Transition with Me, Step by Step – Day 03

Transition with Me, Step by Step – Day 03
Procrastinating on Information Interviews

First of all, just for clarities sake – this is not the literal third day of the transition process, but I thought I’d keep things labeled in order. It seemed easier than jumping from day 2 to day 21 and having everyone wonder what they missed in between. :)

I promised to do my information interviews in two weeks. Three weeks have now passed and I have only talked to people I happened to be having lunch with anyway. I’m procrastinating on my information interviews, but this is a great thing to write about, because many of my clients also procrastinate on information interviews, and sometimes we even lose each other in this part of the process. It’s funny, because I have a list of people to call and a list of questions, but it doesn’t feel urgent, and I keep wanting to jump to the next step, or spend my time on “more important” things.

Information interviews, when done well, provide you with information that you can then use to better position yourself into your target job or your target client base. The problem with information interviewing is you don’t really know what juicy stuff you’ll find out before the conversations, so it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking they are not important. The other trap people fall into is trying to over-use the information interview, by turning it into a “secret roundabout way” to get a job. Unfortunately, if you take that approach, it usually comes across just as manipulative as it is.

Information interviews are powerful when they are done right. The purpose is to hear the story of several people who have already done something you are planning to do. As you hear their stories you will get the inside scoop on what they learned, and you can make much better decisions about your direction and your strategy.

Since these people know nothing about you, it’s important to keep the conversation focused on them and their story – NOT on what they think you should do. If you go down the “asking them for advice” path, the whole conversation moves up to a surface level, because they stop thinking about their real experiences and they start feeling pressured to give you good answers. However, if you take the pressure off and approach them more like a journalist – really interested in hearing their story, then you get more of the interesting experiences that they believe are unique to them. After hearing five different unique perspectives, you will be able to extrapolate for yourself what applies to you.

To drive home this point, I’ll share a great example:

When I was a product manager in the high tech world, if you asked me for advice on what you needed to do to become a product manager, I would have told you to get a technical or business degree and about five years of experience in marketing and technology. This would be an honest answer, because it was to my knowledge the typical path one would take to achieve this career goal.

On the other hand, if you had asked me to share my story on how I became a product manager, I would have told you how I started in an engineering support role because I had some solid database background, but that I spent most of my time interacting with the sales department and helping them understand the nuances of the products we sold. Eventually I was recruited by the VP of Marketing for a market research job which I was not interested in, but I decided to ask if he’d be up for trying me out as a product manager and he was willing to.

Very different stories, right? Both completely true. The only reason they are different is because of the slight difference in the way you question me. Make it about you and I give you the standard industry line because I think that’s the safest and most practical advice I can give you. Make it about me, and I get to talk about me, which is fun, no pressure, and it’s a huge added bonus that my story helps you as well.

Which story is more useful?

Here is something to keep in mind when you are avoiding information interviewing:

You don’t know what you don’t know, AND you only have one mind, one set of life experiences, and perhaps two or three additional perspectives from conversations you’ve had. So it’s very likely that what you DON’T know is quite a lot more than what you DO know. And, you have a choice to make: you can move forward with what you do know and learn from your mistakes, OR you can talk to five people who have done this before you and learn from their mistakes.

I choose to learn from their mistakes, so I am now recommitting to at least having contacted the rest of the people I’d like to interview by the end of this week.

How are you doing?

Transition with Me, Step by Step - Day 01

Transition with Me, Step by Step
by Nahid Casazza – Day One

Putting yourself through a big professional change is pretty scary, and it’s always easier to come up with “great ideas”, “great leads”, and “great advice” for someone else, than to actually translate those ideas into productive results for yourself. That’s why, in the name of practicing what I preach as a transition coach, I’ve decided to put myself through one of the most difficult, yet effective, processes that can help someone in job transition get the ideal job, and someone in business get exactly the clients they want. It’s not an easy process, and I might fail at it myself, but I believe if I’m willing to take the same steps I challenge you to take, if we are in this together, then through the power of synergy, it will increase all of our chances of success.

One commitment I am making is to be as raw as possible about the emotions, insecurities, and inner turmoil that happen during transition. They happen to the best of us, they have happened every time I’ve transitioned, and at least some of it will probably happen to you. Most people try to keep their best face forward and hide all this from the public, as they must when showing their professional face. But here it’s not going to do us any good to “show a good face”. You need to know that someone “gets” what happens behind the scenes.

So let’s start with my goal. I’ve been a coach, working mainly with people in career transition and small business owners for about eight years now. Every once in awhile I get a chance to work with executives on leadership, and I’ve really enjoyed it. Ideally, I would like to add this work more firmly to my portfolio and have it compliment the rest of my work. However, because it seems to me that “everybody” in the coaching world calls themselves a leadership coach, I haven’t been able to see a unique opening where I can distinguish myself and reach potential clients in that space. My situation is very similar to that of someone in career transition who wants to get a job that is different from the last job, and wonders how in the world to compete with everyone else wanting that same job with the “right” experience or contacts.

My goal is to get five “leadership” clients within the next three months. They can be five individuals who hire me as a leadership coach, or it can be a group of five or more within one company.

So when I have a client in transition, I walk them through a five step process that goes something like this:

1. Internal-discovery – find your unique talents and strengths
2. External discovery - Identify potential jobs and choose a target
3. Needs Identification - Learn a lot about your target job so you know the two or three things that are most important to the people who have the power to hire you
4. Strategize – Come up with a communication plan that “bridges” you to your target and make sure your message is consistent over a long enough period of time to be heard by enough people to give you a chance.
5. Execute – Action, action, action, learn from your results, adapt or change the action, and action, action, action some more. Continue this cycle until you get what you want or you’re satisfied that you have turned over every single pebble and it’s time to come up with a different target.

Most people who have a vague idea of what they want, feel compelled to jump to steps 4 and 5 right away. And there are others who like hanging out in steps 1 through 3 forever; every time they get to step 4, some compelling reason comes up that convinces them they need to start over at step 1.

I admit I’m feeling BOTH of these pulls right now. A part of me is saying, “OK – you already know what you want, and if you start at step one you are going to be wasting time. Plus, knowing you, you’ll never get to step five.” Then another part of me is saying, “You know, there are valuable exercises you haven’t done in phases one through three, and if you do them, you may end up with a much more effective execution strategy”

When my clients struggle with this inner conflict, (and most of them do) we usually follow a “short term opportunity / long term opportunity” time-management strategy. What that means is to spend the first part of every day addressing short term opportunities – sending resumes out to current openings, following up with people who may have leads now – that sort of thing. Then, once you’ve spent at least two hours working on short term stuff, then you work on longer term stuff like doing research and self-discovery exercises.

So I have a short term opportunity – and that is an accelerated transition program I recently started. It’s a great program for people who want a strong support system to keep them focused and productive while they are in transition. I have already made a commitment to consistently tell people about it until we have a nice group of six to eight. (By the way, if you are interested in learning more about this program you can go to my website, http://www.aspyrre.com/ATProgram.htm and I would LOVE it if you would tell everyone YOU know about it as well)

So every work day, priority one is “executing” by telling people about my accelerated transition program, and priority two is working through this new transition, step by step.

Step One

The first exercise in the Aspyrre transition process is called “My Twenty Proudest Moments”. It is simply a brainstormed list of times you were really proud of yourself in a work setting. The moment you are proud of can be truly just a “moment” – perhaps a two minute interaction where you were able to influence people you didn’t think you could influence. Or it could be a longer term project, like getting an MBA or working on a team completing a complicated project at work. The “Twenty Proudest Moments” exercise is extremely useful. First you’ll use it to identify your strengths, which are the skills you see come up over and over again in your moments. But these moments can also be a basis for accomplishment statements on your resume and examples you can provide for behavioral interviewing questions.

My first commitment is to complete the 20 proudest moments exercise, and in my next entry, show you how to translate this into key strengths and also more clarity about your target client or employer.

Should I leave my job?

Should I Stay or Should I Go?

You feel butterflies in your stomach as you drive to work. You can't wait until Friday. You are bored out of your mind each day. Nothing you do at work seems worthwhile. Constant politics get in the way of any projects getting done. Every morning you wonder how many sick days you have left and if you can possibly afford to take a mental health day.

But then, how do you know if you can find something better? And how hard will it be to start all over with no vacation and no accrued benefits? What if you want to do something completely different that is personally fulfilling? Will you have to go back to school or start over at entry level? If you have a mortgage, a family to support, or any level of financial obligation, the options don't seem plentiful.

These are critical questions, and definitely worth asking. Many people who leave one job to find their passion end up changing jobs two or three times before they find something they like better. And often they do end up getting paid less, or in an office environment that is more stressful than where they started out.

Studies have shown that more than 70% of all employees remain in jobs they are not completely satisfied with, and this makes sense given what's involved in finding a better situation.

But the good news is, it is absolutely possible to find a job that is fulfilling, enjoyable, and lucrative as well. You just need to know how to look. Here are some initial pointers:

1. You have to know what is the cause of most of your current drain at work. In some cases the work is draining, because it isn't something you naturally excel at or enjoy. But in other cases specific relationships may be the only thing getting in the way of you enjoying your job. It helps to write down what you most dislike about your current situation, and ask yourself whether changing that one aspect of your job would make enough of a difference for you to want to stay.

2. Do some values work and rethink your life. Sometimes we feel miserable and the job is just one of many places where that misery is showing up. If you approach this as a life change instead of just a job change, you have a better chance of finding work that feels meaningful and in balance with your personal goals.

3. You don't know what's out there until you look. And looking doesn't involve going out to job websites. Looking is first about figuring out what kind of work you would like to do, and then finding some people who are actually doing it and learning about how they did it. Looking is about asking questions and having conversations with people - WAY before you go out applying for jobs. The biggest mistake people make when they hate their current job is blindly go out and getting the first opening that they fit. That's like jumping out of the frying pan without looking to see where the fire is. If you look first, you have a much better chance of landing in a place you'll enjoy.

I work with three other career coaches in a program specifically designed to support people who want to make a change, but do it right. If you'd like to learn more about the program, please visit http://www.thrivingintransition.com/.

We will all be writing our thoughts in this blog from time to time, to support you in finding work that you can truly enjoy and thrive in.

Keep reading - this could be your first step to a new life!