How does SMP Solutions differ from other Career Development Consultancies?
SMP is all about people, providing a friendly, personal service to help you unlock your career potential. We focus on developing your career to the next level, especially aspiring managers and executives or helping you achieve a complete change of career. in addition to 1:1 Career Coaching, which can be face to face or by telephone and email, we also offer Career Transition Workshops for small groups.
Most importantly, unlike many other consultancies, all of our career coaches and consultants have worked at management or senior management level and experienced redundancy and or significant career changes, so can empathise and support you from personal experience. We believe this is key to helping you achieve your career goals.
We specialise in personalising individual and group career development programmes to meet the needs of a wide range of clients from graduates to senior managers and executives, those facing or having experienced redundancy or returning to work after a career break. We treat everyone as an equal and individual, as we are all unique!
Crucial for you, we have an enviable success record in helping people move their careers to the next stage whether up the ladder into management or executive level, through a major career change or into self employment.
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Does it matter where I live?
Not at all, except that we do focus on the UK market. SMP provides personalised face to face career coaching and development programmes for clients who live in London and the ‘Home Counties’.
The majority of our clients live in and around London and M25, M3, M4, M40 and M1. We will visit you at a convenient location e.g. hotel lounge area, quiet pub or coffee shop where we can talk privately in a relaxed environment. We also have access to meeting rooms in Ruislip, Middlesex and Central London. We are not constrained by expensive office premises, so are highly flexible and will travel to you, if you are happy to pay for our expenses.
However, the majority of our programmes can be run taking full advantage of telephone and email especially more general Career Coaching, CV's and Interview Skills and these can also be beneficial to overseas clients. We can also tailor a programme to combine a mixture of face to face and telephone/email sessions, to maximise your time and budget.
Following an initial free discussion we can determine the most suitable approach for your needs.
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I only need help with a CV, Job application or Interview Skills can you still help me?
Yes, we can help with CV's, covering letters, interview skills and job search techniques.
We do find that most people like to have more than one session and we are experts in personalising Career Development programmes to ensure that you gain maximum benefit to help achieve your career goals. This is very individual and would be established in our initial discussions.
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I have never written a CV how do I go about it?
Whether you are a high flying executive, returner to employment, graduate or someone with a long career history, we will work with you to help promote your skills, experience, personal attributes and achievements to make you more marketable and get you to an interview!
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How do I update or improve my CV?
We can advise you on how to do this using good layout, presentation and most importantly by selling yourself more effectively. This can be acheived through telephone, email or face to face appointments.
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How do I overcome my age disadvantage?
Whether it is due to being new to the job market or being in the ‘twilight years’ years of your career, everybody has something to offer by way of unique skills and varying degrees of life experience. Often it is the interests and out of work activities that can uncover some obvious but neglected skills and achievements that can make the difference to your application, especially for a first job or career change.
For people considering self employment or interim management, maturity, a good track record and life skills are definite benefits.
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I haven’t had an interview for years, how can I prepare myself?
Most importantly, you are not alone. Many people get jobs through networking or progress through the ranks at organisations without ever having formal interviews.
SMP are expert at coaching you to win at interviews! We can help you prepare for different types of interviews, difficult interview situations and questions, strategies for dealing with personal negativity and coping with nerves, so that you sell yourself in a positive and confident manner to achieve to job you really want!
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I have been struggling to find new employment since taking redundancy or having a career break. What do you think I am doing wrong?
There are usually a number of factors e.g. your CV is not selling you effectively so not working for you, you may be out of practice and lacking in confidence at interviews, not using your networks effectively or your values have changed and you are applying for the wrong jobs.
Often it is down to lack of focus, direction, self confidence, belief and effective self marketing. Our Breakthrough Career Development Programmes and Full day Move Your Career 'One Step Beyond' Workshops are a great way to tackle and overcome these barriers.
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What are my career options?
Although it may not seem like it, everyone has options. This is very individual and ‘one size does not fit all’.
We use very specific exercises and analysis to establish your skills, attributes, achievements, values and needs, which make it easier for you to pin point the type of job, organisation or environment most suited to you. This can be achieved through personalised 1:1 Career Coaching or via our 'Move Your Career 'One Step Beyond' full day workshops.
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I am thinking about Self Employment and have heard about Portfolio Careers. What are they and could they work for me?
Self employment can be extremely rewarding but is not for everyone. If you are looking for a complete change, a new challenge and really want to be the architecht of your own future, then it could be just the tonic you need!
Portfolio careers are a way of earning income from a range of activities. These can be related or totally unrelated and can be a mix of employed and self employed or all self employed activities. To be a successful portfolio worker, you need to have some very definite values and behavioural traits.
We have significant expertise in both Self Employment and Portfolio Careers and can offer help through specific coaching or as part of a personalised career development programme.
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I have heard a lot about Interim Management. Can you explain this?
Interim Management is popular for both employers and people going through career change. Interim work is usually project based and for a period of weeks or months, often to cover for a senior member of staff who has left, maternity cover or to fill a skills gap in the organisation.
Unlike Consultancy, where the remit is usually to review and recommend, Interim work is ‘hands on’ implementation, often in a change environment and with line responsibility. Interims are expected to ‘hit the ground running’ and be specialists in their field.
Interims usually are expected to trade through their own Limited Companies but are sometimes employed on PAYE basis.
Interim Management can be very rewarding and a number of people have made a successful career out of it. However, it is very difficult to break into and there is no guarantee of work, so you need to consider your options very carefully before you devote too much time on this potential aspect of your career.
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How much do you charge for your services?
Our range of Career Development Coaching and Workshop prices are featured on the Career Development section of the website. The price list provides full details of prices for individuals. Please call or email us for our range of services and prices for businesses.
Travel time and cost will also be factored into fees, if working with you on a face to face basis.
SMP pride ourselves on offering a highly professional, expert, value for money service for individuals and businesses. Coaching and development sessions are up to 1 hour by telephone or usually up to 2 hours if face to face.
As we are not constrained by expensive office premises, our personalised 'Breakthrough Career Development Programme' of 4 x 2 hour sessions, offers similar value to a one off Management or Executive CV with some larger and more impersonal consultancies and we can help write your CV as part of your programme!
The most important factor is your individual requirements and due to our flexibility, we will do our utmost to find a solution that meets your needs and budget, although we do not provide free coaching or advice!
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How can I justify the expense?
There can only be one answer. Whatever your final expense it will be a small price to pay for investing in your future to find the job or career you really want!
If you are looking to advance your career, or returning to work after a career break or redundancy, you are likley to recoup your investment in a matter of months but don't forget that the net gain in salary will be ongoing!
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What methods of payment do you accept?
We offer a range of payment methods, dependent on the service or products your require. For ease of payment and security, our preferred method of payment is by credit or debit card using Google Checkout, which is Google's secure payement processing facility, similar to Paypal.
We can also take payment by electronic bank transfer (BACS) or cash. Cheques can also be accepted for some services subject to time for clearance. We will agree the most suitable payment option when you make your enquiry or booking. Payment for all workshop events must be made in advance and we often provide attractive earlybird booking discounts for Full Day Career Workshops.
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What are the benefits of your One Step Beyond events over your 1:1 coaching services?
Both offer you the opportunity to help make whatever transition you are looking to achieve. It is a matter of personal preference whether you wish to take a more personal route on a 1:1 basis, over a number of tailored sessions, or if you feel you would benefit from the energy, camaraderie, sharing of knowledge and experiences and fun resulting from the group dynamics.
However, our full day workshops are exceptional value, as they are less than 50% of the cost of the equivalant 8 hours of 1:1 coaching you get with our Breakthrough Career Development Programme but have a different emphasis which is geared to achieving results in a group environment.
Our full day workshop followed up with with specific 1:1 coaching is a very powerful combination which will fastrack you towards your career goals.
If you are unsure which option you wish to take, please contact us to discuss your needs. An excellent first step could be to attend one of our evening 'Career SOS' Evening Workshops. This way you will get a real insight into our approach, how we can help you and the best way for you to move forward.