Five Steps to Successful Career Transition
One Post, 8 bonus links, including video and self quiz
© Irene Becker | www.justcoachit.com | 3Q Leadership™ Blog – Reach-Resonance-Results
Helping smart people and organizations communicate and lead forward smarter, faster and happier is what I do best
Successful career transition is an art and a balancing act that can open the door to new opportunities. Nothing is static. Some of the techniques and strategies that helped my clients succeed two years ago are irrelevant and ineffective today. Learn what you need to know and do NOW to position yourself for success through every hill and valley of career transition.
Developing your personal brand is important, but it is no longer enough. Develop a personal brand AND a toolkit of communication skills and strategies that make YOU shine in the eyes of constituents and prospective employers. Tools, skills and strategies that get YOU, through the slush pile, through the interviews to your current desired career destination. Most people have greater and faster success finding help to guide them through career transition. Find the best help you can to move forward faster.
Five Steps to Successful Career Transition
Step #1 Redirect your focus. Focus forward. Understand where you want to go and how to best get there.Take the time to think about your end game. What do you want from your career? What is really important to you? What makes work meaningful for you? What type of environment do you need to function at maximum potential? What makes you happy, purposeful at work? Know yourself, then get to know your marketing channels and your buyer profile(organizations you want to work for and individuals who will be interviewing you). Before you can market yourself effectively, you need to have clarity around your long term and short term career goals. You need to market yourself effectively to yourself, before you can market effectively to your target audience.
Step #2 Empower: Retrain your brain to focus on your achievements, the unique value you add and bring to the plate. Find your happy spot, give your mind a spa vacation by going to a happy place at least a couple of times a day. Build a template, a document/chart that will refocus you on key achievements and strengths. Develop a new focus and self talk that keeps you centered and empowered as you go through the innately challenging and often stressful process of career transition. Develop strategies and techniques that help you deal effectively with stress and inherent volatility of career change so that you avoid getting stuck in a rut or being in a constant state of overdrive. Remember, what you focus on grows. When you have hit a wall, take time to regroup, refocus and move forward. Developing new ways of thinking, doing and communicating that will help you focus forward and lead forward in the face of challenges is critical to living, leading and succeeding at the speed of change.
Step #3 Actualize: Define, align, execute. Understanding your skills, your unique value, your personal brand is critical, but it is no longer enough. We can talk about the war for talent in certain areas, but in many sectors increased competition is real, and can be daunting. Develop a career transition campaign, a marketing plan or have someone help you develop one. Get a new resume that opens doors, or regig what you have for improved traction and results. Create a road map you can use, a career campaign that will help you define, align and execute.
Define-Build brand equity with every interaction. You are the brand. Make sure your marketing collaterals are effective. Keywords, personal branding, having a style/format
that gives the reader a 7 second snapshot of the value you bring to the table is critical. Make sure that your resume, executive bio, cover letter-written communication that is formatted and positioned in a way that takes you forward faster and better. Your reputation, your personal brand and the connections you make are all important. Optimize them, track them use them to move forward.
Align: Know the new rules of the game. What are your best marketing channels? How can you best negotiate career change from a personal and a career management perspective?
What are the rules of the game in terms of successfully moving ahead through every step of the interview process? What are the most effective ways to deal with recruiters, job applications, HR managers as well as friends and colleagues who want to help?
Effective execution and follow up: Career transition is innately stressful; it may be one of the most challenging things any of us goes through. YOU must have personal tools to keep your focus, your confidence and resiliency primed as well as a roadmap/ strategy to execute, follow-up/review, re-gig ( if necessary) and move forward. Defining, aligning and executing your plan are a must, and finding an accountability partner who will also champion your spirit and focus when you hit a bump in the road is critical.
Step #4 Communicate effectively for maximum rapport. Effective communication is not about more words it is about talking in a language and style that opens the ears of your audience. It is about developing rapport, trust, congruency. You need to build rapport to attract the right employer to YOU. You may be in love with the organization or position, but you need to learn to how to make the right impression through every cycle of career transition because the way you will position yourself needs to be adjusted to your audience through every stage of the process. Treat every first meeting, first communication point as a first date. Your value, your integrity and authenticity are paramount, so is the way you communicate forward. A small change in a marketing collateral (resume, bio, cover email-letter), a small change in your words, tone or the body language you use can mean the difference between success and failure. Your language, the words you use in every resume, executive bio, email and verbal conversation count. Remember less is more. Fewer words, with greater punch. Use personal mantras and self talk that keep focused forward. Develop connection points that build rapport.
Step #5 Harvest: You need to invest your courage, strength and stamina to execute forward through a career transition. Get doing. Get going. Develop agility and focus. Get a plan and develop the tools and career transition skills that will take you forward. Think of this process as the beginning of a new and better story. Learn to tell your story in a way that drives reach, resonance and results. Tell your story in a way that helps you build a strong network for NOW and the future. Use the challenges you face along the way to develop your power to adapt and relearn new skills, develop new ways of focusing and transforming challenges into strategies and solutions that drive results.
More on Career Transition Tips and Tools? YOU Betcha
Self Quiz: The Quality of Your Life and Career
The Ten Irrefutable Laws of Successful Job Interviewing
The 3 R’s of Great Resume Writing
Winning Resume Tips
Understanding and Acing the Behavioral Interview
Ten Tips on Acing Your Next Telephone Interview
Video Successful Career Transition and YOUR Marketing Channels
Career Transition Toolkit Program ( Customized programs for individual clients, groups and managers who want to help their people with career transition)
Is it time to REACH- Redirect-empower-actualize-communicate and harvest YOUR potential to lead forward? Get Executive Coaching, Training that Sticks? Enjoy an insightful and inspiring keynote? Just Coach It for reach, resonance, results. Executive Coaching, Consulting, Keynotes and Workshops with as 3Q Edge™
Irene Becker, Chief Success Officer, Just Coach It–The 3Q Edge™| Reach-Resonance-Results Toronto and Virtually Everywhere | Face-Face, By Tel, Skype or Video Conferencing www.justcoachit.com Tel: 1-416-671-4726 Email: irene@justcoachitcom Twitter @justcoachit Skype: beckerirene
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