career planning

[svp]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DGTMXzPyxw[/svp]
Too often, professionals abdicate responsibility for their careers just like royalty does with their crown.

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The term, “abdication,” is an interesting one.  I know I tend to think of it in the context of royalty– a king or queen abdicating the crown, removing it from their head and surrendering authority for the realm.  Other people abdicate as well.  Let me offer a few illustrations.

The 1st 1 comes from my work in headhunting.  As you know I did for many years before becoming a coach.  There was a firm I done a lot of work with filled a lot of positions with that came to me and said that they wanted to reduce my fee by 20%.  I pause for a moment as we were speaking over the phone and nodded my head and said, “When you go to the store and pick up a package of steak and it says $20 on it and then you offer $15 or $16 for it, what did they tell you to do?“

“The answer is that they won’t sell it to you and tell you to put it back.  I charge the price that I am going to charge him is up to you to decide whether or not you are willing to pay it.  If you don’t, that is perfectly fine. You can purchase from someone else but this is what I’m going to charge.”

Story number 2 involves people in their careers.

When was the last time you really did career planning for yourself?  When was the last time you sat down and said to yourself, “You know, this isn’t going the way I hoped.  I’m going to sit down and figure out where I want to take my career 5 years and how I’m going to get there.“

Have you ever done that?  Most people never.  They go to a job and do the tasks that they been assigned to do.  They stop thinking about themselves and their needs, doing a great job for their employer so that mommy and daddy company will take care of them. How smart is that?  If you look at the last recession, it wasn’t too smart, was it?

And, we can expect another reces of course, not! S

I want you to start thinking for yourself ion because recessions always show up.  Do you think you’re going to be immune to layoffs because your good girl or good boy and did exactly what you are told? Of course, not.

I want you to put yourself into the equation, take responsibility for your career. Instead of abdicating it to someone else.  If you do abdicate, you put yourself and your family at risk.  Is that really all that smart?

If you are involved with job hunting or need advice with your search, visit JobSearchCoachingHQ.com and join there.

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Do you really think employers are trying to help you?

You already know you can’t trust recruiters—they tell you as much as they think you need to know to take the job they after representing so they collect their payday.

The skills needed to find a job are different yet complement the skills needed to do a job.

Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter has been a career coach and recruiter for what seems like one hundred years.

JobSearchCoachingHQ.com changes that with great advice for job hunters—videos, my books and guides to job hunting, podcasts, articles, PLUS a community for you to ask questions of PLUS the ability to ask me questions where I function as your ally with no conflict of interest answering your questions.

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