Lifeskills Blog

Why A Cover Letter Is Necessary A cover letter is like a sales pitch! This is what summarises all your skills, experience and capabilities for the job you are applying for. It gives you the opportunity to tell a story. It should be brief and straight to the point. Most candidates make the mistake of copy-pasting the same cover letter for all the jobs applied for. This is a huge error and it’s where most candidates go wrong. A cover letter adds focus to your resume. In most job adverts it is a requirement for one to send their CV and Cover Letter. Unfortunately, most candidates don’t know the purpose of this letter. They treat a cover letter as just any other document required in the application process. For those who know the reason of having one, they make mistakes when sending out the application and as a result, employers and recruiters end up not reading them. In this article, we’ll make a...

Salary negotiation can be scary because you do not want to undervalue yourself and get a raw deal or overvalue yourself and get disqualified. The most important thing is to know your worth and this can be simplified by following these guidelines. Your experience t goes without saying that the more experience you have, the more your skills you possess and the more value you bring on board. As such, you should consider your professional experience when quoting your expected salary. As a basic requirement, employers will usually specify the number of years of experience in the qualifications part of a job advertisement. As stated earlier, once a position is available, a budget is determined. The years of experience are part of the consideration when determining the budget to be set aside for a particular position. This then means that you should quantify this when determining your net worth. Your skills When applying for a job, carefully look at the skills required and how many you have...

You just completed another application for the umpteenth time. You are sure about this, you did all you could before submitting this application. Now you sit and wait for the call, or a regret email. No response. Then wait some more. Until now – the feedback is not forthcoming – you are losing hope now. After a couple of weeks, you decide to move on. It is a sad reality that most companies do not give any feedback to candidates after job applications. Some applicants even wonder if the job sites even receive the applications. They get frustrated, and anxious. To get more clarity on this, here are a few pointers you should know; 1. You are not qualified for the role  The job advert read ”We are looking for a candidate with 4 years of experience for the role.” Your experience, on the other hand, is less than a year. What are the odds of you getting a call? The recruiter needs someone who is qualified for...

If you are lucky to get called for an interview during the current Covid-19 crisis, it is very likely that it is going to be an online interview. Technology continues to influence the world of work during and post the Covid-19 pandemic. Companies are slowly adopting the available technology to keep their operations running and using tools like Zoom, Skype and Google hangouts to hold meetings and interviews. Employees are also working from home so it is likely that a HR professional will suggest to conduct an online interview. Here are tips to get you ready for that online interview. Read More...

What employers want to know about you You walk into an interview room and find 3 people waiting for you. For a moment, you are tensed. You do not know what to expect. Once you settle down and the real interview begins, questions start coming from all sides and for a moment, you are not sure of what exactly the recruiters want to hear. Currently, all those common interview questions and answers you had rehearsed have evaporated from your head due to the confusion. Well, panicking is a very valid response in such a situation but, you can manage to keep calm and ace the interview. Recruiters often have a few things they want to hear from a candidate and they are always keen to filter what they consider valuable to them from the candidate’s responses. It has nothing to do with rehearsed responses or very deep research about the company, even though covering these two areas does set you apart from the crowd. In...

Twenty-one years ago, 17 software engineers published the Manifesto for Agile Software Development, more commonly known as the Agile Manifesto. Responding to the bureaucratic waterfall model of software development, with its linear phases and heavy documentation, these engineers advocated a more flexible approach, one that could adapt and succeed in a highly dynamic environment. That simple declaration of values and principles has since spawned a global movement that has gone far beyond software development, gradually expanding to include under its umbrella a broad set of tools, processes, and functions. Agile has fundamentally changed the way we build software. In my organization, for example, we scrum, run sprints, and far outperform the pace of development from the past. During the last 20 years, the agile movement has gained astonishing momentum, even outside of software development. There’s agile HR, agile project management, agile customer service, agile sales, agile operations, agile C-suite, and so on. Read More...

What employers want to know about you You walk into an interview room and find 3 people waiting for you. For a moment, you are tensed. You do not know what to expect. Once you settle down and the real interview begins, questions start coming from all sides and for a moment, you are not sure of what exactly the recruiters want to hear. Currently, all those common interview questions and answers you had rehearsed have evaporated from your head due to the confusion. Well, panicking is a very valid response in such a situation but, you can manage to keep calm and ace the interview. Recruiters often have a few things they want to hear from a candidate and they are always keen to filter what they consider valuable to them from the candidate’s responses. It has nothing to do with rehearsed responses or a very deep research about the company, even though covering these two areas does set you apart from the crowd. In...

Everyone needs a great support system. This is why you must identify the types of coworkers you’d like to associate with in your place of work. Picking the right office relationships is necessary for successful career growth. No matter where you work, ensure you are constantly developing a relationship business. Technology has seen most millennials inhibit interactions with other people as they can easily live in their own cloud bubble. We all have, at some point in our careers, sent an email over to a colleague sitting right across instead of standing up and having an actual conversation. This is why there is a need to start cultivating the right connections in the workplace. These are the types of coworkers that can help you get a promotion, get that salary raise or better yet, connect you to the right markets for life. So who are these coworkers and why do you need them in your circle? 1. The Office BestFriend We all have one or...

Every week I get them: Emails from women in the ad industry asking if they should quit. It happens so often that I've started to call myself the Quitting Coach. These weary notes don't surprise me. Despite recent efforts to hire a more diverse workforce and promote women, advertising is still a boys' club. The women who write to me get passed over for raises and promotions. Their less experienced and less talented male colleagues get the prime accounts, projects, and job offers. Related: Female Founders Need to Stop Self-Sabotaging Research performed by the 3% Movement bears out what is obvious to anyone who has worked in the industry: Women who don't adjust to the grueling workweeks, inflexibility and family-unfriendly environment simply leave. I understand the yearning for something different: I spent 10 wonderful, magical years working for Wieden + Kennedy, producing work for brands like Nike, Coca-Cola and Powerade -- but I started itching for new ways to challenge myself and take some risks. Then the universe...

Do you think your CV can stand out from a pile and catch the attention of a hiring manager? If the answer to that question is a no or a maybe there’s quite the work to be done. Your CV should represent you fully to a hiring manager and give you an opportunity to meet the interviewer. Here are 10 characteristics of a great CV you should check your CV against; It Grabs the Reader’s Attention This is the most important aspect in a CV. Your CV should stand out from pile and intrigue the reader enough to want to read it. On average, a recruiter or HR practitioner takes about 7 seconds to decide whether or not your CV is worth their time. A great CV captures the attention of it’s reader right away. It tells the Reader the Kind of Job You are Looking For Your CV should immediately state the job and industry you are interested in. This information can be entered in...

There is no sure way to write a professional CV that captures all recruiters’ attention. However, with the tough competition in the job market, a professional CV is what you might just need to stand out. The ultimate rule for writing a CV that stands out, is to ensure that you showcase your unique selling point – stand out. A Curriculum vitae, popularly known as a CV is a professional document that gives a summary of your work history, education, and skills. Your CV should sell you, as a candidate, to hiring employers. There are 2 types of CVs, the skills-based CV, and the experience-focused type. A skills-based CV, also referred to as functional CV, highlights qualifications and skills, as compared to experience. An experienced focused CV, on the other hand, prioritizes work expertise and achievements. This section contains your official names, email addresses and phone numbers. Make sure the number provided is active and belongs to you. A recruiter will want...

Most of us begin a new position with energy and a desire to impress. Our effort is high. Our passion is infectious. Our enthusiasm helps us to excel quickly. But for some, work becomes mundane and repetitive. They lose some of their passion, and their work can begin to feel like a chore. Eventually, some of those executives who had initially loved their careers enter the dimension we call the “day prison.” As they enter their workspace, they feel the metaphorical bars close around them in a zone where they are unmotivated, dissatisfied, and much less productive than they could be. To better understand this phenomenon we examined data from 970 such people in a single organization. They were between 35 and 44 years old (the typical range for the onset of a mid-career crisis), and they all rated their engagement at work in the bottom 10%....

Taking a rest is important for your physical and mental well-being. In addition to having some time off work just to relax, there are other circumstances which might force you to take some time off. As a result, the government of Kenya has gazetted some important laws which guide employers and employees on how to take some time off work, under different circumstances. It should be noted that these are the legal privileges protected by the law. This is perhaps the most common and widely known type of leave. According to section 28 of the Kenyan Employment Act, clause Clause 7.8.9, every employee is entitled to 21 annual leave days after one year of service to the company, with full pay. This is calculated as 1.75 working days per month. It does not mean that an employee is not entitled to leave days if they have not completed one year of service. Rather, it means that the employee accrues their leave as...