Career Development Archives

Studying Future Trends

I ran across this article predicting jobs that don’t exist yet and wanted to share it. Looking at changes coming down the pipeline in your industry is a great way to navigate your career development and learning plan. Take time once a year or so to think forward in your career and look for neat niches you can steer toward as one strategy for knowing what learning experiences will best add to your repertoire.

Other ways to stay ahead of the curve is to host discussions with colleagues, to have periodic informational interviews with experts in your field, and to read the professional literature related to your occupation. All the while asking questions in order to encourage your brain to make connections and notice developing trends.

Questions such as:

  • what is the biggest problem in my career field right now?
  • what industry is my industry starting to merge with?
  • how will changes in the industry influence what happen in my occupation?

Career Research Part 2

A career keyword is what your ideal career is all about. When self-reflecting to cover step one of career research, consider this: What is your career keyword? This is an exercise in big picture thinking and zooming in on what jazzes you most. Here are some examples keywords just to get you thinking.

My career is about _____.

  • competition
  • action
  • beauty
  • building
  • communicating
  • nurturing
  • performing
  • service
  • healing
  • relating to others
  • research
  • detecting
  • exploring
  • teaching/learning
  • administrating
  • protecting
  • sales
  • science
  • art

When you come up with a career keyword or two you can use it as your north star along your career journey guide your progress always building on your strengths. Your career keywords also becomes the basis of your personal mission statement.

How To Have a Great Career

career boost celebration#1 Take Ownership

  • Your career is yours and yours alone. You have the power to create it and live it as an expression of your unique talents and energy.
  • Forget what other people think of your choices. Even though people often mean well, you will be the one putting in the hours so be selfish enough to do something you enjoy and to have fun with it!
  • Being yourself in your work gives power, creativity, and freedom. You are off track if you feel insecure or like an pretender at work.

#2 Look Inside Yourself, You Know the Answers

  • Take note when you find yourself fully engaged in a work activity. If it feels like you are in the zone, or plugged in and energized, or connected to something larger than yourself: Pay special attention.
  • Then describe it further…what are you liking about what you are doing? Is it this? Is it that? Keep asking yourself and you’ll know when you hit the answer that feels right.
  • Start general then get more specific in your description of what you like about what you are doing. For example, is it the communication or connection? Is it the performing or beautifying? Is it the helping or healing? Is it the organizing or administrating? Then add more detail by asking why.

#3 Respect the Career Development Process

  • The beauty of a great career is in the way it unfolds.
  • Enjoy the present moment. Each small step adds up until you are for sure ready for more.
  • Appreciate then forget when you felt lost or frustrated in your career. Through those times you learned more about what you DO want.

#4 Understand the Power of People

  • People can be powerful and brilliant in sharing their connections with others. Use strategy in maintaining your 150 or so top connections to tap into the power.
  • Accept that people can be dark, egotistical, and negative but this is nothing compared to an individual in harmony with self. Recognize the negative as the weaker power and stay beyond it.
  • See and applaud the strengths of others as you do for yourself. Be a builder-upper who is generous with knowledge, info, and positive energy.

#5 Be an Opportunity Bulldog

  • Take your individual strengths and mesh them into your public identity and no one can take your place.
  • Research and understand the opportunities that exist because of the challenges in your field of expertise.
  • Present a passion for being or finding the solution and be unafraid of asking for the opportunity.

Steps to Enhance Your Career

Step #1 Pay attention to what you’re focusing on.

This step alone can do wonders for you almost immediately. First understand that what you focus on affects your emotional state, or how you feel.

If what you’re thinking about makes you feel bad it affects your energy level in a bad way. If you’re thinking about something that makes you feel bad you will quickly start to feel stressed or tired or just generally have a bad attitude.

On the other hand, if what you’re thinking about makes you feel good it affects your energy level in a good way. It doesn’t really matter if what you’re thinking about it is true or not what matters is if it helps you feel good.

So use this to enhance your career. For example if thinking about the weekend or free time makes you feel good then don’t wait until Friday to daydream about the weekend. But if thinking about the weekend makes you feel bad because you want it to be the weekend now or it makes you yearn for the weekend, then avoid thoughts about the weekend choosing to focus on something to make you feel good instead.

Here is another example. On a recent episode of Dancing with the Stars, Olympian Evan Lysacek was being coached by his dancing pro Anna Trebunskaya. Evan is a top notch technician but was not good at showing emotion in his dancing. Anna asked him, “What makes you happy?” Evan mumbled something about cars and then said, as his face lit up, “my baby nephew!”

He then proceeded to show cute little videos of his nephew on his phone to his coach smiling & laughing the whole time. Anna capitalized on that reaction and brought it to his attention. Long story short, he danced like a whole new man in that week’s competition. Even more importantly, he now knows a trick (shall we say, a Jedi mind trick?) for something to focus on when he notices he is not feeling as happy as he could.

Step #2 Use your strengths in your career.
Strengths as related to careers are activities that you enjoy doing, that you do well, and that you don’t mind doing repeatedly. This new hot philosophy on strengths was developed by Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton in the book, “Now, Discover Your Strengths.”
They promote the idea that we can be happier in our careers by focusing on strengths instead of trying to improve weaknesses. In fact, they say that one can advance further and faster in skill attainment by practicing and developing one’s strengths rather than one’s weaknesses (for example, their idea that you can work everyday  to improve a weaknesses and achieve only lackluster results). The book is a little long winded because of all the theory and development talk, but when you buy the book you get an assessment code to enter online to take the assessment. The more recent version is StrengthsFinder 2.0 by Tom Rath. The book is much more of a friendly, quick reference which also includes an assessment.

Step #3 Be selfish.
No, I don’t mean selfish in a bad way. It is simply that factoring in everyone else’s opinion of what you should be doing in your work, (or for that matter what anyone thinks about the work you do) is exhausting and fruitless…so be selfish! After all, YOU are the one putting in the time and attention to whatever you choose for your career, and you are the one noticing everyday how you feel about your career (see step #1). So be selfish, and take charge of your career development to make sure your work is life-enhancing.

Next Generation Career Coaching

  1. Skill Identification is a process that expands client’s personal skill vocabulary and effects and builds a positive change in self-confidence.
  2. Explore both old jobs and new options. “New career direction.”
  3. Development of different career options through a method/process that opens doors of opportunity that otherwise would be overlooked or discarded.
  4. Personalized training and individual attention to those things that will set you apart from all other candidates.
  5. Developing a clear self-presentation and unique marketing materials as well as learning key job searching tools.
  6. Campaign focused mainly on personal one-on- one informational contacts where the jobs are in the making. When there is a vacancy or posted opening, “client usually gets an interview.”
  7. In addition to posting a LinkedIn & Facebook profiles, all kinds of e-media are explored to build visibility and credibility in your chosen market.
  8. Three-stage controlled networking campaign. Adeptly using internet for background research to locate, and connect with “countless” contacts.
  9. Dual-approach to get interviews from employer-
identified ads: applying through personnel and
 approaching Hiring Decision Maker(s) directly.
  10. Primary interview training: Referral Interviews, which build connections to the hiring decision makers. without waiting for “openings.” These interviews also train candidates for actual job interviews.
  11. Step-by-step coaching to handling salary negotiations/questions given at the beginning of the search. Coaching at time of the offer generally increases comp package by 10% and more.
  12. Client continues to build visibility and credibility in his/her chosen field. 5-year goals established as well as the development of your network “Power Team” that has been built to advance your career now and in the future.

Career Development Planning

The beginning steps to getting to the next level in your career.career development planning

  1. Identify what the next level looks like.
  2. Track your accomplishments.
  3. Identify your personal brand.
  4. Start talking to people and thinking often about what you are wanting.
  5. Plan your networking.
  6. Be on the lookout for the right opportunity.

Change a Bad Reputation

Reputations are built after a stream of first impressions converge and people start communicating and comparing notes about their experiences then reveling in the common ground whether it be positive or negative. Its just human nature and an important survival skill.

It takes consistent change of behavior for an extended duration of time to change a bad reputation. It also takes willingness on the part of the one who made the judgment to let go of their ego and be open to changing their mind. No easy task to change a reputation to be sure.

Priority #1: Take on a marketing campaign emphasizing the change. Be earnest in admitting an understanding about why things needed to change and the resulting empowerment and enthusiasm since making the change.

Priority #2: Strive to make every future first impression positive to the extent possible. Release the anxiety when finding those who refuse to allow a reputation to change or who form a negative first impression due to reasons you can’t control.

Fluid Process

We are all learning more each day and gathering new skills, insights, and info so a career decision will likely not be made once and for all. Situations change, technology changes, lifestyle preferences change too along with a person’s abilities, interests, skills, and values. So career choice is really an evolving process rather than deciding once and for all.

Hodge Podge of Career Tips

  • Always be thinking two jobs ahead to realize how the current position you are in connects you to where you want to be in the future.
  • You must know your own value and be able to communicate your value to others comfortably.
  • Often when a person feels most comfortable in their work is when outside contacts really dwindle. Don’t let that happen to you!
  • Maintain a job pipeline by tracking leads for potential work.
  • Make it a habit to log your accomplishments each week.

Today’s World of Work

In today’s fast-paced work environment, most people cannot expect to stay with the same company for 20 years then retire. The current environment is much more dynamic with more opportunities for multiple avenues of success. Workers now can custom design a work life in ways that were not dreamed of 25 years ago.

You can work full-time, part-time, temporary, and/or be an entrepreneur. You can work from home or commute to the office only a few days a week. You can be an independent contractor working project by project. Most importantly, you can go from one type of work arrangement to another depending on which type best meets your lifestyle goals and compliments your stage of life.

To add another interesting aspect of the world of work today, you can even return to school at various stages of your career. In fact, to be competitive in today’s workforce we all must keep participating in education as a lifelong learners more so than ever before.

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