Career In Limbo, I'll Tell You Why A Career Coach Can Help

Hiring a career coach is just like hiring a personal trainer. They can help you to establish realistic goals and give you a plan on how to reach them. A career coach will personally work with you to plan out a strategy to improve your prospects of moving up in the business world. In addition to planning your route to success, a career coach will also ensure that you stay on the appropriate path in order to reach your goals.

A lot of people are intimidated at the thought of hiring a career coach, but this is because they do not fully understand the position. A career coach is hired to act as your friend, partner, and business ally. They are in no way, shape, or form hired to degrade you and tell you that your goals cannot be reached. The role of your coach is to listen to you, and then give you positive feedback. They assist you in helping to find new career goals, and realize the potential of particular situations. Also, anything you speak about with you career coach will be kept confidential.

If you are reluctant to hire a career coach because you think that it is the same as hiring a therapist, you need to clear your mind of these thoughts. A career coach well help you achieve your goals, and reach your maximum potential. On the other hand, a therapist is hired to tell you why you are not fulfilling your goals and why you feel inadequate in the business world. As opposed to a therapist, a career coach is upbeat, energized, and goal oriented, just like you.

Time should not be a factor in considering whether or not you need a career coach. Everybody has time constraints, and these coaches will work around your schedule. If you can only speak at lunch or on weekends that can be arranged. It is important to remember that coaches will work with you face to face, over the phone, or via email. And not every session has to be long. You can specify up front how long you want each session to last.

Being able to track your success can sometimes be a difficult task, and is different with each and every person. One obvious way to judge if your career coach is working is to see how many of your goals you have reached. Also, ask yourself if you have been feeling more self confident and motivated. If you feel like you are not getting what you should out of your sessions explain this to your coach and devise a plan to get back on track.

Overall, a career coach is a great way to achieve your goals and reach your maximum potential.

Think About This!

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit."
- Aristotle

"Explore and explore. Be neither chided nor flattered out of your position of perpetual inquiry."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it."
- John Steinbeck

"Quality improvement will result from people improving their processes and from management improving the system."
—Thomas Pyzdek

"Cause and effect are two sides of one fact."
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Failure is simply a reason to strengthen resolve."
- John W. Gardner

"It is those who can spot opportunities who are truly exceptional."
- Chinese proverb

Put Your Change of Career on Hold Now - I'll Tell You Why

Thinking about a career change is a challenging and often stressful time in a person’s life. If this career change you are making was a choice you made on your, good for you. If the company you worked for has opted to push you out the door, good for you also; some people need a push. Regardless of the reason behind your career change, there are three initial steps that need to be addressed by you in preparing for your next profession.

Step 1. Evaluation - This is where you perform the reality check of yourself and situation. Yes, it is an emotional time and you will feel to some degree anxiety about what the future holds. This is normal and a needed part of building a new foundation for a successful transition. Let your emotions out, and let's get on with the evaluation. As part of the evaluation process you must take stoke of your financial situation as this will dictate what type of actions you will take in step 3. Evaluate these items first.

* Financial - If you are living paycheck to paycheck, you will continue to live paycheck to paycheck. So the easy solution is to get a job that will sustain you through this period while you are working on getting the job you really want. Yes you are going to work hard, yes you will make sacrifices to get through this, but you and only you will control this effort - You Can Do It!. Be realistic and seek professional advice and help if there is any doubt about how to establish and meet your short term expenses based on your current income situation.

* Reflection - You have been successful and can be again. Start reflecting and documenting your career, experience, things you do well. List skills you are proficient at, professional achievements and continuing education. Begin thinking about how all of these attributes will come together in a professional summary that forms the first part of your resume.

* Future - What do you want to do for a career? Simple question to ask, but for most people a very tough one to respond with a good answer without first thinking about it. You just got out of a job that you may or may not have really enjoyed, do you want to go back and do the same thing with a different company? Maybe you want to go into teaching, retail, food service or open your own business. You must decide and do so in a timely manner. List out all the possible career options or jobs you can think of, and then really scrutinize these down to three. For these three, list the positive and negative for each, if done correctly this process will yield your next career or desired job.

If you can not decide or the results are unclear, try it again and let your gut instinct play apart. Maybe a little more research or information is required, again take the time to make a comprehensive and informed selection, it is your future we are talking about.

The Evaluation step is the most important and toughest step to get through. Do Not Give Up, this takes time ... walk away and come back if you get overly frustrated. Take some time and refer to old documents or resume's as needed to assist if, I found these very helpful in simplifying a historical timeline and organizing my key words and activities. This effort creates your career template.

Step 2. Readiness - Now that you have completed the evaluation step lets get ready to present yourself to a future employer, business partner or the marketplace. Remember, you are now going to have to sell yourself and create value.

* Resume - Create a comprehensive and focused resume containing a lead in paragraph of you professional summary. I can not go into all the types of resume formats that are acceptable theses days. Do a little research and decide what best format is for you.

*Introduction - Prepare and practice for the initial meeting with a prospective employer or market place representative. It is critical you practice this introduction in front a mirror and with friends. Think about when you meet someone, most new face to face situations there are about 30 seconds of real attention, you either sell yourself or you do not in this initial meeting. Make it short, easy to follow, have it contain key words without a lot of fluff and get to the point. It is a good idea to get personal business cards with contact information on it so when you meet someone, you can hand them you card.

Step 3. Action – You completed the evaluation and readiness step, now for the exciting and most engaging step; taking action. Research the companies you desire to work for, utilize your network of personal and professional contacts.

Let your network of contacts know you are interested in a career change, solicit references and let them know if they need any help you are available. During this step, attitude and assertiveness are key elements to keep in mind. Be persistent, because you never know where you next opportunity may come from. Attend professional meetings, church group gatherings and any other social event you think can offer a lead or two. Explore and pursue all priority leads that support your desired job, even if they may not exactly match. Sometimes the words fail to describe the job or position adequately, again you will not know any of this until you explore.

Positive attitude yields great results, keep it up and good things will come your way.

Do Not Post Your Resume' Online - Until You Read This!

Do not post your resume' online until you understand exactly what you may be getting into. The internet is a wonderful tool to utilize when and if you are looking for a job or a change of career. However, there are some consequences of putting your resume’ out for the world to look at that you may not be aware of.

Some of these consequences has to do with the format of your resume’ and the content you include. Here are my top five items to address before posting your resume’ online and why.

1. Get a unique email address for your resume’. Why? Because you do not want you primary email account tied up with the responses or the spam spiders out looking for new email addresses. You can get additional email accounts from your current service provider or online for free most of the time. Believe me, if you do nothing else, take get a different email account and you may even want to consider getting a different account for each type of career you are searching for.

2. Include a professional summary at the beginning of your resume; the statement is about your qualifications and accreditations to date. This summary should be well thought out and only be two to three sentences in length. Why? In this summary you want to target the career specific key words appropriate for the job you are seeking.

3. Do not embellish or inflate the content included in your resume’. Be accurate and concise. Why? Simply you do not need too, just be yourself and promote the qualities and qualifications you have. Also you can be inundated with potential jobs that you may not be qualified for but have to sift through anyway. The resume’ is a first step in introducing and promoting yourself, do not jeopardize a great job because you fibbed a little…you will get trapped eventually.

4. Make sure the last page of your resume’ includes an additional 5 to 10 key words; hide the viewable color by changing the text to white (so these are not printed out). Why? The search engine spiders will find these key words, but they will not show up the print copy.

5. Keep the content specific to the career you or job you are seeking. Why? The effort to sift through the jobs takes time and you do not want to utilize this time wisely. I suggest if there are crossover jobs you use separate resumes for each and set up different email accounts to keep you organized.

One final piece of data you should be aware of, only 20 % of people actually find a job via the internet. Guess how the other 80% got their job? Through personal and professional networking! Think about it, the Human Resource person may get up to a hundred resume’s a day for internet posting, would it not be better to have someone on the inside that allowed your resume to be reviewed by the hiring manager and let them consider your qualifications first! Good luck and keep up the positive attitude on your path to success.