A New Chapter in Your Life #Transition
August 22, 2013
Next week many colleges will be crazed with students and parents, as freshmen will be moving into their dorms to start a new chapter in their lives. What about you? Are you starting a new chapter in your life?
Just like college freshmen are starting a new chapter in their life, many professionals are starting a new chapter in their lives. More specifically they have changed careers. Changing careers takes a lot of energy, time, heart and courage. While some people land positions in the field they’ve been in for years, for the career changer it takes time.
Cal State Fresno Freshmen move in.
People change careers for a number of reasons. One reason is that people are not happy with their previous position. Why people change careers is not the focus of this blog. The actual process of the career change is.
When changing careers, it’s a good idea to choose a profession in which you’re passionate about doing. Once you’ve decided on what your new profession will, now you’ll need to chart a plan. Do you need retraining? If so, what does your educational path look like? How do you plan on getting experience?
Let’s talk about how does one get the experience? It’s what was you found out when you looked for a job after college. “I won’t get hired because I don’t have experience. How can I get experience if I don’t get hired?” It’s time roll up your sleeves and start volunteering. However, find volunteer opportunities in your field may be harder than it sounds. By this time as a professional, you should already have a nice network in place. A good percentage of your key volunteer opportunities will come from your network. This brings me to another point. Spend some of your time “networking” in person and virtually. You’ll never know when an opportunity will come from your network. Read the rest of this entry »
Network your way to success #Transition #Underemployed
August 1, 2013
Network your way to success. Seems like quite the popular theme of late.
Last week I had the opportunity to be a presenter at an event sponsored by Network 2 NewWork in Grand Rapids. The event was to give the under and unemployed additional skills in today’s business world. There was a session on What is Good Networking by Ken Soper, a Mock Interview, Behaviors and Habits on what not to do during an interview (by Kimberly Stein and Heather Den Houter), and I conducted Polishing Your LinkedIn Profile and Using LinkedIn to Maximize Opportunities and Get More Face to Face Meetings.
My first session on Polishing Your LikedIn Profile involved going through each section of the profile. What each section means and how each section should be written. I started with the photograph and ended with experience.
I’m talking about the photograph for your LinkedIn profile.
The second presentation was how to use LinkedIn, which as I see it, is marketing yourself. Another part of the presentation talked about networking on LinkedIn. There is a skill to networking in person and a skill to virtual networking.
I thoroughly enjoyed conducting the presentations on LinkedIn at this event. My objective was to give the attendees enough information to either start developing their profile, or improve their profile and learn how to use the power of LinkedIn.
After the workshops there was plenty of time for networking. Everyone had a chance to meet each another to find out they can help one another. Good networking techniques were even taught during the mixer part of the program.
While the attendees were meeting one another, people came up to me with questions. I spent the remainder of the evening helping people one-on-one with LinkedIn. I enjoy helping people use LinkedIn. I go by the philosophy of “helping people without expecting anything in return”. It was wonderful that so many people wanted to learn more about LinkedIn and how this social networking program help them. Read the rest of this entry »
Social Business Success 