Insights

The Questions That Can Change a Career

Most people think career growth comes from having the right answers. In my experience, it often starts with asking better questions. I have seen this many times in recruitment. The people who make the strongest progress are not always the most technically gifted or the most confident in the room. Very often, they are the ones who have learned how to use conversations wisely. They understand that time with an experienced leader is not just a chance to impress. It is a chance to learn how good judgement is formed.

Why Your Brain Lies to You at Work

One of the most interesting things I have learned over the years working in recruitment is that people rarely make career decisions as rationally as they believe they do. Most candidates think they are carefully weighing opportunities, analysing the facts, and choosing what is best for their future. In reality, many decisions are shaped by something far less reliable: the shortcuts our brains take to keep us safe.

Why the Best Time to Look for a New Job Is While You Still Have One

One of the most common career decisions people face is when to begin looking for their next role. In my experience, many professionals feel an urge to resign first and then start searching for something new. They reach a point of frustration or exhaustion and decide that leaving immediately will create the mental space they need to move forward.

Practice Manager Interview Edge Guide - How to Stand Out in an Optical Practice Interview

If you have been invited to interview for a Practice Manager role, you have already done something right. The practice believes you could be a good fit.

Inspired Recruitment Practice Manager Interview Guide How to Stand Out and Show You Can Run the Practice

The Many Directions an Optometry Career Can Take

When most people think about optometry, they picture a professional sitting behind a phoropter asking a familiar question: “Which is clearer, one or two?” It is a small moment that represents an entire profession dedicated to improving how people see the world.

Clear Thinking for Optical Professionals

9 Mindset Tips to Help You Stay Confident, Focused, and Successful in Your Optical Career

INSPIRED RECRUITMENT TRAINING - The 5-Minute Interview Prep Call

Inspired Recruitment - Practice Manager Interview Cheat Sheet (60 Second Refresher Before You Walk In)

Before you walk into the practice, take a moment to reset your mindset.

The 8 Traits That Make You Mentally Stronger at Work

How to build resilience, confidence, and clarity in your career

When Work Stops Feeling Sustainable: Understanding Burnout Before It Costs You Your Career

Over the years I have spoken to thousands of people about their working lives. Some conversations are about ambition, opportunity, and progress. Others are quieter and far more concerning. They often begin with a sentence like, “I think I’m burning out.”

Why Your Career Often Stalls Because Your Mind Is Too Full

Over the years working in recruitment, I have noticed something interesting about people who feel stuck in their careers. It is rarely a lack of ability. It is rarely a lack of opportunity. More often, it is something much simpler: their mind is too full.

When Anxiety Shows Up at Work: What Your Mind Is Actually Trying to Do

Anxiety is often treated as something purely negative. Something to eliminate. Something that signals weakness, lack of confidence, or inability to cope with pressure. Yet over the years, working with thousands of candidates and employers, I have noticed something interesting: many of the most capable professionals I have met experience anxiety at key moments in their careers.

Confidence is not something you are handed when you qualify. It is something you build, quietly, in the spaces where no one is clapping.

In optics, we talk a great deal about competence. Clinical accuracy. Communication skills. Commercial awareness. Hitting targets. Managing diaries. Reducing remakes. But behind all of that sits something far less visible and far more powerful. Self-trust.

The Subtle Behaviours That Quietly Lead to Promotion

One of the most common questions people ask me in recruitment is surprisingly simple: What actually gets someone promoted? Not what appears on a performance review form, not what sits in a job description, but what genuinely influences the decision when a manager chooses who moves up. After many years of working with both employers and candidates, I have learned that promotions rarely come from doing your job well alone. Competence is expected. Promotion tends to follow something slightly different: the ability to make yourself useful at a higher level before anyone officially asks you to.

Inspired Recruitment - The 10 Minute Interview Edge How to Walk Into Your Interview Looking Like the Future Practice Manager

If you have been invited to interview for a Practice Manager role, the practice already believes you could be a good fit.

How Well Do You Really Know Yourself as an Optical Professional?

Spend enough time in practice and you start to notice something interesting. The optometrist who dreads pre-reg supervision but says they “love mentoring.” The dispensing optician who insists they are fine with targets yet becomes visibly frustrated when conversion is discussed. The optical assistant who dreams of progressing but never quite applies for the next step.

Don’t like your current reality in practice?

Good. That usually means you have reached the point where “just getting through the week” is no longer enough.

Heritage Is Powerful. But It Is Not Enough.

In optics, legacy carries weight. A practice that has stood for generations commands respect before a single eye test begins. The name above the door means something. Patients remember it. Families return. Staff feel part of something bigger than themselves.

Most careers in optics are not limited by clinical ability. They are limited by mindset.

Spend enough time in practice and you will see it clearly. Two optometrists can graduate with similar grades, complete the same pre-reg year, and start in comparable roles. Five years later, one is leading clinics, mentoring juniors and shaping the direction of the practice. The other is still hesitant, doubting decisions, avoiding new challenges and quietly believing they are not quite ready for more.

Forty years is a long time in optics.

Think about how much has changed in a single decade, let alone four. From manual focimeters to fully automated systems. From paper appointment books to cloud-based practice management. From simple single vision lenses to bespoke freeform designs tailored to lifestyle and vocation. Optical practice has never stood still, and neither have the professionals within it.

Hard truth. Most people in optics do not leave their job because it is unbearable. They leave because they have stopped seeing it clearly.

It is easy to look at another practice and imagine it must be better. Shorter testing times. Higher salary. No Saturdays. A more supportive director. A tidier dispensary. The grass often looks greener when you are standing in the middle of a busy clinic, running late, with a challenging patient waiting outside and a pre-reg asking for supervision at the same time.

The Four Quiet Traits That Shape Strong Careers

Every so often I come across an idea that has been around for thousands of years yet still explains modern working life remarkably well. Stoic philosophy is one of those ideas. Long before corporate leadership books and workplace coaching, the Stoics described four simple virtues that they believed formed the foundation of a good life: wisdom, courage, justice, and temperance.

The Career Skill Nobody Talks About: Learning the Art of Detachment

One of the most common patterns I have seen over the years in recruitment is how emotionally attached people become to outcomes they cannot control. A candidate becomes fixated on a single job opportunity. A hiring manager becomes convinced that only one specific candidate will work. A professional ties their entire sense of progress to a promotion that may or may not happen this year.