Archive for Career Topics
Finding a Career
Posted by: | CommentsFinding a career can be time consuming, formidable, and just downright frustrating.
If you’re just entering college, you have dozens and dozens – if not hundreds — of majors to choose from. Of course you want to make the perfect choice here. After all, you’re talking about the rest of your working life, right?
Maybe you’re a recent victim of economic woes and are fresh out of a job due to downsizing or even company closure. You might be frustrated with the career field you’re in and want something new. Worse, the field you’re in may be becoming obsolete, making a new job even harder to find.
Whatever the reason, finding a career that works for you is not a task to be taken lightly.
Where to Look
To get you started immediately on your search, career websites are plentiful and offer career assessment tests to help you identify careers that may be suitable to you based upon your skills, abilities, interests and hobbies.
Even if you’ve taken job assessment tests in years past, take them again. Maybe the results will be the same, but maybe you’ve changed and new career paths will be brought to your attention. Maybe new careers have sprung up over the past few years – careers you hadn’t heard of, but might be just the career for you.
Here’s one I recommend that is free and very good because it gives you a detailed report, the Keirsey Temparment Sorter 2.
The Hottest Jobs
But no matter what your interests are at this moment, be sure to look at the fastest growing careers.
As technology and population demographics change, so do the careers in demand. Some of the top careers right now are computer related, for obvious reasons in our high-tech world. But as you contemplate the condition of our society, would it surprise you to know some of the fastest growing careers are personal financial advisors, substance abuse counselors, forensic science techs, mental health counselors and marriage counselors?
These top careers mean lots of job opportunities, lots of variety in the jobs offered, quicker advancement due to the sheer number of jobs, greater relocation options, and possibly more competitive salaries.
But I Need a Job Now…
If you don’t need additional training to enter the career of your choice right now, or if you need a job to tide you over while you get further career training and education, job search websites are waiting for you. Some of the more popular sites you’ve probably heard of: monster.com, hotjobs.com, and careerbuilder.com. These job search websites are national and can help you locate a job in a particular field, a particular city, or both.
But if you’re content living where you are right now, don’t forget to look for local career job search sites. Jobing.com, for example, has many regional sections to make finding a career in your own hometown accessible.
For the executive looking for new employment, several websites offer strictly executive job searches for positions paying no less than $100,000 per year.
Another advent of our high-tech, web-driven society is the growth of online jobs. More and more companies offer full work-at-home jobs or a split between time in the office and time working from home. You can even find technical support jobs you do from the comfort of your own home – and pajamas, if you choose.
Career Change Advice
Posted by: | CommentsLooking for some solid career change advice?
It wasn’t all that long ago that a man got a job and worked for that same company for 20, 30, even 50 years in some cases.
But times have changed and now you’re facing a career change crisis? This can happen at any age and even right after college. It’s startling when it happens after spending over 10 years in your career. It’s even worse when it’s because of a shift in the economy!
Sometimes a career change is spurred by technological changes making some jobs obsolete. In the printing industry, for example, many paste-up and plate-burning jobs are gone forever due to the advent of “direct to plate” technology where the print job goes from the computer directly to the printing plate. In manufacturing, robotics advancements are eliminating numerous “people” jobs.
The other side to those examples, however, is that careers in computer technology and robotics are growing rapidly. Unfortunately, you probably can’t go from the old job of manufacturing the parts by hand to building the robots to do it for you without several years of further education.
Are You Stuck?
Maybe your desire for career change is because you feel stuck or lack a sense of accomplishment in your current field. Do you wonder if a career change is right for you?
Before telling your boss you quit and you find yourself without a job or an income, take a breath, consult with a career coach, and plan out your next move with some solid career change advice. In fact, leaving any job right now is risky. Those that find themselves unemployed often end up with less pay and statistic show it can take 10 years of more to get to the income they had before the layoff.
Some important questions to ask yourself as you look at a new career option:
- What skills do you have now?
- What careers interest you?
- What personal preferences do you have in regards to working with people? Do you like people? Do you like variety or predictability?
- What lifestyle do you want or need? Will this affect your choice of career?
- What is job growth and availability for your new career?
- If you’re relocating, are jobs available in the new area?
- Do you have savings to fall back on while you go to school full time?
- Where possible, have you tried part time or volunteer work in your prospective field?
Career Change Advice
Take some career assessment tests and talk with your career coach to ensure you’re on the right path with achievable, realistic goals.
Some other scenarios… Maybe no one has given you a proper performance review with clear goals, or no one has discussed your future with you or told you how to advance. All these things can make a person feel “stuck”.
Sometimes the grass isn’t greener on the other side.
Over the years I was able to keep valuable employees by finding out what goals they had or what they felt they struggled in and was able to help them get back on track.
I wasn’t able to do that with everyone, but what if you had a career advocate, someone you could discuss things with and brainstorm ideas? Could you come up with a clear plan for getting feedback from your supervisors or getting promoted if you had some good career change advice? Maybe. There are ways to find out. More on that in another post.
The “Career Change” Resume
So now that you’ve decided on your new career, taken classes, received your certifications, how you get employers to look at your resume over those of candidates with direct experience?
A “career change” resume.
Resumes can be created in several formats: chronological, targeted, combination. But the style you’ll want for your career change resume is the functional style resume.
When writing your functional resume, you’ll take the skills and experience from your previous career and show how they will benefit your prospective company.
Instead of showing off your past, you’re showing off your future. As a manager that has looked at many resume’s I think career changes are exciting for most people and managers look closely at the “why’s” of career change. Make it positive and real.
A “career change” cover letter is a must, too. Here is some career change resume advice:
* Be honest. Don’t try to hide that you don’t have direct experience. Be the first to call it out, but then show them why you are indirectly experienced.
* Show how you can help them, not how they can help you
* Show how your past experience will help their company. Don’t expect them to connect the dots on their own.
Because changing careers is an emotional event, take the time to plan and map out your change, if your situation permits. And by all means, Contact Us. We’re here to help.
A Career in Business Management
Posted by: | CommentsThinking of making your career business management? Or maybe you’re taking over a manager position?
I would have to say business management is the most rewarding, fun, dynamic and exhilarating job imaginable. I often find myself missing the “team” aspect of having a staff, deadlines and of course the thrill of developing others to be great leaders! Which is why I do what I do now. But I miss the pressure and fun you have when you are managing a large team.
We offer career and business management online classes to teach you about management styles and give you the supervisor skills you will need to become an effective supervisor.
Management Styles
There are several career business management styles you can adopt. You might have the choice to choose what works best for you and your company, or you might have to follow the management style set forth by the company you work for.
- Participatory – giving each team member a specific task to complete
- Directing – telling employees what must be done, when and how
- Teamwork Style – knowledge is pooled and tasks completed as one group
- Authoritative – decisions are made by the manager alone, or within the senior management group
- Democratic – decision making is influenced by the input of the employees, too.
Supervisor duties are many and varied, but good supervisors should always be willing to do the very thing they’re asking their employee to do. Leading by example goes a long way towards becoming an effective supervisor.
Development Ideas
On the job training is only as effective as those training you. You might learn good skills, but if you have a bad supervisor yourself, you’re apt to learn bad skills.
However you can learn a lot of great things from a bad supervisor. I always said I learned the most from the managers that I had the greatest challenges with and it’s true. It depends on what you do to gain the upper hand.
There are several things you can do to improve:
- Journals are a great tool to grow as a manager, they help you understand when and how you have been mismanaged and work through more constructive ways to handle it.
- There are many great books as well, too many for me to list here. It also depends on what your growth opportunities are.
- A support group or a career coach can be a great tool to help you grow.
You need someone that will help you find your internal compass to navigate trying situations and help you develop clear action steps for the journey ahead.
Business management classes are important but they aren’t a cure all. Some people have certain drives and knack’s for doing things that transcend schooling. A lot depends on your learning style and your personality type. There are many great personality assessments that can help you determine whether school is a good fit or maybe you are a “fly by the seat of your pants” type person and can’t stand school.
Find Your Strengths
Know what kind of person you are and what motivates you. I would recommend school to anyone that is at a point they can do it. It gives you so much discipline and ability to follow up with projects and deadlines that may catapult your career. Even if you don’t know your specialty it’s best to go ahead and get a basic degree, it’s a lot harder to go back than to finish in the first place.
Great Books Can Help
You can read books and grow if you are self motivated and have a learning style that enables you to read and take action. A powerful combination is a combination of books and coaching. It is so much easier to create actions and you retain so much more from what you read when you have the opportunity to discuss it with someone else.
Some great books that are easy reads are:
Strengths Finder 2.0 by Tom Rath. This book, if you buy it new, also comes with an assessment you take online. It’s a great tool.
Some of his research done with the Gallup organization is staggering. Here are some numbers:
- They found that out of a 1000 people who feel strongly that they don’t get to do “what I do best”, EVERY person was disengaged from their job.
- Those that have the opportunity to focus on their strengths are 6 times as likely to be engaged in their job and more than 3 times as likely to report having “an excellent quality of life in general”.
- If your manager primarily ignores you the chances of you being actively disengaged are 40%.
- If your manager focuses primarily on your weaknesses the chances of you being actively disengaged are 22%.
- If your manager primarily focuses on your strengths the chances of you being actively disengaged fall to 1%.
The power of a supervisor’s role on their staff can not be underestimeated. And also of parents and teachers, the book goes on to talk about how their research shows that 77% of parents believe the lowest grade deserves the most attention and time instead of investing more time in the areas where the child has the greatest potential.
Emotional Intelligence
The Emotional Intelligence Quick Book by Travis Bradberry and Jean Greaves is excellent. This book also comes with a free assessment as long as the book is new and someone hasn’t used it. Emotional Intelligence, also referred to as EQ, has been a fairly new component of understanding work place environments and productivity.
The book describes the difference of IQ from EQ.
Your IQ never changes and stays the same. They have done studies and found that two people with the same IQ can have completely different levels of success. Also your IQ is your ability to learn and it does not change over time.
On the other hand EQ can be developed even if you are not born with it. Your senses enter your brain through your spinal cord and must travel through the limbic system before you can think rationally about your experience. Emotional intelligence requires smooth communication between the rational and emotional centers of the brain. When you practice emotional intelligence, the traffic flows smoothly in both directions.
By the way, with EQ, women and men are basically even, so the idea that women have more EQ is wrong.
- Women scores higher in Social Awareness and Relationship Management
- Men scored higher in Self-Management
- The sexes were almost tied for Self-Awareness but men had a slight edge.
The four emotional skills they identify is: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness and relationship management. Understanding how they work and how they interact is important at gaining EQ.
Leadership in a Nutshell
Leadership and the One Minute Manager by Ken Blanchard, Patricia Zigmarmi and Drea Zigmarmi. All the One Minute Manager series are excellent but this one help new managers understand how they need to manage people differently. This book would work for experienced managers as well. “Different strokes for different folks” as the authors described it.
The book is simplistic but very easy to understand and gives great examples of how leadership styles effect your ability to get things done and how your staff reacts to you.
Another book that is a compelling true story, an easy read and is aligned with many larger corporations way of thinking is, It’s Your Ship by Captain D. Michael Abrashoff. This book has some great stories and real life examples of how, even in the military, accepting how something is done just because “that’s the way it’s done” is a narrow way of looking at things. There are ways to do things better.
Business Management Classes
Post-secondary education in business management is widely available. And management training companies are abundant, as are online business management classes through colleges such as the University of Phoenix.
Careers in business management can be gained with a bachelor’s degree, or even an associate’s degree, but an MBA (Masters Business Association) will open up even more doors since the focus of an MBA degree is the science of management. I have never seen a MBA graduate manage better than any other manager so this depends on what you want to do with it.
Business management classes will cover such topics as time management in the workplace, managing difficult employees, managing change in the workplace, managing conflict at work, managing ethics in the workplace, and managing workplace stress.
Management is not the only career business management colleges will prepare you for. After taking business management classes, you might feel less suited towards managing people directly, and more suited towards human resources, retail services, benefits administration or communication, to name a few.
Career Topics
Posted by: | CommentsThere are so many things related to careers……
From negotiating more money to landing a job…. About salary negotiation, in all the years I was managing I was always surprised how often people took the first offer. People………. You NEED to negotiate. The person hiring you has a fiduciary responsibility to their employer to get you for the lowest price. Your bargaining chips are limited right now in some industries, so be careful!
Then what do you do to stand out in your job? Easy!! Work hard, be on time, offer to do extra jobs, learn other people’s jobs. I can tell you in layoffs I have always been a lot more reluctant to let someone go who is a go-getter and has multiple skills.
There is more on this topic so be sure to check out the other posts!
