Career Management

Carolyn Boyes

• Publisher: HarperCollins Business
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9780007324439
• eBook ISBN: 9780007358885
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

The career management secrets that experts and top professionals use.

Get results fast with this quick, easy guide to the fundamentals of Career Management.
Includes how to:
• Assess your career goals
• Create and follow an exciting career plan
• Make yourself visible for your ideal job
• Deliver the perfect interview
• Get yourself noticed and promoted, or go it alone

Change your career

If you aren’t satisfied with what you are doing, then perhaps you need to make a radical change. Do you want a new job in the same industry, or perhaps the same kind of role that you currently have but in a different sector?

6.1
Be flexible

Having a positive outlook to change will carry you through any challenges while looking for a new job. Human beings face huge amount of changes in their lives. Your ability to handle change has an enormous impact not just on your emotional well-being but also on how effective you are when looking for a job.

Some people love the challenge of new experiences. Others hate the loss of familiar ways of doing things.

If you can handle change then you will be able to stay the course for longer, have more energy and enthusiasm, and come across better to potential employers.

one minute wonder Give yourself a new routine, even if it is artificial. Draw up a new schedule for the next few weeks and months even if it includes non-work related stuff like going to the gym. Write down time you will use for research, networking and other job-related activities.

Many people become very anxious at the thought of change. They stay in one job far past the point where they should have made a change and miss out on opportunities for promotion or to develop themselves as people. Why?

• People like routines. Many, if not most, people love routines. They like having a clear identity. When asked what they do, they reply simply with a job title. They like knowing where they should be and what tasks they need to do on a daily basis. For many employees, what they do each day to earn a living is what gives them a feeling of self worth and confidence in their abilities.

• But resistance to change is damaging. Change is part of life. People who fight it can spiral down into a series of negative feelings until some structure is restored. This can be the same whether you leave a job voluntarily or because you are forced to. According to research, the negative emotions generated by resisting change may include shock, denial, anger and depression. If, on the other hand, you accept change quickly, then you can take control of your own destiny.

• Be prepared to change your routines. Being flexible and ready for change will keep you in control. Manage change as soon as you see it coming by letting go of the old routines quickly. Put in place new routines and structures as soon as possible. Instead of resisting change and going through all the unpleasant emotions described above, put your energy towards fulfilling your goals and personal sense of purpose in work and life in general.

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Instead of trying to resist change, put new routines and structures into your life as soon as possible.

6.2
Open up your options

If you have been working in one organization for a long time, you may have been very narrowly focused on your job and limited your opportunities without realizing. Now is your big chance to sit back and look at what other options and opportunities might be out there and perhaps have a go at something totally different.

When you decide it might be time to change your career, the one person you can count on is yourself. Life has a habit of throwing us unexpected changes and it is what we do with them that makes all the difference. If you are good at numeracy in one job, you are not going to suddenly stop being good with numbers if you change jobs. Likewise, if you have been a fantastic leader for 10 years, you will probably continue to be so for the next 10 or 20 years. Take some simple steps to open up opportunities.

1Revisit your career vision and goals. It might be that you always had a career change in mind as a goal or you might need to rethink some of them.

one minute wonder Identify possible new jobs. Think about the top activities you would like to have in a new job. What other industries or roles contain these activities? Now think about what you definitely do NOT want. Which jobs should you avoid?

2 Revisit your CV. Your skills and experience are transferable. Now is your chance to harness these skills and look for new opportunities to use them in a different setting.

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3 You might want to think about particular areas of interest you have never pursued before or perhaps a new job that didn’t exist when you started your career. You might want to turn one of your hobbies into a career.

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4 Remember, you are the designer of your own destiny. You don’t have to do what you have always done. You can totally reinvent your career at any time.

Think creatively. Every year new jobs are created globally, partly through the growth in new technologies and the internet. Web designers, online journalists and bloggers are 21st-century professions. If these jobs didn’t exist in your childhood or in your parents’ generation, think what other professions might exist even within the next 10 years or so.

Are you open enough to new opportunities to see them and grab them when they appear?

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Be alert to new forms of work that have been created in the 21st century.

6.3
Plan your campaign

You can’t expect to make a successful career change through luck alone. Planning always lies behind any successful career move. Thoroughly defining the type of role, organization and sector you want to work in makes the difference between ending up in any old job and a career in which you can really grow.

There are a few easy to follow tips for making sure you don’t waste time doing unnecessary research and instead keep focused on achieving what you want in the minimum time possible.

Start by writing down all your options. It’s no point doing your research then a month later adding what you could have thought about to begin with. Start big, then narrow down. What sectors? What companies within those sectors and what roles within those companies?

one minute wonder Write out a network contacts list. Who do you know already who might have links to the sort of organization you want to work in? Remember that networking is great for getting referrals to future work possibilities.

If you set some clear criteria you can start cutting out as well as adding companies. Here are some of the things to think about:

• Size. How big or small a company do you want to work for? Think about the culture and feel of your ideal company.

• Location. Where would your ideal company be located? Would you rather have a short commute or a pleasant location? In the town or the country?

• Culture. What would be the culture of your ideal organization? A well-established company or market leader, or a new or start up environment?

• Activities. What are the activities you would do in your ideal role? What wouldn’t you do?

• Colleagues. What about your boss and the other members of the team? What would be the ideal style of the people you want to work with?

These sort of questions will let you narrow down your options and you will probably end up with a few organizations, and maybe one or two roles that are front runners for your attention. Then you can sit down and really do your research and narrow down your options even further. The more you research different organizations, through networking, or desk-based research, the clearer you will get about your ideal organization.

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You are most likely to hit a bull’s eye if you aim at it rather than everything on the board.

6.4
Keep research records

Once you have your target job and organization clear in your mind, it’s time to get out there and meet people to gather information and hopefully get an interview (and a job offer). It’s all going to be much easier and more structured if you keep good records of what you have done so far and what’s left to do.

It doesn’t really matter whether you design a fancy spreadsheet or keep papers in a folder. The key is to think of career change as a business campaign. For a good campaign you need to be able to track what you have done, what you know, what has worked, what hasn’t worked and what you might do differently next time:

• Records of contacts. The sort of things you are going to want to keep a note of include your target companies and any key contacts within those companies along with their contact details. Also keep a note of which of them you have contacted, when and what was the result of the contact. If any of these contacts link up, make sure you note down which person referred you to another contact.

one minute wonder Take the time to write down all your reasons for targeting a particular company and sector. This will drive how you approach contacts and the sort of information you ask for and also help you to tailor your CV to your target market.

• Recruitment agencies. Also keep a record of any agencies and search firms you are in touch with. The quality of recruiters can vary, so it is good if you can track the effectiveness of the company or particular person in getting you leads.

• Current industry news. It is also useful to keep a record of the information you find out about your chosen industry. Do you know what current trends are affecting your sector? Who is doing well and who isn’t? What are the critical issues for your industry? This will help you to identify gaps in your knowledge and to develop questions for neworking meetings and interviews.

• Useful resources. Finally, what about useful databases and sources of information? Tap your contacts for resources that you can draw on. It is great to have an on-going list of useful books, websites and databases, even links to magazine or newspaper articles that you can refer to again if needed.

Keep your records up-to-date. Add to them, use them and be more focused on your target.

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Keeping records will stop you wasting time and energy when job-hunting.

6.5
Buy a coffee

When you are looking for a new job, ask your contacts to refer you to people they know who might be able to help. Offer your referrals a coffee, and use your short meeting over the coffee break to gather information about your chosen career path.

Asking people directly for jobs doesn’t usually work. It is very unlikely that the people you ask ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Table of Contents
• Learn how to manage your career
• Take control
• Dare to dream
• Market yourself
• Be a rising star
• Strike a balance
• Change your career
• Go it alone
• Jargon buster
• Further reading
• About The Author
• Copyright
• About the Publisher