Category: Charting Your Career for Success

Charting Your Career for Success:
Feeling a pull towards something different in your work life? This category is your compass for navigating the exciting and sometimes challenging journey of career change. Whether you’re contemplating a slight pivot or a complete industry leap, you’ll find guidance and resources here to help you:

Explore new career possibilities that align with your passions and skills.
Identify your transferable skills and how to leverage them in a new field.
Develop a strategic plan for making a successful transition.
Learn practical tips for networking, upskilling, and adapting your job search materials.
Find inspiration and real-world stories from others who have navigated career changes.
It’s never too late to pursue a more fulfilling and meaningful career. Let’s explore the possibilities together and help you confidently chart your new professional path.

Interview Safety: 4 Steps to Avoiding Risks

Jay Wren The Moveable Career ~ Interview Safety: when you feel safe and comfortable, you will have a better interview. Avoid the risks. Plan for your safety. Here are 4 steps that many job seekers find effective.

Location

The safety of the interview location is important.

Most interviewers will meet with applicants in public locations such as a hotel room, hotel lobby, coffee shop, restaurant, or airport arrival area.

Before going to the interview, look at the safety of the area where you are interviewing. If you are concerned, you might consider asking the interviewer at another location. If you remain concerned, you need to ask whether you want to take the risks of interviewing with the company.

Safety Contact

Let someone, friend or family, know you are going to the interview.  Arrange for the person to be available to take your call after your interview. You can use your cell-phone speaker or hands-free system to drive safely.

You can use your call to discuss your interview with this person waiting for your call.  Giving the person feedback on your interview will reinforce your memory and increase understanding of the interview.

Travel

If you are flying for an interview, learn how to connect with ground transportation before you leave on your trip. This information can make your transportation safer and save you time and energy during your travel.

Fly early in the day.  Just the eerie nature of a late-night empty airport is reason enough to travel early.

Interviewer Behavior

If the interviewer is lewd, profane, threatening, or violent, do the obvious. Leave the interview. Get in touch with friends or family as soon as possible. Let them know about your experience.

I am not a lawyer.  I can’t tell you how to handle legal matters.  If you believe that the interviewer has broken the law or harmed, seek direction from your friends and family. Additionally, you may consider contacting the proper authorities.

Interview Safety: The Safe Side

You may find that interviewing is interesting, maybe even fun.  Plan: think about your safety before making interview commitments.  You will have terrific interviews, and you may even land a great job.

Read more…

Elevator Pitch: Bad Presentations Don’t Solve Problems

Elevator Pitch: before you go to an interview, rehearse a short pitch to show how you can create success for the hiring company. Some people call this short pitch, “The Elevator Pitch.”

The purpose of an elevator pitch is to persuade a person to accept your proposal in a brief presentation. The best elevator pitches make even complex proposals easier to understand and accept.
~ www.jaywren.com

Here is a format that I have found effective for elevator pitches.

  1. If you do not know the person, introduce yourself.
  2.  State the subject of your pitch.
  3. Summarize the objectives of the job.
  4. State a list of successful things you have done to achieve and exceed the objectives of the job. Show how the hiring company will benefit from your experience.
  5. State that the reason that you are interviewing for the job is that you enjoy performing the type of tasks the job requires and that you admire the company and what it is doing.
  6. Ask the person to meet with on one or two specific dates. In persuasive selling this is called closing on a choice.

The most effective people know how to ask great questions and to learn from listening. ~ www.jaywren.com 

Introduce Yourself

If you do not know the person, introduce yourself.  Let the person know that excited to meet them to discuss their career opportunity.

State the Subject

Don’t keep guessing what you are discussing.  Your elevator pitch will be confusing and lack focus unless people know where you are going with your discussion.

State the Objective of the Job

Before you go to an interview, study the job description.  Learn as much as you can about the company. Script how you understand the job based on the business of the hiring company.  Practice presenting a short statement of the hiring need of the company.

Explain how Your Experience Shows that You can Achieve the Objective of the Job

Compare your experience with the job objective. Have a summary of the ways your experience benefits the company.  Tailor your pitch directly to the company and to the specific job.  Anticipate questions and objections.  Have answers that direct the question back to your goal of getting a job interview.

State that You Want the Job

Let the person know that you want the job and that you will make yourself available to fit the needs of the hiring company.  Do not mention income.  Your goal is to get a job interview.  Once you get the interview that leads to an offer, you can fine-tune the details of salary, bonus, and benefits.

Close on a Choice

Ask the person to meet with on one or two specific dates. In persuasive selling this is called closing on a choice.

Practice Giving Your Pitch so You can give it Flawlessly

When you can give your elevator pitch, take a breath before you start.  Don’t let the adrenaline drive your pitch.  Remember to smile.  Look at the person’s face.  Remember that you are dealing with a human being.  Allow a comfortable three feet of space between yourself and your contact. Remember you speaking with the person to offer solutions and opportunities to the person and the person’s company.  You want to join their team.

The Seven Steps of a Persuasive Presentation

Warning Signs: Are You Interviewing with the Wrong Company?

Warning signs: What should you look for when you are interviewing for a job? Should you be interviewing with a better company?

As the owner of a recruiting firm, I worked with applicants who dealt with troubling issues during the interview process.  Here are some of the things I learned from my experience in helping these applicants

Interviewers Fail to Keep their Commitments

In some cases, interviewers have valid reasons for cancelling an appointment, and they explain those reasons to you.  An easy way to handle the situation is to show understanding and simply reschedule.

However, some interviewers raise warning signs when they fail to keep commitments.

  • The interviewers cancel appointments without attempting to reschedule.
  • They cancel appointments more than once.
  • Worth of all, the interviewers completely fail to call you or to meet with you without calling to cancel or reschedule.

If interviewers can’t keep their commitments, you should see that as a warning sign that you are interviewing with the wrong company.

Interview Interruptions

For interviews allowing interruptions is unfair to you. The interruptions are a distraction to you. The interview loses continuity and you may lose your ability to focus. Furthermore, these people can fail to focused on you and to give a fair evaluation.  This type of behavior is a warning sign that the interviewer is not interested in you or, perhaps, simply does not respect your time.

Remember that the way an interviewer handles an interview is a sign of how a company deals with its employees.  This behavior is uncommon, but when it has happened, applicants have often complained to me about it and rightfully so.

The interviewer is the face of the company.  If the interviewer doesn’t respect your time, how well will you be able to at a company where people do not respect your time.  This type of company is the wrong company.

Withholding Information Benefits and Salary Range

The company withholds information on benefits and salary range during the interview process.

The company benefits and compensation are confidential information.  For competitive security issues, companies must protect the details of their operations.  However, to avoid wasting their own time and the applicant’s time, the best interviewers provide general information on benefits and compensation.  Often, companies include a general statement on benefits and compensation on the job description.

You need to work for companies that put the information out front.  Companies that are not forthcoming during the interview are companies that show warning signs that you are interviewing with a company that runs its business that way.  This type of company is the wrong company.

Warning Signs

Take heed of warning signs. To summarize here common warning signs that I have seen during my experience as a recruiter.

  • Interviewers fail to keep their commitments
  • Interviewers allow interruptions
  • It is difficult for you to get a general idea on benefits and salary range

 

Winning Performance: How to Build on Your Skills for Success

Winning Performance is not only about how hard you work or how many skills you have. It’s, also, about having the soft skills for working effectively. Day in, day out, equally talented people give different levels of winning performance. Likewise, equally talented people can have widely different career success. Here are seven steps that will help you accomplish more with your time.

  1. Seeking Advice for Winning Performance.

Seek advice before acting on important decisions. It is so easy for me to go into difficult situations and make large decisions with the belief that I already have all the answers.  It is equally easy for me to overlook things that I should have considered before acting. I have better results when I get ideas and solutions from other people. I better understand my circumstances by discussing them with someone else.

  1. Getting the Greatest Results – Yards After Catch

Get the greatest results from each activity. The National Football League wide receiver Jerry Rice holds 23 NFL records. One of the more important records is the greater distance he gained after he caught the pass. From my observation, Jerry Rice trained harder and more skillfully than other athletes. Jerry Rice brought winning performance to every game he played.

  1. Listen and Learn

Business professionals can do a better job for their company by identifying those small details that turn mediocre projects into hugely successful projects. They do the same tasks every else does and achieve greater results than anyone else, often because of their getting input from people around them. These people develop a team mentality that tells them when to act or when to set a finished product aside and return to it when they have a fresh perspective.

These people build companies like Apple, Procter & Gamble, Toyota, and so on across the spectrum.

  1. Do One More Task

When you finish your work before the end of the day, do at least one more task before leaving work. It is easy to sit around or leave early. By starting and completing one more task on these days, you will find that your production can rise dramatically. If you add and complete one extra task per week, you will complete fifty more tasks over the course of the year. Your company will benefit. Your value to your company will grow.

  1. Read

Regularly read articles and books about your job and your goals. Nearly every job continues to evolve.  Many jobs disappear entirely. New information and tools become available to make job performance easier and make you more marketable.  Take advantage of this information to grow in professional value and for personal enrichment.

  1. See Solutions Not Problems

Everyone has problems. Everyone encounters obstacles. It is easy to give up or procrastinate instead of acting on these obstacles. In creating solutions, you can develop effective, often new ways of dealing with these obstacles.

As you create solutions, look for ways to help other people use your solutions. People have founded companies based on providing products and services to overcome common obstacles.  If you can sell the solutions you have developed in overcoming obstacles, you have a business.

  1. Build Your Network

Continue to build your network of friends and mentors.  One of the more interesting qualities of my son is that he has multiple circles of friends. The people in each of these circles are people he has met at different times and in different settings.  Some of these friends are from high school classes. Other friends come from his sports activities. Additionally, he has friends from college and his career.

Since graduating from college, he has met these people from different circles to pick up new hobbies and to travel. He has traveled to Sweden, Peru, and Thailand to meet with friends he has met over the years. You may also find that having new circles of friends can help you develop new and valuable career ideas and solutions for Winning Performance.

  1. Set Goals

Continue to set goals. Goal setting can have a subconscious power to drive your actions even when you are not working directly from a daily plan. Additionally, having goals can give you a sense of purpose and a feeling of a richer quality of life.  Rather than focusing on the ruts of your life, you can focus on your goals and how to move toward them.  Goals lead to Winning Performance.

Career Change Commitment: Steps to Stay Engaged

Career Change Commitment: Hunting for jobs take a lot of work. It is easy to let up and let opportunities slip away. Finding a job is a business. Even when business is slow, you can act to increase your success of finding the job you deserve. Here are some things you can do during a lull in activity.

The Steps to Career Change Commitment

  1. Stay Connected
  2. Become a Resume Expert
  3. Gain Access to Power Players
  4. Read Career Books
  5. Expand Your Skills
  6. Build an Attitude for Success
  7. Protect Your Health
  8. Focus on Action

Stay Connected

Speak and write to your friends and business connections to let them know that you are still actively seeking a new opportunity. Each time you connect, thank them for their support and let them know that you welcome their support with referrals and job listings.

Become a Resume Expert

Make your resume tighter. Reduce the accomplishments in older jobs and increase the list of accomplishments in recent jobs. Revise the objective of your resume to match the job for which you are applying. Even if you use a resume writer, you must know whether your resume is effective to meet your needs for applying for specific jobs. Ask everyone you trust in your job search to review your resume for effectiveness. Recruiters should be able to help you review your resume for jobs where they are referring you.

Gain Access to Power Players.

Work on the quality of your first-degree network. In many cases, there is nothing wrong to building a huge network. As your network grows, you have the power of audience reach. However, within your close network you must have the people who can empower you for success.

Specifically, build your database with people who have relationships in the industry and at companies where you want to work.  Being to make a direct application to an employer is far better than applying through a job board or a membership site.

Just knowing that you are connected with people who can help you create optimism for career change commitment.

Read Career Books

The most successful people become experts in their career. Likewise, the most successful people increase their potential for success with a lifetime of learning. As you go through your career move, you can empower yourself to perform each step as a well-informed professional.

Reading can help you become more interested in what you are doing in your career search and maintain your career change commitment.

Expand Your Skills

There are YouTube videos on nearly every subject imaginable.  With the Internet, you can take college courses without leaving your home.  Skills seminars and meetups can help you learn new skills as well as expand your network. LinkedIn, Facebook, Reddit, Quora and other social media websites offer groups and forums to help you find answers for developing your skills. Some websites offer free subscriptions to articles on skills development. YouTube is especially helpful to show you how to advance your skills.

What you learn from these videos can get you excited about finding a new job.

Build an Attitude for Success

There is so much information on creating a healthy, productive attitude. My first exposure to creating a more powerful attitude came from reading the Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale. Later, I found that listening to Zig Ziglar tapes help me feel more comfortable and confident about everything in my life. For most of my career, I have used forms of meditation to quiet my mind and think more clearly. This practice helps me understand and respond more intelligently to the people in my life.

A simple step to a better attitude is to avoid negative people and spend time with people who will help you feel motivated and positive throughout your career.

A powerful attitude can motivate you to be more aggressive and active in your career move.

Protect your Health

You are your greatest asset.  Eat healthy.  Get daily exercise. Sleep well. You will have more energy to work on your career.  With that energy comes a clearer mind that leads to better decisions.  Remember that the body in which you live is the same vehicle in which you achieve success.

A healthy body is a natural first step to an engaged mind and developing the energy for action.

Focus on Action

Focusing on your difficulties in finding a job will not help. It can discourage you from working on your career search. You build success by seeking and acting on solutions not focusing on problems.

Job Search Websites: Finding the Job You Deserve

Job Search Websites: Job Search Engines, Job Boards, Social Media Sites that List Jobs, and company owned job boards. How they work and where to find them.

Even on the Internet, everything is easier to find when you know where to look. ~ www.jaywren.com

The Types of Job Search Websites

There are four types of job search websites.

  • #1 Job Search Engines (Google for Jobs, Indeed, SimplyHired)
  • #2 Job Boards (Monster, Career Builder)
  • #3 Social Media Sites that List Jobs (Facebook with Targeted Ads, LinkedIn)
  • #4 Company Websites that List the Job within that Company

Job search engines, characteristically, promote their ability to search all websites as well as their own website for jobs. Because of their ability to scour the Internet for jobs, job search engines have gained tremendous popularity.  However, these job search engines naturally list their own job-listings first.  Searches across the web may be buried deep in the pages of the website.

Job Boards, characteristically, post jobs listed with their company. When you enter job search criteria into these websites, the results return only the website’s listing.

Social Media Sites post jobs listed with their company. Additionally, LinkedIn lets members post jobs on their profiles and in their groups. A third place to post jobs is on the LinkedIn homepage feed. For many recruiters, hiring companies, and job seekers, LinkedIn is a site to network for jobs.

Company Websites post jobs they have available. Responding to the company’s website can give you direct access to the recruiting department and, perhaps, the hiring manager.

Keywords and Refinements

Start your computer search with job title, company, or other keywords, and preferred location.

Keyword and location are excellent starting points for your job search in a job search website.  Other keywords might include might be phrases like these:

  • Best companies in [name of city]
  • Jobs in [name of city]
  • All companies in [name of city]
  • Name of job skills in [name of city]. 

Add refinements or filters.  Google for Jobs and SimplyHired offer refinements for things like job category or industry. Indeed.com offers refinements in the sidebar for compensation, job type, and a few other refinements.

Browser Tip

A helpful tip is to open the job listing links in a separate tab or separate window.  By using that technique, you will be able to work your way through the search results without having to re-enter you search.

Risks in an Internet Job Search

There are risks in using job boards. What’s on the Internet is available to anyone who has access to that information. Anyone with access to the website’s database of applicants can see your resume listed there.

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