Whether it’s Christmas time, Easter time or your summer holidays, if you hate your job then there’s always that dreaded thought at the back of your head.  “Once this is over, I’ll have to go back to work.”  Now to be honest, the vast majority of people don’t look forward to going back to work after their holidays.  But for some people, their intense dislike of their work situation can actually affect the enjoyment of their leisure time. I’ve certainly experienced this.  I’ve had jobs where I was so stressed that I would be worrying about them on a Friday night, just when the weekend had started!  Even when I wasn’t massively stressed, I used to envy those people who loved their jobs.  And there genuinely some people out there who do.  And quite often they seemed to be the ones who were doing really well.

The dread of going back to work was one of the first signs that I had to change career.  I used to work in legal admin and in my 20’s and early 30’s I basically just wanted to live for the weekend.  Work during the week was something to be tolerated, and on the weekend was ‘me’ time when I could have some fun.  I used to like the people I worked with, but the work itself was so dry.  I wasn’t expressing myself at all in what I was doing. And the older I got, the more this became an issue.   I wanted to be myself at work, as well as during my free time.  Why should work be something completely at odds with who I was as a person?

So I took a course in life coaching and found that I loved it.  My coaching work progressed and I decided to specialise in career coaching and now I have developed a niche for career coaching for introverts (see Introvert At Work).  But the memories of my time working in legal admin haven’t gone, so I can remember the feelings of dread coming over me on Easter Monday, when I knew I would be going back to work the next day.

So how do you feel about going back to work after Easter?  Do any of these feelings strike a chord with you?

• You tense up immediately.  You can’t stand the thought of going back.
• You don’t really have any strong feelings.  Work is dull and so are your feelings about it.
• You are obliged to go back to work, but you know deep down you’re meant to do something else.
• You feel fine about it now, but you know when you do actually go back to work that that little inner voice will be telling you that you really should change career to something else.

From my experience, if you do have any of the above feelings, then it's worth investigating them. Those feelings are there for a reason.  If you've spent a long time ignoring them, then why not get them out into the open and take a good look at them.   Who knows.  It might be the first step to something truly exciting and nourishing.  I know I've never regretted making the move from legal admin to career coaching.  And I want to help others look forward to going back to their work, just the same that I do.

I have a fairly simple question for you - what is the experience of working with you?  I feel it is a fairly fundamental one for people who are looking for work.  Another way of phrasing it is, what would a potential company experience if they were to employ you?  As I say, it’s not something that people pay enough attention to.  It also cuts both ways – what would your experience be working at company x?

Quite often the major problem with people looking for work is that they don’t know how to market themselves. They are more than competent enough to do a role, but the way they present themselves to potential employers doesn’t make the most of their abilities.  One of the main reasons is that they talk about things which simply aren’t that relevant to the job they are going for now.  The “So What?” question should always be asked when talking about  something on your CV or when mentioning your capabilities to an employer.  Why should they care?  What has what you have achieved in previous roles got to do with what they are looking for?  That should be the first step in appraising how to contact a company to look for any opportunities.  See if what you have to offer is a good match for what they are looking for, and if it is, make sure you get that across to them.  But one way of making yourself stand out is to get them to see the person behind the achievements.

So it’s not just a case of what you have achieved.  It’s also about how you achieved it.  What is your personal style?  Your potential employers are going to be employing a person, not a robot.  So give them an indication of what your personal way of going about things.  Have you got a calm, understated style that brings out the best in people below you.  Are you more extravert and action orientated and like to be very much in control.  When you think about bosses you’ve worked for, whether you have got on with them or not has not just been down to the results they have got.  It has also been about their style in managing you.

A useful anacronym for describing the experience of working with you is STAR.  This stands for:

• Situation
• Task
• Action
• Result

What was the general situation at work, and the particular task in hand that needed sorting?  What action did you specifically take?  Not the action taken by the team as a whole, or other department members.  But what action did you personally take?  And  as mentioned above, this includes your personal way of doing things.   Then the final part is what results were achieved as a result of the actions you took.

So, remember, when  you are contacting firms to look for work....you’re a human being, not a robot!

I’ve sensed over the years that if someone’s stint in a job doesn’t work out, then it’s assumed that that person was a bit of a failure.  They couldn’t cut the mustard, so good riddance.  And this sense of a person being a ‘failure’ seems to have amplified in recent times.  Perhaps it’s the tough job market, where it feels like survival of the fittest, but people can have judgements formed about them very quickly.  But how much is someone’s apparent failure to do with their work environment, rather than any supposed lack of ability?  Were they simply a square peg in a round hole?

I wonder just how many workplaces really consider their employees personalities and whether they are a good fit they are for the work environment.  You can have two very similar jobs, but they can be set in very different workplaces.  I always ask people to consider the culture of workplaces when they are looking for a job. Which ones feel like the kind of place that they would get along in?  It’s not something that clients often really consider that much.  But I do think it can be an extremely important consideration in how well someone performs.

I’ve felt for a while now that workplaces can tend to favour extravert qualities.  Companies like people who are good mixers, who will not only do a good job but will be seen to do a good job.  There is no I in team, and we want team players who will work well with others.  But what if you’re actually very capable at your job, but you just don’t your company’s style of working?  How often do companies consider that the employee who’s not getting great results at the moment might actually be very capable but things aren’t set up very well for them?  If they work best without loads of interruptions and like to work along, then does it make sense to have them bang in the middle of a noisy office where they’re surrounded by loud people?

You get a lot of work reviews looking at people’s performance.    But how many of those reviews assume that if someone isn’t performing then it’s their fault?  Particularly if they seem to be out of sync with their workplace environment or culture?  This issue struck me when I heard about Albert Einstein’s school days.  Believe it or not, but one of our most foremost intellectuals of recent times was not always considered a genius.  When he first went to school apparently he struggled.  But this was not down to a lack of intelligence. It was due his school environment tending to favour extraverts, and being introverted, his talents weren’t readily recognised.  Once he moved countries and went to a different school which his personality was much more suited to, he was able to shine.  Admittedly he was young at the time, but if someone as exceptional as Einstein can be affected by his environment then what are the chances that more ‘ordinary’ talents will similarly suffer.

People have unique personalities and aren’t robots.  Expecting them to adapt to rigid systems of work and behave in uniform ways may not be making the most of their talents.  As my title suggests, it’s worth considering which environments would allow you to flourish.  It could be the difference between success and failure.