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Age is Your Advantage

Episode 284 - This Ain’t Your First Recession: How to Navigate Today’s Job Market Like a Pro 

Inflation is slowing. Interest rates remain high. Companies are hiring, but cautiously. For experienced professionals, that mix translates into fewer job openings, more competition, and longer wait times. Meanwhile, the jobs that do exist are being filled differently. Some never even reach job boards. 

This blog summarizes Episode 284 of The Job Hunting Podcast, in which I discuss the biggest challenges facing mid- to senior-level professionals and offer a strategy playbook for overcoming them. If you’re applying for roles and not hearing back or wondering how to reposition yourself in a slower, more selective market, this is for you. 

Key Shifts in the 2025 Job Market 

Profitability Over Growth: The Current Employer Mindset 

As inflation slows but interest rates remain high, companies in the US and Australia have adopted a risk-averse stance. Instead of pursuing aggressive expansion, organizations are prioritizing profitability. For job seekers, this shift translates into slower hiring processes, selective recruitment, and frequent pauses on advertised roles. 

Companies are hiring, but more cautiously. Role approvals are taking longer, and even when roles are advertised, recruitment processes are often paused midway. This environment particularly affects mid-level managers and experienced executives, as fewer new departments or initiatives are being launched. 

Sector-Specific Hiring Trends 

While traditional corporate sectors are slowing down, others are accelerating: 

  • Public Sector: Despite publicized layoffs in some countries, transformation and reform initiatives continue to drive recruitment. Corporate professionals may find opportunities by transitioning into roles in government or public administration. 
  • Green Energy, Sustainability, and Infrastructure: Projects related to clean energy and infrastructure remain active, often supported by consumer demand and long-term government investment. 
  • Technology and AI: Integrating artificial intelligence and machine learning into business processes is no longer optional. Even professionals in their 40s, 50s, and 60s must stay informed and upskill to remain competitive.
  • Healthcare, Education, and Professional Services: As global populations age and economies demand reskilling, these sectors are expanding, offering significant opportunities for professionals looking to pivot. 

Strategy Playbook for Job Seekers 

1. Reframe Your Narrative 

Experienced professionals must shift from trying to prove they are “still current” to acting with confidence and relevance. Your resume, LinkedIn, and interviews should reflect strategic thinking, not defensiveness. 

  • Tip: Avoid phrases like “despite my age.” Instead, emphasize your ability to navigate uncertainty, lead during change, and deliver results. 
  • Example: “I’ve led teams through major downturns. I bring calm, clarity, and action when things feel uncertain.” 

Tips number 2 to 6 will be sent to The Job Hunting Newsletter subscribers. Click here to sign up. 

Future Outlook: Thriving Amid Uncertainty 

While the job market in 2025 poses unique challenges, it also offers a roadmap for those willing to adapt. Industries like AI, healthcare, and sustainability will continue to expand. Experienced professionals who reframe their values, communicate clearly, and stay agile will thrive. 

Adaptability, strategic positioning, and a strong support system are more critical than ever. Corporate professionals who recognize that job searching is a technical process, not a reflection of their worth, can move from stalled to successful faster. 

The modern job market demands more than qualifications. It requires strategy, clarity, and confidence. Experienced professionals must: 

  • Embrace their age and experience as strengths 
  • Communicate their leadership maturity. 
  • Align with emerging sectors and flexible work formats. 

With the right tools, mindset, and support, you can move through the 2025 job market with greater clarity and purpose. This episode offers essential guidance for any professional feeling frustrated or stuck. 

Renata Bernarde

About the Host, Renata Bernarde

Hello, I’m Renata Bernarde, the Host of The Job Hunting Podcast. I’m also an executive coach, job hunting expert, and career strategist. I teach professionals (corporate, non-profit, and public) the steps and frameworks to help them find great jobs, change, and advance their careers with confidence and less stress.

 

If you are an ambitious professional who is keen to develop a robust career plan, if you are looking to find your next job or promotion, or if you want to keep a finger on the pulse of the job market so that when you are ready, and an opportunity arises, you can hit the ground running, then this podcast is for you.

 

In addition to The Job Hunting Podcast, on my website, I have developed a range of courses and services for professionals in career or job transition. And, of course, I also coach private clients

Timestamps to Guide Your Listening

  • 00:00 Introduction to Job Market Analysis 2025

  • 03:57 Current Economic Context and Job Market Trends

  • 22:16 Strategies for Job Hunting in 2025

  • 41:52 Final Thoughts and Next Steps

Hello, welcome back to the job hunting podcast. This will be a solo episode. It will be just me. I want it to be part one of three episodes that I’ll be doing in the next coming weeks as well. And that is because I think that there’s a lot going on. We’re in the second quarter of 2025 and I want to do an analysis to support professionals that are in the job market currently unemployed or

who are really keen to find a new job and just trying to understand 2025 and how to navigate the job market this year. It’s been incredibly tumultuous to say the least, especially for my clients in America and things are about to get quite interesting in Australia as well. I’m going to be focusing on these two markets, but I think it’s fair to say that…

we can extrapolate some of the ideas that I will be discussing, especially in this first episode to wherever you are in the world. I have clients in the Middle East, in Asia, in Europe, all over England, Ireland, South America, and of course Australia, in the US, in Canada. So I need, know, I’m not a jack of all trades. What I’m good at is helping you find jobs. That’s why people work with me.

But I think it’s important for us to contextualize where we are in the world. As you can see today, it’s going to be free flowing. I don’t have a lot of notes. I’m not going to be reading from notes. It will be really, I think an important conversation that I want to have with my audience. And by the way, thank you for supporting this podcast. I’m always so impressed by how many people that listen to it. And thank goodness, because it brings me the best clients I could wish for.

my ideal clients and I tell them when they reach out to me after listening to these episodes and deciding they need my help, I’m like, it’s amazing how this pipeline works so well, you know, because I’m always so grateful for the people that reach out to me. They are ideal clients for me. And, you know, I’ve been working with the most amazing professionals all over the world.

subscribe to this podcast and remember that I have a newsletter that I’m boosting and I’m sort of making it more more interesting. I want it to be something that you look forward to. Like, you’re like, I can’t wait for this newsletter. Why is Renata taking so long to send it? You know, sometimes I don’t send it early morning in on Tuesday. Sometimes it takes me a little bit longer and I send it in the afternoon. I want people to be sort of refreshing their inbox.

and that the content there is super valuable to them. I want it to be special. So subscribe to it. There’s content there that I don’t add anywhere else. And I want to have special offers and special events just for my newsletter subscribers, because you mean the world to me. So remember to subscribe to the podcast wherever you found it and then find the newsletter link to subscribe. It’s on my website. It’s easy to find.

Let’s go through, find me on LinkedIn, find me online. It’s renatabernardi.com. There’s a link to it in the episode show notes as well. Okay. So let’s begin. Let’s start with context, right? What is different about 2025 and why is it causing us so much headache? So let’s start with a quick pulse check.

just so that we know what we’re talking about here. If you are in the US or in Australia right now, we’re in the kind of a tight, optimistic phase, right? inflammation, too, but inflation has slowed down and it hasn’t disappeared, but it has slowed. And this has to do with…

changes of government, especially in the US. In Australia, we’re about to go into an election as I record this episode. So inflation has slowed compared to previous two years. Interest rates remain high enough to keep business leaders cautious. And why is this important for job seekers? Because it’s the makeup of the environment, right? So companies, when…

They are in this situation where the interest rates are still high. Companies are focused on profitability over growth, right? That’s usually what happens. So hiring is happening, but it’s slow. It’s selective. It’s risk averse. And this tends to employees across the board, job seekers across the board.

but specifically for those that are in the more experienced phase and they may be mid managers, may be specialists or they may be executives. If there is no growth, there is no need for a new head of department, for a new function, for a new project, right? So profitability over growth means it’s everything slows down and goes back to BAU. So business as usual,

And the process is also very risk averse. So if you are potentially a good client, a good candidate for a role, but you are not experienced enough, or if you’re changing industries, all of these things will not be beneficial to you at this point in time. But that’s not all problematic, okay? But I think it may explain to those that are listening.

If you’ve been applying for jobs and you’re not hearing much back from your applications, this may be the reason why. Recruiters are struggling as well. So if you were struggling, there is a chain effect, right? So if you’re finding it hard, recruiters are also finding it hard. Approvals are taking longer for new assignments, for new job advertisements. So they might be

prospecting their clients and trying to convince their clients who are the employers to advertise a role through them. Or if they are internal recruiters, if they are part of the HR team, they might be having several meetings and going after people in order to get approval to advertise the role. And the roles are being opened and then they are being paused.

constantly. So you may have experienced that. I know many of my clients have. They come to me and they say I applied for the job and then the job is no longer going to be progressing, the recruitment process not progressing. That is coming from 2024 and it remains a trend in 2025, unfortunately.

Then there are sectors that are hiring. Now, I know that there are a lot of professionals losing their jobs in the public sector in the US, but there are also jobs that are being advertised in the public sector, not just in the US, but here in Australia and many other countries overseas. And sometimes we come out of corporate when you forget to look above and beyond the industries and the environment, the sector that we’re in.

So I want you to sort of keep an eye on opportunities to join the public sector in roles such as transformation and reform, which is usually where the growth is for the public sector. You with your corporate mindset, skills and competencies may be a good transition into the public sector for those types of roles because it’s not something that

They usually do, but it’s something that they’re definitely doing now. So keep an eye on that. The other thing that I have seen grow and you may, you know, that’s not me. It’s just what’s researched. I mean, there’s several surveys out there that you can look these things up. There’s the LinkedIn surveys, there’s Gartner surveys, there’s surveys that are done by the, by governments.

And we see green energy, sustainability in infrastructure projects as being big projects. So let’s not forget that because that is still something that a lot of us sometimes forget because of the politics around it. But there’s no way around it. Green energy is growing. Consumers want it. If they can afford it, it is still a privilege. But there is a

growth in that market. So what I’m trying to remind you is where the areas of growth are. So green energy and sustainability and infrastructure are really big projects that are going to be implemented now and in the near future. So if you have the time to do some sort of transition, upskilling, reskilling in order for you to apply for roles in

that include these things that would be beneficial to you. Then we have technology and AI. Now, yesterday I had lunch with a future guest of the podcast about technology and AI and how to engage with that at our age. You know, if you’re listening to this and you’re in your 40s, 50s and 60s, don’t discount how important AI, machine learning and tech in general will be for this

final leg of your career or the middle, if you’re in the middle of your career, you you most definitely need to incorporate that into your repertoire of skills. And let’s not wait and be laggards into this. Let’s find out how we can quickly upskill to remain relevant and in the driver seat of the implementation of technology in your

organization, high tech, especially AI. Then you have healthcare, professional services and education. And talking about AI, I was recently interviewed for a newspaper here in Australia called The Age. You may have seen it. The interview has nothing to do with career. But coincidentally, I got two clients out of that interview. I was talking about using AI, which is a

passion of mine, I’m really passionate about AI. I teach all of my clients how to use chat2bt correctly, to present themselves well professionally and how to use that to optimize their job search and then to help them do their jobs as well or anything else. So I was talking about AI in the context of health, how I manage my health with the help of chat2bt.

and they took a picture of me, I will put a link below if you’re interested. But the reason why I say this is that yes, AI has helped me in many ways, but there are so many other things that I, as somebody who has a few chronic issues, I cannot live without the healthcare sector, right? To the professional services.

of the healthcare sector is just so important and it’s going to be growing because we are living longer, we want to be healthier. So if you have the opportunity now to pivot your career into healthcare, into med tech, into health services, go, go now. It’s going to be a big area as we get older as a planet. Then you have professional services, you have education.

And again, I think that there is so much that as somebody who has spent most of my career in higher education and in the not-for-profit sector, building bridges with corporate and with government, I think that there is lots of interesting roles there for you to consider. Correct me if I’m wrong, send me an email, reply to my newsletter or comment under…

my YouTube video of this podcast or any of my LinkedIn posts when this episode comes out. But I think that there is a lot of opportunities there for us to consider. And I’m always working with my clients to guide them into finding the right opportunities that will leverage their skills and experience. But why is it that experienced professionals are struggling right now?

So there’s a paradox here. You are more valuable than ever, but you’re not being hired yet. Right? Now that you have all of this experience behind you, you’ve managed teams, you’ve managed projects, you know your expertise inside out, be it accounting or marketing or finance or HR or I don’t know, whatever it is, logistics, and you’re not being hired.

So there are issues there that would take me forever to untangle. And that’s why I created a course about it and a group coaching program. And I coach my clients privately because your expertise is one thing, but going through the job market and selling yourself is not something that we’re prepared to do. We don’t like doing it. People usually hate doing it.

And nobody has taught us how to do it. I’m so lucky that Monash University hires me to teach master students. I have over 150 students every year. This will be the fifth year that I teach master students on how to plan their careers, how to design their careers, how to take control over their careers and present themselves well. So that is not usually something that is embedded in the curriculum. And even if it was.

It would have been too long ago. What I teach my master’s students is different from what I’m teaching my more experienced professionals. So one of the things that I think I see a lot from people that come to me for the first time for consultations or to find out more about private coaching is that they are undervaluing themselves by applying for jobs that they are overqualified because of the scarcity in the job market.

Now, I’ve written about this before, I’ve posted on LinkedIn about this before. It’s expensive and it’s hard to manage a candidate that is overqualified for a role. Not only that, you will come back to me six months from now, very unhappy in that role. I see this time and time again. I saw it this week, I saw it last week. know, people that apply for a role,

earning less in a job that is less than what they did before because they couldn’t find anything else and then they hate it. They don’t like it because they don’t like not to be in the driver’s seat or not to have the decision-making power or for whatever reason the loss of status quo and the loss of money with it makes it very hard for them to remain in that role. So I want you to

Think about how you can position yourself for the right roles when they appear. What I tell my clients is this, when you apply for a role, that is you written down in a piece of paper. Like you know you can do that job. You know you are qualified to do it. It’s at your level as well. The salary is good. There is no reason why you should not be interviewed for that role.

The only thing between you and that role is your technical understanding of how to apply for the job. And I know, I know this is controversial to say and I know it’s hard for you to listen, but it’s a technical issue. So many times clients have come to me, 100 % matching the role that they are going to apply for, but their application, pardon my French.

Their application sucks. So they are not going to be, they are not going to be invited for an interview or their application is okay. And then the second thing that the recruiter will do either an external recruiter or an HR consultant working internally for the organization, they will check your LinkedIn and your LinkedIn sucks. Right. So as long as that’s happening to you.

then you know that that’s a technical issue. has nothing to do with your expertise, but you need to fix that with my help, with the help of another coach or you just figuring it out. The other thing that I think is an important paradox is you worry about fitting into a new team and not being adaptable enough for a certain organization. I see this happening a lot.

So instead of applying for the role and using the recruitment process to interview the organization the same way that they’re going to be interviewing you, you’re already making assumptions. they’re not going to hire me. You know, it’s not the type of organization I go for or, you you just start the salary is just a little bit below. You start putting a lot of barriers of entry.

And I’ve seen this happen all of my life. So when I was the CEO of a foundation that gave out scholarships to Australians to study overseas, was a highly prestigious organization with, you know, well-funded scholarship programs for people to go to places like Harvard and Cambridge and so forth. People used to come to me and say, so many people must apply for your scholarships. And I’m like, no.

Actually, they don’t. We self-select ourselves out of this because I’m assuming what people thought was this is too hard. I’m not going to get in. I’m not good enough. It’s not for me. You know, I’m too old or, you know, I’m not the right fit. So we make a lot of assumptions instead of just going for it. So that is also why I think experienced professionals struggle with a tight

scarce market. I say experienced professionals because I think that younger professionals are bit more naive and make less assumptions and it’s quite funny because Greg Savage who I am a big fan of, I follow him, he’s a coach to recruiters so I’m a coach to job candidates. Greg is a coach to recruiters. I have interviewed him on this podcast so go check him out on his episode. I’ll put the link below. I need to remember

the links that I’m telling you to do. So that was Greg and my age interview. OK, so he wrote that, you know, like recruiters make so many mistakes, especially the experienced recruiters, because they make too many assumptions about the candidates. Right. So he has a newsletter for recruiters. I receive it. And I’m like, that’s absolutely right. Job candidates make mistakes as well because they make assumptions.

So stop making assumptions, use the interviewing process to test out your hypothesis and you might be surprised. So many times a client has said to me, I can’t work for that type of organization. And as soon as they go to an interview, they fell in love with the team and with the ethos. They better understood the organization. They’re happily employed. So.

think that this is such an interesting conundrum that I hope that you reflect on it and check if you’re doing it. Maybe use this episode as some sort of traffic light episode, like am I doing this? Yes or no, if not, just don’t worry about it. All right, so let’s talk about an effective job hunting strategy for you for 2025.

and maybe 2025 and beyond, but definitely for 2025. I’m gonna give you a few strategic points that I’ve been seeing in my job as a career coach that is affecting my clients, especially, you know, my clients, remember, are experienced professionals. They are experts in their fields. They usually manage either teams or projects. Some of them are executives.

working in large scale organizations, but most of them are mid managers and above. So I want you to consider this. First, I want you to think about your narrative. How are you coming across? And I want you to stop trying to prove that you’re current and start acting like you’re current, like you’re keeping up with the times.

Right? So ideally your LinkedIn profile will show your capability and how strategic you are. And I want you to frame your age as a competitive advantage, not a liability. I want that to change inside your mind first so that when you are in interviews and talking to people that

comes out confidently from your mouth. So I’ve, you know, saying things like I have seen, and this is true. I have seen people send me pictures written with this type of language. Despite my age, I am, you know, confident and an expert in it. I’m like, no, never say that. Right. So I want you to use your age to your advantage and maybe

If age is not a problem for you, change it to something else, know, lack of experience in government or whatever it is, you know, I’m trying to say here that I want you to remember what your strengths are. And if you don’t know what your strengths are, well, let’s talk because you need to know those competitive advantages and how you are coming across as a unique type of candidate. So saying things like I’ve led teams through

major downturns, I know how to bring calm and clarity and action when things feel uncertain, is a good way of leveraging from your age. Right? And again, if age is not a problem for you, just use this reframing of the narrative strategy for whatever it is that is keeping you awake at night and making you worry. Okay? It could be that you’re

not a native, know, so I came from Brazil and I remember, you know, many times having to reframe my narrative to position my international experience as a competitive advantage and not as a disadvantage. So use this the way that is best, that best works for you. What else? The second thing I was going to suggest for you to do is to, adjust your target.

I know, yes, I know that many, many of you want a permanent role that pays monthly and provides you with long-term safety and security. I understand that. That is what we were raised to aim for in the corporate world. That’s why we chose to study business and to work as white office color, white collar workers and, and, and office workers is because we understood that

If we do that, we’re going to pay it every month. We get paid every month. get security like insurance or, retirement funds and all of that. Things have changed since we graduated. You may have noticed, and we need to adjust with how employers want to engage talent now. Okay. So I want you to think about, the sorts of roles that could.

you could land and could be well paid and may not offer a traditional safety net that you aspire, but they are actually quite good in combination. I’m talking about entering executive roles. I’m talking about management contract roles, consulting roles.

stepping into opportunities and maybe having two or three of them happening so that the combination of the revenues of the three is probably above and beyond what you would be earning as an employee working for an organization. It can be very rewarding to have that sort of portfolio career. I’m going to…

provide some links below to other episodes that I have done interviewing recruiters and professionals that have portfolio careers. We need to adjust and it may be time for you to start considering that. Also think about roles that value leadership if that is the sort of maturity in your professional experience that has led you to have that.

experience in leadership? What are the types of roles that value leadership maturity? They are usually roles that are transformation projects, change management projects, stakeholder engagement projects, know, that sort of value chain of prospecting clients, engaging clients, both sales, relationship managers or business managers.

That stakeholder engagement is so important and you need to be mature and an expert in your field in order to have those conversations with clients across that life cycle. Governance, compliance are also roles that really value maturity and leadership and consulting, right?

ESG, you know, if you’re in finance or legal and you want to transition into ESG, the maturity of the experience that you bring might be supportive of you positioning yourself in that new field. And of course, strategy, right? So if you are interested in understanding more about how you can

leverage your leadership maturity, then I think coaching can really help. But if anything, you need to know what’s your leadership style and what’s your leadership experience and speak about it confidently. Right? If you’ve been working for 20 plus years, that question will be asked in an interview. Tell me about your leadership style and you need to answer confidently. And with this

type of narrative that is expected of an experienced professional. So I think that having practicing that and understanding how to answer those questions are really important to show that executive presence, that leadership presence that the employer wants you to have when they hire you.

I also have another idea here and it is to make it easy for recruiters. Make it easy for recruiters. Don’t ghost them. So I have somebody I know who is looking for a job. I have messaged her last night because I have somebody who may have a job for her. She’s not even a client of mine. It’s just somebody in my social network. She hasn’t replied. It’s been more than 24 hours.

If she’s really looking for a job, which I’ve been told she is, she should have replied straight away. Okay, I want you to be clear and crisp and sharp about how you communicate with people that have the power to become agents for you, have the power to make important introductions for you. So if you are unsure about how to reach out to them when they’ve…

So to send you a message, don’t use time to figure it out. Reach out to them straight back. Okay. Be vulnerable if you, if you need to, know, if you’re not ready and it surprised you say that, wow. That’s such a surprise to hear from you. I’m excited. Tell me more. You don’t need to be perfect when you’re talking to these people. just need to be clear and you need to be fast. Make it easy.

for them to reach out to you, make it easy for them to find you. Then also think about how they will read your resume and 100 % of the time when people come to me for resume reviews, you can book a consultation with me for that. I find that the resumes are really hard to read, are long.

It’s very hard, know. I know it’s easier for me to do your resume than my resume, okay? We have an emotional attachment to the things in our career and somebody else with a more objective take on it might be able to summarize ideas better for you because making it clear, the results you’ve achieved,

making the titles match the market language. This is something that I’ve been working on, especially with clients that have changed countries and the titles, when they translate the titles to English, for example, it just doesn’t resonate with the titles that we have in the job market that say in the US or in Australia. So we have to do more than just translation. We need to do adjustments.

Keywords for job ads, know, making sure that you have those keywords that are easy to find for recruiters. Documents that are easy to scan with the eyes and scan with an ATS system. Right? So making it easy for recruiters to reach out to you and get, you know, to talk to you directly, to have a resume that they can read and understand, a LinkedIn that they can…

go to and learn more about you. All of this is making it easier for recruiters. Use your network. Use your network like a pro, right? I was with a client, two clients this week. This is not even my coaching week. I’ve had so many emergencies this week, but what I explained to them and they’re at the beginning of their process now. these two clients have been made redundant this week and I had to…

do emergency calls with them. One is a private coaching client, so they already knew that it could happen. And the other one was an emergency consultation, which if it’s an emergency, I am always ready for you. And I explained to them that don’t be silent and don’t wait until the last minute to reach out to potential referees, for example.

Right. The most important thing for you is to find people that can support you, can advocate for you, can keep you top of mind. So the thing is that most job openings, they will eventually make their way into LinkedIn jobs or here in Australia, have seek.com and in the U S indeed is so popular. They will eventually get to the job markets, but before they do, they will be discussed.

internally and externally. And that could take months. This is something I teach as part of my coaching program, Job Hunting Made Simple, the online course. have a whole hour dedicated to understanding how recruitment works and where you can step in at different stages, even before a job is advertised. So these things happen during conversations, referrals, taps on the shoulder, introductions.

So those coffee chats are important. Text to former colleagues to let them know where you’re at is important. You don’t need to ask them to find you a job. You can just ask them to keep you top of mind. Ask them for their advice. What would you do if you were me? Your next opportunity may come from somebody you haven’t spoken in five years. When I was struggling during the pandemic with absolutely no work. So if you don’t know my story, I was…

Made redundant in 2018. spent 2019 building a consultancy business with a few of my favorite people that I have had worked with in the past. And we put together some amazing proposals for not-for-profits, for schools, for universities. And we were about to sign two or three major contracts in 2021.

And then the pandemic happened. And it’s not only that these contracts were postponed, they just didn’t make any sense anymore because, you know, they were infrastructure work and, and incubator for, for students. Nobody was coming to school. There is no need to update infrastructure if nobody’s coming into the office. So all of these things just fell apart. And I was quickly contacted by somebody that I had met.

a decade before and she needed help with international students and conveying messages to parents and agents overseas. Could I help Australia with that? I’m like Australia is part of the Australian government dealing with trade. International education is a very big business here in Australia. And I immediately said yes, together with to apply for mine tribes. We both worked with them and it was so great because all of a sudden I had money coming in.

at a time when I was really uncertain about what I was going to do. So you never know, you never know. Nurturing your network can give you amazing and surprising results. And it’s not about asking people for jobs. It’s just about keeping in touch, connecting with everybody you know on LinkedIn, commenting on their posts, messaging them when there is something

interesting and fun happening in their careers. It’s not about you. It’s about keeping that network tight and surrounding yourself with interesting people within your area of expertise and beyond. The other thing too is to stay disciplined with the job search. Momentum matters and I know it’s very hard when there are not a lot of jobs advertised and

even worse when you go for a job and then you are rejected for it. Rejection is really bad. It really affects us terribly. We usually need a lot of positive reinforcements when there is something negative happening in our lives and we don’t get that during job search. We get a rejection and that’s it. You don’t get five job offers immediately afterwards. That’s not how it goes.

So having a sort of strategy and also a mindset that is strong enough to support you during this incredibly hard competition, because it is a competition recruitment and selection, will really help you. And I think this is why the work that I do is so rewarding, because I know that I’m there supporting a professional athlete, my corporate clients.

go through an incredibly taxing competition and if they have my support they usually do better, go better, go faster and you need to find that support system for yourself. It doesn’t have to be me but it needs to be there for you. You alone it would be not impossible but it would be very hard and if you are feeling alone just remember you’re not alone there are lots of people like you.

And I feel like it’s my job to educate you not to be alone, to reach out to your connections, to your friends and family, to your mentors, former managers, and invest in coaching so that you can get yourself into your next role as soon as possible. So it will speed up that process for you. Keep showing up even when there’s nothing happening, even when there’s no jobs advertising. In fact,

I’ve been thinking about this. woke up so early this morning. woke up at 4 a.m. unfortunately, and I was thinking about one of my clients and I know that she’s very stoic and disciplined and she’s applying for lots of jobs and I need to keep reminding her that applying for jobs from the comfort of her home is not enough to get her employed. Sometimes we do what’s easier for us and for most of my clients, it’s doing what she’s doing, staying at home.

cocoon in her office and applying for jobs that she sees are great for her and she’s doing the right thing. But without a network to support her without those interactions, it will not happen. And the other thing that could happen is people that don’t like to apply for jobs. And I’ve had those clients as well. And they have lots and lots and lots of conversations.

Those conversations will not lead anywhere if you’re not clear about what you’re trying to achieve and they don’t have a unique understanding of your personal brand and reputation and the documentation to back it up, right? A clear resume, a LinkedIn profile that makes sense. So all of these things, they are holistic. It’s like an ecosystem. They need to happen together. So staying in motion, keeping up the momentum with both.

applications and networking and attending events and improving yourself. know, learning new things, doing a short course here and there will also be very beneficial so that when you start your new job you will hit the ground running. Okay? So the final thoughts for this episode are as follows. You are not outdated. You are under marketed.

If you are my ideal client, this is not your first rodeo. You’ve been here before. We’ve gone through these before, these recessions, these difficult times. was, was GFC, there was the pandemic, there were things that have happened in your career prior to this. So you know that careers are cyclical and there are ups and downs.

You’re not starting from scratch. You are leveraging from decades of insights and connections and achievements and wisdom. So let’s not forget that and let’s not tap into that. We have to tap into that. I hope I was clear if I wasn’t. You have to tap into that, especially your network, right? And understand what your strengths are and leverage them throughout this job search of yours. Yes.

2025’s recruitment and selection process and the job market are different from maybe three, four, five years ago when you were in the market before. Maybe it has been 10 years, maybe more. know, some of my clients haven’t had to look for work for over 20 years. I know things have changed, but you’ve got what it takes to thrive. There is no reason why you are not going to be employed again.

And it pains me that the reason why you may not be converting from job search to interview and from interview to an offer is just technical stuff that we could fix quickly. It pains me. Right. And the mindset as well, you know, people might start thinking, I’m not getting anywhere. Maybe, maybe it’s my time to retire or maybe, you know, there’s something wrong with me. No, there’s nothing wrong with you. We can fix that.

You know, these are technical, tactical issues that we can fix. So in the next two episodes, this is part one of a series. In the next episode, we’re going to talk about branding again. We’re going to talk about positioning yourself powerfully as an experienced professional. That’s the next episode. And then after that, I want to talk to you about unlocking the hidden job market a little bit more, giving you more insight about

relationships, building them or rebuilding them, making sure you don’t burn bridges along the way and making yourself more visible. Okay, so remember to subscribe wherever you found this podcast. I’d love to know. I think I’m growing a lot on Spotify. I think it’s now bigger than Apple. I don’t know if people are listening on iHeartRadio. Sometimes I get clients from Audible as well.

I don’t have a lot of people watching me on YouTube. I don’t even know why I record these videos because this is a video podcast. If you want to see me and see how crazy my hair is because it’s very humid in Melbourne today, go on YouTube. You’ll see that. So yeah, don’t forget to subscribe and then remember that in my newsletter, I always put some very strategic tips to help you.

that are linked to the episode, but we haven’t shared it here. It’s just for my subscribers. Okay. All right. I will talk to you soon. Thank you so much for staying here and listening to it all to the end and I’ll see you next time. Bye for now.

 

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