When a STUD is a Spouse Trailing Under Duress I’ve just had lunch with a STUD. No, this was not a hot date, but a perfectly correct meeting with a Spouse Trailing Under Duress aka …STUD. This is an affectionately humerous moniker given in Brussels to male partners following the careers of their female counterparts.…

  The salary expectation question should not be stressful I came across a discussion on LinkedIn recently posted by J. Paige Freedland about how to handle the salary expectation question. There were almost 400 responses covering a wide range of viewpoints from all participants, some of them conflicting and contradictory. It became very clear that…

Why it’s important to network with recruiters The value of passive candidates I saw a post from someone recently complaining quite vociferously about being contacted by a head hunter. The message from this individual, was that if he was looking for a job he would **#!** well let them know. I checked out his LinkedIn…

Onboarding And why probationary periods are Ok So you’ve  created a winning resume,  negotiated any number of telephone screenings, sailed through all the face to face interviews, maybe even  aced the behavioural tests.  Finally you are opening that coveted offer letter.   Your heart races as you realise you’ve landed a great job, maybe a salary increase and fantastic future career opportunities. But one phrase stands…

Job hopping: career planning or terminal unreliability? In the past two weeks I have come across a number of polarised attitudes to career movement. One person’s creative attempts to acquire transferable skills by gaining experience and seizing opportunities in a variety of different sectors, functions or geographic areas, can be perceived by others as opportunistic job…

Is there really a lipstick jungle –  some would say so. For many women, organisations are not safe places. Not only are they more likely to be bullied by a man, but also by another woman. For many  the lipstick jungle is real and bullying leaves indelible scars, ultimately impacting their long-term view of their…

The role of the organisation in bullying This research project has been eye-opening in many ways. So many interesting and contentious points have been raised that it has taken me a while to synthesise them. What is the role of the organisation in bullying?  What do they do about this phenomenon? Answer – not a…

This continues my series researching the bullying of women By women in the work place. See my 2 posts to date: Bitch or Bully: The Pink Elephant and The Lipstick Jungle: Female Saboteurs   The response I originally set out to benchmark a client’s experience. If I had any preconceived notions, they were centred around…

Bullying by Women in the Workplace – Part  The sabotaging of women BY women. As part of my series of bullying by women in the work place started in “Bitch or Bully: The Pink Elephant” Now we are looking at female saboteurs. Complex and confusing  I am exploring a number of complex and often confusingly…

Why red alert resumés send out a warning signal. I’m going to come clean. I hate functional CVs. With a passion. As someone who reads possibly hundreds of CVs a week, there is nothing more frustrating than reading a list of qualities and so called achievements and still having very little idea of what the…