Changing careers

How to Change Careers Part 2

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[svp]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gp_nNtpLDow[/svp]
This is my 2nd video in the series about changing careers. Grab a pen and paper or your iPad and be prepared to do some homework.

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This is the 2nd in my series of videos about changing careers after all, some of you, like me, have gotten to a point professionally where it feels like time to start looking at other alternatives.

I don’t care what your age is. Whether you are a geezer like me or someone much younger, you just come to realize that this is not fulfilling work that you’re doing and you just want to do something else but are not clear about what you want to do.

Today, we are going to answer some questions that will help you with your evaluation of alternatives. After all, if you are not sure about what to do next, I want to help you instigate your mind in order. Start thinking in new directions.

This is a homework assignment I’m giving you.  It is a series of questions that will help cultivate your thinking about what direction to take.

  1.  “What do I enjoy regardless of the opinions of others?” I think this is a great opening question that allows you to stand out from the influence of others that I certainly know I am influenced by.  “
  2. “What would I love doing enough that I would do it for free?“
  3. “If I had to teach something, what would I teach?”
  4. “What would I do that makes me lose track of time?”  It makes you get into the flow when you are doing a bunch of stuff.
  5. “What do people typically ask me for help with?”
  6. “What makes me feel great about myself?”

These are the starting questions for this part of the process.  So far I’m giving you 6 questions.  Let me add a few more.

7.  “Is there a cause that you really believe in or feel strongly about?”

8. “What are your favorite thing is that you have done in the past?  What are they that you have done now?”

9. “What has occurred in the past that you don’t want others to go through?”

When all is said and done, I want you to connect with yourself in doing this process. I want you to really think about it, explore and “feel stuff.”I really think that is the way to go here.  Take some time and review.

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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.

Connect with me on LinkedIn

You can order a copy of “Diagnosing Your Job Search Problems” for Kindle for $.99 and receive free Kindle versions of “No BS Resume Advice” and “Interview Preparation.”

How to Change Careers Part 1

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[svp]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-U0T3jqQO6w[/svp]
This video begins a series I’m going to do about changing careers and how to go about doing it.

changing-career-at-50-plus

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Changing careers is often will most difficult things a person has to decide to do. You have spent time working in one profession. You’ve been a business owner and, perhaps, decided to go back to corporate, you worked in corporate and now you decide to go into business for yourself or you decide to get a job in a completely unrelated field but you don’t know quite what to do.

These are pretty common scenarios for career changers. I’m beginning a series for those of you who are interested in changing careers with steps that you can take to start the exploration process.

Now, if you think you are suddenly going to have an epiphany, that isn’t the way I’m going to leave this process.  The way you will need to go through. This is with care, with time, and with concern.  So I want you to understand this going into the process, because if you aren’t prepared to take time

you will wind up barking up the wrong tree and not get the results that you want. If that is what you want to do, you don’t need these videos. Where we are going to go with these videos is through a number of steps that you can take that, hopefully, you can stare at and used to evaluate a number of potential opportunities and possibilities, to eliminate ones that don’t fit and stick with ones that do.

Let’s start by looking at this process from the viewpoint of being a child. My son has been looking at a career in the medical profession for the longest time. Recently, he’s come to realize the amount of effort that is going to go into becoming the kind of doctor he said he wanted to become. As a result, his aspirations have rolled back pretty profoundly.

For a lot of job hunters, for a lot of career changers, it is much the same thing. For example, many job changers will say (to use an example that I know), “Oh! I really want to be a quantitative analyst on Wall Street,” without really knowing anything about the profession. Then, when they start to look at it closely, decide that is pretty boring and not a lot of fun for them.

The Starting Line

Here’s where we start today. I want you to sit down and create an enormous list of what your strengths are. You may think of yourself as one way, but I want you to ask those around you about some of the things they see you as being particularly good at.

Are you empathetic with people?
Are you a great listener?
Are you a terrific speaker?
Are you great in front of a camera?

They can be things that you think are dumb… No filtering!

If you like sports on TV, that goes on the list. If you like playing tennis, that goes on the list.

Anything goes on that list for now. Make it long. Make a comprehensive. Take time with it. This is not spending 5 minutes with it and then you are done.

I want you really thinking about.

I like making dinner for my family can go on the list.
I like going to church/the synagogue/no mosque/the meditation center… Whatever it is, it goes on the list. Every last item.

That’s where we are going to start.

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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.

Connect with me on LinkedIn

You can order a copy of “Diagnosing Your Job Search Problems” for Kindle for $.99 and receive free Kindle versions of “No BS Resume Advice” and “Interview Preparation.”

How to Change Careers Part 5

by

[svp]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNevguSsr6U[/svp]
This is the next video my series about changing careers. I’m sure this is not what you would’ve expected.

 

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This is part 5 in my series of how to change careers. It is a little atypical and I’m going to start off the story about myself.

After a while, I started to realize how conditioned I had been to think in certain ways and do certain things. From the time I got into school as a little kid until the time I graduated, the system was conditioning me to think in certain ways and do certain things.

The classic thing is being brought to school as a little kid and learning that what you are supposed to do is shut up, do what you’re told, regurgitate a bunch of things or else you will get into a good college. Eventually, you get into the college and you get the message that you’re supposed to shut up, do what you told, regurgitate a bunch of things or else he will get a good job.

The habit that I was conditioned into was to take direction, do what I was told (What a surprise! I’ve been told this since I was little and the message got through.), not thinking for myself in some ways about what would make me happy.

I got pushed through the system and,, I want to be clear, I got a lot of good stuff out of it, but my heart’s passion has it been the kind of work that I’ve done for so many years and what I had been conditioned to do.

As part of this exercise that eventually led me to coaching, I start to think, “Let’s go crazy!  Tell me some unrealistic things I might try to do.“

That’s what the next homework assignment is going to be.  Be unrealistic.  Write down a few things for yourself that in no way, shape or form. Do you think you could possibly do.  

This is part of a liberation process because often the conditioning that you have received causes you to think small in self-limiting ways.  Once you start thinking about it, you might actually be able to do some of them.  It might take some practice and you might not be an expert.  The 1st time you do it.  You might need to get training but it is the sort of thing, that when you were a little might of love doing, but discovered that you weren’t a good enough pitcher to pitch for the Yankees.

Don’t worry if it’s realistic.  Think while. Go crazy!  Write down the sort of things that if your friends heard about it, they might tease you.  Remember, these are true for you and the reaction is their “stuff.”  Don’t let their opinions rule your life right now.  You are trying to figure out what is going to excite you in your life right now and ignite your passion and your career.  That’s the most important thing right now.

Maybe it’s something that you did when you were little.  I have a friend who decided he wanted to run a scuba business in the Bahamas.  He left his job to do scuba.  Maybe that’s your thing.  Just write down 3 things (and if you write down 5 or 10 or 50, that’s. Even better).

[/spp-transcript]

 

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.

Connect with me on LinkedIn

You can order a copy of “Diagnosing Your Job Search Problems” for Kindle for $.99 and receive free Kindle versions of “No BS Resume Advice” and “Interview Preparation.”