We were recently asked to share our coaching expertise through a guest blog on new author, Joe Twelves' career explorations blog called Career Decisions Made Easy. Joe and his family have worked together to publish a unique resource called Conversations: Find Your Niche!
Read on to see what we had to say . . .
As career coaches who work with new college graduates, we see the same story over again.
You have been looking for a job with little success. It's incredibly frustrating, and even worse, your self-esteem has taken a hit and you begin to think, "Do I really have anything valuable to offer?"
We think you do. You have more skills and marketable experiences than you realize.
The reality is that it is very hard to maintain a high level of energy, enthusiasm and optimism during a lengthy job search. You feel stuck and don't know what to do to move forward. At this point, job seekers turn to us to help them jumpstart their motivation and learn new ways to approach the job search.
When we coach a client, the first step is to "Start With Your Strengths" - the process of identifying a list of all your strengths, experiences, and skills that you have developed over the course of your life (paid or unpaid) that can then be crafted into a compelling resume.
When individuals get "stuck" in their job search, they tend to focus on the negative - skills they don’t have, work experience they don’t possess, and even personality traits they were not born with. Their thoughts are peppered with "If only" statements. "If only I had learned a second language. . . then I would have a job." "If only I had five years experience in marketing . . . then I would have a job." "If only I was more outgoing . . . then I would have a job." Focusing on the negative keeps you stuck. Focusing on all the skills, strengths and experiences that you DO have accomplishes two things: 1) it creates forward momentum in a positive direction towards your goal; and 2) it provides a wealth of new content for your resume. When you "Start With Your Strengths", you feel re-energized AND your resume becomes stronger.
So, How do you begin to examine your strengths?
First, and this is very important, enlist the aid of an empowering partner to help you with this step. An empowering partner is someone in your corner, who will enthusiastically help you achieve your goal. It can be good friend, a trusted mentor, or a career coach like us. An empowering partner will make sure that you uncover ALL the skills, strengths and experiences that you possess. Let us illustrate the importance of working with an empowering partner with an example from one of our coaching sessions:
Karen (Career Coach) Tell me four things that you've done in the last four years that you've found really rewarding.
Lila (new grad job seeker) One thing I did that I really loved was my summer job as a camp counselor at a science camp.
Karen: Great! What skills did you learn or use as a camp counselor?
Lila: I really can't think of too many that apply to the job market - I basically organized the kids and made sure they got to their different activities.
Karen: Really? That’s all? So, when you took the kids to their activities, you didn't participate at all?
Lila: Well, actually, I designed some of the activities and helped the kids during the activities.
Karen: Can you give me a specific example?
Lila: We had a lot of thunderstorms that summer and the kids got really fascinated with weather. So, I got some money from the camp director and we built this weather station. It was so cool. We could track wind speed, wind direction, air pressure, rainfall, and temperature. I made up these weather games that compared our data with other science camps around the state and the kids really got into it. By the end of the summer, I showed all the counselors how to use it with their kids.
Karen: Ok - so not only did you get funding for an operational weather lab, you cooperatively designed and built the lab with your students, you designed science curriculum, you taught the curriculum to your students, AND you trained other educators in the curriculum you designed. All of those skills are important to put on your resume. And, as you can see, those are a lot more skills than simply making sure kids got to their different activities!
An empowering partner will challenge you to think deeper and clearer about the skills and experiences that you have. It is just the beginning to thinking about your job search is new positive way. It will jumpstart your energy and motivation and help you get “unstuck”!
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Monday, January 11, 2010
Success Story: Coaching Turns Career Impasse into Fruitful Job Search
The impact comes from positive psychology, the science behind living a more fulfilling life. It’s the key ingredient in our 6-step coaching process that helped Maureen move forward in her career. Positive psychology focuses on harnessing the power of one's strengths, and challenging negative self-limiting thinking, to keep you moving forward toward a goal.
Maureen was a smart, motivated, and mature 24 year old who landed a dream job, right out of college, as an event coordinator at a well known nonprofit. Two years later, feeling stuck and needing to move on, she lacked direction and confidence. Maureen had difficulty considering her career options because of a negative belief she had developed that she wasn’t good at certain aspects of her job. We wondered if this was really true, or had something caused her to believe this. We learned that a year into her job, Maureen lost her mentor. She continued to organize and coordinate large scale volunteer events, but without supervision or real guidance. Because she did such a good job, she was given more and more responsibility. Although she was outwardly successful, she felt overwhelmed by the magnitude of the job, and lost confidence. We helped Maureen to see that she may actually be very competent at this job, but was currently in a situation where her responsibilities outweighed her training. Maureen became hopeful that she could have a successful career in nonprofit event management if she could change her situation.
Through our process, we helped Maureen shift her thinking about her abilities so she could see her strengths and the very real marketable skills she had developed. Maureen realized that she wanted to continue in the nonprofit sector because it was meaningful to her, that she had a very high skill set for someone of her age and experience level, but she clearly needed a mentor to keep learning and growing in a professional capacity. Finding a strong, supportive mentor became a top priority in Maureen’s job search, above and beyond the organization or job description. With the sharpening of her focus, she found exactly the right job in a very short period of time. And, two years later, she is still working successfully and growing in that job.
The way we think about our experience, abilities and potential matters more than most people believe. Negative thinking is the number one thing that holds us back and is often times reflected in the jobs we seek, on our resumes and even during interviews. We help individuals like Maureen shift their self-limiting thinking and identify and highlight their strongest abilities and skills so that they can begin to move forward in meaningful ways.
Maureen was a smart, motivated, and mature 24 year old who landed a dream job, right out of college, as an event coordinator at a well known nonprofit. Two years later, feeling stuck and needing to move on, she lacked direction and confidence. Maureen had difficulty considering her career options because of a negative belief she had developed that she wasn’t good at certain aspects of her job. We wondered if this was really true, or had something caused her to believe this. We learned that a year into her job, Maureen lost her mentor. She continued to organize and coordinate large scale volunteer events, but without supervision or real guidance. Because she did such a good job, she was given more and more responsibility. Although she was outwardly successful, she felt overwhelmed by the magnitude of the job, and lost confidence. We helped Maureen to see that she may actually be very competent at this job, but was currently in a situation where her responsibilities outweighed her training. Maureen became hopeful that she could have a successful career in nonprofit event management if she could change her situation.
Through our process, we helped Maureen shift her thinking about her abilities so she could see her strengths and the very real marketable skills she had developed. Maureen realized that she wanted to continue in the nonprofit sector because it was meaningful to her, that she had a very high skill set for someone of her age and experience level, but she clearly needed a mentor to keep learning and growing in a professional capacity. Finding a strong, supportive mentor became a top priority in Maureen’s job search, above and beyond the organization or job description. With the sharpening of her focus, she found exactly the right job in a very short period of time. And, two years later, she is still working successfully and growing in that job.
The way we think about our experience, abilities and potential matters more than most people believe. Negative thinking is the number one thing that holds us back and is often times reflected in the jobs we seek, on our resumes and even during interviews. We help individuals like Maureen shift their self-limiting thinking and identify and highlight their strongest abilities and skills so that they can begin to move forward in meaningful ways.
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