Peak Careers

Professional Development for Career Practitioners

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Less is Best

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Less is best in most cases. We live with a tsunami of information and all we often need is a beach and an umbrella. Malcolm Gladwell in Blink says, “We live in a world saturated with information….The key to good decision making is not knowledge. It is understanding.”20130704_112354

So how do we take this enormous amount of information and turn this into understanding? One way to do this is to embrace the “less is best” motto and it will leave you with the clues to understanding. Malcolm Gladwell speaks to this in his book and I talk about “trusting your instincts”. (See 3rd bullet point in this blog).

When working with college students on their resume, I say that every word on this needs to count. To have a purpose. You do not need to tell me that 207-555-5555 is a “cell phone” or JimPeacock @Peak-Careers.com is an “email”, I know what it is. Use bullet phrases, not sentences in your experience area because I am skimming this document, not reading it. Make this resume shorter, meaningful, and cleaner, so I can understand you.

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Boomers to Save the Economy…again.

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Why not? Boomers have driven the economy since we were born. Our love of toys in the 50’s & 60’s created many new companies. You are welcome Hasbro, Fisher-Price, Legos, and Mattel.

With 10,000 Boomers nationwide turning 65 daily across the country, we are facing a labor shortage crisis everywhere. Here in Maine, nearly a third of the population is in the Boomer age range. Some states are worse than others, but nationally 47% of the labor force is 55+ during the decade 2006-2016. The growth in the labor force for ages 16-54 is less than 1%!  YIKES! Houston, we have a problem.

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A career expert, David DeLong calls them “piling up at the door”.

Here in Maine, the total labor force is 700,000 and with 411,000 people aged 45-64, they will be leaving the workforce in the next 2 decades. Match this with 302,000 residents under the age of 20 years old, this could be a gap of 109,000! And Maine is typical of states across the U.S.

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Prop Them Up Until They Get Their Balance

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I heard this quote recently and it has been running through my head since. “Prop them up until they get their balance“. It hit home to me as a career counselor and coach. Much of my work is helping people “get their balance” so they can move forward on their own. I love this visual, as I evolve from a “counselor” or “advisor” who gives something, to more of a “coach” who encourages my students and clients to look within and figure it out themselves.

How did I prop someone up?

  • Helped a client come up with four questions to ask in an informational interview
  • Guided a student in writing an email to alumni asking for advice
  • Helped a Boomer / mid-life career changer “discover” the value of their own network by uncovering numerous serendipitous moments in their lives positively affected by people they knew
  • Encouraged a student to try an informational interview with a faculty member before stepping out and doing one with alumni they do not know
  • What have you done to ‘prop someone up’?

Each person is different. Some people simply need a few resources and they are off and running. Others simply need a ‘reframing’ of the situation to see it in a more positive light. Others are “off-kilter” and need a few suggestions or open-ended questions to get them thinking. The key as a career practitioner is to keep the ownership of the issue with the person and not try to give them answers that worked for you or others in the past. To truly listen to what they are saying & thinking and help them figure out how to move forward.

What they present to us often is not the real issue. If you view yourself as a “propper upper” first, you realize that we are often a sounding board for others, asking the questions that no one else has asked them. Yes, often we are the first people to ask these questions

  • “What skills do you want to use in a job?”
  • “What did you love / like about past jobs you’ve had and is there a connection or theme?”
  • “How can you leverage your strengths and passions to do something in the next 3 weeks?  3 months? 6  months?“

What are some of your favorite questions you ask that helps a person see more clearly?
That “props them up until they get their balance”.
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Jim Peacock is the Principal at Peak-Careers Consulting and writes a monthly newsletter for career practitioners. Peak-Careers offers discussion-based online seminars for career practitioners focused on meeting continuing education needs for CCSP, GCDF and BCC certified professionals as well as workshops for career practitioners and individual career coaching.

Sign up here to receive my  TOP 10 TIPS WHEN WORKING WITH AN UNDECIDED PERSON.  You can also receive the career practitioners newsletter which includes a variety of career topics, industry news, interesting events, and more. 

If you are happier will it lead you to your “purpose”?

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My wife thinks I was crazy to register for a college class right now with all that I have to do. She’s right of course. But I could not stop myself from registering for my first MOOC* on the Science of Happiness. (*Massive Open Online Course.) UC-Berkeley stated that over 10,000 people had signed up. I can guarantee you there are not 10,000 in week 7. (I am in week 7, but the class is in week 8.)

Studying happiness with research and science to back it up has been wonderful. What has been more amazing is how intertwined this is with discovering your “purpose” in life. As a career coach or career counselor, here are three specific things you can do to help your students/clients to be happier and three things to think about in helping them discover purpose and meaning in their lives.

Research shows that happiness has a “set point” in all of us at about 50%. This means that we are born with a certain happiness set point that is not moveable. 10% of our happiness is our environment, where we live, with whom we live & work, etc.. This leaves a WHOPPING 40% that we actually have control over! Yahoo! Here are three action steps you can take to increase your happiness that I have learned in the class I do not have time for 🙂

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Undecided? Or open to opportunities? 5 things you can do to be “open to opportunities.”

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Here are some points I try to keep in mind when working with undecided individuals.

Are you really “undecided” about your career choices or are you “open to opportunities?” If you are not sure what you want to do, the first step is to change your mindset. I truly believe most people are NOT undecided.

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It does not take me long to determine if a person is more “people focused” or more “math / science / structure” focused and all I need to do is ask them if they’d like to do something that is the OPPOSITE of their personality and they say “eeewww…that’s gross” (as Jimmy Fallon says).

Well if you know what you do NOT want to do, then down deep, you must know what you DO want to do. You just need to find the right words to get your head around it and change your thinking.

1. Think skills first, not occupations or job titles. The world we live in today is very different than 20 years ago. Employers are looking for a variety of skill sets to increase their production or productivity. If you focus on your skills and can articulate them to a potential employer, you will clearly have their attention and you might be surprised at the variety of jobs that require those skills.

Think about past accomplishments that you are most proud of. What skills were you using when you did it? We naturally gravitate to doing things we are good at and then we do them over again because it feels good. Pay attention to this and trust your hunches (see #3 below). Look for broad skill trends as well as specific skills (i.e. I am very good at explaining things to groups of people in a helping relationship).

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LinkedIn – Now What Do I Do?

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“I have a LinkedIn profile but no idea what to do with it.”

“There is no time for LinkedIn in my life.”

“I need a career change and have applied to 100’s of jobs, but there is nothing out there.”

Recently I was working with a young man who was desperate to get out of his current job. My first question was, “What have you done so far to find work?”

His response was a combination of all of the above statements rolled into his three-minute overview of what he’d done.

My response to him, “What you have done is a huge waste of time.”

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Pause for effect…         “What?”

And then the session began.

Rule number 1, people hire people. This young man was applying for jobs every night, literally every night, all night until he went to bed. He was SO BUSY that he felt he was being productive.

Rule number 2, see Rule number 1.

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