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Career Pathways (November/December, 2011)
November 29, 2011
My Ten Best Career Pathways Columns from October, 2009 through September, 2011
I cannot believe that I have been writing this column for over two years! Every month = 24 columns. It was suggested that I select the 10 columns that I thought were the best of all that I had written. I have selected those that I think were the most: a) interesting, b) helpful in seeing career transitions from a new perspective, or c) enabling to become more focused in a job marketing strategy.
Here are the first five, in no particular order:
1. Is Your Brand Up-to-Date? October 2009
When making a career move or work shift, there is a period of time when you are in the midst of passing through one situation or stage to another. This is the transition phase – a seamless pause/hiatus to assess the impact of this change on your life, to regroup, and to develop a clearer perspective of the situation and the ways you need to revise your brand and edit your story. Continued
2. How Do You Define Professional Success? November 2009
Everyone had a different definition of success. How do define success for yourself? Is it just in a professional sense? Or do you have more than one definition for different parts of your life? As this is a “career transitions” column, let us focus on professional success. Only you can characterize what you consider to be successful in what you do to earn a living. Continued
3. Create A Professional Development Plan. January 2010
Are you focused on today’s workplace realities and how you can meet your organization’s current needs or still operating from yesterday’s perspective? To take advantage of opportunities that arise and to position yourself for success, you must be knowledgeable about current cutting edge issues, trends, and challenges. Continued
4. Time to Reinvent Yourself. March 2010
Winter is gone, clocks have sprung forwarded, daisies are beginning to appear, and it will soon be cherry blossom time in DC. If you are in the midst of or thinking about starting a job search, career transition, job shift or just feel you need to refresh and brighten up your work life, now is the time to take some action. Continued
5. Tooting Your Horn Is Not Bragging. June 2010
To get ahead, to develop your unique brand, to become and remain visible, to have people contact you with an opportunity you need to consistently toot your own horn. This is not bragging! Bragging is a form of exaggeration. It can be boasting and/or gloating. Continued
Coming up: Five more.
1. Is Your Brand Up-to-Date
To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly. Henri Bergson
When making a career move or work shift, there is a period of time when you are in the midst of passing through one situation or stage to another. This is the transition phase – a seamless pause/hiatus to assess the impact of this change on your life, to regroup, and to develop a clearer perspective of the situation and the ways you need to revise your brand and edit your story. Now is the time to think about the ideal professional image that you want to project today and that advances you towards the future. This is branding your self.
Branding Basic Characteristics:
- Spotlights your unique professional niche – individualized combination of skills and savvy
- Introduces a desired professional image – depicts an instantly recognized work identity and personality
- Includes specific words and phrases – carefully chosen that attracts your intended market/audience
Branding is a powerful marketing tool – think of products and services you use – why is the name so well–known and remembered? What comes to mind when you think of a particular name? Now, think of how you would like to be known and remembered – the professional who ----- or the woman with -----.
How can you use branding for other marketing situations than just job search? It can be utilize for promotions, team projects, repositioning yourself from one industry or specialization to another, moving from working for someone else to becoming your own boss, shifting from working for an organization to joining a consulting firm, etc.
Think of a brand statement as a networking intro statement or a one-minute elevator speech. It should be brief, concise, targeted, capturing in a few short phrases: a) the essence of your professional image, b) your personality reflected thru a projected image, and c) the strengths offered as benefits for developing a working relationship with you.
Branding Work Statement:
The purposes of a branding statement is to:
- Grab a specific person’s attention quickly and to sustain interest in you.
- Allow you to stand out from your competition
- Focus on how you want to be seen
A branding statement gives you a focal point for career success; therefore it must be up-to-date and targeted in the message that it sends out. If you presently have a branding statement, now is the time to review it, have others look at it, and to consider what needs to be taken out and what needs to be added, for you to rebrand yourself. If you have never written one, now is the time to do so.
Part of being in transition is that it allows time for reviewing, reflecting and planning – how this change affects your life and what the implications are for a different image. How can your branding work statement resonate how you now want to spend your time earning your living and contributing to your community? Create or revise your brand as a way to acknowledge your anticipated new roles and responsibilities – essentially your new professional “skin”.
Keep Your Brand Visible
It is important to maintain a current public presence; an essential component of your career fluidity and survival. You cannot allow your work brand to become stagnant and your creditability to weaken, thus diminishing your competitiveness and success level. Up-dating your brand identity keeps your visibility strong, preserves your reputation and sustains respect and confidence among your colleagues and peers.
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2. How Do You Define Professional Success? November 2009
Everyone had a different definition of success. How do define success for yourself? Is it just in a professional sense? Or do you have more than one definition for different parts of your life?
As this is a “career transitions” column, let us focus on professional success. Only you can characterize what you consider to be successful in what you do to earn a living. Your values, priorities, and the changes you undergo during your work lifetime prompted by growth, development, and life events, influence your definition of professional success. Therefore, at different points of your life, the meaning of professional success may change for you. For example, in your 20’s-40’s, due to building your personal life and/or family responsibilities, income level can be a priority; however, in your 50’s-60’s. when you may begin to feel “been there, done that”, your sense of achievement may change to focus on contributing to your community and shifting professional gears to a non-profit organization.
If you had to write a statement describing “professional success”, what are the factors you would consider for inclusion, can they be quantified, e.g. income level or specified, e.g. position title to indicate work achievement? To become aware of the meaning of professional success at the present or near future, complete the following exercise:
Defining Your Professional Success
Review the following success factors and check those that are important to you. There is no maximum or minimum number of choices. Rank them in order of their priority for you with number one being the highest priority.
Professional Success Factor Priority
Acknowledgement from colleagues/peers
Appreciation from employer
Benefits
Contribution to the profession or field
Financial security//earnings
Having own business
Independence
Job advancement/title
Job security
Respected/admired as a leader
Professional reputation
Work at dream job
Work to my fullest potential
Work/life balance
Other
Write a statement that defines professional success for you by describing the characteristics of the above chosen factors. Include why you prioritized in the way you did.
Do you feel you have reached a satisfactory level of success by your definition and why? Were you surprised by any of your responses, and if so, what were they? What can you do within the next year to improve your level of accomplishment? Will you need to make a major professional/career transition to achieve your present definition of professional success and why?
Whether you are thinking of or in the midst of a career transition – be it a professional shift, industry/field change or a job move, it is important to have a clear focused image of how you define professional success. This is a key element to creating your distinctive pathway to work fulfillment and your sense of self.
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3. Create A Professional Development Plan. January 2010
Are you focused on today’s workplace realities and how you can meet your organization’s current needs or still operating from yesterday’s perspective? To take advantage of opportunities that arise and to position yourself for success, you must be knowledgeable about current cutting edge issues, trends, and challenges:
Organizational shifts
Changing nature of work
Transformation of your field
Fast-paced technological advances
Emphasis on nonstop learning
Quality-of-life issues
You can truly make a difference in the workplace by knowing how to capitalize on your knowledge of what is happening NOW combined with your skills and expertise.
As you are aware, change is constant and everywhere – in organizations, family life, technology, social and cultural arenas, and learning methodology. Your professional field or industry is no exception, old job titles, roles, competencies, and skills, are rapidly being replaced by new ones or are being aligned with current workplace needs. Take some time and review what is happening in your field or industry. What are some of the emerging new position titles? What additional specialties are appearing on the horizon? What do you need to do to remain competitive?
Basically, the majority of professional arenas are dynamic and fluid with several interrelated items: workplace realities, practice areas, client bases, and work settings. All changes and movements affect how and why you work and reach set outcomes effectively and efficiently.
How do people take charge of their career pathway and professional progression not just for survival but, for meaningful and successful results? Start with knowing how to manage your career and professional activities so that they are focused and targeted. The key is a Professional Design Plan (PDP) – a blueprint for mapping out a big picture for how, when, and where to build your career from the initial vision to strategy actualization.
A PDP is a design in progress – adaptable, flexible, reflecting your current situation’s status as you move through work and personal life experience or are affected by changing marketplace and business concerns and trends. The PDP is a concrete working document providing a format and space to think about what you need to do, what you are willing to do, and what you can do to reach your ultimate professional goals.
By developing a PDP, you have a structure that:
Enables you to work out and refine a strategy to manage your career path and professional experiences
Gives you the means to develop a workable, comprehensive, practical action plan for accomplishing your professional goals
Empowers you to create a design reflecting what you want and when you want it, declaring your intentions to yourself and others
Spotlights what you need to do to eliminate gaps in your competencies, knowledge, and skills
Pinpoints a set of related tasks, allowing you to arrange them in logical order
Commits you to action by providing a format to turn your ideas and desires into substance
Targets priority tasks, placing them at the head of your to-do list
Serves as a measurement tool for monitoring progress and assessing needed revisions
Creating a PDP is a career management survival skill that allows you to be pro-active for continuing professional growth and development, balancing work/personal lives, adapting to unexpected situations, recognizing relevant possibilities, and preventing things from falling through the grid. A PDP helps to center you in an uncertain and shifting workplace, maintain a positive mindset, and be a deterrent to feeling you have lost control over the path of your work life. With a PDP as your guide, manage your career and professional choices to arrive at your destination.
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4. Time to Reinvent Yourself. March 2010
Winter is gone, clocks have sprung forwarded, daisies are beginning to appear, and it will soon be cherry blossom time in DC. If you are in the midst of or thinking about starting a job search, career transition, job shift or just feel you need to refresh and brighten up your work life, now is the time to take some action.
From your resume to your wardrobe to professional development, to your networking activities, spring is the time to take steps to reinvent yourself. It can be done in little ways, with major changes, or as a complete makeover. What specifically are the modifications/alterations you want to or feel you need to make? Do you need to take one step back and do some self-assessing before moving forward? Will you need to consult with or seek the services of a professional?
Let us take a look at some of the arenas in which you can take action to make yourself more marketable, more professional, and/or more visible. Consider if you need to make change (s) in one or more of the following:
Professional or Career Arena:
For making a change and altering your work pathway consider;
Moving within your current work situation, by moving vertically advancing your career or moving vertically to obtain a new skill or expertise.
Moving to a new employer for a better opportunity, salary and benefits, and/or to renew the feeling of being challenged once again.
Becoming unemployed through a voluntary resignation due to burn-out, lack of work satisfaction/toxic work environment, or restore balance between your work and personal lives,
Making a work/position shift to entrepreneurship, joining a consulting firm, teaching at an academic institution in your subject matter department, or switching to another specialization within your profession or field.
Continuing Education Arena:
For expanding or improving your professional knowledge and skills consider:
Employer-sponsored on-site training and development activities including training classed facilitated by internal or external consultants, long-distance learning, online training classes, or technology-delivered courses.
Off-site education and training activities including degree and certificate-granting programs (tuition-reimbursement benefit?}, CEUs, and professional meetings, seminars, workshops, and conferences.
Marketing/Branding Arena:
For creating a higher visibility level and to increase your circle of contacts consider:
Networking activities provide opportunities to keep up with the latest professional news and issues and who is doing what, by reconnecting with colleagues and peers as well as expanding your network when attending professional events.
Resume review, as this is your main branding tool demonstrating your unique professional niche and reflecting your present professional story that projects an ideal image for tomorrow.
Information interviewing to learn about how to position yourself for a new field, industry, specialization and obtain additional referrals and contact leads, become aware of relevant professional associations/networking groups, and in general, seek advice about your targeting your next actions.
Personal Appearance Arena:
For improving the immediate impression you make when walking into a room consider:
Your wardrobe is a vital element in how people view you and can be changed and made to look more stylish with just a small item such as a new scarf or blouse or be given a major overhaul with the purchase of several new pieces that can be combined with old items in your closet.
Your hairstyle is another important element contributing to your sense of confidence and well-being and a new haircut can have people take notice of you.
Your make-up is the element that is the finishing touch to your image and includes not only your face but also your nails and toes if wearing open-toed shoes.
Reinventing yourself means making a commitment to change and modification, perhaps changing old habits, mindsets, and attitudes, and possibly, a willingness to take some risks. However, with an action plan, milestone and a support group to encourage and keep you targeted and on track, you will be looking at a “new you” in the near future.
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5. Tooting Your Horn Is Not Bragging. June 2010
To get ahead, to develop your unique brand, to become and remain visible, to have people contact you with an opportunity you need to consistently toot your own horn. This is not bragging! Bragging is a form of exaggeration. It can be boasting and/or gloating.
Tooting your own horn is letting people know about your actual accomplishments, expertise, experiences, and where and how you want to move along your career pathway. It is marketing yourself, matching your qualifications to the needs of your audience. Whether you are seeking a job, raise, promotion, performance review, new clients and/or professional contacts, you cannot be shy and retiring, compelling, and sincere.
To talk about yourself with pride and passion, that is self-promoting but with style and finesse, you need to have a sense of your identity - that is - who you are and how you want to project this image. If necessary, improve your communication and presentation skills so that people will take notice of you and feel that they want to know you better. Perceptions of you by others are an essential element for accomplishing your goal.
Tooting your horn becomes more real and allows people to develop a detailed picture of you when you give specific examples and incidents. You are no longer "gray" colorless, or one-dimensional, but full of color and life. Think about how you can talk about yourself without being boring, trite, generic, and dull. What you may think is no big deal, maybe in the eyes of someone else a tremendous and unique achievement. If you think something you have done is really nothing or not that special, tell the story to some friends/colleagues and see how they react. You may be quite surprised!
Just as you have a cache of skills and successes to cut and paste into your resume, so you need to develop a stash of basic marketing pieces that can be woven into your story to focus and strengthen the "selling of yourself" in a person-to-person situation.
Some questions to ask yourself:
What work do you do and how did you come to do this work?
What are your three most favorite things to do when not at work and why?
What do you consider as the career/job successes in which you take the most pride?
What risks have you taken?
What barriers have you had to overcome to reach the place you are presently, both professionally and personally?
What has life taught you so far?
What do you think are your best assets and why?
What are the most interesting or memorable things you have done or have happened to you?
What are the five most likely adjectives that friends would use to describe you?
The next time you need to introduce yourself, talk about yourself, promote yourself - that is, market your brand - you will have a stash of "toot your horn" items. You will be able to select the ones that match the situation and meet the needs of your audience in an impressive and effective manner. And, enjoy doing it.
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