Career Progress

“I now have the confidence to be both selective and ambitious”

Marlies Hoogeboom is managing director EMEA and Asia Pacific for Mace Group. “I’d been in my job for eight years and was keen to progress my career when a friend suggested Sam at Obvious Candidate. I was impressed with Sam’s expertise because I felt it would supercharge my personal marketing and kickstart my job search. “Sam has clear coaching frameworks to help you focus on how to advance your career. Easy exercises enabled me to ‘harvest my history’, e!ortlessly capturing my most impressive examples to showcase my experience. Sam’s insistence on setting my job-search criteria as ‘job one’ saved me so much time! This clarity helped me focus on the right roles and gave me the confidence to be both selective and ambitious. “I’m currently at my third career move working with Sam. My last two moves have both been significant promotions. It’s been a successful long-term approach to land a dream job at senior level with a destination employer like Mace. Sam is intuitive and pushes me to realise my potential. The CV and interview preparations are e!ective, and as my career has progressed and my personal life has changed, I have found that my job criteria have adjusted too, helping me to zero in on my dream job. “I can measure my progress in how far my career has advanced. It’s easy to say what you don’t want and harder to identify what you do, and Sam is able to unlock this for me. His ability to build and optimise a LinkedIn profile and CV is remarkable. He always finds ways to personalise his coaching interventions to enable progress and results.”

Making your CV work for you

Career coach John Lees share his top tips on CV perfection

DRAW ATTENTION to those things that are likely to get you an interview. Include anything that the organisation in question is hungry to find, such as industry knowledge, job knowledge and skills. In short, anything that’s likely to get you on a shortlist for interview.

TAKE ATTENTION AWAY from things such as qualifications that have no relevance, gaps in your CV and job titles that aren’t helpful. It’s good practice not to include your date of birth, as that can give organisations an equality issue, but they do like to see the dates of your main qualifications.

Practical solutions

Need to enhance your skills? There are plenty of courses available

There are more than 400 free courses for adult learners without a level 3 qualification, ranging from engineering and healthcare to conservation. The government is also set to introduce the Lifelong Loan Entitlement in 2025, which will give every adult access to a flexible loan for higher-level education and training at university or college, useable at any point in their lives. In the meantime, there’s the Advanced Learner Loan, which can help with the costs of a course at a college or training provider in England. Work experience is also a great option. Contact local companies that interest you to see if you can help out. Many placements can lead to permanent jobs, as the employer has a chance to get to know you and your skills before o!ering a job.