Key tips to optimize your career management and job changing strategy.
At Executives On Go we know the importance dealing properly with your career management and job searching in uncertain situations to be better prepared to consider options and take decisions.
Therefore, we remind you of some key tips that could help you improve the positioning of your profile in the job market and in the development of your professional career.
With these suggestions we hope to encourage you to develop a career plan with a broader and more comprehensive personal and professional insight, that allows you to face this journey as effectively as possible.
Develop your own plan and strategy for better career management.
The way to approach career management has changed in recent decades. Now, each person is responsible for their own professional development.
And in this process, the traditional job searching approach of developing a resume, conducting interviews and talking to our contacts is not enough, if not complemented by other strategies.
It is necessary to have an strategical plan to guide you, a set of actions planned that make it easy to make decisions to meet a goal. In this case, to find work or take on a new professional challenge giving value to your personal and professional profile (which you do best to do work). A roadmap that allows you to address the expected and unexpected opportunities and obstacles that the future holds and navigate through the competitive environment you find in relation to your profile.
Key tips to developing your career management plan
1 Analyze your initial situation
The starting point is to become aware of your current situation. Carefully analyze, for example, what you consider today your strengths and weaknesses, as well as the opportunities and threats of the labor market.
And appreciate the different options you can consider. Like, for example,
- Improve your positioning and professional progression within your organization (internal promotion, career management plan, development, etc.).
- Take a leap to a new challenge.
- Switch to a new project in another organization or industry.
- Take a turn on your career. Explore professional options.
- Proactively manage occupational risks, pressure and stress situations.
- Realign your work life and personal priorities.
- Other
2 Exercise self-knowledge and reflection.
To build a solid foundation, you need to think about your skills, interests, passions, values and whether you’ve integrated them into your professional performance and how much you’ve done it. Lists the priorities regarding professional and personal relationships and the responsibilities involved in each of them.
Reflect and discover aspects about who you are, what you do, how you do it, how you are perceived, that you want to achieve.
You may define multiple professional identities. In this case it is advisable to segment them and manage them with a certain order of preference, so as not to discard any of them, but keeping in mind that each may require a different or complementary approach in your approach to the market.
Also ask people who know you, from the professional field or in the personal field, how they would present you to someone who does not know you. What they think your strengths and areas of improvement are. What is your attitude and your degree of initiative in the face of changes, new challenges and problem solving?
Reflect on your personal and family circumstances. What conditions you can have at any given time, the degree of flexibility, the availability to move or to settle in another city.
In the midst of a time of professional reinvention, it is essential to know each other and to know what our competences are. Identity and authenticity.
3 Exploring market situation and perspective
This phase involves collecting and analyzing information about industries, companies and functions of interest to you and for your professional development. Who are you targeting?
In order to develop your value proposition, you have to identify first what type of companies may be of interest to you, which will ultimately also be part of your goal. To do this, focus on what they offer, how they offer it, what their customers are, what their culture is, what values they support, how they are positioned in the market and how a profile like yours might fit in the moment they are currently going through.
What are the real needs of companies regarding the role or roles you play? Note that there are several types of needs:
- Those that the company tell us
- Those that are not seen and sometimes the company is not aware of them
- The ones that the company highlights but that does not really try to solve.
What kind of companies may be interested in hiring a profile like yours?
4 Define your value and strategy proposition
Your value proposition begins to be set up by overlapping your interests (phase 2) with what is happening in the market (phase 3) and setting a goal for your search for new options. What is my competitive advantage? Who am I addressing?
Your professional goal will be like a compass that will bring you closer to the job you’re wanted.
• What do I want to do professionally? (interests, motivations, type of company, sector, conditions, position, responsibilities).
• What can I contribute to the company? (attitudes, experience, knowledge, skills, training, skills).
Your value proposition should include what makes you different from other similar profiles.
We are not only referring to your experience and knowledge, but also to the personal touch that you can bring to it because of your emotions, behaviors, attitude, way of doing things and ideas, for example.
It has to reflect why a company beyond its dimension should hire you. That is, you must make it very clear what makes you unique, different and unrepeatable in the market. And to help you understand it better, the only thing (something tangible or intangible) can be your way of communicating, writing, managing, reducing, improving, creating, solving problems, or other skills you’ve developed.
In short, what is the benefit of the company when hiring you? Why should he choose you? How will you help this company grow?
Your value proposition is part of you and your personal brand, so they expose it in a concise but clear way and through the channels that best fit your goal….. in the excerpt and title of professional networks, in your resume, in the cover letters, in your bio, in your elevator pitch, in interviews and in any tool or occasion that is relevant to do so.
Check your C.V. and your verbal presentation to develop a new version that incorporates your value proposition, and presents each experience with information about the role and skills you have put into play especially in the face of every challenge you have had to face. It may be interesting to look for similar profiles that make a better impression on us and discuss how our competitors might be presented.
Prepare interviews, identify success stories and challenges in which you have put your skills at stake, incorporate answers that add value to your profile and explain your orientation to the business and the results of your company. Provide examples of specific situations: circumstances, your challenge, your performance, and your results.
Many times we assume that the other one knows what we know how to do, and we don’t bother to generate that kind of contact or work well the message we want them to have of us.
Work your message to get clearly moving who you are, your value proposition and from this definition and taking into account that that is your identity, the degree of flexibility you offer to consider other options or alternative profiles.
5 Implement your action plan and follow up
This phase is probably the most funny one. Here you can validate your approach and make decisions based on specific facts and data.
It’s time to determine the tasks, timelines, and resources that will contribute to your goal. What, how, when and with whom you will perform the actions.
Document and follow all actions and the type of response obtained. Choose a simple and useful tool to track your actions and contacts.
Review and improve your presence and visibility on social networks and forums or events related to your goal. Work your network of contacts. Always with proportionality and in a way that is relevant to your goals. We need to be very clear about what we want them to remember about us, and it is appropriate to build trusted networks that are sustainable over time.
The quality contact network can allow you to access hidden job offers. Many offers are not visible, but they exist, and the network of contacts is the best way to get them.
Remember not to assume in any case that the other person knows or knows how to interpret your profile and your value proposition. Move your message. Test your presentation, get feedback and review.
Empathize with your interviewer, understand what they are looking for and change your perspective to theirs.
The need you’ve really detected is? Is your profile a valid solution to that need?
Then, highlight from your profile the features that really facilitate the business of the company, solving specific problems and generating the desired results.
Periodically review the plan to make sure you’re being realistic about your goals and the actions you’re taking. Make the necessary adjustments to your presentation, in focus, to your expectations.
While focused on your profile and goal, stay responsive to new opportunities you haven’t previously set out that can give you other perspective or additional information to adjust your initial focus. Explore your creativity to the fullest, imagine alternatives that, although you may seem unviable or meaningless at first, could have a lot of potential.
Consider new models of work and collaboration: interim, project work, telework, entrepreneurship, etc.
6 Check the situation achieved
It is important to have in mind that many times we set our own limits:
- Making some mistakes is part of the learning process. The important thing is not to give up the first time.
- When you face of a mistake, analyze, learn, rectify and continue.
- Introduce new approaches in an orderly way to validate its effectiveness.
If you work a holistic approach to career management, you will
- Improve your positioning in the face of new opportunities and be more competitive.
- A more accurate market interpretation and more effective approach to it.
- Improve market needs detection.
- Greater flexibility and adaptation to opportunities.
Lucinda Martínez
Partner-Director Executives On Go
Lucinda Martínez | Perfil LinkeIn
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