I love guiding people as they navigate decisions that define their life and career choices. From my perch as a career coach and executive recruiter for the past three decades, never a month goes by that I don’t hear “I’m done with this job” or “I’m miserable and want to quit but I can’t.”
I also think to myself, “I’ve found my life’s work and passion, so anyone can.”
Changing your job or career is no small feat. Figuring out what you really want from your work is where the process must begin. There’s a significant amount of alignment that needs to happen before you can hit the street — or the Internet. Before you can start vetting positions there are many questions you need to address. My role is to guide you to the point of knowing what you want and what you’re willing to do.
Indeed before you craft your resume, cue-up your LinkedIn profile and perfect your cover-letters, it’s critical you are clear about what you want to do. You must be crystal clear about what kind of work you want, what engages you at an intellectual level – what you can see yourself happily doing – and what the job entails. You’ve got to examine your strengths and weaknesses in a meaningful way, and that’s hard to do without an objective perspective.
What most people fail to realize is our desires will always change, and that’s okay. It’s how we’re wired. We do something, it works for a while, then we set our sights on something else. This change is what allows us to grow and learn and expand. We can start doing one kind of work and years later (or months later) come to realize we’re no longer engaged or interested. Sadly, most people persevere and “hang-in-there” only to manifest mediocre results and insidious unhappiness. However, mortgages, insurance premiums, tuitions, and other obligations feed the false premise that we have to stay where we are, that we can’t afford to be happy and make career changes. We often feel obligated to carry-on and tough-it-out. So we do until we start realizing this isn’t working. Doing a job that doesn’t feel right leads to dis-ease. We get depressed or angry (they’re the same thing), or worse, we start manifesting illness. At a certain point, we are driven to say, “Enough! I’m done. It’s time to move on.”
Things change. People change. Jobs change. Companies change. Indeed one of the few things you can count on throughout your life is change. And thank God for that. How awful would life be without change? I’ve personally experienced more than few enormous, life-altering changes and I suspect they’ll keep coming. I say, “Bring ‘em on!”
My career/life coaching practice is a relatively short, exciting and insightful three-hour process that takes place within the span of just 3 weeks. We examine who you are, what you’ve done, what motivates you, strengths, what you would consider doing, and then we design a methodical and pragmatic approach to get there, inclusive of opportunity research, and, your personal branding; perfecting your resumes), LinkedIn profile, cover letter(s) and interviewing techniques. This process is informed by three decades of successful coaching and talent advisory experience, working with people of all ages, in all disciplines, on four continents.
To have your questions answered about the process and learn more about how you can move forward intelligently, please go to my website at www.ShulmanAssoc.com and book a 15-minute call.
