Imagine this:

Recruiter: So where do you see yourself heading in the next five years?

Ben the Executive: Good question, I don’t know. I’d like a new challenge.

Recruiter: Well, are you looking to take the next step up in your career, maintaining the status quo, or easing back?

Ben the Executive: I’m not sure.

Recruiter: Are you looking for the same industry or do you think you’ll try something new?

Ben the Executive: I guess I haven’t considered that yet. I just thought I’d look at what was around and see if I could see any challenging opportunities.

Recruiter: Right.

Ben the Executive: I have a lot of transferable skills. Perhaps if I gave you list of the type of things I could do, you could align them with a position you may have?

——- * * * ——–

If you’re thinking that this is a good way to annoy a recruiter, you’re right! But it’s not as rare as you may think.

Let’s take a closer look at Ben. He’s keen to get started on the job search, being frustrated and dissatisfied in his current role. He has no idea where he is heading, whether he wants to move to a different state or country or enter a new industry. A company name or type has not crossed his mind.

Despite his superior business savvy and a career that has been the envy of his peers, Ben has given no thought to his future other than the very short term—and that is out and away from where he is now.

His frustrations compound as he attempts to write his resume, knowing there is something wrong, but unaware of what.

In Ben’s desire to flee his current role, he mistakenly believes that the first thing he should do is write the resume and then everything will fall magically into place… despite nothing in life ever working that way.

He creates a resume that will suit a hundred different positions, in numerous different industries and he ends up with a one-size-fits all resume. Of course, he is dissatisfied with the outcome. The document is written without a target audience, country, or industry in mind. A disappointing interview with the impatient recruiter is another blow to Ben’s confidence. As far as the recruiter is concerned, Ben’s lack of decisiveness, his unfocused resume and his vague need for a challenge, indicates he is a leader incapable of making a decision. She won’t be recommending him for any roles she has coming up.

It is time for Ben to create a plan. Before writing his resume or seeking new work, he needs to take the time to establish his directions and preferences.

You can do this too.

In fact, as a job starts coming to an end, you need to take a personal and professional inventory. What did you like and dislike about this job and previous jobs? If you didn’t like the industry because it was cutthroat, hated working for a company with a poor reputation or questionable ethics, and suffered stress being a contract employee with no safety net, then it would be fair to say that a job with these attributes would or should not be on your list for next time.

On the other hand if you loved working with company-critical projects, enjoyed high-end strategy creation and execution and relished opportunities to sell,  then these should be key components of the type of role you’re seeking. When the recruiter says to you, “What type of role are you looking for next?” you can state your preferences and sound decisive and confident. This will help the recruiter assess if any of the appointments she has available may suit your experience and style.

Be honest with yourself. If you like jobs with prestige, power, respect and status, then working for a small business operation or a start-up, is unlikely to give you the type of environment you crave.

Little-by-little you’ll start to shape your future job as your insights grow and these will be crucial in articulating your value to others both at interviews and when you come to writing an audience-specific resume.

Wanting to leave your job and having no insight into your future career, infers your strategic and thought processes need work. There are professionals who can help, or you can start evaluating your motivators and preferences yourself.

Not taking the time now, may mean another job that “didn’t work out” and that may be even harder to communicate.

Looking for a new job is a typical reaction when you acknowledge your unhappiness with your current role. In these difficult times where competition is high, you may want to ask yourself “Is this what I really want?” What if there was a way to move forward without leaving behind job security and embarking on a stressful job search? Lateral Moves shows you how this may work for you.

Keeping your career advancement within the confines of your current employer isn’t such a bad idea, particularly if you like the job, but find your work colleagues or manager unbearable, or if you like the culture but not your specific job. Both of these things can be changed and it would be a shame to give away the security of a job and your accrued benefits on the strengths of a personality clash with someone who may end up leaving the company soon after you go!

Of course you need to come to terms first with what it is you like and dislike about your job, the people and the company. As long as the issues aren’t deal-breakers such as workplace bullying, the company’s looming financial collapse, a repressive culture, or an industry you just plain don’t like, then it may be worth investing in your future with your current company and removing yourself away from the deadbeat team mates or the inadequate manager and steam on forward with your own career.

Intrapreneurship

The word “intrapreneur” is based on “entrepreneur”. Just like an entrepreneur starting his or her own business, intrapreneurs observe opportunities and gaps in the workplace that can be leveraged. The intrapreneur sees what is wrong, works out what he or she can do to fix the problems, and then sells these ideas to people of influence. In that way, you are altering your own job description a bit at a time to incorporate something that gives you satisfaction and adds value to your employer.

Ask yourself:

• What is everyone complaining about most here?
• What can I do to fix the problem or ease the issue?
• Who is an open-minded mentor in this company who will listen to my ideas?
• What can I do to make sure i can take ownership of my idea and see it through?
• What talents do I have to contribute to implementing these changes?

Going up the Ladder

Make an appointment to speak with your human resources department to discuss your career. They may be very supportive of your ambitions and dreams and now that you have made them known, they may be able to place you in a program for advancing within the company. On the downside, they may raise performance issues that have stopped you from moving within the company of which you are unaware. While this may seem daunting, take it as a positive. Information is power and with this knowledge you can now adjust your attitude or performance to show you are attempting to reform and grow.

Influence your manager on the importance of multiskilling to learn other people’s jobs. As you become more productive, you will also be considered somewhat indispensable as the only person who has a big picture view of the department or team. You will become the “go to” person which may then place you in a position to be considered for a team leadership, management or training role.

Observe the wording the vacancies used for higher positions. Find out about them. Understand what other people do. It will provide you with a direction post for what skills you are missing and what you need to do to acquire them to be a contender for the roles you want.

Keep your ear to the ground. Be political and know what’s happening. Don’t be the last to know. People who walk around in a dream, or alternatively are too busy complaining, miss out on tidbits of information. If that tidbit is someone considering leaving or about to hand in his or her notice, then it’s time to ramp up who you talk with and decide how you will position yourself for the soon-to-be vacant job.

Same Job, Different Place

Like the job but the people leave a bit to be desired? Like the job but the manager is hopeless? If you work for a state, national or international company, think about a transfer to another branch, department or division.

Take on Short-Term Assignments

Short-term roles can be a secondment to a different department or a special project. It can be a study grant, a job-sharing initiative or research. You could become a union representative, a fire warden, or a health and safety officer — all jobs that expose you to different levels of the company and different people than you would normally come into contact with.

Short-term assignments help by:

• Offering opportunities to be seen in a new light
• Enhancing your profile in the organisation and exposing you to new people
• Developing new skills for upward mobility

Whatever You Do…
Don’t stand still! There comes a time when you need to stop complaining and start taking action! Think about what you want, lay the foundation for getting it and engage a positive attitude.

You’ve tried everything you can to get a job over the past year. Your hopes have been raised, they’ve been dashed, raised again and dashed again. The couple of interviews you’ve scored, they’ve told you you are over-qualified or under-qualified or you’ve failed to connect in some way. Whatever you’ve been told, it hasn’t been what you wanted to hear; those three words—You are hired”.

What you have been doing is not working. If it had worked, you’d be sitting in a new job by now, or at the very least, you would have attended more than a handful of interviews in a year.

Take for example, Eduardo. Eduardo is originally from Venezuela where he was a leading executive for a mining company. He’s led mergers and acquisitions that have reaped millions of dollars, he’s negotiated huge contracts, and he was known as a mover and shaker in the business world. Today, Eduardo is working in Melbourne Australia as a department manager in customer service for a telecommunications carrier.

And he hates it.

It’s dull, he is unappreciated and he’s been stuck there since he arrived in Australia about 15 months ago.

This wasn’t his plan, but he felt that employers would find his outstanding achievements and career background daunting and his opportunities would be limited if he held out for a senior-level role. Eduardo wanted to find work quickly; to settle in and start making a life for himself in Australia. He was prepared to take a giant step backwards if it meant a quicker settling-in period. His resume, a skeleton of what it could and should have been, provided precious little information and certainly none about his substantial business achievements back in Venezuela.

For the past year, he has sent this resume to apply for so many jobs, he’s lost count. Eduardo is despondent. Is this all he can expect? To be a departmental manager in customer service for the rest of his career?

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over-and-over and expecting a different outcome.

If Eduardo hasn’t made any headway in more than a year, then something needs to change. He simply cannot expect that the resume that hasn’t caught the interest of anyone is going to suddenly become something it isn’t. He can’t expect that a weekly visit to search for advertised jobs on a Saturday is going to do anything but fail, as it has for months on end.

What does he have to lose if he changes his strategy? So far, he’s dumbed down his experience to get a job he hates. His resume fails to inspire anyone, and any attempts to apply for roles for which is is qualified, fail immediately as nothing in his resume shows him as anything other than an overly ambitious and unqualified departmental manager.

What would happen if Eduardo took a new approach?

What if he decided to embrace his experience and lay claim to his achievements as a successful businessman? What if Eduardo stopped trying to sell himself as being something he isn’t, and instead, showed the confident demeanour that allowed people to see his authentic self?

What if… indeed.

Time will tell if taking the risk of revealing his true experience and taking it to the market, will yield good results. The probability that he will do better, is encouraging. Eduardo can talk confidently about what he knows, he won’t be continually altering his interview responses to tone down his experience, or remember what is and is not on his resume. By making a new pitch, by taking ownership of his skills, knowledge and experience, Eduardo will no longer hide behind a pretence easily identified by search consultants. He can claim his true business achievements, he can demonstrate that he is a genuine, credible contender, and with that comes the conviction, poise and courage that he’s been afraid to reveal until now.

Have you been doing the same thing over-and-over and expecting a different outcome? Perhaps you need to consider changing your job search strategy. After all, what do you have to lose?

It happens to a great many people. Personal circumstances are the catalyst for removing themselves from the workforce for an extended time. It could be four or five years caring for children, it could be a year or more caring for sick or elderly parents, six months as the executor of a Will, or just a returning to full time education. Whatever it is, it doesn’t enter your mind how difficult it is to represent that time on your resume until you have to do it. If you don’t explain your absence from the workforce, you let people assume what you’ve been doing—and letting people assume is never a good thing! Today’s webinar addresses that issue: how to show what you have done during your absence from the paid workforce and relate it as transferable professional skills and experience.

Click here to view the embedded video.

You’re flipping through the job advertisements online because, well, you’d like some money to pay for your mobile phone bill, and have a decent social life. Of course, Mum and dad have been all over you to get a job now you’re finished high school and frankly, if the truth be known, you’re pretty keen to start your life.

It’s easy to get discouraged. Job after job asks for experience and you have none. Well, none to get excited about anyway. You’ve tutored a few kids in maths, helped with some fundraising a couple of times, and in Year 10 you completed a two-week work experience placement where you sat around at a computer and added names and addresses to the database.

So here you are with no experience, no qualifications and you need to write a resume to sell yourself and give yourself half a chance of getting an interview. The question is, how?

Forget Clichés: Everyone writes “excellent communication and interpersonal skills” and “reliable and trustworthy”, “a team player”, “a people person” or an “innovative thinker”. When you describe yourself in this way, you’re only giving an opinion. And unfortunately, it’s your opinion. You may as well say “I’m the most fantastic, wonderful person in the whole world” because that means about as much and has as much value! If you’re going to sell yourself properly, then give an example of how you have used your skills to benefit others.

• Won the trust of teaching staff to retain the keys to the school sports administration area. Monitored inbound and outbound sports equipment, recorded names, and ensured the security of the area through a special authorisation/validation process.

Work with what you have: Don’t discount what you have achieved or done in the past. People don’t expect school leavers to have worked on a million-dollar merger and acquisitions. Our example showed that you have helped with fundraising, tutored some other students in maths and completed a two-week work placement. Check these out and think whether you think they sound impressive. (Hint: You should, because others will).

• Raised more than $2,000 as a regular fundraiser and contributor to the annual Royal Children’s Hospital Appeal. Door-knocked and provided a compelling case for donations, brainstormed a fun costume event to achieve sponsorship, and volunteered at the change counting centre throughout the 24-hour telethon.
• Devised easy-to-understand methods to train students struggling with Year 10 Advanced Mathematics. Students previously failing, progressed to complete the course with a “B” average—crediting improvement to the quality of assistance provided.
• Selected as only Year 10 student to complete two-week work experience program at the ABC Corporation. Initially an observation role, initiative and willingness to learn was rewarded with hands-on task in entering customer data into the database used to generate revenues for the business.

Sounds great doesn’t it? Who would have thought that those little items you disregarded as meaningless could look like e-x-p-e-r-i-e-n-c-e. You know that word you thought you were missing?

Now that’s all very nice I hear you say, but what I have nothing? No fundraising, no tutoring other students, no work experience placing? Nothing! zero, zip, nadda.

If that’s the case, we bring out the secret weapon. Your academic experience.

There are all different types of experiences. Life experiences, work experience, academic experience. Just getting through some days can be a lesson-learned!

So your secret weapon to combatting the “lack of experience” is to show your knowledge.

Think back over your last year of studies and think of projects that you worked on either by yourself or in groups with other students.

Think of projects that will showcase your knowledge and show how you used your problem-solving skills and team spirit. It would be a good idea to look first at the subjects you particularly enjoyed and for which you received the best results. Out of those projects you worked on, choose three or four that really stand out in your mind for either being interesting, demanding and hopefully, where you received a good score!

Now write down this information on a sheet of paper so you can work this out.

• To what subject was this project related?
• What (briefly) were you required to do for this project (such as write a report, for example)?
• How many team members worked on this project in addition to you?
• What were the most difficult aspects of the project? In other words, were there any specific challenges that impacted on the project’s progress or problems you had to overcome? These could be personal and/or professional. For instance, research may have been difficult to access, or one of your team members may not have worked as much as you thought they should have, or perhaps everyone’s timetables clashed. So what, if any, challenges did you have to overcome with this project?
• What action did you take to overcome those challenges/problems?
• If it was a team project, what specific part did you play? Were you assigned a certain area to research and write about? What was your direct input?
• Did you have to present this project to the class? Or was this project presented to a real-life employer as a solution to a real-life problem?
• What feedback did you receive for this project (such as a grade or award)?

So how would this look? Here are a couple of examples:

• Marketing: Key contributor to team of five researching the local café market and assessing how major players dominate with products, services, and brand names. Project explored the challenges new entrants to the market faced when pitted against retail “goliaths”. Team members’ competing time demands prompted a resolution to produce each component two weeks prior to deadline, allowing time to fine-tune the presentation prior to tutor’s review. Personally developed SWOT analysis on four major cafés in Australia. Result: 87%—one of the highest across the entire marketing level.
• Economics—Markets: Produced report exploring the issues surrounding Europe’s anti-trust case against Microsoft USA, and drew connections with the impact of monopoly power on the markets and consumers. Sourcing unbiased information proved a challenge, and disseminating complex information into graphs necessitated meticulous planning. Praised for report’s easy-to-understand format, which balanced the economic aspects of a monopoly with the anti-trust case. Score: 95%.
• Management: Composed 3,000-word report on the key components of being an effective manager. Scanned volumes of information to mine appropriate data, while simultaneously juggling a demanding schedule of competing project deadlines. Scoured Internet resources and traveled to several libraries to secure up-to-date reference material. Defined the functions and attributes of a manager and explored the challenges faced. The project received a score of 93%—a significant success in light of the lecturer’s high-expectations and stringent scoring methods

Powerful? Hard-hitting? You bet! Employers would have a hard time overlooking a resume that describes this kind of experience. Yes, I said experience. Look how each example also describes how you have solved problems to get a result.

This works.

You just need to think a little creatively as to how you can best describe yourself in a way that meets the requirements of the job.