourself – in writing. And the ‘private’ part of that is very important, because most of us have some things locked away inside us that we would never want to reveal to another person – even a professional ‘listener’ - and which therefore might otherwise never be verbalised at all.

If you don’t want to commit those particularly private thoughts to paper – and I can understand why you might not want to take the risk of having someone read what you’ve written either now or in the future - there’s always the cat, the dog or a tree in the park. You can talk to any one of them, because none of them ever tell tales – and you’ll still have said what you wanted or needed to say.

Everyone needs to talk often – actually everyone needs to talk every day – about the things that have annoyed or upset them that day. And, of course, they also need to finally come out with all those things that have been niggling away at them for months (or even years) and which can sometimes add the emotional weight of past events to present problems.

Diaries – real ones as opposed to the ones that remind you that you need to go to the dentist next Wednesday – have gone out of fashion. That’s a pity. Garbage is something that needs to be thrown out – and you can offload an awful lot of it into a very small, very cheap book.

Talk to yourself often! It’s good for you. Things tend not to get quite so out of proportion if you do.

Emily - http://www.therapypartnership.com

Keep Smiling!

While you’re practicing (I hope!) better breathing (and if you aren’t, please go back to yesterdays post and start practicing it today) I want to share a really simple stress-relieving technique with you that you can practice anywhere at any time – and the more often the better.

You probably don’t know it, but you are very efficient chemical factory. This is one of the reasons I can never understand people coughing up large sums for supplementary, more dangerous, and less effective chemicals – but that’s a whole other story. The important thing is that you appreciate that practically everything you do with your body causes a chemical reaction that can be positive or negative – and that many of those reactions are completely under your control.

All facial gestures, for example, trigger the production of neurotransmitters – negative or positive. When you smile, your brain is triggered to produce ‘uppers’ to fit the gesture, and your mood and energy levels lift accordingly – and (obviously!) the longer you smile, and the more you smile, the more ‘uppers’ your brain will produce.

Equally, if you frown the brain produces the equivalent of ‘downers’ - and the longer you frown and the more you frown the more ‘downers’ your brain will churn out, and your mood and energy levels will drop dramatically in consequence.

If you want to, you can test the speed and efficiency of this kind of automatic chemical response by going into your bathroom right now and snarling – really seriously snarling – at yourself in the mirror.

Whenever people snarl aggressively, the body immediately produces adrenaline and painkillers - and if you manage a really good snarl in the course of your experiment, you’ll find that not only will you undergo a very noticeable mood change, but also that your heart rate will go up, your nostrils will flare, and you’ll be able to feel ‘fight or flight’ quantities of adrenaline flooding into your system. There isn’t a threat in your bathroom, of course – and no reason to fight or to run away and live to fight another day either - but your unconscious mind will assume that there is, because that’s what you’re saying with your face.

Facial expressions are a particularly unsubtle form of body language, and the easiest of all to produce deliberately – and it’s a good idea to produce positive ones, because (as you will have learned for yourself if you managed a really successful snarl in your bathroom just now!) a particular facial gesture doesn’t have to be accompanied by the appropriate emotion in order to produce results. ‘Fake’ snarling produces adrenaline and painkillers; ‘fake’ smiling – smiling when you don’t feel like it, in other words – produces a cascade of upper-type chemicals from your brain, because your unconscious mind assumes that you wouldn’t be making the gesture without good reason.

This built-in, easily manipulated mechanism means that you have the power to influence your own moods, and reduce (or raise!) your own stress levels.

• Negative and anxious facial expressions produce very definite stress reactions in the autonomic nervous system because the neurotransmitters they provoke are stress-producing.
• Positive and happy facial gestures lower stress because the neurotransmitters they provoke make you feel good.

It’s obviously therefore in your own best interests to try to maintain positive facial expressions - and to make the effort to actively produce them if you’re feeling really miserable about something.

It’s important to bear in mind as well that positive facial expressions receive positive responses from other people – and equally that negative ones receive negative responses.

This is because facial expressions and moods appear to be contagious. In other words, when we perceive that someone else is happy, or sad, or angry, we don’t just register the fact, we actually experience the emotion, albeit to a lesser degree. Consequently, if you smile, you’ll not only feel better yourself, you’ll make other people feel better, too, and that mood will build on itself. Equally, of course, if your facial expressions are negative, you’ll make other people feel negative and that mood will build on itself.

Most of our stress and many of our negative thoughts and feelings directly result of dealing with difficult people.

Making the effort to maintain positive facial expressions habitually will go a long way toward ensuring that the person creating the difficulty isn’t you.

Oh yes – there is just one other thing. We all age and, in the process, we all get the lines and wrinkles we deserve. Make smiling your habitual facial expression today. Nobody needs to get written off as a miserable old bat on sight...

Emily - http://www.therapypartnership.com/

Breath is Life. The Best Breath is More of It.

It’s always very difficult to explain to people why they need to practice breathing when they’re standing there with their chests going up and down and nobody is expecting to see a hearse arrive anytime soon.

But then there’s breathing, and not breathing all that well.

There’s an important relationship between breathing, emotion, and the autonomic nervous system, and if you can get that relationship into balance then you will be a healthier, calmer and much happier person.

Practising abdominal breathing is the best way to achieve that balance. Abdominal breathing leads automatically to physical and mental relaxation and better mental and physical health - and once you've got the hang of it you can do it whenever or wherever you want, or need, to.

When people are calm and composed, abdominal breathing is the norm. When people are anxious and stressed, on the other hand, costal (or chest) breathing can become the norm. Costal breathing is shallow, unsteady and jerky, which naturally results in the mind and the emotions becoming unsteady also, so that it becomes impossible to relax. That in turn leads to tension and anxiety which leads to continued costal breathing, thus creating a vicious circle that goes round and round and on and on until something finally breaks down.

It isn’t difficult to achieve and maintain an optimum abdominal breathing pattern. It just takes practice and a few minutes of your time every day. And it's something that you can build on - a simple technique that forms the basis of other 'stress breaking' habits.

Here’s one way of breathing in a less stressful life. Read the exercise through carefully a couple of times so as to be sure that you can remember what you need to do:

1. Lie on your back with your feet apart. Allow your feet to flop loosely, heels turned inwards and toes turned outwards.

2. Let your arms flop loosely away from your body, palms turned upward and fingers loosely curled.

3. Close your eyes, and take a moment to enjoy lying down in this physically relaxed position.

4. Put one hand on your chest and the other on your abdomen.

5. Take a moment to become aware of the rate and rhythm of your breath.

6. Note which hand is moving as you breathe.

7. Inhale and exhale slowly, smoothly and deeply.

8. Try to pull your abdominal muscles in as you exhale. If you feel that you want to, you can push those muscles in gently with your hand.

9. Put your hands back by your sides and continue breathing in and out. The only thing you need to think about now is the gentle rise and fall of your abdomen. (In general, people breathe in and out twelve to sixteen times a minute when they are resting. You may find that your breathing slows as you relax).

10. Get up slowly only when you are ready to get up. That could be in five minutes or in fifteen minutes or when you wake up on this first occasion. It really depends upon how tired and stressed you have allowed yourself to become. As you progess, you will find that five minutes will be the norm.

Practice for five minutes every day. If you have a problem dealing with this method of practising abdominal breathing, I’ll be talking about another method later this week. In the meantime one or another of us will be talking about other ways to use your body to reduce stress.

Emily - http://www.therapypartnership.com/

Christmas - Less a Holiday, More a Stress-Fest

Christmas can be a very stressful time for all kinds of reasons even if you have nothing else to worry about - which, for at least 95% of us, isn’t the case.

The best way to deal with stress is to anticipate it and take positive steps to cope with it, so over the next couple of weeks or so we’re going to be talking about simple physical relaxation exercises that can help you to cope with stress positively – not just at Christmas, but all the time.

None of these techniques will take up great chunks of your day – half an hour at most and sometimes as little as three or four minutes - and none of them are going to cost you anything. You do need to appreciate, though, that you are going to have to LEARN how to relax.

Genuine mental and physical relaxation isn’t about just sitting down and taking it easy: it’s a skill - like riding a bicycle or driving a car – and (just like riding a bicycle or driving a car) you need to practise until it becomes second nature. That takes time, motivation and commitment.

We’ll start tomorrow with abdominal (or diaphragmatic) breathing. That probably doesn’t sound very exciting, but actually it’s the most important stress management technique of all.

What will you get out of it?

Improved health and well-being, increased energy, and the ability to be mentally and physically relaxed at will.

What do you need to complete the exercise?

A place lie down – a floor or a hard bed - and three or four minutes.

What do you need to get the best out of the exercise in the long term?

A place to lie down and three or four minutes every day until abdominal breathing becomes your normal pattern of breathing. If you practice every day you'll find that that happens very quickly.

Emily - http://www.therapypartnership.com/

The Only Person You Need to Impress is You

I think most of us spend a lot of time at one time or another trying to impress other people. We do it in all sorts of ways - with our clothes or our belongings or by the way we behave or the things we say or do.

It works, of course, sometimes - but only with people who are impressed by externals - the young, the naïve and (let's face it) those very shallow people who judge others not by whom or what they are, but by their belongings, and the the labels in their clothes.

Obviously, getting a job (or even keeping one!) is about impressing people, and very good clothes and very nice accessories can be great props to ones confidence in those circumstances, but the fact is that nine times out of ten an interviewer or an employer (whilst perhaps noticing the neatness of your appearance) wouldn't know the difference between Cerruti and Marks and Sparks and couldn't care less one way or the other.

Being impressive to other people - real people who really matter - never depends on what you wear or what you own. It depends on you - the real you - the person you really are, and what you think of and believe about yourself and your skills, and your abilities, and what you have to offer to an employer, to society and the world.

That's why the only person you really need to impress is yourself. If you don't believe in the real you - the you without what Geoffrey's late mother would have called 'the schmutter' - who else is going to?

Emily - http://www.therapypartnership.com

TBG Learning - Free Training at Chesterfield & Alfreton

I came across TBG (The Training and Business Group)on Facebook.

The branch of TBG that I found there is a a Derbyshire based organisation situated in Chesterfield (URL http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tbglearning.com%2Flearning-chesterfield.htm&h=fce8e84fad40a62c9cc1ab184de5c629) and it seems to have plenty to offer - including a successful relationship with Job Centre Plus.

TBG Chesterfield states that it can make a real difference to the lives of long-term unemployed people, and that it is able to provide New Deal Programmes including Adult Literacy & Numeracy, Warehouse Production, and Retail in a relaxed and friendly atmosphere where learners receive all the help and support they need to improve confidence, enhance career prospects and gain recognised qualifications. Programmes are tailored to suit individual needs.

The following is taken from TBG Chesterfield's site on Facebook:

If you live or work in Derbyshire and you've recently been made unemployed, you're entitled to FREE training funded by the Government. Basically I work for a Company, and if we don't get people the training the money gets taken away.. so get in touch!

If you're applying for work and finding that you haven't got the qualifications you need.., we can help! FREE training includes... CSCS (Site Safety Card)FLT (Fork Lift Truck)SIA (Security) ECDL (European Computer Driving License) Business Administration or any other training you think will help you secure that job. (Within reason!)

Remember... Tell all your friends because if this funding doesn't get used it will be wasted... probably on a new skate park!

The TBG Learning centres in Chesterfield and Alfreton have secured government funding to provide anyone that's been made redundant in the last six month's free training to help them get back into work - so the most important phrase in the statement I found on their Facebook site from your point of view is 'any other training you think will help you to secure that job'.

In other words: don't be put off by the fact that what you want to learn isn't listed. If what you want is 'within reason' you stand a change of getting free training.

I don't know whether all of the TBG Centres have secured funding for free training. Find out by contacting http://www.tbglearning.com/.

Emily - http://www.therapypartnership.com/

Priority Debts - And turn2us.org.uk

All dunning letters need to be answered promptly - but it's particularly importantly to deal with 'priority debt' letters.

Priority debts are:

• mortage or rent
• fuel and utilities
• council tax
• income tax
• maintenance to ex-partners or children
• Court fines (e.g. magistrates fines for traffic offences
• TV Licence

and it's vital to deal with them quickly, because if you don't, you could lose your home, have your goods seized in settlement of your indebtedness - or go to jail.

If any one or more of your priority creditors is threatening to start, or has started, to take Court action against you, then you can send them a 'holding letter' explaining your problems, telling them that you will contact them again in two or three weeks time, and asking them not to take any further action in the meantime. That will give you time to seek advice and help - and it's particularly important to do that if you can't afford to pay anything, and your situation is not likely to get better.

Obviously, if you are in that situation, the first place to go is your local Citizens Advice Bureau - they will help you to write to, and negotiate with, your priority creditors - but you should also look to try to get help from turn2us.co.uk.

Turn2us is all about support - and not just financial support, although that's obviously an important part of what the Charity does. Turn2us can give you advice, help you to get benefits or grants that will help you to pay your bills or buy essential items, point you to resources that you may not know about or have thought of.

You can join Turn2us on Facebook (link opens in a new
window) for news, events, real-life stories and a growing community where you can discuss topics of interest and share information on their discussion board.

Do it!

Geoff

Getting Help to Get Out of Debt

A couple of days ago Geoffrey began to talk about dealing with debt, and he'll be writing more about negotiating with creditors, differentiating between priority and non-priority creditors, and handling various other aspects of this problem over the next few days. If you need to read what he has already said, then you can find it archived in September at "Dealing with Debt".

However, whilst the initial system Geoffrey recommended is simple and straightforward, works just as well whether you have two or twenty-two creditors, and can help you to feel that you have some measure of control over what's happening, the idea of dealing with a mountain of debt - constructing a complete and accurate statement of your affairs, and handling the correspondence involved - can be so stressful, depressing, and frightening that many people find that they just can't do it by themselves.

You can get outside help to get out of debt - but you shouldn't be tempted to pay for it.

There are lots of companies advertising that they can help you solve your problems, but all of those companies want money - sometimes large amounts of money - and many of them make unsubstantiated claims. The Ministry of Justice Claims Regulator has already put a hundred such companies out of business for fraud, disregarding the rules, persistently making misleading claims, and encouraging people to hand over fees on the strength of high pressure cold colds from marketing centres. You can read the complete story by using the search box at Ministry of Justice Claims Regulation .

If you have been approached by any company offering the promise of wiping out your debts by challenging their enforceability, top tips from the Ministry of Justice Claims Registration are:

DON’T be pressurised into making any on-the-spot decisions – take time to consider your options.

DON’T hand money over there and then – get full written information from the business about the service they are offering, what it will cost and the time it will take before paying anything. The business is required to provide this.

DO contact an independent adviser – such as Citizens Advice, who can advise you on the best way to deal with financial problem and complaints.

DO check that the claims company is registered at the Claims Management Regulation website – if it provides debt advice services it is likely to also need a consumer credit licence issued by the Office of Fair Trading, check the Office of Fair Trading's Public Register.

DO report any concerns you may have about a business, by email or by calling the claims management anonymous reporting hotline line on 0333 200 0110.

Our advice is to avoid people who claim that they can get your credit cards written off within six weeks, state that 80% of credit agreements are unenforceable, or that they can write off all your outstanding debt.

This is really the equivalent of a free lunch, and we all know know that there really isn't any such thing. If you need help, go to your local Citizens Advice Bureau . The Citizens Advice Bureau can help you to negotiate with your creditors. It's safe - and it's free.

Emily, Geoffrey & Bill

Dealing With Debt - If You've Got Problems, Kill Them While They're Little

I’ve been meaning to talk about dealing with debt for some time – but it seemed better to all of us to deal with other aspects of the problem of being out of work first. Getting a job and staying positive and at least relatively sane whilst you are going about it, is, after all, very, very important. The trouble is that redundancy and getting into debt often go hand in hand.

The most important thing to do about debt is to face it, and deal with it immediately.

This is a sort of ‘kill it while it’s little rather than waiting for it to grow up’ strategy – and it’s a good one, because it may allow you to avoid having Claims issued against you.

If you receive a letter demanding settlement of a debt then you need to respond to it right away. Your reply should:

• set out your financial situation in detail;
• contain a request that your creditor freeze interest;
• contain an offer to pay weekly or monthly instalments, however small;
• mention any changes that are going to happen that will affect your ability to pay;
• contain an initial payment on account – and those payments should be kept up week by week or month by month until the creditor either accepts or refuses your offer.

Here’s what may happen if you don’t respond to initial letters:

• If you owe money and can't pay it, and you fail to respond to letters demanding payment, then your creditor may issue a Claim or a Writ, depending upon the amount that you owe.


• If you do not answer the Claim or the Writ, then your Creditor may apply for Judgement.


• If the Court considers that the Claim or Writ is substantiated by the accompanying documentation, then it will issue a Judgment against you.


• When the firm of Solicitors acting for the Creditors receives the Judgment; it will notify you of it, and warn you that they may apply for a Warrant of Execution.


• If you don't respond to the letter notifying you that there is a Judgment against you, then Solicitors acting for your Creditor may apply for a Warrant of Execution and instruct a Bailiff or a Sheriff to seize your possessions immediately they have the Warrant. There are household and other goods that neither a Bailiff nor a Sheriff is allowed to seize – but that isn’t the point of this post, although it is something I’ll get around to talking about in the longer term.

Your creditor or its agents may well refuse your offer and issue a Claim or a Writ in any event in an effort to secure the debt - but your letter will evidence both your current financial situation and your willingness to pay what you can, and the Court is unlikely to ignore your letter or award larger instalments to the creditor.

If you receive a Claim or a Writ, you must answer that, too.

There is no charge for doing this. You'll receive an Admission Form with the Claim Form, asking you about your income and outgoings. On the form you can make an offer to repay the debt (or a lower amount if you think you owe less than the creditor claims). If you have written an initial letter attach a copy of it and proof of payment of instalments to the form when you submit it.

If you have not previously made an offer in writing, and explained your circumstances fully, now is the time to do it, because if you don't make an offer and the Court decides against you, it may decide that you must pay either the full amount or make monthly payments.

You have 16 days from the date of the postmark to send the form back to the Court. If you need help to complete the forms staff at your local County Court will be able to answer your queries. Make sure to keep a copy of the completed forms for yourself.

If you ignore a claim, or miss the deadline, the claimant can request Judgment against you without hearing your side of the story. This is known as 'Judgment by Default'. This can result in an Order demanding that you pay the money in full (plus costs) immediately. Your credit rating may also be affected.

After the Court hearing, the Court may issue an Order saying you must repay the debt. This Order is called a County Court Judgment (CCJ) and will either be for the amount agreed between you and your creditor. If you can't agree, then a payment will be set by the Court. If you have written a letter in the first instance, and paid instalments, this will obviously count in your favour.

If you then pay nothing, or don't keep up with the payments under such an Order, the creditor can ask the Court to take steps to make you pay, in which case you may have to pay more costs.

However, don't forget. If you genuinely can't pay, even by instalments, you can ask the Court to reduce the amount of the payments or suspend the Order.

Important: If you have Judgments from more than one creditor, the Court can combine your debts and make an 'Administration Order' - saying you must make a single payment every month to be shared by all your creditors.

When you have problems of any kind, it's very tempting to bury one’s head in the sand, and think that things will go away. When it comes to debt, that isn’t good strategy. If you have creditors who are pressing for payment, or creditors who have issued Claims against you, take my advice and take the bull by the horns and answer them.

Geoff - http://www.metlissbarfield.com/

Final Questions - And One More Letter

Once the interviewer (or prospective employer) has asked his or her questions, it will be your turn. Determine exactly what you want to know, and practice how you are going to pose your questions beforehand. It may be that the interviewer will raise questions that you hadn't thought of and obviously you won't be able to craft those questions, but some things are standard - what duties, what salary, and what chance of rises, bonuses and promotions.

Be very careful about how you approach the question of rises, bonuses, and promotions. Bald questions on any of these subjects are a bad idea. They can seem 'pushy', and they can lead the interviewer to believe that you are more interested in what you can get out of the job than actually doing it - or that you might be likely to leave if bonuses, rises and promotions fail to appear within a given time known only to you.

Bonuses, rises and perks are usually covered by an interviewer when people start talking about salaries. If they aren't, then frankly those are subjects that are best left alone. Promotion is, of course, another matter. Most candidates for any position need to know whether promotion is a possibility, and most employers are aware that few people really want a 'dead end' job. Be diplomatic - ask whether other people who have joined the Company in the past at your level have been promoted internally.

Most employers don't automatically let people know immediately that they have been successful - and many want to make a final decision only when they have finished interviewing all the potential candidates for the job - so your final question needs to about how long that decision is going to take.

Don't be afraid to ask it. All employers are aware that candidates are looking to, or have already, lined up other interviews. Consequently, the 'yes' or the 'no' tends to arrive in the short, rather than the long, term.

Don't take 'by the end of the week' as a sign that you haven't got the job, and that a 'Sorry, not interested, but Good Luck' letter will be on the mat tomorrow. You need to appear confident to the very end of your interview, and negative thoughts won't help you to do that.

Do thank people personally for their time before you leave - and do write a follow-up letter immediately you get home and post it same day if possible. It's polite and makes a good impression. It's politic (and it makes a good impression!) to say that you found the meeting interesting and stimulating. It's a good idea, too, to say that you would like the job - but only if you're really serious!

Geoff - http://www.metlissbarfield.com

Real Depression Can Be Very Dangerous

You may have read in the newspapers, or heard on the news, that the French Labour Minister Xavier Darcos is to meet the head of France Telecom to talk about the number of suicides among the Company’s staff.

There have been 23 suicides of France Telecom staff so far this year. The latest occurred last Friday when a 32-year-old woman leapt to her death at a France Telecom office in Paris – and there have been two abortive attempts since then. Last Wednesday, a 49-year-old man stuck a knife into his own stomach during a meeting in which he had been told he was being transferred. Yesterday another employee attempted suicide.

France Telecom has something like 100,000 employees, and the Company is therefore quoting statistics, and stating that most suicides are prompted by personal, not professional, causes. It has, however, admitted that the cultural and organisational changes required by the move from French public monopoly to a competitive multinational were ‘bound to cause stress’. Given the nature and extent of the protection afforded to employees of a French public monopoly, that statement could probably rank as one of the great understatements of the century. These people thought they had jobs for life - and then suddenly somebody moved the goal posts.

Some people handle stress very well and adapt very well to change – in fact some people thrive on stress, and see change as a challenge. Other people - very obviously - do not.

We talked about the importance of staying positive and exerting some measure of control over your life way back in May, and you might want to go back and look at those posts, and maybe start to work with some of the techniques we’ve suggested – but in the meantime if you feel that you're getting seriously depressed, then you should seek help immediately.

Any GP can prescribe anti-depressives – and they work quite well – and if you are seriously depressed then your local GP should be your first port of call. But talking things over with a sympathetic listener and getting some objective advice can work better than popping pills that dull the pain, but leave the causes of it bottled up inside. And GPs don't have much time to talk.

The Samaritans provide confidential non-judgemental emotional support, 24 hours a day for people who are experiencing feelings of distress or despair, including those which could lead to suicide. You can contact them by telephone, email, letter and face to face in most of their branches. Samaritans is available to anyone in the UK and Ireland. If you live outside of the UK and Ireland, you can visit http://www.befrienders.org/ to find your nearest helpline.

And there is something else to think about here. If you go to the Samaritans website; you'll see that they state that:

Everyone has it in them to be a Samaritans volunteer. To touch another person’s life when it really matters, either by discussing their feelings with them directly, or by keeping our branches running so others can. Say ‘yes’ to joining us, and we will be behind you all the way with the training and back up you need.

Our confidential, 24-hour listening service, which never judges people, is at the heart of Samaritans – and there are many ways to contribute. By working together with the shared desire to help people experiencing emotional distress, our 17,000 volunteers make sure that our 202 branches are well-organised and supportive places to spend time. There are plenty of social activities too!

Learning to help other people is a great way to stay positive and add meaning and purpose to ones life.

Emily - http://www.therapypartnership.com/

Sometimes, when you go for an interview, you find yourself facing not one person, but a sort of panel instead. That can be very hard. You can really feel that you’re ‘on trial’ - and not being able to distinguish the Judge from the Jury doesn’t make that any better.

If you find yourself in that position, it’s very important to switch your attention from one person to another periodically and quite regularly so as not to exclude or ‘ignore’ anyone.

It's important, too, not to try to gauge the effect that you are having on any one person, because that can lead you to become ‘exclusive’. It's human nature to fix on a 'sympathetic' listener, but including everyone in a ‘conversation” is very important at any time, and is vital in these circumstances. The best interviews are (or become) 'conversations'.

For the same reason, try not to turn your back on anyone - and even if one person asks you a direct question, try to address your answer to everyone present.

I’ve been talking about practice. You can practice this, too: you really only need a couple of friends, or a couple of family members, and the questions that I’ve already provided to practice ‘panel’ interviewing.

In the meantime, here’s something else to think about. Panel interviews – in fact, lots of interviews - often start with the ‘what we do here is…’speech. The interviewer – and the panel if there is one - knows that speech off by heart. Actually, if you’ve done your research, most of it won’t come as any surprise to you either.

But some of it might - so don't spend the 'what we do here' speech time thinking about the questions that you think you might be asked.

Listen very attentively to the ‘what we do here is’ speech. In the first place, it’s a useful mine to dig out relevant questions of your own. Secondly, you might need to demonstrate that you have listened to, understood, and are able to extrapolate from "what we do here...".

And thirdly - all experienced interviewers know whether someone is actually listening. Or not...

Bill - http://www.therapypartnership.com/

Answers Raise Questions...

And so interviewers probe. Consequently, however well prepared and well rehearsed you are, you can't possibly hope to cover all the bases.

If you are asked a really unexpected question that arises from an answer, or the interviewer choses to approach that same question again from an unexpected angle - take the time to think before you answer. Nobody is going to worry too much about a delay of 6 or 7 seconds to get an answer to a question that comes straight out of 'left field'.

The real danger here is losing sight of the point of the question, and finding yourself floundering halfway through your answer. If that happens - stop, ask the interviewer to repeat the question, and then try to stick strictly to the point when you answer it.

Good way to practice? Get hold of a friend or family member to help you rehearse your answers to the questions we've dealt with over the last couple of posts, and prime them to throw in a few 'wingers' for you to answer. They won't find that difficult because answers raise questions - and you'll benefit from the experience of having to answer unexpected questions 'off the top of your head'.

Bill - http://www.therapypartnership.com

So Tell Me About Yourself...

Every interviewer wants to get as much first-hand, straight-from-the-horses-mouth personal information as possible from the person he or she is interviewing. Journalists want that information because it adds 'human interest' to a story. Job interviewers want it because they need to know something more about the potentially valuable human being that is sitting on the other side of the desk than can be gained from reading the CV that's sitting on the desk.

An interviewer might just say, "So tell me about yourself", but it's much more likely that he or she would go for leading questions, because leading questions are more pointed and more specific.

• What are your strengths?


• What are your weaknesses?


• What have you done that you are particularly proud of?


• What do you wish you had done differently?

An interviewer might also want to probe further into information given on your CV.

• I see from your CV that you're interested in (golf, stamp collecting etc). How did you get involved in that?


• I see from your CV that you're studying (French, accountancy, Contract Law etc). What made you decide to do that?

Questions, whether leading or straightforward, give you an opportunity to talk and to tell stories about yourself, show what you have experienced and what your interests are - to and illustrate that you are capable of logical, organised thought, because that's what talking about and telling stories about yourself well is all about.

It also gives you an opportunity to portray yourself in a positive light. But please don't forget that 'positive' in this context needs to include some negatives if it is to be genuinely 'positive'.

I have an enormous mistrust of people who - according to their own account of themselves - have no weaknesses, have never made a mistake, and have never regretted anything, or wished that they had done something differently. And any interviewer would, because life is full of pitfalls, and no human being lacks weaknesses, and has never experienced doubt or regret.

Don't hide negatives when you are asked to talk about yourself.

• Admitting that you have weaknesses shows character and maturity and is illustrative of the fact that you have actually thought about your weaknesses and have recognised them.


• Admitting that there are some things that you would have - or should have - done differently, shows that you are capable of learning from experience.


• Being able to talk about those things to an interviewer - who is, after all, a comparitive stranger - is indicative not just of maturity, but of honesty.

Which is not to say that you shouldn't prepare yourself for such questions and rehearse your answers. Preparation and rehearsal will give you the confidence to talk and tell stories about yourself really well. The insight you'll get out of it isn't a bad thing either...

Bill - http://www.therapypartnership.com/

Why Do You Want The Job?

This can be a very tricky question to answer, because although some interviewers might ask that question directly, many others will not.

The interviewer’s job is to find out whether you fit the job and the Company – and the easiest way to find that out is to ask you about your ideal job, and see how closely you and your ideal matches what’s on offer now and what might be on offer in the future.

You therefore have several options – and all of them require prior thought and planning.

1. Write out an answer to the question ‘Why do you want the job?’ based on the job description and what you have learned about the Company from its website and other sources.

2. Write out an answer to the question ‘What is your ideal job?’ based on the job description and what you have learned about the Company from its website, etc.

3. Visualise your genuinely ideal job, and write down a description of it.

If the interviewer asks ‘Why do you want the job?’ you can use the answer you formulated based on the job description and etc – item 1.

If the interviewer asks ‘What would be your ideal job? You can use item 2 or take a chance and go for item 3.

You might think it would be safer and more productive of success to stick to item 2 – but I wouldn’t take that for granted if I were you.

In the first place item 2 would be, to a greater or lesser degree, a lie – and few people are as good at lying as they think they are. An experienced interviewer would almost certainly notice something missing: the genuine and unmistakable enthusiasm of a person describing something they really want.

Secondly, a job description (however good) isn’t necessarily the be all and end all of what a Company is looking for in a potential employee. Your ‘ideal job’ might make you an ‘ideal person’ in the long, albeit not the short, term.

And please don’t forget that you are interviewing the Company just as surely as they are interviewing you. The Company may not be right for you – and you need to find that out. The easiest way to do that is to ask questions and tell the truth about what you want.

And in any event, appreciating that you are an interviewer and not a supplicant can make you feel a lot less nervous and a lot more confident about being interviewed - and having confidence and showing it can give you a huge advantage.

Bill - http://www.therapypartnership.com/

Interviews - Research, Rehearse, and Tell the Truth

Sorry I’m late - and I know that I am very, very late with this post. I've been visiting the wife’s relatives in Armenia, and I’m still trying to catch up.

I think Emily told you that I was a political correspondent for many years before I became a therapist, so you’ll probably appreciate that I’ve spent a big chunk of my life interviewing people. Some of those people were very good, and came out of their interviews looking great and smelling of roses – and some of them weren’t and didn’t.

What made the difference between good and bad was preparation, rehearsal, and a willingness to be honest.

• Good interviewees do a lot of research, know they want to say, and rehearse how they want to say it.
• They anticipate the questions they're going to be asked, decide in advance what they're going to say in reply, and they rehearse their replies.
• They have relevant stories to tell about their experiences, and they tell them confidently and well because they have rehearsed telling those stories.
• They answer hard questions honestly even if the answers don’t reflect well upon them (have to say that many politicians stumble over that one!) – and they answer those questions well because they have anticipated and thought about them and understand that honesty is the best policy and that fudging isn’t going to fool anyone.

And they don’t try to blind the interviewer with science, or use acronyms unknown to anyone but themselves, because they’re intelligent enough to realise that that is really very, very irritating!

Over the next couple of days I’m going to be talking about some of the questions you might be asked, and we can discuss how you might answer them, but in the meantime, a couple of things to bear in mind:

• Every interviewer begins with an ‘icebreaker’ question that is actually a leading question. A job interviewer is likely to use ‘What are you doing now or what were you doing in your last job?’ as an icebreaker/leading question.

This is your chance to shine, because what the interviewer really wants to know is why you took that job, what your role is or was, whether you understand and can explain how your role related to the rest of the company as a whole, whether you were really interested in the company, or whether the job was just a job and, of course, why you have left or want to leave it.

‘Icebreaker‘/leading questions are designed to allow the interviewer to frame follow up questions. If you answer an icebreaker fully and well you will have made a good beginning – so take some time to formulate and rehearse an answer to the icebreaker!

• Every interviewer wants to know about your strengths and weaknesses. Most people are good on their strengths, but fall down on their weaknesses because they try to portray them as potential strengths.

Please, please, don’t use the same old, same old, ‘I’m a perfectionist’ or ‘I expect everyone to work as hard as I do’ answer to this question! Everybody knows that people are trained to use the ‘my weaknesses are my strengths’ technique, and nobody is fooled by it anymore – if they ever were. You'll be far better off telling people that you’re a lousy timekeeper or that you have a low threshold of boredom than going down that route - not least because if you do go down that route people are likely to fall about laughing the minute you leave the room.

Think about it. What are your weaknesses? Be honest with yourself, because you really need to come up with some genuine goods here. If you stumble over weaknesses and come up with nothing but platitudes you’re going to lose credibility all the way along the line. Rehearse what you are going to say and how you are going to say it.

• Interviewers do research, too. If you screwed up somewhere – they’ll probably know all about it. And in the nicest possible roundabout way, they’ll ask you about it. Just as I would, and always did, albeit that I was rarely roundabout and wasn't employed to ask questions in the nicest possible way.

If you've screwed up somewhere – be prepared to admit it and explain what happened. Truthfully, with no fudging, no evasions, and no excuses. Politicians are bad at this one, too – which is why they’re so often publicly discredited by people like me.

Honestly is really very, very important when it comes to interviews, because one lie (or even one fudged or evasive answer) casts doubt on the integrity of every other statement made - and on the integrity of the person who makes those statements.

Research, rehearse - and tell the truth!

Bill - http://www.therapypartnership.com/

Interviews Are a Two-Way Street

Sorry we’ve been missing for so long – Geoffrey and I have got decorators and a heatwave, and Bill’s just back from visiting his wife’s relatives in Armenia. Actually, it’s probably cooler in Armenia; it was 115 degrees in the shade in my garden at six o’clock this afternoon , and here it is nearly half past twelve and it really doesn’t feel any cooler.

Anyway, what I really wanted to talk about is the fact that interviews are a two way street. The question isn’t just ‘does this employer want you?’ It’s also ‘do you want this employer?’

Asking the right questions can put you onto an equal footing with an interviewer. That’s purely psychological, but it’s a powerful tool when it comes to interviews, because you might be considered more qualified than other applicants simply because the right questions can bring the interviewer to consider you – quite unconsciously – as an ‘equal’. However, the basic question remains: 'do you want this particular employer?'

Bill Doult was a journalist and a political correspondent for many years before he became a therapist. He’s therefore an expert interviewer (Maggie Thatcher always addressed him as 'dolt' - as in 'Oh, it's you again, Dolt' - but she usually answered his questions anyway), and he’s going to be talking about asking questions and fielding them, and I think that’s going to be very helpful. In the meantime though, and if you are going to be on the hotspot come Monday - ask who your immediate superior is going to be.

Quite often one of the people involved in interviewing you will be the person you end up working for, but if it isn’t, you should ask to meet him or her – and when you do, pay very, very close attention to how he or she reacts to, deals with, and speaks to you, because if the Company offers you a job, that person is going to be an important part of your life.

Don’t take a job if you feel you can’t get along with the person who’s going to be an important part of your life. In the present climate that probably sounds ridiculous - but it isn’t.

Try not to think of any interview as your last chance, or as any job as being better than nothing, because if you take something that you don’t feel good about, you could end up back on the market with a six month stint on your CV/resume that it’s going to be difficult to put over well.

It’s best to take the time to find the right job and take the pressure off by setting long term goals, rather than jumping at the first thing that comes along like a cock at a blackberry. I know it isn’t always possible to do that, but you may have other options that you haven’t thought about that don’t involve messing up your CV - and we can talk about that when Bill’s gone though asking and fielding interview questions!

Emily - http://www.therapypartnership.com/

I've Got Nothing To Wear!

Yes you do.! You have a whole wardrobe of stuff that you've worn to work for ever. It's good and it's comfortable - so stick with it. New clothes are lovely to have - but they're not familiar - and familiar and comfortable is what you need when you have do have to do something 'scary' like going to an interview.

And the last thing you need is new shoes.

I have to say that I love shoes. I've bought ridiculous shoes with four inch heels in silly colours at silly prices (and worn them in some very silly places!) and I've bought plain black flats for interviews. They all pinched. Take my advice - polish your old ones.

If you're really worried about what to wear to an interview - stand about outside the building the morning before your interview, take a look at what everyone else is wearing, and take your cue from that. Normally you'll find that it's plain, dark and discreet. No flashy ties. No big chain jewellery. No pale green shoes with four inch heels. And certainly no skirts split all the way to anybody's bum. In other words - business as usual.

Confidence comes from inside you, not from new, unfamiliar and (usually!) uncomfortable clothing. Worrying about what to wear is wasted energy. Concentrate on what you need to say instead.

Emily - http://www.therapypartnership.com

Being Interviewed Can Be Scary - BUT...

Being interviewed for anything can be scary; being interviewed for a new job (particularly if you’ve been in the same job and off the market for years) can be particularly scary – BUT...

...being interviewed can be a lot less scary if you bear in mind that you got the interview on the strength of your CV, your Application Form, and your covering letter, and that although your prospective employers might have received fifty or even hundreds of sets of paperwork they chose yours, and were interested enough in it to want to see and talk to you. You can gain a certain amount of confidence from that!

In the meantime, if you’re not getting interviews, or not doing very well with the interviews you do get, remember that constructing a good CV and performing well at interviews takes practice, and the more you practice, the more confident and skilled you are going to become – which makes recruitment agencies a very useful resource:

• Recruitment agencies interview you – which is great because not only do you get to practice being interviewed, you can also ask for feedback and get constructive help with working on your interviewing technique.


• Recruitment agencies evaluate your skills – which is great because an evaluation can reinforce your belief in yourself and your abilities, or highlight areas that need improvement.


• Recruitment agencies go through your CV with you – which is great because they see an awful lot of CVs, and will certainly be willing to suggest how you can improve yours because it’s in their own interests to do so. They are, after all, going to try to sell you on the strength of it.


• Recruitment agencies discuss what you’re looking for – which is great because it can help you to clarify exactly what it is you do want.

There are a lot of businesses that give courses on writing CV’s or improving interviewing techniques – but they cost money, and you don’t need (and maybe can’t afford) to spend that money. Recruitment agencies are good at what they do – they wouldn't stay in business if they weren't - and they’re free to you. They’ll get you a job if they can – and they’ll also get you the best salary they can because they earn a percentage of the annual salary of every single person they place.

There are a lot of recruitment agencies around. If you live in a big city you can find one on nearly every street corner. Make plans to register with some of them. They might not be able to come up with an ‘instant job’ – but they can certainly give you some instant interview practice and give you some very practical advice and help on presenting your paperwork and yourself for success.

Emily - http://www.therapypartnership.com

Don't Cross Yourself Out!

Speaking of old friends and filling in forms and signing them: do you backslash right through your signature when you’re signing your name? A lot of people do that – in fact a lot of people aren’t content with just one single backslash; they go over it two or three times to make sure that their name is effectively well and truly crossed out.

Your signature reflects your personality; it’s personal logo - a written picture of how you see yourself in relation to other people. In fact, many Graphologists believe that when it comes to analysing people, signatures are more revealing than handwriting.

Whilst it's very unlikely that the people who read your Application Forms or covering letters will be trained Graphologists, those people will still be influenced by the way you sign your name, because signatures send signals about the personality of the writer to the conscious and subconscious minds of the reader.

So please don’t cross yourself out!

P.S. What prompted to me to mention this is a book called “Love Letters, The Romantic Secrets Written in Our Handwriting” - which was written by the same old friend who reminded me that ‘CVs’ are ‘resumes’...

A CV is a Resume - And We've Been Very Parochial!

An old friend sent me an e-mail the other day to remind me that CVs are called ‘resumes’ in the United States. "Not that you will have forgotten" she said, "but, CV is an unknown term here - always just resume".

Actually, I hadn’t forgotten – I’d just gotten very parochial and really quite careless.

I have to say that Bill is absolutely innocent – he’s always lived in Britain - but neither Geoffrey nor I have any such excuse. We’ve both of us lived in the United States, and we now live in France, where the word for ‘resume, is - ‘résumé’.

Sorry everyone!

Emily - http://www.therapypartnership.com

Why Do People Want An Application Form When They Already Have a CV?

Some employers ask that candidates complete an Application Form as well as providing a CV and a covering letter. Much of the information demanded by the form can be found on the CV and/or the application letter. So why do people bother with Application Forms – extra pieces of paper which cost money to produce (and, these days, post!)? Well – for several reasons:

A CV is a statement, which may or may not be entirely factual. A CV doesn’t demand that you verify that it is entirely factual; in fact it doesn’t demand that you verify anything at all.

On the other hand most Application Forms generally conclude with a clause that demands that a candidate confirm that the information given on the Form is entirely factual by signing and dating the Form in the space provided next to or below the clause – and some Application Forms positively state that if an employer discovers that any part of the Application is false, then the candidate can be dismissed for that reason.

Here are some of the points you can expect to have to deal with on a standard job Application Form:

1. Personal Details (excluding preferred working arrangements)

2. Education and Professional Qualifications
3. Present Employment (if any)

4. Previous Employment
5. Relevant Skills, Abilities, Knowledge and Experience

6. Other information (this will exclude reference to prior health record, and the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974)

7. References
8. Declaration

A job Application Form is a legal document. As such, it offers protection to potential employers. There are several things that you don’t need to reveal – but you do need to be careful about what you say. If you don’t feel able to swear to it, don’t say it. And remember – your CV needs to match your Application Form!

A CV is a pre-prepared statement – usually a very carefully crafted pre-prepared statement. Job Application Forms, on the other hand, are really a sort of questionnaire.

Questionnaires are designed to encourage people to reveal a great deal about themselves without being consciously aware that they’re doing so – which is why so many therapists use them.

Both the questionnaires that therapists use and many job Application Forms ask questions designed to reveal what people genuinely want, rather than what they would like to persuade the reader that they want. A therapist’s form, for example, might ask: ‘Where do you see yourself in five years time?’ The job Application Form version of that question is a request for a ‘Personal Profile’ or an ‘Objective Statement’ setting out an applicant’s hopes, plans, and objectives.

So where do you see yourself in five years time? You might as well spent some time thinking about that question now, because one way or another somewhere along the line somebody is going to ask you to answer it.

If possible, you need to spend as much time crafting and polishing your job Application Form as you spend on your CV. If someone springs an Application Form on you when you arrive for your interview TAKE YOUR TIME. Don’t get pushed into rushing through the form, because people can learn a lot about you from the way you complete it.

Ideally, if you get the form sent to you, you should take a photocopy of it and practice with it, or plan everything you want to say on a separate piece of paper. Practicing with a photocopy is best because you’ll be able to see exactly how much you can fit into each box without cramping your writing and decide what you want to say with space in mind. Don’t forget to ‘angle’ your answers to the Company – and don’t reply to any question with the words “See my CV”.

Obviously, you shouldn’t complete the real form until you’re completely satisfied with how your practice copy looks and reads. When you do, use a black pen so that it can be easily photocopied, use block capitals so that it is easily legible, and make it as neat and clear as possible.

Take a photocopy for yourself so that you can remember exactly what you said – and take the copy with you to the interview, so that you can refresh your memory while travelling or waiting.

Geoffrey, Bill, and Emily

Aghh! Covering Letters! Presentation, Presentation, Presentation!

Obviously, if you’re sending out a CV, then you have to write a covering letter – a relevant, well-produced letter that has to be short enough to hold the reader’s attention, long enough to say what you need to say, and interesting enough to persuade the recipient to read your CV.

I was never actually in love with constructing a CV - and I was never keen on completing application forms either because I almost always managed to put something in the wrong box – but I really HATED writing covering letters!

There’s nothing for it, of course, but to keep on messing around with your sentences until the letter is short enough and long enough and (hopefully!) interesting enough to do the trick. In the meantime clarity and good presentation goes a long way toward grabbing someone’s attention:

• If the advert doesn’t specify to whom exactly you should be writing, ring up and find out who is dealing with the applications. At least that way your letter ends up on the right desk, and you get brownie points for good manners and initiative.


• If you have to telephone to get a name – don’t forget to ask the person to whom you speak to spell the name for you. Geoffrey once got an application addressed to Jeffrey Meltis. I don’t think I need to tell you how impressive he found that.
• Make sure that you state clearly – in a emboldened heading, preferably – exactly which job you’re chasing. Big companies in particular tend have several vacancies at any given time, and you don’t want to find yourself being interviewed for something quite other than you had in mind. Don’t laugh – it can happen. People see what they want to see – and read what they want to read.


• Set the letter well on the page. Don’t cramp everything up at the top and leave a huge white space at the bottom, for example, because letters like that tend to look as though the writer couldn’t be bothered to design the letter properly, and just ran it off in a rush. A piece of paper is a big white space. If it’s filled in a balanced way then it looks pleasant and harmonious – and gives the impression that the writer has taken some care and trouble over it.


• The last word on the page (right at the bottom!) should be ‘enclosures’ – and after it (in brackets) should be the number of enclosures. It’s correct and efficient, of course, to do that, but the fact is that few people can resist counting the enclosures they’re supposed to have – and whilst one is counting one is also looking and reading. It’s a way of drawing attention to the enclosures.


• Try to get some nice paper for your covering letters. People are more impressed by that aspect of presentation than you might think.


• READ WHAT YOU’VE WRITTEN BEFORE YOU SEND THE LETTER. People don’t just see what they want to see – they see what they believe to be there. It’s amazingly easy to miss out a word or overlook a typo. And don’t rely on your spell check. It doesn’t know from context, and it can help you to come up with some real howlers!

Obviously, content is very important – but presentation is very important too, because first impressions are important, and your covering letter offers a prospective employer a chance to form a ‘first impression’ of you. Make it a good one!

Emily http://www.therapypartnership.com

It Can Be Hard to Be Objective...

It can be hard to be objective when you are writing about yourself, but your CV is the key to getting through the ‘interview door’, and unless you can make your reader interested enough to want to see you from your CV, the key isn’t going to work, and you won’t get an interview never mind a job.

Write and design your CV to appeal to your readers - and bear in mind that, because your prospective employer might receive literally hundreds of CVs, something well-organised and brief is more likely to attract and hold his or her attention:

• Contact information should be clearly visible on the first page.

• Format should be easy to follow – headlines that are highlighted and indented, for example, catch the attention of the reader and make it easier for a person to take a QUICK look at your CV.

• CV should be accurate and correct. Fifty percent of people lie a little bit on their CVs; some people lie a lot - see http://metlissbarfield.blogspot.com/2009_06_01_archive.html for more information about that. Try to not to exaggerate or embroider facts on your CV. These days you’re likely to be found out – and obviously people aren't too keen on hiring people who haven't been entirely honest.

• Keep the CV as short as you possibly can without crowding the page - or making the typeface very small. Try not to use more than two sheets and keep the typeface very legible.

• Don’t forget to put a header and footer on the second sheet and on all accompanying Certificates, etc. Many people like to spread papers out in a line so as to be able to check one sheet against another – I do myself – so paperclips and staples are regularly removed from documents, and it’s very easy for loose papers to go astray even in the best regulated circles.

• Choose a style that is likely to appeal to the reader. Chronological CVs are the most common style and you will need to have one of those anyway, but skills-based CVs often ‘target’ better. Skills-based CVs are more difficult, because they demand that you think through all of the skills that are necessary to a particular job, and then list personal details under those skill headings. Skills-based CVs are becoming more common the UK, incidentally, so it’s worthwhile trying to design one if circumstances seem to demand it.

• Don’t forget that employers are looking for a ‘perfect match’ at the moment – not only because employing someone is an expensive proposition, but also because they are in a ‘buyers market’. Whether you go for a chronological or skills-based format CV, always write a new CV for each job, so as to tailor information about yourself and your experience for that particular job. It means collecting information about the company and the job in question so that you can match your talents to what they’re looking for – and it can be hard work if you happen to be sending out a lot of CVs. On the other hand you won’t get nearly such good results from sending out a standard CV in every case.

• Try to stay abreast of what’s going on in your particular field – the latest technology, training and jargon that are relevant to what you do. It some cases it’s easy to fall behind if you're ‘out of the loop’ for even very short periods.

• Vary style according to the type of job you are applying for. Big or ‘professional’ Companies (like Solicitors and accountants, for example) usually expect very formal CVs on white paper (and yes, the quality of the paper does matter!), but in some cases you might use coloured paper or an unusual design. Again, it’s a case of finding out as much as possible about the Company and deciding what would be most appropriate and appealing.

Your CV is, of course, is going to have to go out with a covering letter – but that’s a post for another day!

Geoff - http://www.metlissbarfield.com