When someone is looking for a job, and depending on his personal and economic situation, he may be stressed, demotivated and his level of self-esteem can be very compromised. In this situation, it may be advisable to hire an expert to accompany you in the search for a job and to train you for the dreaded work interview.

We offer an individual career advisory service adapted to the specific candidate profile and expectations. Our goal is that the impact is good enough to generate enough interest, beyond your CV, so that the interviewer spends time getting to know you. In the digital world in which we live with countless tutorials on YouTube, books at a click, and diverse resources accessible, many people face a selection processes without having prepared the interview phase at all. We also show haw to use different channels to search for a job.

Our service add value to the “Milenials” that want to begin their professional career. A first good impact could be decisive, not having a professional experience and having to compete with many other similar candidates. But it can also help senior professionals to prepare for the type of selection processes that is common now a days, without assuming their extensive CV shows it all.

If it´s becoming more and more common to have a personal trainer, a personal Shopper, a personal coach, why not have a personal career counselor, that advise and train us in the crucial task of finding a new job opportunity.

It is common to find many people, especially women, who have been out of the labor market, either for taking care of their children, or because the recent economic crisis has not allowed them to find a job, and they firmly believe that they do not have the right set of competencies and experience to find a rewarding job.

Please forget it, we all have many skills and most of them are not learned in the work environment, as a good friend often says, you bring them from home.

Let´s take as an example Mary´s case. Mary is a mother of two children under 6, with a partner in a temporary job and a tight income just enough to pay monthly expenses.  She has been a stay at home mum for a few years, because without any family support, the different schedules of her children, have not allowed her to find a job that could be compatible with her family needs.

If we look carefully, we can see that Mary has not lost this time at home with her kids, on the contrary, she has been developing many skills.

A few days ago, her two children had the School Carnival, and of course, what father or mother restraint themselves from buying their children the best costume?  She looked at several tutorials in YouTube, bought the materials in the outlet shop near her house, and made them some fantastic costumes that could be mistaken for those from any grand Musical. There they are, critical competencies: learning agility, results oriented and budget management.

Maria doesn't have any kind of help, her family lives in another city and she must be autonomous: she cleans her house,  cooks, brings and collects her kids from the school, buys their clothes, buys food... you will agree with me in believing that Maria is demonstrating a solid set of skills: she is able to relate with different people, she is able to multitask, she can effectively plan the short and the medium term including critical tasks and organizing her time schedule.

With this proven record, would you hire Maria? I would sure do.

Of course not, and the same applies for seniors. But unfortunately, they are often excluded from recruitment processes, even if the age factor is not spoken openly.

In recent years, a subject of constant concern has been the high rate of unemployment, especially among youngsters, with very worrying numbers of young talent moving form Spain to other countries such as the United Kingdom or Germany to find a better future.

But I want to talk to you about my friend John. John studied engineering, learned English and French, and worked for 15 years in important companies, one of them a top multinational company in an executive committee position.

The economic crisis began, and like many, John was made redundant. After two years without finding any job opportunity, he worked for a small family owned company, with a very small salary, in a position not aligned with his experience. John worked had, learned from scratch, and earned a critical income for his family, but not enough...

Now that it seems that the worst of the economic crisis is over, John wants to find a professional opportunity more appropriate for his education and experience, but has a limitation that no one speaks about, he is not young anymore, he is already 49 years old.

If we think of big companies, how many have a young talent attraction program? Probably most of them. If we think about how many have it in Spain for the attraction of senior talent in age and experience, let´s say above 45 years old and over 15 of experience, the answer will be nearly none.

As many experts say, we are reaching a period of shortage of qualified professionals, so more than ever, companies should work to include this huge source of talent, establishing specific plans to attract seniors. It can also be a key factor for being considered an employer of choice and differentiate ourselves from the competition.

The United States already develops rankings of best companies in senior talent attraction policies and is becoming a relevant parameter to be taken into account by investors, customers, and society in general. It can also be an element to include for the attraction of “Milenials”, much more concerned about the social responsibility of the company they are going to join, than in the past.  If they feel that the company does not care about senior professionals, why would they think it is going to care about them in the future?

Hope by now, you are determined to search for senior talent, and so the first question to ask yourself is, will any senior add value?

As within any other group, the answer is very simple, NO.  Not all of them will match your needs, only the good ones, and to detect them, the main qualities you need to look for are:

Operating capacity: We need a hands-on candidate, able to work well with others and open to perform new and different tasks.  Someone who has only worked in the world of ideas or great strategies will not adapt well. The use of Microsoft user tools is essential in any qualified work.

Excellent communication skills and ability to influence Being realistic, a senior candidate may not be easily accepted. For this reason, it is more critical than in young people to hire someone that is able to communicate with confidence and passion and that interacts well with other age groups.

Curiosity: Only those who wish to know new people, things, environments and have a natural inclination to learn will meet your requirements. By the way, curiosity is not often included among the relevant skills for a job, we often talk about learning ability, which is not the same, curiosity should be at the top of the list.

Cultural match: We need to explain what our company culture is about, how we expect him/her to behave and what values we promote. If this is important in any candidate, it is critical in a senior whose personal values are usually much more settled and need to match somehow the ones promoted by the organization.

Willing attitude: If you want, we can call it “can do attitude”, but I prefer willing.  You need a candidate that wants to take the challenge, work hard and give the best of him/her.

Determination: Find a candidate who is really determined to getting the job done and that will fight to achieve his goals, that will not get frustrated easily, is not only about resilience, but also about the desire to add value and make the difference.

Human resources professionals, public entities, private companies and expert consultants, who speak about senior talent and the need to incorporate it in the organizations, are beginning to be heard.

I encourage you to set up specific programs for attracting senior professionals, that can serve as a source of talent, experience and inspiration for other generations of your company.

UCLA University in the United States has conducted a study to help us improve on the difficult art of liking others. In it, it clarifies what are the 10 habits that help less to be liked by others. Here you have them summarized:

1. Mention names of important people that you can know or not, without any relevance for the conversation, makes you be perceived as arrogant.
2. Emotional ups and downs: expressing too much joy or anger at unimportant issues only causes mistrust and rejection. We all reject screams and pitches, especially in the working environment.
3. False humility: To say that you do wrong or not dominate something in which you are clearly superior to your team, colleagues, etc. really can annoy others.
4. Do not leave your eyes from your mobile: Look at the phone even if you are in the middle of a meeting or an important conversation. Makes others feel unimportant to you.
5. Be very "closed-minded", not admitting other points of view, other beliefs, other values, and making it evident.
6. Don't ask questions: If you don't ask, you don't show any interest in what surrounds you, or the opinion of others.
7. Gossip: Talk about personal issues that don't affect you, and usually negatively.
8. Share a lot too soon: Without a real close relationship, humans do not like to hear the personal problems of others.... Choose who you share your problems with.
9. Share too much on social networks: As in every other aspect of life, you need to find the midpoint, including what do you have for breakfast, lunch and dinner every day and photograph all the sites you visit in the networks, only transmit an "unhealthy" need for social acceptance and personal insecurity.
10. Being very serious: Try to be serious and professional in the performance of your work, but accessible and friendly in your interaction with others.

We encourage you to identify the ones you practice more often and work in a plan to avoid them. Best of luck.

Do we give the necessary importance to each factor or do we continue to prioritize only academic background?

Steve Jobs dropped out of school six months after he started college. With twenty-six years he already was millionaire thanks to the launching of a computer that could be managed by a user without knowledge in computer science.

Bill Gates founded Microsoft while conducting his studies at the university. Due to the success of the company, he had to leave the university to devote himself completely to this project.

Amancio Ortega began at the age of fourteen to work in a clothing shop in La Coruña. Later, he started a company dedicated to produce bathrobes. In 1975 he launches Zara's first clothing store in La Coruña and in 1985 he creates the successful Inditex group.

Mark Zuckerberg left Harvard a year after creating Facebook without completing his university studies.

What do these different people have in common?

All of them have been self-taught, constant, committed and have worked to achieve their goal.

Some, like Steve Jobs or Bill Gates, have provided solutions to the technological needs of the moment, making all of them evolve with them and their projects.

Others, as Mark Zuckerberg changed the way we relate to each other, starting the famous social networks.

Amancio Ortega, for his part, is the clear example of someone who "starts from the bottom" and little by little acquires the necessary knowledge through experience. Maybe this is the key to your success.

Therefore, we must remember that people are not only the titles that accompany him. A master or a university degree does not always indicate the value of a candidate. Perseverance, learning ability, commitment and many other competencies must be an essential requirement when it comes to incorporating talent into the company. In the same way that training is.

It is becoming increasingly common for large companies to launch talent attraction programs for people without university education, a professional without the necessary skills and personal values will not achieve the success you expect even if he has a solid academic background.