Transcript of Career Change: How to Find a Job When You Don’t Know What to Do
Stacey Delo
Okay, we’re gonna give it just like a little bit, little bit, few more seconds here, and then we’ll get going
okay, I think we’ll get started. Good morning. Good afternoon. I hope everyone is feeling well, today and ready to dive into what it is your turn to do. Today we are focusing on career change one of our topics that’s near and dear to us here at Apres. And specifically talking about finding a job when you don’t know what to do, which can be extremely overwhelming, leaving you feeling frustrated, and you know, unfortunately, in many cases, doubtful of your strengths. So today, and it also is time consuming and sort of sends you in directions that are just not worth your time. So today, we’re going to help you learn some strategies to really hone in on what your strengths are, and put a strategy in place. So once again, welcome. I’m Stacey de lo and along with these lovely women that you see here on this slide. And also, here in the video panels. We are a pray and our purpose that I pray is to help you discover what it is your turn to do. And then to give you the the tools to get there. It is truly what we are here for. And we we do that through a variety of tools. We have our newsletter, so if you aren’t registered there, please sign up for our newsletter. We offer one on one individual coaching. And we have a boutique job board where employers post positions where resume gaps are welcome. Right now we have some really phenomenal opportunities. It is an opportunities board. So we have jobs. And we also offer some upskilling opportunities. We have a couple of those on the site right now one with Aspire ship, which is a sales training and customer service training program, and one with Hey there social media where you can learn how to become a social media marketer. We have jobs with First Citizens Bank right now that’s a position that’s remote, but also in North Carolina for BIA, which is an education statistics company that’s actually making some news right now on how how much students suffer during the pandemic. They collect data they’ve hired with us many times. So I encourage you to go to our job board, prey group.com/hire or slash job opportunities and just check out what we have going. Those rotate regularly. Just an update we are we have our annual member survey happening right now. We actually this is probably there’s probably, maybe 20 questions on there. And most of them are half of them are sort of specific to where you are in your job search. Some of them are just about you individually. And so we’d love for you to take that survey and we’re offering a free resume review or LinkedIn profile review. We’ll do a drawing we might do it live on one of our upcoming webinars. But we’ll do it we’ll do a drawing for a free webinar, a free resume review or LinkedIn profile review. So it takes take a few minutes. It actually really helps us when we’re talking to employers, and to make sure that we start to really populate the job board with jobs that you’re interested in. And also think about different ways that we can help with our coaching. So please take a moment to do that. I wanted to say congratulate additions to one of our premium members who’s been with us a while and just is really has just been such a standout human that we have worked with. And she let us know that she got a return ship with PepsiCo over the summer. And we just couldn’t be more excited and happy for her. She truly is a great example of somebody who’s worked really hard to get back into the workforce. And she has a PhD she’s, she’s very qualified to work in many different places. So we’re really excited for Elena just wanted to give her a quick shout out. With that, I wanted to mention what our coaching packages are, before we get into the meat of our conversation today.
And kind of walk through a little bit about how we approach coaching, just so you’re familiar, we have several packages that you can go on the site and take a look at yourself. And they range from the resume and LinkedIn profile review to interview coaching, which is both of those are about that they’re an hour of individual one on one time, on the interview coaching, we offer a 10 to 15 minutes sort of up to update prep, right before you have that big interview just so you’re really feeling fresh and alive and ready to answer those questions. So it’s a little bit you know, a little bit longer than an hour. And we we take we use an intake form for those. So by the time you meet with Tina or Meghan, in that case, we know what you’re looking to accomplish. So we’re trying to be extremely efficient with your time and make it really worthwhile. So you’ve told us what you’re looking for. And we’re ready to just dive in. When we talk to you, you’ve sent your resume, you’ve sent your LinkedIn profile, etc, we’re ready to just get going on the bigger coaching packages that we offer, which are just two and a half hours. Again, we’re trying to be really efficient with your time. And so again, we have a short intake form, but then you meet with me for about 30 minutes. And I get a sense of where you are and what you’re really looking to try to do, and how we can best utilize those two hours that you’re going to get with one of our coaches, and then you get matched. And by the time you talk with them. Again, they’re fully prepped and ready to work with you. Sometimes people need a little extra time. But we’ve really found that this approach is effective, it gets people moving in the right direction quickly, because often when you’re in job search mode, there’s there’s something driving you and you need to go ahead and take those steps. And so that’s really what these packages are designed for. And we still have our your turn Summer Series code will have, I need to double check exactly what that code is. But we’re offering a 20% discount that ends just after Labor Day. So it’s really coming up, because it was a summer discount. So take advantage of that if you are ready. And just a few of the things that people say about us, we’re really, you know, again, working with people one on one is extremely delightful to us because we get to see what they get to go and do after we work with them. So those are my updates. And just a little bit more about us. I want to get into what we’re here to talk about. And it really we’re all totally what we’re going to do here in a second, I’m gonna give you some ground rules. In the next, you know, 30 minutes or so that we have here together, we really want you to step into that zone of it is your turn. There are a lot of competing interests that we all have in our life. And it’s really difficult sometimes to just settle into that concept of it is your turn. But for the next 30 minutes, I want you to try to you know, try to focus in with us. Relax, listen, we’ll send you these slides afterward. Really get your thinking going. And take advantage of the fact that we have two coaches here, we’re actually going to try doing a little bit of a live coaching session. So we’re going to be looking for somebody to raise their hand if they can and talk to us out loud about what’s happening in their career journey and how we might be able to help. We encourage you to use the chat, please for you know just small things and encouragement and helping each other but if you have really specific questions that you want to know or Meghan’s answer after this presentation, then please use the q&a box that helps us kind of really keep track of questions that, you know, we need to cover before the end of the session.
And finally, hopefully this goes without being needing to be sad, but be kind. This is a this is a kind of space where everyone’s meant to be learning and helping each other. So with that, let’s get started. I’m going to kick this off today. Basically, the what what we want to illuminate when it comes to how to find a job, which we’ve talked about can be completely overwhelming if you don’t know exactly what to do when Jen and I wrote our book, we spent a lot of time trying to figure out and boil down what are the things that really lead to an effective job search. And what we discovered is that it’s a combination of what drives you. And then understanding what your core competencies are. And so today, we’re going to help you narrow in on what those motivations of yours might be, and think about what your core competencies are, and then help you put a plan in place to go execute on both. So let’s talk about what potentially might motivate you. I’ve, I’ve tried to come up with about five that seem to be buckets that resonate with people, and I call them the five M’s now. And these are your motivators. And then ranking them will will save you time because you’ll be able to filter out distractions. So we’ll just go through them really quickly. But But think about them in your mind, and maybe take a few notes. So must must is the reality of life for many people, that you must get a job, perhaps the financial situation in your house has changed, somebody potentially lost a job, maybe there’s divorce or illness that’s happening, even a death. Maybe you need different benefits, or there’s a new expense that requires more income. So the next one mind, this is your brain telling you that it needs more more engagement, a bigger challenge, you’re ready for something new new information, something to learn, maybe you have a passion or a calling that you really can’t shake me, I’m going to shift down to meaning over there in the right corner for our right hand corner. This is where you might want to make a difference or have impact on the world. Some of the ones that come up in our coaching can include education, mental health, nutrition, climate change, poverty, things that products that make people’s lives easier or better. So meaning could have a big impact on what’s driving you right now. And then money, money can be a very serious motivator for people. And this is completely okay. You may have a financial goal for yourself or for your family. So money is a big driver for people. And finally modeling. And sometimes I use the word messaging there. But for some, it’s important to show their kids that it’s possible to, you know, have a career that sort of doesn’t follow that straight through line. Maybe it includes a career pause. And then you know, one of the things that one of our coaching clients told us a while back, which I thought was so nice is that she thought it was also really important to get back into the workforce to be able to tell other women and to show other women that she took a significant sized career pause, and then got back into the workforce successfully. So this think about these must mind modeling money meaning and how they relate to you and your situation. And then if you can try to rank them. And of course, some of them will sort of feed with each other. You know, mind and meaning might be equal to each other. Must and money might go together. The purpose of ranking them is to help you take all the things that you could possibly do and weed out the ones that you should not because they won’t meet your needs. So with that At, I’m going to hand it over to Tina, who’s going to talk about sort of how we take those motivations now, and then put them together with understanding what your strengths are. So Tina, I turn it to you.
Tina Mondragon
Okay, good morning, or good afternoon, everybody. I’m Tina Mondragon, one of our career coaches here at a prayer group, I would be delighted to help any of you with your resume your LinkedIn, elevator pitch, interviewing prep. I love working with everybody here in our community. So I will kick this off, Stacy, I love all your motivators, that’s a great way to get started to figure out what it is that you are needing and helping you find a job to go back to work. So another area is to reconnect with your professional self. So think about your professional career or your volunteer experience, and what motivates you and excites you about those past experiences? kind of evaluate your past? Think about what did you like about those experiences? Also, what what drains you, in those past working experiences, go back to a time in your career or volunteer experience, when you were thriving, when you were really happy? What it was that you were doing in those moments? Ask yourself questions. What did you like about that particular company? or organization that you’re working for? What did you not like about it? What did you like about the environment or not like about that environment, or the culture that was there? How big was it, maybe you like a bigger company, maybe you like a smaller company, maybe you like something in the middle, right? You know, medium sized company, write down. So you want to get a journal to start writing all of these things down. But write down accomplishments and wins that you have had in your professional career. Also, this can go to volunteer experience, write down what you were doing in those moments. And think about that, because generally, if you were thriving in those moments, those are things that you are really good at doing. And that could be an indicator of possibly where you want to go to next with your career. So ask yourself questions, what was the happiest or proudest thing I did, in those moments at the company? What was my biggest accomplishment at that company, it can be something small, it can be many accomplishments, it could be something really big. But think back to those times in your career. Look up previous colleagues that she worked with, look that you can find them on LinkedIn, connect with them, see what they’re doing, see where their career trajectory has gotten, maybe they took a pause or they pivoted in their career. And you can reach out and say, How did you do that? Or are you happy where you are? What did you like or not like about you know, those people that you’ve are working with? Call Oh colleagues and friends as well and reconnect with them. Think about things that you didn’t like to do that you did like to do? What was the most challenging about working at that company? Maybe that’s something that you liked, or you didn’t like about that, just start making these lists? The good and the bad with everything that you’ve had in your career? What did you like the most about the responsibilities that you had at that company? That’s a really good indicator about what you might like to do in your next in your next job? If you’re not sure what to do? What did you like to do? What did you not like to do? In those roles that you had? What would you like to do again? And whose job did I admire at that company? Like when you were working, volunteering, or at the company? Who, who in what role did you look at and say that would be a fun job. Those are things to write down when thinking about. And then also you want to start to kind of outline your hard skills when thinking about what job it is you want to find. So take note of your hard skills, those could be any certifications that you have your education, it could be foreign language, that you know, it can be all your computer skills that you know every job has got computer skills, write those all down, I’m good at Microsoft Office, I know Google I know write all of those things down any technical skills you might have management skills, marketing, analytical writing skills, just write all of those skills down what you have, and then also write down what you might need for jobs that you’re interested in. And that’s a great start to kind of reconnect with your professional self
Stacey Delo
Yeah, and I think also printing out your your resume and and starting to circle what those hard skills in this in this phase is like. is a great step to just sort of bookend everything that Tina discussed. So let’s talk about reconnecting with you. And Megan, I’ll turn it over to you.
Megan Strickland
Great. Thank you. Hi, everyone. It’s so nice to be back after a little summer break. I’m Megan Strickland and I am one of our other coaches. So after you’ve really taken a look at your career, and your volunteer experience and your hard skills, we strongly recommend reconnecting with yourself. So go back to a time in your life and you are thriving, not career, not professional, just a time in your life, when you are personally thriving. And think there. What were you doing? What was the environment like? Who were you with? I think that this, this this piece, the who you were with is really important, because I’ve just read so much research and listened to so many podcasts that as we get older, the people that you surround yourself with is one of the key pieces to fulfillment and happiness. So really think through who you were with, what were their personality traits? Were they supportive? And then what did you do for fun, this is another piece that’s very important. So think through all this, write this all down. And then the next step, this is my favorite part, call friends and family and reminisce, and really ask them. What is it about you that they love? Like, what do they think you’re really good at the number of times we’ve had coaching clients do this exercise. And just I mean, there are so many things that you’re good at that you don’t even realize, you know, but people who are close to you, your friends and your family that see you every day, they pick up on these, and so they can really shed light on what you should do next. So ask them what you’re good at, write it all down, and then begin outlining your soft skills. You know, did Are you really organized? Are you a really great communicator? Are you extremely empathetic? Are you worried about like teen mental health, I mean, you know, just any, any soft skill. And again, this is these are things that you may not realize, but the people close to you well, so really start focusing on those and write this all down.
Stacey Delo
Alright, I’m trying to unmute I love that, because it also allows you to really, like we were saying, focus in and think about this as your turn it gives you that time and space and a chance to revisit at, you know, we’ve talked to women who, you know, started also started different projects that they used to do like, running, going back to their running club, or tennis or whatever it is that sort of brings them joy, because a job search is a time when you want to be feeling really good about yourself. And so surrounding yourself with people who’ve known you a long time who can really call out those great characters. It’s just what a wonderful gift of how to use your time.
Tina Mondragon
Well. And another thing I want to point out is when when connecting with your professional self and yourself, as Megan was saying, to write down times when you were thriving, and you were happy. And I was saying to do that in your professional life as well, you might see some themes that can be with both. And when you find those themes, I generally think those are things that you really shine at, you’re really good at if you think about those times, when you were thriving in your professional career. And then you were also thriving with just you having fun. These are things that are just probably innate to you, like you’re super organized. You’re always on time, you’re great at communication. Those are just gifts that you have. And those are things that you’re thriving and you’re having fun with. And those are things that you can put in that bucket of maybe that’s a job that I could have a really fun time doing. So those are the kinds of the themes is when you have those two buckets is to see what is it that I’m really good at and what can I bring to a company and I’ll be thriving as well, because I’ll be my happiest while doing it. Yeah,
Stacey Delo
and career change is great for that because it’s it can be a clean slate, right, where you’re taking your previous experience and putting it towards something new. And so if it’s something new than the one, you know, the difficult part of that is the world is large and there are a lot of opportunities. But if you can start to hone in a bit, then maybe it’s something that you can put your time toward that it really excites you as well. So, this slide I just wanted to share really quickly. And I’ll sort of piggyback on what Megan was saying that the soft skills can be really important in today’s hiring market. I think it was monster.com did a survey earlier in the year and it said 70% of employers are willing to hire and train people who have these transferable skills, because they know that they can teach them the more specific skills to that business. So that’s something to just keep in your back pocket, that those, those soft skills are really in demand and really important. But after you take what Tina and Meghan outlined on reconnecting with your professional self, and reconnecting with you, you really should have started to have some lists that are coming together. And like Tina said, starting to put some themes together. And so I always suggest that people make make these lists that then they can post up so that you can start to live with them. And, you know, circle the ones that make you feel particularly alive and start to cross out the ones that you just don’t want to do any more. And then what Tina and Megan are very good at is helping you look at those lists, map it to job descriptions, and then position your resume and LinkedIn profile to highlight all of those. So start putting those lists together, and spend some time with them. And that’s kind of what we wanted to try in this exercise. Here. We wanted to give you a minute, just a quick minute to write down as we’ve been talking, is there something where your brain has gone? Oh, I know exactly. When I was thriving, and what made me feel really good. And write down what that was take a minute, just a couple of seconds to write that down. Try to think about the hard skills you were using at that time and three soft skills that you were using at that time and write those down. And then what we’d love to do is we’d love to hear from somebody who wants to share about that time in their life and maybe highlight some of those skills, if you can think about them and talk to us about it, you know, are there roles that you’re considering? Or are you really struggling to pull that together? I don’t know if there’s anyone who wants to be the brave soul and talk out loud, but we’d love to call on you. We don’t need to see you, we can just listen to your audio, or you can use the chat will kind of take a minute in the chat. If you want to write down a time that you were thriving, or a time just maybe put some of your hard skills or soft skills in there. We can kind of this is your your turn, it’s your opportunity to get some some live coaching if you want to be that brave soul.
Tina Mondragon
Okay,
Stacey Delo
so I’m Don, do you want to? Can you raise your hand? Can you see that? Raise your hand, and I can come to you? Yep. Great. I’m gonna allow you to talk. Okay, are you there?
Unknown Speaker
I’m here.
Stacey Delo
Are you here? Yes, we can hear you. brave soul, it is your turn.
Unknown Speaker
I don’t know that. I’m looking for a job like this. But it said to just look at a time you are thriving. So I was teaching ESL English as a second language. And the hard skills I was using was putting together like PowerPoint presentations, curriculum design, worksheets, quizzes, tests. And then, of course, communicating so that you would speak to people that were in different levels of how much English they knew. So that was really good to sort of figure out how to simplify my vernacular and then make it more extensive for people that needed to have more advanced language skills. And the most exciting thing was is after we would do the classes, we would also go out into I’m in the Los Angeles area, and I would tour them around, and I really liked showing off the city. So taking them to historic places, maybe places that people don’t know about. So that was really exciting to put together a little tour package for them. So it was sort of a two part. Job And in terms of roles I would be considering, I think I’m getting a bit older for the touring part. And so I don’t I, as much as I have fun doing that, I just don’t know that I have that in me anymore. In terms of teaching ESL, I think that there’s a lot of I don’t know that I’m thinking that I want to do something more corporately, because there’s really usually, it’s usually part time jobs, there’s usually no benefits. And I’m going to shut up now.
Stacey Delo
You know, Megan, do you want to respond?
Tina Mondragon
Yeah, well, thank you, Don, for sharing, you have so many great skills, I was just trying to write a few down as listening to him and you got collaborating, networking, teaching organized, I wrote down project management, because you’re just organizing so many aspects of, of this program, I love the work that you’re doing for all of these people. And you want to go back to a corporate role. That I was thinking, maybe corporate training, at a corporate if you if you love teaching, if you love that interaction with people having there you’ve got a lot of great skills, just in two minutes of you telling us from what you gain from this exercise, that are words that you could easily put on your LinkedIn on your resume, weave them into your elevator pitch. And those are all skills that hiring managers are looking for right now. So I think you’re in a great position to get started with where you want to go to that. Megan, what would you add to that,
Megan Strickland
just listening to the things that came to mind. And I don’t know, I would obviously need more time with you to really get this right. But it’s like the blending of corporate and teaching in a space that is really going crazy right now, it would be the ed tech space. So there’s all these companies now, like, especially in California, but everywhere, where their education technology platforms. And so I actually know a woman who her heart and soul is in teaching, but she just she was struggling. I mean, The pay wasn’t great, all the things that we know that teachers struggle with. So she just took a job at an ad tech company. So she still has the passion for teaching and bringing education to the world, but in a more technology driven corporate environment. So that may be one thing. And then this is probably way off base. But when I heard you say how much you love showing off your city of Los Angeles, I know there’s a lot of companies that work with big corporations to help like if if if a big corporation that’s based in LA is relocating an executive or someone to La you, you help them find schools or neighborhoods that are good for them. So I don’t know if that’s interesting. But those were the two things that came to mind.
Stacey Delo
Yeah, Don, I’ll just add really quickly, the whole and Megan mentioned ed tech, which is a huge area, but also just learning development departments within companies. And so maybe what you a good next step for you would be to really start to think about the pieces of when you were doing English as a second language. Training, what outside of the touring? What was it that really spoke to you? Was it the organizational aspect of the paper of creating the the communications essentially the, the learning documents, or was it the interaction, one on one, and that will also help you sort of narrow down job titles that you might be interested in. And then, depending on how you feel about being in person, hybrid remote, all these various options that we have right now might help you start to begin to narrow the circle of what companies to really start to follow and, and get to know and then potentially begin to apply to. So I hope that this was helpful. I don’t know if you have any quick follow up. But that was just so brave. And we are really grateful. And it sounds like you have a lot of opportunities based on what you shared with us.
Unknown Speaker
I guess, you know that. I really appreciate your feedback, by the way. Thank you so much. And I did start sort of blogging about edtech because I thought it was really interesting. I think it’s a great area. I do want to sort of say that’s part of my problem is is that because some of these things are a while ago and we have these gaps in my resume. It’s really hard to like get recommendations and reach out to people to to sort of help me go to the next step, because either they’re not around anymore, or they don’t know if I can still do it, or they’re not in this specific ad tech space. So if you can speak to anything in terms of the, you know, setting up your network to help you with these transitions, that would be awesome. But thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Stacey Delo
Absolutely. Megan, are Tina, do you want to respond really quickly, and then we should move move on?
Tina Mondragon
Yeah. So really quickly done, I would recommend your LinkedIn, I don’t know how active you are on your LinkedIn profile. But that is an excellent way to get connected with people in that space. You might think you might not know anybody in that space. But on LinkedIn, you might find out that if we were connected, I know people in that space. So I could easily make that introduction to you to somebody that’s in that space, you can also start following companies and hiring managers that are in that space as well. So I would say look at LinkedIn, and then start weaving that into your elevator pitch everybody you’re talking to, because they might not might know somebody who can help introduce you into that space?
Megan Strickland
Yeah, when you bump into the neighbor, the person at Starbucks, just tell them you know, if this is what you have decided you want to do. I’m looking for a job in edtech. Is there anyone you can think of that I should meet? It sounds very forward, but people Sorry, I’m having some issues with my lady. It sounds very bored, but people are always willing to help. Yep. Yeah.
Stacey Delo
Okay, that segues nicely into the next piece of advice here.
Tina Mondragon
Yeah, so I think this is this is me, I’m up. So get curious. This is a great segue into what we were just talking about is talk to people just start networking and talking to people talk to people who love their job, who you know that love their job and ask them why. Start taking some time in your job search to, to request or schedule informational interviews, you can do that on your LinkedIn profile. With people in fields that you are interested to learn more about. You don’t have to necessarily apply for the job, you can just send somebody a message on LinkedIn and say, I really admire the work you’re doing. Do you have five minutes that we can talk about how you landed that role, it’s something I think I want to be doing. Excuse me, then you can learn about their career paths and get possibly some career advice from them. You can ask about their job, their professional past, how they what they did to get there, their aspirations, and you can learn more about the industry. You can also try to find people who made career changes, if that’s what you’re going to be doing. And ask them how they made that change how they went from this job to that job? Did they take any upskilling classes? How were they able to land on that? What did they do to their resume that was able to shine in that new role and getting that job. Reach out to people that you admire, and what they do. And not just people you admire, but the jobs that they’re doing? Reach out to them. And don’t limit yourself to people who you don’t know or don’t have connections with. There are connections everywhere. Like we were just saying, as network with everybody, like Megan said, on your morning walk, when you’re out getting a coffee. It should be your Hi, how are you? I’m great. I’m going back to work or pivoting in my career in this space. And then it just leads to a conversation. People love to help people. I always people know what I do. And when they see me, I always ask what are you doing, they tell me a job they’re interested interested in, I might not know but I come home and I tell my husband, I’ll tell Stacey and Meghan, we’re always trying to help people. So spread the word to to everybody, and you just never know where that might land when you’re at a kids sporting game. Wherever that is just let people know. Take note of what you’re reading, or simply talking about. These might be things that you’re interested in as well. They could help you on your career trajectory. join Facebook groups, Twitter, chats, social media platforms to learn more. Those are a great way to get also connected with people. You can join these groups on Facebook or LinkedIn with a whole group of people who are already in that job or that space. And then you could connect with them after you’re in that group. read people’s job descriptions. read articles, look at jobs that you admire, start reading the job descriptions. Do quick Google searches on people in those jobs or what it’s like working in those jobs. Just get really curious and start learning. Learning about that that field and those people in that field.
Megan Strickland
Great. Okay. To consider areas for growth. So one of the most important soft skills that we’ve had recruiters tell us time and time again, is people who are willing to learn new skills, because if you can do that they can teach you anything. So if you find that there are gaps that you need, in terms of what you want to do, look, first look at returnships. These are amazing training programs, they’re usually 16 weeks and you go work at a company for 16 weeks, and they you work on a project or you have a job there. And I think 85 to 90% of the time, they turn into full time positions. So look for returnships, these are a great option. Also free training programs there are. So let’s say you decide that you want to be a project manager, maybe take a three and you’ve never done this before, but you have all the skills, take a training program on Google, Microsoft offers free training programs, LinkedIn has a ton of options, LinkedIn learning. And if you do it through LinkedIn, it’ll automatically pop up on your LinkedIn profile that you’ve completed this course. So look for free training programs, strategically volunteering This is so again, let’s say you want to get into marketing. And you’ve never really done this before. You can go work for a nonprofit or work for a school and tell them that you’ll write their marketing plan. That is real work experience that’s now on your resume. There’s also a an organization called Catch a fire, catch a fire, where they will match you to nonprofits that need help. And you go through an interview process you I mean, it’s like a basically, it’s real, real work experience. So try something like that. If you think you know, maybe you’re not sure if you like marketing, but this would be a great way to test it out. Working with a coach is also very helpful. And then taking strengths tests, there’s I love taking the strength test, there’s StrengthsFinder, there’s a high five, there’s so many different tests that can just shed some light on what your strengths are and what maybe you should be pursuing in the future.
Stacey Delo
Okay, let’s talk about putting putting all the pieces together here.
Tina Mondragon
Yeah, so once, once you’re on your plan, then you want to start to put as we just said, put the pieces together. So you can start to research job titles, and companies, this is really important when I work with people, a lot of people who don’t know what they want to do, you can go on to Glassdoor, LinkedIn, indeed, and put in job titles, you don’t have to put one you could put five, if you’re not quite sure what that job is put those job titles and start getting emails, alerts for those jobs. If you’re an active active job search, do it daily, you can set it to be weekly, open up that email, start reading those job descriptions, really read them. And if you find one that you love printed out and highlight all those keywords that are in that job description, because that’s generally an area that you’re really interested in the where, where you want to go, you might put a job title in there, read the job descriptions, and you might not be interested in what the job description has, which is another find that you say, You know what I really thought I wanted to do that I don’t want to do that I want to do this instead. So take the time to do that. research companies, you can go on LinkedIn, Facebook, follow them, follow people at those companies, you’ll get to learn a lot about them. Particularly if you’re following the hiring managers, they post jobs right on LinkedIn, a lot of the time so you can find out who’s hiring, what new products are coming out, you get a sense of their culture and kind of their vibe of the company by following them on these sites. That’s a great way to start to get your plan into place. You can also start to talk to people who you’re interested in, there’s jobs that I was talking about. On this putting your plan in place, maybe you say like talk to five different people a week or maybe it’s one person a day, you can reach out to them on LinkedIn, which is so easy, you just do it from your computer sent push the button, send it to somebody, you could meet somebody for coffee, but start talking to people really talking to people and ask them you know, how did you get that job? What was your What was your in at that company? What do you love about that company? Because you will start to learn a lot more about it and it might even lead to the conversation of you know, we’re looking for somebody would you like to join us a contract or or we have an open role. You just never know where that conversation will lead will lead to attend a networking event. Things are opening up a lot more and anything can be a networking event. A kids soccer game is a networking event. This is a networking event mean there’s there there’s always opportunities for networking events, any dinner party you go to, those are all networking events. Go to them and go to them with in mind to let people know what it is that you are wanting to do in your career, because as we said, people love to help people. So get the word out there. Practice your elevator pitch, practice it with your friends, with your family, on your walk with your dog, practice, practice, as you get comfortable saying saying it. Keep a journal that’s so helpful. I like to do lists. And I like writing things down. So I love a journal, because that’s something that daily, you just go into, and you take your notes and it keeps you accountable. Which is the next thing is find an accountability partner. Writing things down is one way I keep accountable. Another way is my team here to pray. We all talk about what our goals are, they hold me accountable as well. My family, I’ll tell them my dreams and aspirations, it’s really great to have a cheering section for you. Surrounding yourself with people who you admire, and I think are always a little bit better than me, helps me be accountable as well to put some some parameters around your search ditch, don’t have it be a wide open, like, try to narrow down what it is you think you want to be doing. And like I said, craft and test your elevator pitch, get really comfortable at your elevator pitch. So it just rolls off of you when you see people. A lot of times when I’m first working with people will practice their elevator pitch. And they’ll say, Well, I think I want to do that. And we always talk about how it’s not I think I want to you know, this is what you want to do. So you’re confident talking about that to people? Did I miss anything? Megan?
Megan Strickland
No, I’m just one thing on the networking events. So these really are opening up and that conferences are starting again. And there’s often ways you can find, like, get a free ticket to a conference in an industry that you’re interested in. And there also are a lot of online networking events.
Tina Mondragon
Sure. Yep, and then refresh your LinkedIn profile is is huge, because that’s where you’re creating your your professional brand. So once you know what it is you want to do, you want to refresh your LinkedIn page and your resume as well. Which we’re happy to help you with here if you need that.
Stacey Delo
Yeah, and critically, especially if you’re going to not to discourage you from linking in with us because we want you to but please put a photo on your LinkedIn profile it is it is critical on a LinkedIn profile to have a photo of yourself. So make sure you put a professional photo in there. So I’m just going to wrap it really quickly. I actually I had a poll, and I forgot to put it at the beginning. So I’m going to launch it now. So as I sort of wrap up here, and I know Megyn needs to drop here. So thank you very much, Megan, Tina, if we you just take a look in the chat to and see if there’s anything that we’ve missed, that people might want us to just address really quickly. But I just I just want to end with the message. I know we sort of overuse this in some ways, but it is your turn. And even if you feel a little unsettled in the process of discovering what career change my look for you, I just want you all to know that that’s okay. Because it does mean that you’re on the precipice of change. And just putting some some parameters around how you go about it will help you feel more structured and allow you to get excited and enjoy the process of career changed, because it is your turn. So thank you all if you want to take a minute to just fill out this poll, this is really helpful to us. And Tina, I don’t know if you were able to see any quickly.
Tina Mondragon
You know, can you give an example of a perfect elevator pitch. That’s a whole webinar in itself, but you just want it to be really quick. You want it to be short and sweet. It’s not something that’s super long. It’s I started my career off in data. I want to continue my career in this or I started my career after this. i Since then I’ve been doing whatever it is you’re doing I’ve learned all these rich skills and now I want to take it to whatever field that easy. Have an elevator pitch. You just want to be confident when you’re saying it.
Stacey Delo
Yeah, great. And I saw something about part time jobs. We sometimes have part At time jobs there, you might try looking at flex jobs, they probably have a good number of part time positions there, you could start to browse those. There. And also on LinkedIn, you can search for part time positions and get really narrow on the companies or industries that you’re interested in with some keywords so that that’s a great place to look for part time positions. We’re still noticing that a lot of the roles that are coming in aren’t necessarily part time, but they’re remote or hybrid. So that’s positive as well. But I think that we’ve, I know there are more people that wanted to share, which we’re really glad about. Well, we’ll make a little extra room on some of these next webinars for that. And we’re going to have the full calendar published, hopefully, by the end of this week, if not early next week of what our upcoming webinars will be. You can use these webinars and also as a bit of an accountability partner, it’s a great way to just kind of keep on task and know that, you know, set some deadlines for yourself in between them, and then use the chat to tell us what you accomplished, since we last saw you but make sure that you’re following us also, on LinkedIn, and Instagram. We use that a lot for quick tips and notifications in addition to the newsletter, I’m really excited in two weeks, we’re going to be interviewing Jennifer Siebel Newsom and E Brodsky, who have a new movie out called fair play. So just some exciting and good things to stay ahead of. But we appreciate you all taking the time to spend time with us this week and or today this morning, and we look forward to seeing you next time.
Tina Mondragon
Thank you so much. Thank you.
Stacey Delo
Thanks, Tina. Thanks, Jordan. Thank you all. Bye, bye. Jordan, can you end it because I think you’re the you actually have the main
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
