Im Clear On The How, But Not The What. How Do I Get Unstuck

“Im Clear On The How, But Not The What. How Do I Get Unstuck” Help from our Community “Im Clear On The How, But Not The What. How Do I Get Unstuck?” * Alec is fed up of feeling like he's chained to a desk for eight hours a day.He knows the lifestyle he wants, but he can't get clear on a career idea that will allow him to have it. When you know the 'how', but not the 'what', how do you make any progress? What's your career history and current job? Until last summer, I worked in business-to-business sales, selling architectural building products to construction companies. I handed in my notice last year and went travelling. How do you feel about your work? I enjoy speaking with different people from different places and connecting customers with solutions. I don't really enjoy sales. I'm not bad at it; I just don't like being chained to a desk, doing a job I could easily do from home. I'm locked up for eight or more hours a day without any autonomy. I also don't like mundane tasks and doing the same thing over, and over, and over again. What would you like to be doing instead? I would like to do something that's location independent, and I'd love to work with information / content creation. I enjoy travelling and new places, and I'd definitely like my work to be more purposedriven, but I'm having trouble deciding what that purpose might be. Writing and speaking really interest me, as does sharing information with others. And, although I don't have a background in it, I'm quite interested in marketing. My friends in marketing all tell me they enjoy their work and have great employers, and I'm wondering if this could be an option for me. Most of what I know of marketing has been self-taught, though, so it's hard to demonstrate knowledge to potential employers without the degree to back it up. I started a small blog while travelling around Europe last year, mainly to keep up with friends and family. Travel writing for a living would be great; however, it's a saturated market with a lot of 'noise' online. I'm not sure I have enough of a niche to turn my blog into anything bigger. I've got an idea for a quarterly coffee table book featuring millennials at work, too. I've been researching people who've started print and online magazines in the past few years, but it's tough to even know where to begin. Building my own business feels as though it's the only way I'll be able to get the flexible hours I want. It'd make a real difference to feel proud of building something for myself instead of spending all my time working for someone else. What's the biggest obstacle in your way? Analysis paralysis. I have a tendency to get bored with things quickly and I don't do well with mundane, repetitive tasks. One day it's a blog, the next, a magazine. Others I find myself trying to source cheap goods to sell on Amazon or Ebay. It's tough to focus on something that I think I can do in the long run. My other option is to keep on going through different positions until I find something that clicks. I think it all comes down to the fact that I'm scared of getting stuck somewhere. How do I find a clear and achievable direction? Can you help Alec? Have you been in a similar situation, or are you in the same boat right now? How do you think Alec could move his shift forwards? Do you know anyone he could talk to? Share your thoughts in the comments below and click the thumbs-up button to show your support. Give Alec a cheer of encouragement by hitting the thumbs-up button here:

First Resume - How to Write Your First Resume

First Resume - How to Write Your First ResumeSo you're looking for the right ways to write your first resume? There are a lot of templates that can be used. However, I recommend you use a template that is professional and easy to use. Here are some good ideas.List your employment history. List the jobs you have held and any other qualifications that would be beneficial to potential employers. Also be sure to list any areas of expertise you might have. If you work on the assembly line, be sure to list this as well.When writing your cover letter, make sure to focus on your experience and qualifications. Look for someone who is looking for an experienced person who is seeking new positions. Be sure to mention your skills, whether you are a good writer or not. Lastly, focus on answering the interviewer's questions to get them excited about hiring you.An effective way to format your resume is to do it on a computer, but in a word processing program. Once the work is on the computer, check it before it goes to the printer to ensure it is formatted correctly. One of the easiest ways to format your first resume is with Microsoft Word. Word will allow you to type in your information, then customize it with certain information. It also allows you to save your resume on disk as a PDF file so you can print out as many copies as you need.The next step is to prepare the letters you will use for your resume. These letters will help you stand out from all the others. Don't be afraid to follow certain rules of etiquette for your letters. Again, it is only going to make your resume look professional.Let's start off with your name. Start out with your full name. You do not want your first and last name to be in the same font because this looks unsophisticated. Then choose a nice font for your title, then you need to make your affiliation. This must be stated on the second line.Then follow up with your career objective. Once again, you should type in the proper way so that your ob jective is presented in the correct format. If your objective is something like, 'career change' then you will need to place it right above the rest of your information. There is no need to use quotation marks if the statement begins with a capital letter.Finally, take your resume to a printing company. They will give you an estimate on how much the paper will cost. You can also have them type your resume for you. This will not make your resume look professional, but it will make it easier to read.

How to Tell When a Job Promotion Is a Bad Career Move

How to Tell When a Job Promotion Is a Bad Career Move Your career would be easier if every job promotion was a guaranteed positive career move. Unfortunately, that is not always the case. Job promotionshappen for a variety of reasons and companies are in a constant state of flux. Before smiling and accepting that promotion at work, stop and think about the consequences. See if this job promotion will end up hurting your career.When the Promotion Does Not Fit Your Career GoalsThere are times when we are offered promotions that take our career in an entirely new direction. For example, if someone managing a marketing department suddenly gets offered a job as Director of Operations. You have to decide if you want to start going in that career direction with your promotion at work.It is a great job promotion and an honor, but operations jobs are very different from marketing. Examine if this will truly be the career you want, going forward.Tip: Accepting promotions to show appreciation for the offer is a bad career move. If you do not want the job, graciously thank them for the offer. Let them know it is not a position you feel you can contribute your best efforts to.When the Promotion at Work Does Not Interest YouEven if a new promotion pays really well, don’t take it if it does not interest you. Repeated studies have shown people are more productive in jobs they love. The last thing you want to do is accept a job for the pay bump and then be really bad at your job.You will make your company feel like the job promotion was a mistake. It was a bad career move because now the company questions your judgment.Tip: Simply put, if it is not your cup of tea, don’t take the new job promotion. You are not being true to yourself or the company.When the Job Promotion Is SymbolicThis one is unfortunate. An employee is at a company for a long time and is well-paid. However, the company is going in a new direction and needs to move people out. Companies may employ the strategy of boring an employee out of a job.The employee is given a higher job title, which looks great on a resume. But then many responsibilities are removed and the promoted employee has nothing to do. Eventually, the employee or the company has to remove the position. This strategy is used because firing someone, or letting them go without reason, creates negativity in the workplace. It is safer for the company to promote the employee and wait for them to quit or get laid off.Tip: When a promotion is offered, find out what your new duties are going to be, first. If you feel it is symbolic, or a company’s way of saying goodbye, take the promotion and salary increase. Then, start looking for new work. Go out on top. Use your new leverage to get a better job somewhere else.When the Job Promotion Creates an Undesirable LifestyleAs you are promoted throughout your career, the type of people you surround yourself with changes, as well. A new promotion at work may mean making your “job” a new “lifestyle”. This means you will be worki ng much harder, and your co-workers will change, too.Your new job/lifestyle has to be something you want, badly. If not, you will end up resenting the company and the new people you work with. And they may end up resenting you because you should never have been promoted. Unfortunately, some employees accept promotions without thinking about the changes in the workplace. They try to stay “one of the employees” when the fact is they now manage the employees.More so, be careful this type of promotion is not done to exhaust you out of the company. Giving a person too many responsibilities to handle is a strategy used to politely force an employee into saying, “I need to leave. I cannot handle this.”Tip: Find out who you will be working with at your new job and the duties at hand. Think about your current life and if you want all that to change. If the change is too much, skip this promotion at work.

How to Tone Down Your Resume for Better Results - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career

How to Tone Down Your Resume for Better Results - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career Has your resume run amok? Has attention-deficit diluted your writing prowess as you seek for the latest, hippest ways to market You, Inc.? If you have watched television programs or read articles from some of the major media lately, you’d think that “resumes gone wild” is the way to go. Here are three examples: 1. Six-second “Vine resumes” have crept through the latticework of the career landscape. 2. An Amazon resume developed by a web product manager creatively detailed his career. 3. Job-seeker billboards straddle the grounds of major highways. Attempts to disrupt the resume market have indeed multiplied. While brilliant, nuanced and attention-grabbing resumes are vital to set you apart from the competition, defining how to color outside the lines while maintaining a message that is crisp, clear and purposeful to your audience is equally vital. Unfortunately, the media’s need for sound bites and traffic-generation often supersedes providing pragmatic value to the job-seeking audience. While boots-on-the-ground resume strategists who have intimate experience working alongside job seekers sit quietly holding their tongues, the airtime often goes to reports touting sexy, outlandish resume methods under the guise of ingenuity. Filter Out the Hype If this confusing message has sent your blood pressure soaring and compelled you to seek the craftiest way to market yourself, calm down â€" creative resumes that tell a ‘value story’ still net the best results. More than ever, in fact, doing the roll-up-your-sleeves work to research your target company, hiring manager and company culture is critical (Glassdoor’s robust company search features will help speed your research!). By doing the arduous work in understanding your recipient’s needs and then vetting out your methods of fulfilling those requirement in your resume, cover letter, emails, elevator pitches, biographies and social media profiles you will ultimately stand apart and get the right person’s attention. While the flash-in-the-pan resume infographics may dazzle a news reporter, the reader that matters is the one who will choose your resume from the stack of thousands and ask you for the interview. That person is silently waiting for the most qualified candidate, not the most innovative sound-bite resume. Zero in Your Message on Your Target Reader Your focus when writing your resume should be the hiring decision-maker, and how you will help them make more money, get things done faster, stop falling behind, look better, regain control of the overflowing project list and stop the bleeding! Nothing less, nothing more. It’s not about you and your capriciously designed resume. It’s about THEM. Showcasing your words with a little flair is advisable â€" think, “framing” and value-add illustrations. For example, the following resume snippet shows how focus on the individual’s value proposition and achievements take center stage; the spots of color and the chart serve to frame the information, adding pop, but not overwhelming the message: Author: Jacqui Barrett-Poindexter is a Glassdoor career and workplace expert, chief career writer and partner with CareerTrend, and is one of only 28 Master Resume Writers (MRW) globally. An intuitive researcher, she helps professionals unearth compelling career story details to help best present their unique experience, skillset and interests in resumes and other career positioning documents as well as through social media profiles. In addition to being interviewed for television and radio stories, Jacqui has written for the Career Management Alliance Connection monthly newsletter and blog, ExecuNet’s Career Smart Advisor, The Kansas City Star, The Business Journal and The Wall Street Journal. In addition, she and her husband, “Sailor Rob,” host a lively careers-focused blog over at http://careertrend.net/blog. Jacqui also is a power Twitter user listed on several Best People to Follow” lists for job seekers.

Writing a Resume After 20 Years of Employment

Writing a Resume After 20 Years of EmploymentMany people who have been at the same job for 20 years tend to get 'the feeling' that they have been working for that company all of their lives. When we become accustomed to our jobs, it is hard to see any other options. Most times we don't even notice the possibility of looking for another job until our spouse says it and we ask how long it has been since we have looked for a new job.We may not even realize that we are missing out on something by not looking at our old resume. We have so much time now to go through our files and if there are certain keywords or information that we need, then we may be able to find it. However, the problem is that most people do not do this. They simply sign up for a service that offers all of the same resumes for a fee.Of course, with all of the money they charge for such services, there is little chance of seeing what they are selling to us is really what we want. The fact is that there is no easy way t o remove the 'feel' of the job, so all we can hope for is to replace it with something more interesting. Writing a resume after 20 years of working for a company is simply not possible.When writing a resume after 20 years of employment, you are most likely spending a lot of time over information that may not be important to your new employer. This means that you are just wasting your time, but if you take the time to prepare a resume that you can submit after only a short period of time, then you will be pleasantly surprised. Here are some tips to follow when writing a resume after 20 years.First, let's talk about what information we should include in our old resume. Your objective is the most important thing you should include. When you are looking for a new job, you want to make sure that you send an objective which is attached to the appropriate cover letter.The next thing you should look for when writing a resume after 20 years of employment is the experience. Whether you were a n assistant manager or a manager is not going to matter because the objective is going to state that you were involved in all of the important duties of the position. Therefore, you should include this in your old resume.Finally, you should always include the job title. In addition to the job title, you should also list the title of the organization where you worked. You should always include any other specific skills you have that relate to the job that you are applying for.Now that you know what information should be included in your old resume, you can prepare one that will meet the needs of the new employer that you are looking for. That can make your experience even more interesting and help you overcome the feeling that you have been working for the same company all of your life. Good luck!

Setting Your IEP For Writing a Resume Goal

Setting Your IEP For Writing a Resume GoalYou will probably want to look for some tips when it comes to setting your IEP goal for writing a resume. When the IEP for children is presented to the parent, the child will be the one that does all the work. The parent will be paying a fee to have their child's needs met while they are in the custody of the court. The fee that the parent is required to pay can be very high and it will depend on the type of case that has been presented to the court.There are many types of cases that involve an IEP for children. Some of the more common cases include when the parents cannot agree on how to raise the child and the case has been determined that they should be placed in the custody of the state. Other types of cases involve abuse and neglect of the child. The IEP goal for writing a resume will usually reflect how the judge feels about each situation.In many cases, a court will require that both parents give the custody of the child to the state w hen there is a disagreement between the parents. If the state is willing to pay a certain amount of money that they are required to pay the parents, then the state will get sole custody of the child. Some states may also be willing to put the child up for adoption. Once a judge determines the state wants to adopt the child, they will make an IEP for writing a resume for the child that will be presented to the parents.When the parents of the child disagree, the court rules can vary. It may be that only one parent can get custody or the other parent will get a trial period to prove their side of the custody issue. There may be other issues such as moving the child from one location to another. In any of these situations, a judge will decide if the child should move to be with the other parent or if the child can stay where they are at this time. Even though the IEP for writing a resume is a written document, a judge may still need to meet with the parents before making their decision. This meeting is called a Rule 41 meeting and it will take place before a hearing that takes place in a juvenile court. During this meeting, the judge will present the child's case and give them an IEP for writing a resume.It doesn't matter whether the child will be able to get the proper care they need during this time. The judge will use the IEP for writing a resume as a guideline and will base their decision on the child's medical needs. The judge will also use the IEP for writing a resume to make sure that the child is having the right amount of emotional support from both parents. The parents may be required to move or provide other things as part of the process of putting the child up for adoption. The parents will have to talk about the details of the plan that they have come up with.One of the main things that the judge will focus on will be the budget that has been set up for the child. The parents should be able to agree on how the money should be spent. The judge will ask them to provide information about the expenses that they have budgeted for the child. The child will also be given a detailed budget to follow.The child will be required to show what type of school they are in as well as what their grades are for each subject. There will be a checklist that is used to make sure that the child has followed the plans that have been presented to them. The IEP for writing a resume will cover all of the details of what will happen if there is an emergency for the child and how the parent should handle those circumstances. There will also be a list of what services the child will need from the state so that they can benefit in whatever way possible.

How to network when youre not looking for a job - Margaret Buj - Interview Coach

How to network when youre not looking for a job I often get asked what to do regarding networking when you’re working and you’re not looking for a job? A lot of people neglect their network when they start a new job and then it becomes harder to reach out to people you might not have spoken to in a while. I am not a big fan of the small talk myself â€" so what do you say when you contact someone? You might want to start with call: “Hello Mark, it is Margaret Buj here. It’s been a while since we’ve worked together at X (or seen each other at Y event). Your name popped out on LinkedIn and I thought “We haven’t spoken for a long time and I should call him!” I’d love to reconnect, see what you’ve been up to and catch up.” Then leave your contact details if you’re leaving a voicemail. When you do speak, start with genuine curiosity. Here are some questions you might want to use: Whats happened since youve last talked? What interesting changes have occurred? Reference something from their LinkedIn profile, or website and ask for them to elaborate and tell you about it? Do they keep in touch with other mutual contacts you have? What projects are they working on and what resources are they looking for? You may able to recommend them resources to help. You can also consider meeting someone you know at a networking event that way you can catch up while still meeting new people. Here are some actions to nurture your new and existing relationships: 1) Write down notes after the meeting: As soon as the event is over, make some notes on the conversations you’ve had, on the people you’ve met and actions to implement. 2) Contact them and begin a dialogue: Write an email indicating that you enjoyed meeting them and why it would make sense to continue the conversation. You can start by asking the person what they thought of the event via email. 3) Connect on social media: Send a LinkedIn invitation to your new contact with a note that you’ve enjoyed meeting them at the event where you met. You might want to follow them on Twitter as well. 4) Arrange a phone call or a meeting: If you both want to keep in contact, you might want to suggest a brief phone call. However, it is important you make it clear how the call can benefit both of you â€" not just you! If appropriate, you might even want to suggest a face to face meeting with contacts who have the most potential or where it simply makes sense. When you meet, show interest in who they are and what they do professionally. 5) Look for ways to offer value. Can you perhaps introduce two people who might be able to help each other? You might also want to send an article or book reference, relevant to something you discussed will show that you listened to the conversation. Very important â€" do NOT automatically add anyone to any mailing list you might have without permission â€" I hate when people do that and consider it a spam. Networking can take time and energy but you shouldn’t wait until you’ve lost your job to start networking. Small but consistent investment of time each week/month can bring huge dividends in the future for you and your network. To learn more about using LinkedIn for networking as well as finding jobs in a hidden jobs market, sign up for my FREE video training “Smart strategies to help you get interviews”.

10 Tips to Help You Retire Without an Identity Crisis - Hallie Crawford

10 Tips to Help You Retire Without an Identity Crisis If you are still in the world of gainful employment, you probably think you are too busy to think about retirement â€" after all, it is 3-7 years out. Or, you may be thinking you can just figure it out when you retire because you will have all the time in the world then. But be careful. That thinking can get you into trouble… and unexpectedly create an identity crisis down the line! Whether you are pushed out of your job, or leave on your own accord and on your own terms, you can feel a sense of loss. The emotional turmoil can be overwhelming and begin to chip away at your identity. So, what do you do? First, you have to work on your emotions and self worth. Then, follow these 10 tips to shift your mindset and shape what you   want to do next with your life.  Here are 10 tips to help you avoid this identity crisis:   Accept that retirement is one of the biggest transitions in life. Take time to grieve for what has been lost and then move forward. Realize that you have the freedom of choice and time to do some long, overdue self reflection. Tap into your passions, interests, strengths and values to create an ideal encore career or life. View life as an opportunity. Appreciate that your life experiences provide more options. Capitalize on the skills you have learned over the last 35-40+ years and leverage them. Bask in the glory of your mature perspective and listen to and follow your inner voice. Enjoy the thrill of new horizons. Cry a little, laugh a lot. Your old job is not your identity it does not define you as a person. You are unique and have many gifts to share with the world. This time in your life is an encore performance for you. You can say to yourself, “Watch out world, here I come.” To learn more about our encore coaching with Katie Weiser, contact us today for a complimentary consultation. and Katie Weiser Atlanta Career Coaching P.S. Do you want more help with your job search and networking? Check out our  Free Resources Page  today!