Jobs & employment blog

  If you’re currently preparing for a remote job interview, you may be feeling concerned that it could be more difficult for you to assess whether the opportunity is the right one for you. After all, when interviewing remotely, you won’t have the opportunity to meet the people you’ll be working with face-to-face, visit the organisation’s offices and generally get a feel for the...

  Are your team members and colleagues taking time off this summer? It falls to managers and human resources leaders to make sure their teams and organisations run smoothly during peak vacation months. You can avoid project delays and deadline extensions during the summer period with the right policies, strategic temporary staff, and forward planning. 1. Create and maintain good...

  Research indicates that temp workers suffer from adverse mental health for a variety of reasons, many of them due to the working patterns and job insecurity inherent to temp work. As a temp worker, you may sometimes feel disposable or replaceable, as a result of inconsistent and irregular work, which can impact negatively on your mental health. Temps can help prioritise...

    Are you wondering why this title is in quotation marks? Well, that’s because it’s not just your friends and family who may want to know why you are thinking of leaving your current job. And, while it can feel easy enough to answer when someone close to you has asked, it can be far harder to articulate your reasons when it’s an interviewer posing the question, and when the...

  For a wide variety of reasons, workers are increasingly taking time out from their career. ‘Returnship’ programmes can help organisations effectively and efficiently bring them back. In the latest Hays Journal, we explore what you need to consider before putting such programmes in place. There’s no let-up in the war for talent and skills. Availability of key skills, in particular,...

  The life sciences industry is growing, and it’s not just because of the pandemic. As I explained in my last blog, we are still trying to conquer diseases for patients with unmet medical needs like cancer, Alzheimer’s, diabetes, Crohn’s disease and rheumatology that affect millions of people every day. Cancer, Haematology and Neurology dominate in the arena of new treatments...

  There are many reasons why you may have gaps on your CV. You might have spent your time away from the workplace to look after children, you may have been studying, travelling, caring for a relative or looking for a job. Career gaps can also be caused, of course, by redundancy. Most people have some sort of gap in their career history, and, as our CEO Alistair Cox explained in a...

    Today in support of International Women’s Day 2021, we are joined by Leadership Coach, Simi Rayat and Rhonda Williams, CEO of Dream Life Academy, who are here to share the key challenges women of colour face in their careers and how to best overcome these obstacles.     1. To begin with, please could you introduce yourself to our...

  Negotiation is probably the most important skill you can master to be successful both at work and in your personal life, but it can be stressful and difficult at the best of times. As I explained at two recent talks I gave to the “Hays Leading Women network” – many people are “avoiders”. Put simply, because they find negotiation so awkward, difficult and uncomfortable they will go...

  In many ways, it seems like there’s never been a more exciting time than the present to be working in marketing, or, indeed, to be embarking on a career as a marketeer. Why? Well, we all know that the world around us is changing, and it’s changing at what sometimes feels like breakneck speed. And you, as a marketeer, have the best seats in the house. As a marketeer, the proverbial...

  Welcome to the first blog in this Practical Product Management series. The series will discuss a number of simple and practical solutions and tools to help through the challenging and evolving landscape of Product Management. So, let us set an objective for this article: I want to be able to clearly define my product on one page. We will do this by following a simple set of six...

  I’ve spoken before about the language you use on your CV and how it can have a huge bearing on whether or not you make the interview shortlist. For example, using action verbs to communicate your successes is one of the simplest ways to help your CV stand out. But it’s also important that the language you use isn’t too clichéd. If it is, you may run the risk of diluting or...

  Let’s face it, no-one likes failure, and for some it’s a horrible word that raises their anxiety levels. I’ve read inspirational quotes such as, “I’ve learnt more from my failures than I have from my successes”, but is it really something we all want to experience and do we really want these circumstances dredged up in the interview room? Surely interviews are the place to highlight...

  Nothing quite beats that feeling when you walk out of an interview room. The thorough preparation, interview nerves, and the fact that you’ve had to talk yourself up for the best part of an hour, can really take it out of a person – so it can be quite a relief when it’s over. That is until you start to wonder how the interview actually went. This limbo period...

  On the face of it, answering the common interview question, “So, tell me about yourself” seems easy enough. After all, you just have to talk about your background, and this is a topic you know better than anyone else. What could possibly go wrong? Well, to be frank, a lot can go wrong. Many perceive this to be one of the easiest interview questions to answer, however providing a...

  As a contractor, you will be more than familiar with the many benefits that contracting brings, from the ability to gain a wide variety of experience and expand your network, to improved work/life balance. And because of these benefits, contract roles are always highly sought after. This means that you need to set yourself apart with a great CV if you want to compete. However, the...

  When a friend of mine told me she was changing jobs recently I congratulated her and asked what she was going to do. “I’m going to work at (insert name of technological mega-brand here),” she answered enthusiastically. I was polite enough not to remind her that she wasn’t answering the question I’d asked, but that seemed irrelevant to her in any case. Her new job title could have...

  One in four businesses on Fortune’s ‘100 Best Companies to Work For’ offer a paid career break. But, what are they and are you eligible for one? A career break is a period of leave, agreed upon with the employer, during which the employee fulfils personal ambitions and development. Career breaks can last for as little as a couple of months, but most people tend to take around a...

  Equity, Diversity & Inclusion in the world of work is vital if all employees are to realise their full potential. For candidates looking to progress in their current workplace or find a new role elsewhere, an organisation’s commitment to these pillars will affect their experiences and opportunities. Today we welcome Sheree Atcheson, an award-winning leader in Equity,...

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