The Blog is Dead, Long Live The Blog!

Thank you to all of my loyal readers and occasional browsers. As part of the launch of my new website, I am creating a new blog that will appear as one of the pages on that site. You can find it here. The Blogspot site will remain active, but new content will be created on the new site. Thank you again, and I look forward to continuing our conversation!

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Successful Transition

Breakthrough Coaching has a blog post on 8 steps to a successful career transition, that I think hits it nicely. Here are the highlights:

Step 1: Forgive Yourself and Everyone Else in your Life; Clear Your Emotional Landscape; Let go of the past; Create a clean Slate in which you can create newly again; Reconnect to the joy of discovery and creation in present time

Step 2: Take Care of your immediate financial needs by utilizing and applying your most easily marketable skills; Get your overall financial house in order; Eliminate survival energy from your life; Maintain a strict separation between your needs for the present and your desires, aspirations, and vision for the future.

Step 3: Create and sustain an effective support system; Learn and apply the 4 coaching elements critical to your long term success in every area of your life

Step 4: Dis-cover (uncover) your core interests, desires, values, skills, talents and passions as a result of a comprehensive assessment process.

Step 5: Synthesize and Distill your discoveries into a Career Playground Statement.

Step 6: Learn, Research, Network, Build relationships and Key Alliances; Find a Mentor; Build Momentum on your Confidence-Success Spiral

Step 7: Create and implement your Career Master Plan; Learn and apply the Entrepreneurial Attitude wherever appropriate; Target and market yourself and/or your products to appropriate individuals and/or organizations.

Step 8: Apply an ongoing feedback-adjustment process to your objectives, vision and strategy. Seek to achieve balance in all areas of your life—physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual.

I guess I would summarize this as:

1> forgive / grieve and move on
2> get your house in order, financially, personally, career-wise
3> get clear on what you want (a job should be fun, after all)
4> create a plan and a feedback system and go get it!

How to measure success in your job search

Measuring success while looking for a job can be difficult. There is the obvious measure, "did I get a job offer that I want?" Short of that, how do you measure success? Here is a post that discusses what progress looks like. Here is the executive summary:

Milestone 1: Have you dealt with the realities that come with a change in employment status?
Milestone 2: Have you taken stock of your accomplishments and of what's happening in the world of work?
Milestone 3: Have you defined and researched a target industry, position, company, or venture?
Milestone 4: Do you have your personal marketing materials up-to-date, tailored, and ready to distribute when needed?
Milestone 5: Are you managing your time to ensure that you have access to 100% of the opportunities 100% of the time?
Milestone 6: Have you been invited for interviews or found yourself in front of interesting possibilities?

To this I will add, you can always track what you have done. What did you do today? Finish your resume? Set up coffee networking meetings (how many?) Apply for positions? (how many?) Go to a networking group? Did you get a call back interview? Etc etc.

Sometimes, it can be hard to measure success. My former career coach, Jack Chapman told me that it is like digging a tunnel blind, you don't know when you will break through to the other side, but you can look back and see how far you have come (as well as make sure you are going straight)

Shout-out to Dan Schawbel

Feelin' the Power!

OK, so in a previous post I wrote that I heard about Ignite Phoenix by reading Pam Slim's blog, Escape From Cubicle Nation, and decided that this was cool, we needed this here in Chicago, so I put out the word for a team, and one came together, spearheaded by the able and motivated event planner and entrepreneur extraordinaire, Michael Sachaj, and last Thursday we held Ignite Chicago, attended by about 30 people, with 11 speakers, and it was a blast! (check out the video on the site!) Folks had a great time, lots of connections were made, I even got a client out of it!

What's the moral of the story? Have fun, follow your passion and good stuff happens! Many people contributed to this, far more than I did, but this started with my idea and vision, my decision set this in motion and allowed this to be! How cool is that?! We are going to do it again in a few months, perhaps downtown near Navy Pier. You can follow it on Twitter: @ignitechi

Wooo!

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Escape From Cubicle Nation

Pamela Slim, the coach behind the blog and book “Escape From Cubicle Nation” is presenting an entrepreneurship workshop here in Chicago on July 17. Cost is just $138 with early bird registration:

http://www.escapefromcubiclenation.com/chicago-escape-from-cubicle-nation-workshop/

I am sure it will be world class learning, and fun.

Dare Yourself!

So, I was at the train station at 945 this morning, looking at the bulletin board, where people (including me) have posted notices about events, products, places for rent, etc. I noticed the owner of the station's coffee shop throwing out the trash, and I introduced myself and asked her if she talked to a lot of people. She said, "why yes, of course," and I told her about the event I was planning for recent college grads who didn't have jobs (see below) and she started telling me all about the people she knew in this situation. I may have recruited a free sales person, just by starting a pleasant conversation. At the very least, I had a pleasant conversation. And, if I had listened to the little voice in my head telling me to stay quiet, none of this would have happened. I dared myself to talk to her and it was fun, maybe profitable.

I dare you to step out of your comfort zone and have some fun and profit today! Post your adventures in the comment section, if you wish.

http://greatjobandmoveout.eventbrite.com/

Long Term vs Short Term

Sometimes, job-seekers ask me what they can do to get a job RIGHT NOW. The answer is, if you want to have a good job by the end of the day, there is not much you can do to make that happen. Sorry. However, if the question is, what can I do RIGHT NOW to get a good job in the near future, then we have lots of options (networking, volunteering, informational interviews, building your online brand, consulting, etc.).

Think of it like this, pursuing short-term results, over and over, for a long time, will likely leave you with little or nothing. BUT, pursuing long-term results starting now will begin to pay off fairly quickly, and will evenually yield something much closer to what you want, if you can stay focused and patient.

Use the metaphor of gardening, (which I have written about here and here). If you tend the garden, it will feed you well come harvest time, but you can't plant seeds and expect to have something by the end of the day.

Someone doesn't get it

To all of those jobseekers who tell me they want to "keep their options open" so they have a better chance of getting a job, I present the following ad, from the supplement to the University of Chicago Magazine:

Wanted: summer job - like tutoring, science, labwork, kids, fencing, pets...
I would be interested in working in a lab (psychology or science) or in any sort of U of C campus job. I can tutor Latin, Attic Greek, and grade school / high school math and English. I also can babysit and have taken many Red Cross courses, including CPR. I've taught knitting, fencing, baking, Latin and math.

This person is totally hedging her bets, instead of clearly stating what she wants as specifically as possible. She is making YOU do the work, to figure out if you have a job that might be appropriate for her. What do you think her chances of success from this ad?

Two posts that say it all

I found these two posts in the WSJ career section. The first is about people who "dumb down" their resume so that they don't look overqualified for a job that they are desperate to get because they need a paycheck. Sad, but true. The second is entitled "Ready to be the Boss?" about becoming an entrepreneur and some of the good and the bad that comes with it.

The side by side comparison of these two was striking to me. One was about playing small, pretending you are less than you are, in order to get a job that is beneath you, and the other is about stepping up and becoming "the Boss" of your life and career.

You can imagine which one I favor.


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Cool eBook

Here is a link for a free eBook entitled The Young Professional Rockstar: Ten tips to rocking your career right now. The style is definitely aimed at young 20-something women, but the content, the recommendations and the exercises are universal. Good stuff, Angela and Jenny.