Career Coaching

This week I attended an incredible talk from recruiter Cheryl Bedard, who shared her thoughts on engaging properly with recruiters.  One of the things that struck me as particularly important is we often only think about contacting a recruiter when we are in-between jobs or thinking of making a move.  This is a very shortsighted strategy – active management of your career includes cultivating your connections with recruiters over time, along with the rest of your network, so that you have the support you need when you need it. In addition to this top tip, here are some other thoughts on how to make a recruiter your best friend: Be approachable and respond to emails and calls This one struck me as a surprise, as doesn’t everyone have a current email on their LinkedIn account?  Evidently not.  Make sure your profile is current and correct and use an email that you actually monitor and will respond to.  If you’re actively looking for a job, answer the phone.  This one may take a bit of a mind shift change as we’re programmed these days to let everything go straight to voicemail.  But if I’m a busy recruiter, instead of leaving a message, I may just hang up and call the next candidate on my list.  And Cheryl pointed out a very interesting piece of info – that coveted call from the recruiter might be tagged as spam on your phone.  The only way to know for sure is to take the call and see.  You can always hang up if it’s spam.  Lastly, listen to your voicemails and make sure your mailbox is not full, with an aim to return messages within 24 hours.  You should call them back and not text and definitely leave a voicemail if they don’t answer. Know what you want and why I often speak about this ad nauseam with career coaching clients.  If there are 5 similar resumes, why would the company pick you?  You need to have an answer to this question.  And just in case you were wondering, “I’m willing to do anything” is not a good response.  Cheryl’s perspective echoed mine, that the talent market does not respond well to generalists.  You need to be a specialist in something, clearly understand the value you bring and be able to articulate it confidently.  To that point there are 5 ways to speak to value – increased revenue, increased profitability, decreased cost, avoided cost, saved time.  Think about the question – “What do you do to make your bosses life easier?” if you’re struggling to come up with an answer to this one.  And even if during the interview process they don’t ask the question, “Why should we hire you?” you need to close with this as part of your summary and make sure they know why they should hire you.  Share, Share and Share A brilliant way to cultivate relationships with recruiters is to be a source of information for them and share […]

We tend to focus a lot on outcomes in our society.  Outcomes are how we evaluate success.  That project didn’t achieve the stated outcome, so we brand it as a failure.  The business is no longer a going concern, so it’s a bust.  Maybe we don’t get the promotion we were longing for, or a particular dream job, and we make ourselves miserable thinking about what could have been.  What should have been.  Focusing solely on outcomes is a recipe for misery I realize this headline may sound ironic coming from a woman who in a former career was responsible for pulling together performance dashboards and kpi updates, but I’ve found it to be true.  For many of us it would behoove us to embrace the Buddhist concept of non-attachment.  Which isn’t the same as not caring or becoming apathetic.  Let me share an example of what I mean by this. I love what I do as a career and leadership coach and facilitator.  In many ways I look at it as a vocation, rather than a job.  I’m deeply attached to the purpose of enabling and helping others to be effective and to develop clarity of purpose, compassion for self and others and confidence.  But my work in this space can feel like heaven, or it can also feel like hell.  And a lot of the difference has to do with how attached I am to certain outcomes. Any job can be heaven or hell Take career coaching for instance – there have been occasions when I’ve been sucked into my client’s outcome, that attachment to finding the perfect job or the perfect career (even though I emphatically assert there is no perfect job or career!).  I become aware of when that happens because I start noticing a few things.  I start worrying more than usual about my client interactions.  I worry they’re not getting enough out of the coaching process, or what they would say about me as their coach.  I start to worry about my reputation and whether I’ll get a bad review.  If it gets extreme, I start judging myself – maybe I should have suggested this or that.  I even start questioning my credibility as a coach.  And when that happens, I find myself violating my own rules as a coach, because I move from curiosity and inquiry into tell mode.  I lose sight of the fact that my role as a coach is to facilitate the process and instead try to drive the outcome.  In essence, I get overly attached to the client’s outcome and as a result make myself miserable and drive myself crazy. When I practice non-attachment that same interaction can look and feels very different.  The reason it feels so different is because I’m not attached to the outcome, and if I’m not attached to the outcome I can rest fully in the present moment. I’m not worrying about the question I just asked and whether it was good enough.  I’m […]

I look around and see everyone is pursuing these amazing careers and they have great lives.  They all seem to know what they’re doing, and they have a purpose.  I don’t understand why I can’t get in gear.  What’s wrong and missing in me that I can’t figure it out? I hear this a lot as a career coach.  And I also recognize it’s hard not to compare yourself to others.  When we are caught up in the cult of comparison, we are often caught up in the trance of the inner critic.  It’s our brain’s flawed way of trying to motivate ourselves to move into action by using comparison as the carrot to dangle in front of our faces or more aptly the switch to use on our backs.  It works up to a point where it stops working as a motivator. We prove and we prove and we prove and then we get tired. And wonder what it was all for.  And that is when we find ourselves on the messy path to growth.  To wholeness.  To uncovering our true value. When I first started out as a coach, my confidence was lower.  I was trying something new; I was worried about whether I would be a success and I spent a lot of time and energy ruminating about what I was doing in relation to other coaches.  I’d see their fancy LinkedIn posts of workshops they were running, filled with pictures of smiling participants, complete with slick materials bearing perfectly polished logos and I’d feel woefully inadequate.  I’d use it as fodder to beat myself up with.  I’d start to spring into action to post something, to plan something, in a desperate desire to compete, to put my own words out there too.  And then I’d be riddled with thoughts about how my idea wasn’t as good.  It would never work.  And I’d abandon the idea to the graveyard we each have in our heads.  Following your true north isn’t easy The inner critic comparison attack still happens from time to time for me, and chances it does for you too.  But it looks a little different now.  Recently I’ve turned down a few opportunities that have come my way, because I’ve sensed they weren’t the right path for me and didn’t resonate with my values.  Perhaps they would have been right for a different coach, or if I had a different idea or vision for my business.  And it was extremely hard to do because I knew deep down my inner critic wasn’t going to like it.  I was afraid of the fire that I knew saying no would brew.  Now Gertie (my inner critic) is telling me I was crazy to walk away from the revenue.  Telling me I am woefully inadequate compared to the coaches that took that path and look how successful they are.  And it’s getting in the way of progressing a couple of initiatives I want to kick off, which was […]

There’s a common misconception floating around currently where passion and purpose is concerned and the whole decision of career path.  “When I find my passion, my job won’t feel like work.” “When I’m following my purpose, I’ll be fearless. I’ll know I’ve found the right career path.  The things that used to scare me just won’t anymore.” Don’t get me wrong, tapping into passion and purpose is great.  A lot of my career coaching and leadership coaching work is geared at helping folks recognize these things for themselves and connect to them in a meaningful way.  But as far as the above statements are concerned – I hate to burst your bubble, but they just aren’t true. I’ll give you an example.  I love teaching, I love facilitating.  It’s when I’ve had probably the most moments in actual flow – those moments you lose yourself, time passes and you’re not watching the clock.  These are magical moments, as you’re completely present, mindful and 100% engaged in what you’re doing.  I often suggest coaching clients think about times when they have entered this state as a way of connecting with activities and topics that bring joy.  The more you notice a correlation between flow moments and a certain activity, it may be a good career path option to explore. There is no career path that will deliver constant flow But that doesn’t mean shifting your focus to that activity or career path will automatically bring you into an instant state of flow 100% of the time.  The human experience is way more complicated than that.  I’ve also had a lot of scary moments as a trainer and a facilitator.  Difficult participants, difficult clients, difficult colleagues.  Logistical challenges where a room hasn’t been ready, the materials failed to show up or a flash flood was suddenly headed my way with a room full of participants and no idea what to do.  Add to this my personal favorite – incomplete or incoherent course content that’s only been delivered to me a day or so before a program and I’m expected to pull off a miracle with no time to prepare.  Before every delivery I’m a little bit nervous.  There are often insecurities that come up – What if I don’t know enough?  What if I get asked a question I don’t know the answer to and look stupid in front of participants?  What if I can’t handle the challenging dynamics in the room?  Things are often coming at a facilitator a million miles a minute.  What if I miss something?  What if the feedback is negative from the participants and they express it was a waste of their time?  What if this team or coachee doesn’t get the outcome they’re looking for? I can’t recall a single delivery where I haven’t felt at least a twinge of anxiety in the run up to a session starting.  And yet I do it anyway.  Day in and day out, over and over again.  I show […]

There’s often a disconnect between what we want and where we find ourselves in this journey called life.  Maybe you come up with an idea of something to try or to learn, but you find yourself quickly dismissing it or finding reasons to rationalize why it would never work.  We often mistakenly perceive these things as a lack of motivation.  “I guess I just didn’t want it enough.  But when I find the right thing, I’ll know it because I’ll suddenly be motivated and filled with an intense passion!” Wrong.  Motivation doesn’t just fly out of the air when you find the right thing.  There is no right thing by the way.  Cultivating motivation and passion has a lot more to do with what voices you’re letting speak inside that crazy thing called your head, rather than the specific thing that you’re focused on. In my experience as a coach, folks typically are stuck for one of two reasons.  The answer lies in the source of the stuckness, and whether it has to do with an outer block or an inner block.  What is an outer block? An outer block is an external constraint or barrier that gets in the way of a person achieving their goal.  It’s something that needs to be planned for, managed, and actively worked.  Let’s say I’m thinking of making a career transition, and I want to move into finance.  Education will obviously be a barrier to me achieving this goal if I know nothing about numbers.  So identifying a course or a program to enroll in, using time management skills to plan for this course, budgeting for this course will be key.  Outer blocks are relatively straightforward and easy to coach.  The problem is that most of us suffer from inner blocks when there is a disconnect from where we currently are to where we want to be, when we feel stuck or are lacking motivation. The sinister world of the inner block and the inner critic In my time as a coach, I’ve never met a client (including myself) who didn’t suffer from inner blocks and the curse of the inner critic.  An inner block is a deep-seated belief that who we are and what we are just isn’t good enough and will never be enough.  We all have an inner critic.  Mine’s name is Gertie.  Here she is: Gertie loves to fly around my head at warp speed and bump into things.  She squeals with glee as she yells, “You don’t work hard enough Shelley!”  Deep down Gertie knows that I’m lazy and I’ll never do what it takes to finish that new initiative or project.  That online leadership academy I’ve been thinking about building and piloting – What a silly pipe dream!  And then I start thinking to myself, “Well, maybe it wasn’t that important after all.  Maybe I just didn’t want it that bad.” Or maybe I do, and I just allowed myself to get derailed because the inner critic […]

In this blog I’m sitting down with an amazing colleague and recruiter Kimberly Wilson, owner of TLR Search.  Kimberly has over 25 years’ experience as a recruiter based in Houston, Texas.  For this short blog post, I’m asking her a question I get asked a lot as a career coach, “How do I approach a recruiter?” About Kimberly Kimberly Wilson enjoys helping energy and chemical company hiring managers gain talent market share by bringing strong diverse talent to their attention and guiding them through any unconscious bias during the search process. Kimberly is the Managing Director/CEO of TLR Search, a recruitment firm she started. Kimberly began her career in retail management learning about customer service, people, and business. Taking that experience along with her education in psychology and sociology, she set out to help companies attract the best unique talent to align with their initiatives and to help individuals/candidates to see potential possibilities in their career.  How do I approach a recruiter?  When you reach out to recruiters and say “find me a job” it’s important to understand that’s not what recruiters do.  I have people who constantly ask, “I’d love to share my background with you, do you have fifteen minutes to chat with me?”  Okay, would you do that if you were dating someone?  I say that because recruiting is a relationship, just like any other important relationship we have. The bottom line is that if I had fifteen minutes to share with every person who asks me that, I wouldn’t have work to get for those people who are qualified for it.  My recommendation is reach out to recruiters but be very thoughtful and make it a win-win. Here’s an example of something that would land much more effectively with a recruiter: “Hi, I identified your organization as one that is doing work within the same sector I’m focused in.  I’m always open to looking at opportunities (if you’re still employed) or I’m currently looking (if you’re not employed).  I wanted to get on your radar and share my resume.  If there is anything in the future, I’d love to hear from you.  If you feel I could be of service to you and help you network on another opportunity, I’m happy to do so.” The key is to be of service The key is to be of service when you are sharing your resume.  What is the value you bring?  Here’s me and how I can create value for one of your clients.  At the end of the day, we don’t market ourselves on the benefits we bring, we market ourselves on the value we bring the client.  And the client when you’re looking for a job is the hiring manager that has posted the job. Then there’s the networking aspect and being able to assist the recruiter. “Here is how I can be of service and help you find candidates for the clients you serve.” Let’s say a recruiter reaches out to you and you’re […]