10 Steps to Your Best Career Transition Ever

Posted on February 03, 2012 by Elaine Patterson, One of Thousands of Executive Coaches on Noomii.

Step 1 — Be clear about what you want

If you are currently unemployed and, let’s be honest about it, feeling somewhat desperate, it’s very tempting to say “I just want a job – any job.” Or to define it in terms of replacing earning power: “I’ll consider any position that pays at least $150,000 per year.”

Not good enough. Not clear enough. To effectively mount a job search you need to be really clear about what you want for a number of reasons

• In order for the resume writer (step 2 below) to be optimally useful to you s/he needs to know how to target your resume.
• You will project what you feel in interviews. If ‘any position will do,’ interviewers will pick up on it and realize that you are not passionate about their opportunity – but they are.
• A change of employment – even an involuntary one – provides an opportunity for you to re-shape your life. Do you want to have more time with your family? Or at the gym getting fit? Now is the time to factor it into the template you create. You may end up compromising, but at least you can compromise from optimal to still desirable conditions.

Step 2 – Hire a professional resume writer

Most job seekers start off by saying that their resume either needs updating or that it’s updated and accurate. Unfortunately, neither is an acceptable position.

In today’s job market, employers are being deluged with resumes and, while an honest, accurate and workmanlike resume might have sufficed in the past, it no longer does.

You need to hire a professional resume writer to help you present your background and experience in the most effective way for the positions you are targeting. This may cost $500 to $1000, but it is well worth the investment

In order to get the most for this investment, you will need to provide the resume writer

• A clear description of your ideal position
• An accurate, (perhaps excessively) detailed chronological resume of your employment experience, including how you’ve added value for your employers in the past. (Your final resume will probably be two powerful pages, but let the resume writer help you decide what’s important to include – or not.)
• A summary of your strengths

And you will have to spend some time being interviewed by the resume writer – s/he needs to get a line on what is special about you in order to clearly portray you to prospective employers. Be prepared to spend an hour or more in this process and to xxx

Step 3 – Tweak your resume

You’ve worked with a pro and now have a resume that showcases your experience in such a way that even you are impressed. You love this resume; it really describes who you are and what you’ve done. In fact, you like it so much that you don’t want to change a single word.

But you must — Every time you approach a new opportunity, you should put yourself in the employer’s mindset and try to understand what is important to the decision makers who will consider applicants. Then, strategically, tweak your resume to show your related skills or experience to advantage. In addition, you can highlight these aspects in your cover letter. Including them only in the cover letter may give the impression that you are not being selective and are engaged in a mass marketing effort.

Step 4 – Develop talking points

For some, this may be the most difficult task of these ten. Sometimes it seems as if there’s a negative correlation between competence and the ability to talk about one’s strengths and professional accomplishments. You already know that it’s unlikely that you are the only qualified applicant being considered. The purpose of talking points – ideally three, not more than five – is to distinguish yourself from the others. Your talking points should address your strengths, how you add value, what are your goals and how this opportunity fits into your total plan.

If you find it difficult to articulate your strengths, ask for help. Contact a handful of former colleagues whose judgment you trust and ask them what they think your greatest strengths. Others often see us more clearly than we can see ourselves.

Talking points need to be specific – not “I am a strategic thinker,” but, using this strength, what did you do? Where? What were the outcomes?

Step 5 – Work your networks

Networks are an important – probably the most important – factor in any well executed career transition. We all have friends, family, former colleagues and employers, holiday card lists, etc. which play some role in our day-to-day existence. Now is the time to convert them into strategic assets.

Create long lists of whom you know in various categories – family, friends, professional contacts. Key professional contracts include professional recruiters who have either placed you or helped you to hire someone in the past.

Starting with recruiters, be selective in order to avoid over-exposure. Many search firms may be working with the same client. To avoid having a potential employer receive your resume from multiple sources, choose one or two search firms, whom you respect and who have served you well in the past, and make initial contact. Explore with them what the market is like for professionals with your background and experience, and, if you are comfortable working with them, let them work for you.

Then create a long list of former colleagues and members of professional associations to which you belong or are, in some way, connected to your profession. Create a data base and triage – who is likely to be most helpful? Least? The rest fall in the middle. You may eventually end up contacting everyone, but start with your most promising contacts. Set a target for yourself — the number of contacts you will make per day or week – and monitor. Each contact is a valuable resource. Consider carefully what you want to achieve and/or ask for with each call or e-mail before making the contact. Even if a contact does not know of current opportunities, you can offer to send your resume electronically. Who knows what make come up the day after tomorrow?

Keep track of whom you’ve called and when so that you can follow up when appropriate.
And do follow up – especially when there’s been an explicit agreement on a next step – but also after a reasonable period of time has elapsed, if you still are in the market.

And, finally, when you accept an offer and start in your new position, take the time to send short notes to everyone who has helped along the way – both to thank them and to let them know of your new status.

Step 6 – Optimize your web persona

In the era of global information, complete strangers have access to lots of information about us. Like it or not, you have a web persona, so the key is to make it work to your advantage.

As you start the process o transitioning your career, take the time to google yourself and see what you find. How will it be perceived by prospective employers? If you are not the source and there’s something less than favorable and you don’t have access to get it removed, be prepared to explain it in an interview and put the best possible face on it.

More likely, though, you are the source of the information on the web. Where have you opened accounts – Monster, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn? Bring to mind all of the places where you have posted information about yourself and update it to reflect the persona you want to project to employers. Convert your talking points into information accessible to web searchers. Make your presentation of self consistent from site to site, and, obviously, remove anything that would be off-putting to a prospective employer – including offside political remarks or jokes which may not be universally appreciated.

Step 7 – Create a tracking mechanism

It is realistic to expect that a career transition could take several months to a year or more to accomplish. The process will be more or less active from time to time. Nevertheless, you need to keep track of whom you’ve contacted, what the discussion was, and who agreed to do what next in order to manage the process. If you are not currently employed, this is your job for the moment. If you are employed but want to make a change, it is still one of your top priorities.

A job search is work! Treat it as such and organize it with the same skill and professionalism you would a highly compensated consulting assignment.

Step 8 – Know whom you’re talking to

In particular, for positions in specialized industries, your contacts may be through an intermediary — a recruiter or search firm. In the early stages of the discussion, you may not even know the name of the company to which your credentials are being presented. As the process progresses, though, if you are a serious contender, certainly before the first interview, you will have this information.

At this point, the web becomes a terrific ally. Use it to find out all you can about the company – not so that you can wow the interviewer with what you know, but by asking thoughtful questions that show that you are someone who prepares thoroughly, is thoughtful, and has a good ‘sense of client.’

Step 9 – Make it easy for prospective employers to know your strengths

An interview is a dialog; both partners contribute and take from the pool of common knowledge that is created during the process. Yes, you do need to respond to the interviewer’s questions, but not only in reactive mode. You are a full partner in the process. Go to each interview with an agenda of points that you want to make – information about you that you want to be sure the interviewer is aware of – and get it out there. You should also be equipped with a list of questions you want to ask and information you want to get from the interview. Remember, it’s a partnership and neither partner benefits from a hiring mistake.

I’ve known very strong candidates who have lost opportunities because the interviewer didn’t ask the right questions to get all relevant information on the table and the candidate assumed that it was known. Do not assume. At this point of the process, it’s your job to make explicit all of your background and experience that is relevant to the position for which you are being considered.

Step 10 – Start thinking about the next career transition after this one

When you’re still feeling uncertain about how the current transition will be resolved, it seems a bit pie-in-the-sky to think about the next transition, but it really is not. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that baby boomers born from 1957 to 1964 held an average of more than 10 jobs between ages 18 and 42. So your next position is not only a source of income and satisfaction, it is also a stepping stone in your career.

By identifying where you want to be in the next step after this, you will increase the clarity about what is a great next career move for you.

Elaine Patterson, MBA, CPA
Executive Coach
The Leading Edge

Office: 561-659-2177
Cell: 703-628-2799
www.the-leading-edge.com