Steps for Developing a Career Plan

It all comes down to developing an effective plan for re-employment.  As you have already experienced, it is hard work.  Creating a plan requires taking an honest look at yourself and asking key questions about your strengths, weaknesses, likes and dislikes.  The following steps will guide you in the process of creating an effective job search plan.

 

Know Where You’ve Been

Take the first step toward building your future by looking back.  No work experience, regardless of how painful it may have been, was in vain.  Throughout your career you learned what you were capable of doing, what you enjoyed doing, and what you hated doing but needed to do to get the job done.  Now that you have a built-in distance from your last job, take a look at your past work experience through a different looking glass.  Here is a starter list of questions to ask yourself:

• What did I like best; least about my last job?

• What were my most important and satisfying accomplishments?

• What did I like best; least about the company?

• What did I like best; least about the people for whom I worked?

• What were my most significant failures?

• What kind of negative feedback did I receive?

• What was missing from my last job that I want to seek in a new position?

 

Ask these same questions about other positions (including volunteer jobs) you’ve held.  By honestly answering questions similar to those above, you are taking the first step toward achieving personal awareness and professional success.

 

Compare Work Experiences

Compare yourself at different stages of your work experience:

• In which job(s) were you happiest - why?

• In which job(s) were you most successful - why?

• What management style was the best/worst you ever had - why?

• Has your career growth been stunted by any barriers?

• If you could start your career over again, what would you do differently?

 

Finding Your Transferable Skills

Transferrable skills are abilities you enjoy doing and do well. They are natural talents and core abilities (often learned from life’s experiences).  To pinpoint these skills it is important you list at least 20 enjoyable talents from all parts of your life: work (from your early career to the present), volunteering, hobbies, education years.  It doesn’t matter how old you were or what other people thought; nor does it matter if you got paid.  Events from childhood can be important because they took place when you were not trying to please a boss.  The more important value is how you felt when you completed the task and could easily see a tangible benefit.

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Capture your accomplishments in writing.  Describe the situation in as much detail as possible.  Relative to your accomplishments, ask questions like:

• What was the purpose or goal?

• What did you do? (step-by step)

• How long did it last?

• What was the outcome?

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Share your stories (of accomplishment) with a family member or friend.  Ask them if they remember when you did it; and invite them to share with you their impression of the incident.  They may be able to share valuable feedback and help you remember times when you did a similar task.

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Rank the 20 by Importance and Reduce to 7

The Enjoyable Accomplishment Approach (or “Seven Stories Approach”) is used by many out-placement organizations.  Bernard Haldane is credited with creating the outplacement method of telling stories to learn about an individual.  He originally moved in 1946 to New York City to be a doctor only to be told his British medical credentials were not acceptable in the United States and he would have to start over.  Instead and in efforts to help returning WWII veterans find jobs, he discovered many did not know how to market their potential skills.  So Haldane asked veterans about what they did well and developed their reputations by writing synopses of their strengths; personalizing their sales pitch – thus calling the concept “dependable strengths”. 

 

Know Your Dependable Strengths

Understanding your core skills helps to validate our working lives and creates a sense of personal stability.  Knowing your strengths allows you to enhance an established career path or encourages you to explore a new avenue toward employment satisfaction.  Knowing your strengths gives you flexibility.

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You will find you are less worried about mistakes made in the past; instead, you begin to look at them as learning opportunities.  There is a great down loadable excerpt from "Targeting the Job You Want" by Kate Wendleton (The Five O'Clock Club, Inc.®) which provides more detail on the “Seven Stories” exercise.

           

The bottom line? Determining your reliable skills is the first step in career planning. Identifying past successes, current strengths, and personal preferences is an enormous step toward rebuilding you and your self-presentation.

 

Finding the Professional You

It’s easy to lose confidence and your perspective when you’ve recently been terminated.  But losing a job doesn’t make you any less a person.  It simply presents a challenge to overcome.  Take the opportunity to further ask yourself these questions:

• How do I typically react to extreme stress and pressure?

• What has been the most difficult kind(s) of work problems I have had to handle?

• How do I typically react when I am being criticized?

• What are some of the rewards I expect from work?

• What are my short range and long-term career objectives?

• Have I ruled out any career alternatives I should now reconsider?

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Other Transferable Skills – Leisure Time

If you’re like most people, you live for more than just work.  Many times the things you most enjoy doing and receive the greatest level of gratification from are non-work related.  Look to your leisure activities for transferable skills.  Perhaps you have instructed others, written, coached, collected, analyzed, programmed or managed.  The knowledge you’ve gained and the skills you’ve picked up while outside the work place might help to validate a different skill set required in a different career or add increased knowledge/value in an old one.

 

Outside the Box – Flight of Fancy

If you could indulge your hobbies and interests into a moneymaking venture, would you? Close your eyes for a few minutes and see yourself engaged in your dream job.  Alternatively you might imagine yourself doing what you like best or something you’ve done in the past that’s given you incredible satisfaction. Visualize (down to the smallest details) your environment, the people and objects around you, and what you’re doing.

 

Use all your senses - Hear the sounds, feel the textures, smell the aromas, and taste the tastes.  Imagine it’s happening now and take the time to fully experience it.  Then open your eyes, while holding the image, and consider:

• What are the most appealing aspects of your fantasy?

• What are the most realistic aspects?

• What are the most absurd?

• What goals would you have to achieve to make your fantasy come true?

• What are the barriers to achieving those goals?

• How can you overcome them?

 

Survey the Field

Even if you’ve worked in the same industry throughout your career, you don’t have to stay in it for the duration.  There’s no reason to feel stuck or to continue pursuing a career or future in a field you are no longer interested in.  Before you commit yourself to a job, do your homework – target industries where you would like to work; where you would be the “right fit”. Since you’re in the search mode, be more objective than you were in the past about what you want to do next.  Depending on your expertise and/or education, it might be a relatively simple transfer of skills and interests from one industry to another.

 

Ultimately you will gain a “reality check” in your field surveys and career direction by means of informational interviewing.  But before you discover the hidden job market through informational interviewing continue reading trade magazines, industry newsletters, and local and national business newspapers.  Attend trade shows and association meetings.  Assess the current state of your industry and the changes that are happening. Begin with the following questions:

• How do industry experts rate the field’s health today?

• What major changes are being predicted for the field?

• What factors will help the industry during the next decade?

• What are the biggest threats the industry will face in the decade ahead?

• In what geographical areas will the field be the strongest?

• What types of people and skills will be in the greatest demand?

• What advantages and disadvantages to working in the field currently loom largest?

 

In addition, consider asking:

• With the skills you have now, are you and the field still a good match?

• Are there additional classes you must take to achieve longevity in the industry?

• Over the long haul, would the industry be able to pay you enough to meet your financial needs?

• Would you be able to stay close to home for the foreseeable future if you stayed in your field? If not, would you and your family be willing to relocate to the geographical areas where the industry is growing?

• Are there other industries to which you could transfer your job skills and interests?

• Would any of these be a better match for you?

Arm yourself with all the information you need to decide if a change of direction makes sense

for you.

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Write a Plan

Writing a career plan creates personal direction and focus.  A written personal career plan is a tangible and measurable outcome and serves as a roadmap to job search success.  Now that you’ve given some thought to your career plans and conducted research into the economic realities, do the following exercise:

• Write down ten industry and job description options and rank them from 1-10

• Decide on the three best alternatives to your current course

• Identify the action steps you’ll have to take to pursue them

 

Create a Career Summary

You’ve taken steps toward assessing your work and life experiences and contemplated where you would best fit in the workplace.  Now it’s time to design your career summary; to showcase you at your highest level of effectiveness.  A good script for developing a career summary begins by filling in the following:

• Industry

• Title

• Areas of Experience (packed with key words relative to the industry)

 

Several samples are shown below:

• “Finance Director with extensive experience in Financial Planning and Budgeting, Variance Analysis, Financial Reporting, Operational, Compliance and Financial Auditing.  An effective leader and communicator with strong business mindset, strengths include data analysis, process improvements, and customer relations.”

•  “Senior Business Manager with progressive operational, customer service, accounting, finance and administrative experience.  A results oriented team player with proven leadership, management, process, negotiation and organizational skills combined with strong operational, analytical, financial, procedural and technical abilities.”

•  “Versatile professional with extensive experience in manufacturing, product

development, and process improvement. Able to perform in a fast paced,

quality driven, team-based manufacturing environment. Proficient in delivering

cost effective solutions to meet customer needs.”

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Remember - a career summary sets forth your “dependable strengths” and transferrable skills. These may change during the course of your job search; and for that reason, you may want to re-evaluate your career summary.

 

Your career summary will be the building foundation for your “30-second commercial”. The “30-second commercial” is an abbreviated, verbal delivery of the strengths and skills you have developed over the years to which you have become experienced and to which have become second nature to you.  This so-called “elevator speech” (because of its brevity) will become the first introduction you will have to telling friends, acquaintances, and potential employers what you can do for them. This term “elevator speech” comes from being able to delivery your summary, with confidence; between  the time the elevator door closes, travels between floors, and before the doors open again - you are done!