Have you lost your job this year? I’m sure like myself, many of you have. Or maybe you’ve been furloughed? These are uncertain times for everyone.
New challenges and opportunities will arrive too. We can be certain of that.
Rub it in Tesco why don’t you
You heard it in the news in April, “Supermarkets frantically hiring new staff!” Great I thought. I’ll get a job in the supermarket. I’ll actually quite enjoy it.
I applied to Iceland as a delivery driver. They didn’t get back to me. I’d already told my friends to expect ice creams delivered personally by me. Soz guys.
Then I set my sights higher in the supermarket game. I went for Tesco. I failed the online assessment. Balls.
In the following week all the adverts on Spotify were for Tesco delivery driver positions. Way to rub salt in the wounds! Cheers Tesco.
(Spotify, for the record, I’ll think about coming back to Premium when I’ve got a job. No need to keep reminding me.)
Am I punching out of my league to apply for Ocado? Friends will surely take delivery slots over free ice creams. But there will be no false promises from me this time.
Welcome to my Bush!
I’ve now had a couple of jobs (or is it gigs?) through Task Rabbit. “Welcome to my Bush!” said the African lady as I arrived at my first gardening job. I didn’t know where to look.
As far as overgrown bushes go, I’d seen worse. A couple of hours later and her garden/bush/whatever was tended to and I was now a Tasker in the gig economy!
Sure, the money is not great. But. The satisfaction of finding your own work and creating something of value is hard to beat.
Maybe you’re a fan of the gig economy. Maybe it’s affecting your business in a bad way. Whether you are a fan or not. It is reshaping the career landscape. We must adapt for change.
Luckily you’re a human. So you’re a master at adapting. Congrats.
Oh and Deliveroo if you’re reading this. I’m still waiting to hear on my application. I’m pretty good at cycling. I once left London, and seven punctures later ended up in Paris. Don’t worry, I wasn’t delivering pizzas.
Just Do It
A great book I read recently is Shoe Dog by Phil Knight, the founder of Nike. You might think Nike was always a successful, big business.
Nike had to start at the beginning too. It could have failed at many points along the way before we’d even heard of it.
I started a side hustle last week. I wrote a post “The Dog Runner” on my website and put an advert on my car window. My Minimum Viable Product or MVP is now live. And in the spirit of Phil Knight, I Just Did It. It probably won’t come to an IPO, but hey, I began.
Do you ever overthink things? I know I do sometimes. It’s the Analyst in me. Say you want a new career, but you have no idea what you want to do. You won’t think you’re way to a solution.
You need to try new things out, talk to people and get some experience if you can.
Maybe you’ve dreamt of being a writer. By all means take a course and read books on it. But please just put a pen to paper. And. See. What. Happens.
Whether you’re at work this week or not. Have a good one and stay alert.
Simon