Previously, we talked about the challenges of finding gainful employment and how the rules are changing when identifying and interviewing for an opportunity. Employers are savvy and know they can benefit from the amazing resources and talent available – so how do you make yourself standout from the crowd?
Consider the old way versus the new: employ vs. engage. Not only is this a different process, it’s also a mindset. Companies are looking for talent that is fresh, updated, are quick learners and who can take the ball and run with it. More of a “here’s what I can do for you” versus the old “here’s what I can do.”
Engagement is about getting people’s attention, offering something of value and then creating buy-in or participation. It’s not spouting your accomplishments or data dumping, waiting for the other person to be impressed.
As a Baby Boomer, your 30 years of stability aren’t necessarily a bonus – they may signal lack or creativity or innovation to a different generation. Don’t take that as a personal slight – it’s just one more way the employment process has changed. Instead, identify key successes, challenges resolved and obstacles you overcame to demonstrate your value and skills.
When writing UPSIDE, Bonnie and I were very aware of these shifts, so we dedicated an entire chapter on how to leverage your value by identifying your existing marketable skills. You can download one of the key exercises, the Power Core, to jumpstart the process for free (http://upsidethebook.com/downloads.html). Once you determine which skills are valuable in the current economy, you can then start identifying which industries need your abilities and offer opportunities.
Andrea Woolf wants you to have it all – the self-proclaimed “Queen of Having It All” discovered her gift of coaching others through challenges at a very young age. While other children played outside, Andrea could be found in her mother’s salon chatting with clients. Eventually, the client would reveal their personal obstacle and commit to specific action steps to resolve it by the time they left.
Andrea applied this talent to a very successful corporate career.While juggling massive projects in a high-pressure environment, she still found that helping individuals achieve their goals to be the most rewarding.When she discovered the role of executive coaching, Andrea says it was like “finding the glove that fit me.”
Her clients are fueled by Andrea’s core values of integrity, full self-expression and inspiring magnificence.She believes that all business is created through powerful and connecting communication, which quickly leads to amazing results and successes.Andrea is committed to inspiring others to own their personal magnificence by thinking and playing bigger while embracing the huge difference they make in the world.
Andrea certainly walks her talk, too.A confessed ‘recovering perfectionist’, Andrea discovered many of the tools she coaches others with as she wrote her first book, Ignite Your Life! How to Get From Where You Are to Where You Want to Be.The need to write the ‘perfect’ book almost immobilized her, but lucky for us, she overcame her self-doubt and busy mind and voila, the book is now a reality!
Her advice to others?“The only thing between you and your dreams is YOU!”How very true – that’s why in order to have it all, you must let go of expectations and doubts and embrace the possibilities.Learn more about Andrea’s inspiring work and sign up for your free chapter newsletter at www.IgniteYourLifeBOOK.com.
This eight-part blog series, exclusively for www.UpsideTheBook.com, highlights the Every Woman Visionary. Each of these women, along with myself, are featured in the first-ever Spirited Woman 2012 Directory: Resources For An Inspired Life! (www.thespiritedwoman.com) set to launch on 12/12/11. It is an exciting time for women, and the FREE magazine-style digital directory – rich with inspirational stories, resources and more – is our gift to you. Women from six countries and over 25 states participated in the directory.
Economist and best-selling author Juliet Schor has a new video describing the new American Dream: http://vimeo.com/26573848. The film shows why economic and job-related strategies from the past that don’t work in today’s economy. It depicts, in her words, “what a post-consumer society could look like, with people working fewer hours and pursuing re-skilling, homesteading, and small-scale enterprises that can help reduce the overall size and impact of the consumer economy.”
In our book Upside, we talk about the need for creating your own career crystal ball of the future. This film is an excellent example of our concept: taking advantage of emerging job opportunities based on the needs of the future. It also takes into account the need to pay attention to our dwindling resources as that affects job opportunities, too. (more…)
During my recent vacation in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, I attended a lecture on the incredible survival rate of the Coyotes. We have much to learn from them.
Some background information shows that they once lived only in a few of the western states. Now they can be found everywhere in the US—and surprisingly in our cities.
What makes them so hearty and clever? As the ranger explained, “They are in a constant state of want.” That phrase can best be translated to they search out every nook and cranny to find food. They will eat anything—from garbage to rope. They adapt to the city life and find ways to get what they need in spite of the high density of human population. They fit into their changing environment and are almost invisible to us. (more…)
When the year 2000 was about to dawn, there was much speculation about changes that might occur – experts feared the binary code in most computers systems would crash, causing chaos and inability to run everything from our bank accounts to gas pumps to grocery stores.
While that scenario sounds like science fiction, it was barely 11 years ago. Luckily, the massive meltdown didn’t take place but it did usher in an era of precedented change. This rate of change can be divided into two schools: emerging or “not-known” opportunities, and completely unknown events. (more…)
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