Top 3 HSE Career Hacks

Welcome to Safeti School, were we crunch down Environment, Health and Safety learning into simple, bite-size snippets that you can use for your business.

In this Episode we crunch down our top 3 HSE career hacks for those in or seeking to join the Health, Safety & Environment profession. For more help, check out the Safeti Podcast Episodes that we have selected below for deep insights into how you can boost your career prospects.

'Evolution of HSE' with Anna Keen - In Episode 23 of The Safeti Podcast, we catch up with Anna Keen, Founder and Director of Acre Frameworks. Anna and her team focus on helping organisations build high-performance teams and assisting individuals in their personal development, focusing primarily on non-technical skills.

'Boost your career using Linkedin' with Richard Collins - Linkedin is the foremost social media platform for professionals and businesses across the globe. It has a steadily growing user base of circa 600 million people - here's our Top 10 tip to use it effectively.

'Get Social' with Laura Aucott - Are you trying to move your HSE career forward but feel like you are getting nowhere? Listen to this Episode with Laura Aucott to find out what employer’s are looking for and how you can take action to get the attention of those that are hiring

Top 3 HSE Career Hacks Episode Transcript

[00:00:04] Welcome to safeti school where we crunch down health safety and environment learning into bitesize snippets that you can use for your business or your career. Helping you improve your knowledge, boost your performance and maybe even providing some inspiration. Let's get started.

[00:00:22] In this episode I'm going to share three top hacks to get your career moving forward faster than it is the moment. If you're finding that your career isn't moving forward in the right way., take these three elements, start putting them into action and see what happens. The first one is to actually engage with the recruiters. Believe it or not recruiters are actually human too. I know lots of people have bad opinions of them and maybe have had bad experiences. We do find a lot of people sharing, that I've been engaging with, a lot of recruiters in the HSE space and taking their feedback to see what we can do better to try and help them do their job and also help us develop our careers. So, just remember there are humans too.

[00:01:04] You need to be able to build personal relationships with them and that means you need to put in the effort i.e. Arranging to meet up for a coffee, getting on the phone, doing a video chat etc. And getting to know them as a person. To let them know what you can offer them so that whenever they meet the right client that they can say 'oh my friends such and such' and can actually deliver what you're looking for in this job.

[00:01:27] Recruiters aren't just another person looking to take your money from you and you need to get rid of that attitude if that's the way you think about it at the moment. So put in that extra effort start developing those relationships and see what transpires.

[00:01:41] Number two then is developing your personal brand. We went over and over this with different people on the safety podcast and it keeps coming up again and again. If you haven't taken any action nice the time to do it you're not too late. There's still a huge opportunity out there and I posted something on LinkedIn the other day that said that only 1 percent of current linkedin end users actually post content on the platform.

[00:02:04] Anybody who's involved in social media social media marketing and that type of thing knows that LinkedIn is exploding at the moment and the organic reach with LinkedIn is the same as what Facebook was five years ago which is massive.

[00:02:17] So it's time to take advantage of that and that means you need to get out there share your knowledge. Don't be afraid to be wrong. Keep being inquisitive. Get involved in conversations and show your desire to keep learning. If you're not motivated to do that then you need to ask yourself what are you actually doing in the profession as well as that. I see a lot of people out there who are quite negative when it comes to actually getting onto social media and the whole networking thing. You have to ask yourself are you gonna be a glass half full person or a glass half empty person.

[00:02:49] Let me be honest. Nobody wants to be around negative people. And as the old saying goes misery loves company so if you keep putting negative opinions out there then you're going to attract the same back and until you start being positive and acting with optimism and putting that out in the world then you'll not get to see back. It's called the Law of Attraction and you can look that up and I'm a firm believer in it.

[00:03:11] So if your perception of developing a personal brand or putting yourself out there amongst the social networking sphere is currently negative I challenge you to turn your attitude towards a positive light and start acting with positivity and optimism and see where that gets you.

[00:03:31] We're already on their third and final and perhaps even the most important tip of all is that you need to focus on developing your soft skills. If you're an HSE professional or a manager or supervisor of any any type this seems to be the big thing right now where companies are really focusing on not just technical ability or qualifications. They want people to have people skills.

[00:03:54] The more technology is developing and our society is becoming more digitized. Arguably these skills are going to become more and more valuable because it's easier for us to just communicate via computers and the technology that we have at our fingertips. I was just reading there last night that the Fortnite World Cup took place at the weekend and they reckon that EA Sports is now going to potentially take over traditional sports. Which is obviously a huge thing and the winner of that World Cup, which I know nothing about, received three million dollars in prize money at the age of 16.

[00:04:33] So things are changing guys. And as I say one thing that I've taken away from a lot of the folks that I've spoken to on the safeti podcast is that soft skills are becoming more and more valued by organizations.

[00:04:45] So what does this mean? This means that you have to develop your ability to negotiate which means putting yourself in uncomfortable positions. Again getting out of your comfort zone whether it be with colleagues peers or people you're working alongside in different organizations.

[00:04:59] You need to be able to push yourself to to make progress and that means that we need to put ourselves into the positions where we're having to compromise with people and also share your values. Also to be able to stand your ground where we need to at the same time of course. Within the Health safety and environment profession it's fundamental that we're able to do that. But we do need to be able to negotiate and find common ground as well.

[00:05:25] Secondly you need to be able to build your competence and actually coaching others. A lot of the traits within our profession traditionally have been that we are the people with the knowledge, the people with the facts, the people who others leaned toward to get answers from. But we need to transition into allowing others to find the right answer for themselves and guiding them along that path. We don't always need to be the one that's the fountain of knowledge.

[00:05:50] So if you want to be a leader, you have to get comfortable letting other people grow in spite of your own self-interest and maybe in spite of what you normally have done.

[00:05:59] And finally on the point of developing soft skills you must become a problem solver and a solutionist. Someone that can resolve conflict between different parties, departments and so on. If you find yourself often acting as a mediator, which we often do, or if you don't try to get yourself into that position. If you're acting as a mediator between different people or groups or groups of people then be sure to be the one that's trying to help everyone get their place of compromise.

[00:06:27] Clearly you have your own objectives that you want to achieve and make sure that you're always sort of aiming towards that as well. But if you're seen to be the person that's helping people with conflicting views compromise with one another and get to a point where there's a positive outcome. That's a great point from which you can grow and continue to influence.

[00:06:46] That's it for this episode of safeti school. We hope this was helpful.

[00:06:49] If so please remember to review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes Google podcasts or Spotify. And remember for more health safety and environment help you can visit us at safeti.com.

[00:07:01] Until next time take care.