Career Advice

After the pandemic reshaped the universal approach to working arrangements, many more of us have been reaping the benefits that remote work can offer. Between the 24 million people who were believed to be working from home during the pandemic, they saved an estimated £1 billion every week on costs related to going into the office. As such, it’s understandable that when moving jobs, you may want to hold on to the freedom and flexibility that comes with this more modern set up.

Whilst you could want these reassurances during the interview, it can be a potentially tricky subject to broach.

There are many employees who are fooled by their job titles. An estimated 200,000 plus paralegals work in a variety of fields and for diverse employers, who are unaware that they are paralegals and can apply for membership of a professional body, giving them status.

Identifying a paralegal

This is simple: does the work they do involve any sort of legality? For example, are they involved in drafting or reviewing commercial contracts or employment contracts? Do they do any legal research to assist someone in their department? Are they involved in compliance or regulation ensuring that statutory criteria are adhered to? Are they involved in reviewing documents in relation to childcare proceedings?

Zoom interviews are becoming more commonplace in today's digital age. Conducting video interviews has numerous advantages:

Since the employee does not have to travel, video interviews save time and money.

It is not unexpected that many people find it difficult to request higher pay. Especially once their job hunt is over and they have an offer. They do not want to risk the opportunity now that they've made it this far.

However, as the UK HR experts point out, hiring in many sectors has surpassed or even reached pre-pandemic levels. On top of that, there is a shortage of skilled professionals, increasing competition for top talent and driving up salaries.

If you do not negotiate a salary offer while having specialised skills and a strong CV, you may lose a huge amount of well-deserved money.

Most recruiting managers will give you time to consider the offer and will not demand a response right away. Here are some pay negotiation techniques to help you politely and confidently request what you want.

You’ve probably heard it before: your self-esteem impacts every part of your life. The truth is, if you want to be successful at work, you need to feel confident in yourself and the value that you bring. Building self-esteem isn’t easy, but it is possible!

Ask for feedback

One of the best ways to build your self-esteem at work is to ask for feedback. Whether it’s from your boss or colleagues, asking for constructive criticism will help you improve yourself and grow as an individual.

Here are some tips on how to do this:

‘Quiet Quitting’ is the new buzz phrase, born from lockdown where people have started to re-evaluate their priorities and work/life balance. Gathering speed on social media, it essentially means ‘just staying within the parameters of your job description’ – doing no more, and no less, than what is required by your contract. For example, no more staying late at work, checking emails outside of your contracted work hours, or volunteering to do the ‘nice to have but not really necessary’ jobs, such as organising social events outside of office hours.

When it comes to job hunting, people get overwhelmed by the number of numerous strategies at their disposal. Some may send hundreds of applications to companies hiring employees, while others may reach out to acquaintances within the industry to help secure a job. Nonetheless, it all comes down to one thing – networking. Networking doesn’t mean pestering people with your problems. With limited time on our hands, it is only possible to network with a few people, especially those within your field. 

The saying "the eyes are the window to the soul" is a popular one. According to hiring experts, an interviewer can tell whether you are telling the truth or lying through eye contact, or lack of. Interviewers can often pay a lot of attention to your eyes and body language during an interview. This means that the importance of eye contact in non-verbal communication holds a great deal of importance.  

Eye contact in non-verbal communication.

Eye contact is a form of non-verbal communication that is particularly significant because most individuals rely on their vision more than any other sense. Your gaze might convey a variety of meanings to the person you are looking at, including attention, affection, hatred, or attraction.

Checklists help you stay organised, better prioritise your time and see the “big picture.” They reduce the number of things you must remember, freeing up valuable headspace for the things that really matter. And if someone else needs to fill in for you, they have a step-by-step guide to tell them exactly what they need to do.

A checklist can be as simple or as complicated as it needs to be. Some will only have a handful of tasks on them; others might be pages long. All that matters is that they serve their purpose: making sure everything gets done.

Simple queries can occasionally lead to embarrassing situations if one is not adequately prepared for them. The interview question “Tell me about yourself”, for example, should be a no-brainer. However, this typical interview question continues to baffle candidates of all levels of expertise. It may be claimed that this is partly due to the open-ended nature of the question, as it is not immediately clear if the interviewer is seeking a brief biography, a full CV or a combination of the two. These concerns, like those associated with any difficult interview topic, can be addressed with appropriate preparation and understanding of the interviewer’s rationale for asking the question.

What does the interviewer want to know?