CAREER SERVICES

Advancing in your career doesn’t necessarily mean a leadership track.  What it does mean is growing professionally, expanding your skills and experience, and being more valued.  Sometimes there are obstacles.  There might be a perception that you are too young. There might be a perception that you are too old.  Why?  Without examining existing prejudices, you will have no way to counter it. What exactly does too old or too young mean?  Or what if you are the only guy in a predominantly female-driven environment?  Or what if you are the only woman in a predominantly male environment?  Do you learn gender differences to succeed?  Or what if there is a brash, aggressive worker posturing to take over your job?  Or what if you want to create a new position, but don’t know how to make that happen, let alone be heard?  Or what if your company was just bought out, and you don’t know how to navigate the new culture where the old rules have been thrown out, and the new rules just do not make any sense?  Hiring a career strategist, like me, will help you rise above the fray to objectively look at your options.  You don’t necessarily have to leave to wield more influence.  However, you will need a specific strategy unique to your situation. Here are some factors to consider:

1. Evaluate what needs to be changed. Does your reputation or perceived value need to change?  Have you come up with new ways to do things?  Is there an challenge that hasn’t been resolved?
2. What is your recommendation for the change and why? Do you have enough research data to be credible?
3. What role you want to play? Why are you qualified to lead this change?
4. Address specific obstacles to success. How would this change adversely affect others?  How would this change positively affect others?  If you are proposing a change that would cause a leadership gap if you leave your current role, how would you fix that?  Anticipate why they would say, “No”.
5. What outcomes are you predicting as a result of this change? What are your measures for success?
6. Who would your allies be and what is the best way to enroll them into your point of view?
7. When would you present your proposal, and when will you follow up for an answer?
8. Be prepared for a counter-proposal. Change initiatives often require patience and negotiation.  Are you prepared to do both?  If not, it’s not a proposal, it is an ultimatum. 

Because of the complexity of a career advancement plan, an impartial career strategist, like me, will be invaluable.  I’ll poke holes in your argument, improve it and help you revise your proposal before you present it.  Call today to begin a conversation on how Courageous Change strategies will benefit you. Ask for Shary Raske at (314) 560-1088. 

Three Real Life Case Studies.  Real People, Real Career Advancers 

★ Twenty years ago a recent college graduate came to me with a vision for his life.  At age 23, he said that by the time he reached 40 he wanted to be making $300,000 a year.  I said, “Let’s get to work!”  We developed a plan, and he landed his first professional level job.  Five years later, he re-activated services with me, and he advanced his career by going to a different company doing the same thing.  Three years later, he re-activated again, and I showed him how to make a lateral move to broaden his skill sets and worth.  Once those new skills were mastered, he continued to gain visibility and credibility until 2 years later when he was promoted into a leadership position. His career path accelerated after that.  Suffice it to say, we have worked together every 3 to 5 years, and now 20 years later he is making $285,000 a year, and he is well-positioned to retire by age 50. 

★ A general manager of a retail store chain came to me because he actually wanted to take a step down within the organization, and didn’t know how to make that happen.  First we got clear about what was motivating that desire, and I learned he had a real passion for preventing merchandize from being stolen.  For him it was like a big puzzle that needed to be solved, and his ideas were much broader than having undercover security personnel.  From his analysis with stronger controls, he could save the organization $3,000,000 annually.  Yet he was facing resistance to making a change, because the owners of the chain saw his leadership as the general manager as too valuable.  So what we decided was for him to groom a highly skilled replacement before he could move into a created position as the Director of Loss Prevention.  Once the owners saw that the leadership direction would not suffer with the new person in place, he was able to make his move, too. 

★ I worked with a woman engineer who had poor social skills.  Because of her blunt, abrasive nature, none of her brilliant ideas were adopted.  Matter-of-fact, her manager told her if she came up with one more idea she would be fired.  She did not make the connection that calling her superiors stupid was preventing her from being heard.  We worked together on a plan to help her tone down her confrontational style behavior.  Rather than saying, “I think you should do it this way” she started asking questions like, “What do you think if we did it this way?  What would be the advantages and disadvantages?.”  At first she thought it was ridiculous to ask questions, when she already knew the superiority of her ideas, yet after a while saw the value of gaining support from others first.  It took her about six months for her superiors to begin to trust her again, but eventually her superiors began listening and adopting her ideas.  Where six months before a new automated inventory control system that she had designed was turned down, she now could present it and get approval to move forward. 

If you are ready to advance in your career, call 314-560-1088.

Job Search Coaching Projects.  Short-term projects range from four to eight months.  This includes a new resume, learning success behaviors, job interviewing practice, career research meeting practice, networking at group events, networking one-on-one, cover letters, job search methodologies and smart salary negotiation. 

Full time Job Hunters risk taking a job for less money just because they want to be employed again.  They also sometimes miscalculate what is needed to have a successful job search campaign because they don’t know what they don’t know.  

Recently I worked with a man who had received outplacement services and was not given how to measure whether he was being effective in his job search.  Without success metrics he didn’t know that his focus was too broad, his strategies were too weak, and his resume, while it looked great, didn’t reflect what he was targeting.  When a full time job hunter retains my services, we conduct a 2-hour analysis to see what is in place and what isn’t.  Sometimes it may take 8 to 10 weeks to get everything in place, but that preparation rapidly accelerates job search results. 

For both full time job hunters, and those who are searching while being employed,  looking only for job openings will actually slow you down from attracting the right opportunity. Instead, I teach professionals to switch their thinking by being market analysts and management consultants to actually identify opportunity that is never even advertised.  Call Shary Raske to learn more at 314-560-1088.  

There are two kinds of job hunters:  Those who are employed and those who are not.  Yet a professional who works full time at 37.5 hours a week will have a drastically different plan than a professional who works 60 hours a week.  Then add other factors such as working out of the country two weeks out the month.  Without a robust job search plan these factors can significantly slow down job search momentum. 

Employed job hunters have the challenge of getting their full time work completed, with a smile on their faces while squeezing out time to change jobs.  What works best for the employed?  A 4-hour a week plan, 6 hours, or even 10 hours?  Your search plan must be sustainable over time. And it has to factor in kids soccer games or care of an elderly parent.  What can be delegated?  What are you willing to sacrifice?  Remember consistent effort gets the best results. 

I worked with a woman who devised a 12-hour a week job search plan to her already intense work schedule of 55 hours a week. I told her this plan would work for about three weeks, and then she would fall in a heap exhausted.  She didn’t believe me, because she had previously worked 14 hour days and more while she worked full time while getting her masters.  Her 12 hour a week plan failed.  Why?  Because there was more to manage physically and emotionally.  A masters program seldom has rejection in the equation, and that’s an every day occurrence in a job search.  Without anticipating setback, the rejection took its toll.  Even the best sales people have a recovery plan in place.  She regrouped and eventually created a 6 hour a week plan, built momentum, and made her job change. 

Also, employed job hunters must tell others to be discreet, particularly if you are at the executive level.  Have a plan about what to say if you get found out.  If you haven’t been on a search for 3 years or longer, retaining a career strategist, like me, will get you up to speed quickly.  Call Shary at 314-560-1088. 

Because of my great respect for graduating students, I am particularly sensitive to professionals who have graduated 2, 3, 4 years ago, and still have not attracted their first professional level job.  Here are  talented, highly-motivated people still working in call centers, movie theaters, and restaurants making $9 – $12 an hour with a load of debt.  One of the gaps is that many universities focus on job fairs and internships without offering courses on what occupations to choose.  Worse yet, students are not trained how to job hunt other than applying to jobs online (which represents a very small percentage of actual opportunity).  Universities are sometimes grossly underfunded for the number of students who need advice, leaving students without a focus or direction.  It’s like saying, “Okay, dig out of this hole, but we are only going to give you a water bottle as your only tool to get out.”  Ouch!

And their parents are not trained in today’s job search methodologies either.  After many of my executive clients lamented to me that their son or daughter could not find work, I said, “Send them to me, and if they can follow directions, I can help them succeed.”  And that’s exactly what happened.  Over time, I developed a distinctly different program from my executive program, called Project Quick Start, a four-month comprehensive course on how to attract professional-level work.  One of the unique features of this course is teaching students the linguistics of the industries they are targeting.  Often students have great skills and even transferrable work experience but they are not using the right words.  Instead, they are using words to describe themselves either from an academic point of view or using words from the wrong industry, never understanding that each industry has it’s unique lexicon.  Once that lexicon is learned, it helps the grad to be perceived as if they already have been in that industry for years.  Another feature is to teach that each organization has a unique personality (called culture) that once learned can be used to help graduates be more attractive job candidates.  Subtle, yet vital, fixes like this can even make the difference of being offered more money at the time of a job offer.

Shary helped me advance my career by teaching how to use the same language a future employer would use to describe my transferable skills. She gave me the confidence to interview well. I would recommend Shary to anyone who wants a better job. – Chloe Richardson

Brief Summary of Project Quick Start

– Courageous Introspection homework to identify occupational choice and target industries.

– Marketing materials including Resume reviewed, revised, and improved both in document and text format.  Cover Email/Letter (not always needed, but those who expect to see it want to see one)  LinkedIn: reviewed to make sure the grad has the right key words to make it easier to be found, and how to use LinkedIn to research potential employers

– Job Interview preparation.  20 of the most frequently asked job interviewing questions and how to answer them.  Five guiding job interviewing principles to answer ANY question. Power statement of who you are in terms of ( skills, experience, and interests) that quickly answers the request, “Tell me about yourself.”  Evaluating job offers.

– How to build a Target Organization list to show others to get introductions.  How to generate job leads from informational meetings and networking events.  How to get linguistic information to be more accepted.   Script for informational meetings to enlist others into your cause. Script for phone follow-up calls.

– Strategies for developing job interviews through career research meetings.  Using career research meetings to identify barriers to success and getting answers on how to overcome those barriers.

– Ways to build momentum to accelerate your job search.  Getting organized, creating structure and accountability.

– Social Skills training.  Overuse of social media has weakened face-to-face interaction making it more difficult to job interview.  I provide Clear and Confident Communication coaching and generational differences training for grads to talk to 45 – 55 year old professionals on a peer-to-peer basis, instead of child to parent basis.

Call Shary at 314-560-1088.