Career Advice: Break The Rules
Fri, June 18, 2010 at 12:00 
There’s a lot of career advice and career guidance out there for the person looking for a new job or a change of career. How to sparkle at interview, how to write the killer CV, what the perfect cover letter looks like. If you were to take it all on board, you’d be ... lost.
Instead of being natural in an interview, you’d be there obeying the interview guidelines: sitting up straight, answering questions fully, making sure to look the interviewer in the eye. What would they see? An obedient, rule obeying candidate, not the fully rounded, fascinated person you are.
What to do for the best?
First, the rules and guidelines are not wrong. They almost all contain some sensible advice. But that’s what it is: advice. Someone’s opinion. An opinion based on their experience, their personality, their needs and desires. It’s career advice they think you need or want – based on their own ideas and experiences. So treat it as such. Imagine it not as impersonal rules, but as someone speaking to you in their voice (perhaps that of an elderly aunt, or an earnest teacher), as they urge you to sit up straight and look the interviewer in the eye. Yes, that may be sensible, but too much of it and you’ll end up looking stiff and like a school kid.
Now, having turned what you read mentally from a ‘rule’ to an ‘opinion’, decide that you’ll accept only what fits you well, that feels comfortable and true to you. For the rest, just ignore it.
Which goes for everything you’ve just read here too. Accept what fits, and ignore the rest.
Author: Simon North and James Caplin - Position Ignition Career Guides
Other blogs:
- A Life Less Ordinary
- Who decides what next?
- How to find the right role
- Money, money, money - 8 reasons not to work for it
Reader Comments (4)
It isn't "opinion" when career advisors recommend good interviewing skills are essential to landing jobs...employer surveys are clear on this point. Have you met employers who say, "Well, the candidate couldn't seem to look me in the eye and she was slumped down in her chair but we thought she was so amazing, we hired her, anyway." Not very often, I'd guess. If an interviewee looks "stiff and like a school kid," that means there is work to do to develop better presentation skills. We shouldn't be telling job seekers that they can ignore the cultural norms of the workplace because they don't feel comfortable about the need to enhance their abilities.