Most people find it really hard to find a new job, especially when they have been let go from their company. A challenging economy and mental anguish from redundancy, add to these difficulties.
On one of our recent Staffwell Advance (job search help) consultations, we met with a manager who was having a difficult time figuring out, on her own, what direction she should now focus her career in.
We first reviewed her resume. It seemed average in content, but had extremely poor formatting. She was one of the manager’s of a B2B company, responsible for a sales team.
We started with our career discussion, which is a lot of open ended Q&A session. The questions, in the end, helped her realize that she did not really enjoy what she was doing. She used to be a top salesperson and could not handle the stress of her ‘large’ team not performing well. She blamed it on the company not allowing her to hire better people, and was quite angry that they were always on her case.
We then probed more about the management part of her job responsibilities. There was a lot of tension in her answers. When probed about her previous jobs, which were senior sales roles, her mood changed and she seemed on top of the world –they were happy memories of success.
We then helped her create her personal brand, and determined what her values and priorities were in the past and what she wanted going forward. We also talked about the influence her family and friends have had on her in her career choices, in both positive and negative ways. Then we covered her accomplishments, attributes, interpersonal style and a host of questions relating to ideal future career scenarios.
In the end it finally came down to the realization that she enjoyed the success and independence of just being responsible for her own results, but that she was nervous and embarrassed to be seen by others taking a lower role, going backward.
We went through her compensation and benefits history and consulted her with our advice that with her sales ability, she would be better off joining a smaller company with a flatter organizational structure, where she could either work completely independently in a top sales only role and/or manage a small team. She stood to make even higher compensation for herself, in this direction, as the likelihood of her outperforming her targets would be higher.
She was really happy and felt really good to have talked it all through. She felt really confident in her new career focus and ability to get a job she really wanted.
We then spent the good part of a day cleaning up her interview skills (which were dated and cringe-worthy at times) and reworked her resume, so that is really stood out over others. After a few short consulting sessions on job search strategies, negotiating offers and tips on succeeding during the first year in a new role, she had a formal interview with our Staffwell Recruitment team.
They loved her new resume and her interview with them was spot on. We then quickly got her out on several interviews with companies she wanted us to target for her, and anxious to start her work life again, she took the first offer she got as it was just what she wanted –and a great opportunity.
It feels great helping people and I am so glad we started this side of the business at Staffwell. I will write about more success stories in the future –they are all different and interesting!
Tags : achievements, future career, personal brand, resume, достижения, карьера, личный «брэнд», резюме
