Where to start your job search

When looking for a job there are a number of places that you can use to start you search. Some people go to the job centre and either speak to an advisor or many now have online computer systems you can use to find jobs that match your skill / experience level.

Online jobs boards are quick and easy to use and allow you to search through hundreds of jobs at a time. You can often search by job type, location or salary and some allow you to refine this more by selecting qualifications you have.

When applying for jobs make sure that you have an up to date CV ready to send out and always tweak your cover letter for each company that you are sending the CV to. The Covering letter should be quite specific to the job you are applying for whereas your CV is likely to be more generic.

First year tax returns

Tax returns can be extremely daunting for someone who has recently gone self-employed. If you had previously been in an employed role, you would not have had to worry about working out how much tax you need to pay, it would have been taken out of your wage at source. However once you enter the world of self-employment, you need to do something called a self-assessment. This is where you declare all your earnings and expensive to the tax office so they can work out if you are due to pay tax. Currently the tax threshold is £10,600 so you are allowed to ear this before having to pay tax.

You can of course work out your tax yourself, but many people opt to employ an accountancy firm to do this for them. You will need to make sure you have kept all receipts, invoices and a note of mileage to enable you or your accountant to work out your tax return.

Coping with your first year as a teacher

A recent survey has shown that a huge number of teachers leave the education industry within their first year. After three of four years training, it seemed odd to be that so many teachers leave to take up another career so quickly.

After doing some extensive research I started to realise that this was mostly due to the immense pressure they were under and often lack of support. You may have heard people say that teachers have it easy, working nine till three, Monday to Friday and long school holidays, but what they may not see is the additional work that goes on behind the scenes.

Most teachers start their working day about 8.15 or even earlier if commuting and do not actually leave school till around five. Once they get home their day still hasn’t finished as they need to plan and prepare for the next day’s lessons and also mark students work. If they also have an inspection or are being assessed then they need to fit in extra time for that.

Getting back in to employment

If you have been out of work for a long period of time, it can be hard getting back in to it. People are out of work for a number of reasons. It may be that you have started a family and wanted to wait until the child started nursery or school before returning or it may be that you have had an illness which stopped you from working, whatever the reason, finding that all important job can be a nerve wrecking process.

You may not feel that you are qualified for the position your previously did, or it may be that this is the first job you are applying for so have no experience. If this is the case you can look to start a job that offers on the job training or even look at returning to education to acquire a qualification that will help you.

Your local careers office or job centre will be able to run through the options available to you and advise you on the best route back in to work. Sometimes they can even offer free training courses to get you started.

Time management for the self employed

Being self-employed can be very rewarding. Allowing you to pick your own hours (to an extent), choosing to run your own business the way you want to and even choosing which clients you work with can make running a business worthwhile and out weight many of the negative points, but you do need to have a high level of discipline to be able to do it successfully.

Time management is one of the most important factors when it comes to owning a business as you will need to make sure that you have time dedicated to working on client work as well as time for updating your accounts and touting for business. If not managed correctly you can very quickly end up in a mess which can cost you dearly in time and money. You may also be responsible for managing the time of any staff that you have should you decide to set up a limited company or outsource work to another individual or company.