Peak Careers

Professional Development for Career Practitioners

skills for work

4 Steps in Helping our Clients Describe their Skills : The foundation of the career development process

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I believe the core of our work as career coaches / counselors is to help our clients articulate their skills.
This is an essential foundation for the career development process. I am working with a number of clients right now that struggle with defining what skills they bring to the workplace. Our work together is focused on really mining out what they do and what makes them unique. In other words, what value do you add to the workplace.

For example, after three meetings with this client, he was able to state this as his value-added statement.

I have the ability to find solutions for complex problems by utilizing my work experiences and skills. I enjoy the personal satisfaction of keeping the customers happy by fixing problems quickly and maintaining the equipment to prevent outages. In doing this I have helped Critical Alert maintain a professional reliable reputation with customer service being at the highest priority. I would like to work for a company where I can transition my skills to work in other electronic fields, communications, or cellular areas where that same dedication to critical messaging is at their highest priority.

Once we had this refined, we were able to develop his resume, cover letter, LinkedIn Profile, and prepare for an interview.

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Skills can be developed a wide variety of ways

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Skills can be developed through on-the-job training, short term certificates or diplomas, even on-line through YouTube or Lynda.com, as well as college degrees. Our economy needs ALL kinds of skills to run. This struck me as I have been working with a number of clients recently who have done very well in the world of work without a college degree.

Bryan Alexander says “Goldman Sachs shared their analysis of higher education for investors a few weeks ago, and it’s an important document for people in higher education to consider.  Goldman is enormously influential in the finance world, and also in government, two realms with a lot of clout in academic institutions. Is the ROI of attending college worth it?”  (Read his analysis) [Read more…] about Skills can be developed a wide variety of ways

How do you find that “sweet spot” when working with midlife career changes?

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How do you find that “sweet spot” when working with midlife career changes? Well, my advice is no different than what I often discuss with college students: “What do you bring to the company or organization that you want to work for?”

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The biggest difference for midlife career changers is that they have an opportunity to look back on their lives and years of experience with deeper knowledge and perspective. Whether they want to leave jobs that they’ve held for many years or find meaningful activities to do with their forty hours per week, most of them still want to make an impact somehow. Our role as a career coach or practitioner is to open up discussions to help people find that “‘sweet spot”, and to help them identify and articulate those key pieces that are important to them.

I love using card sorts as a way to get my clients thinking about skills, passions, interests, strengths, and/or values, and then begin to think about prioritizing and connecting the dots between these various areas. The cards are a kinesthetic way of getting their heads away  from the idea that an occupation is what they’re looking for. It allows them to really look at what is truly important to them, and to consider what they bring to the table that will then generate discussion and greater thinking.

In my current Boomer online seminar, we have used cards to look at passions, strengths, and concerns. We’ve also used an online assessment which helps people to determine what values they want to focus on in the near future. When working with passions, I like to explore if there was a passion that they always wanted to pursue, but their job got in the way. Is there a new passion they discovered by chance in their own career development, through their social connections, or just through curiosity? The questions for these people are: “What are you passionate about? How can you explore it more deeply?”

When we look at strengths using the cards, the challenge is to look beyond the top strengths that they developed in their current job. The objective is to also explore some skills that may have been untapped in their work that they could bring to a company or an organization.

The values discussion is often interesting as the assessment I use online does not rate which values are important to the client, but which ones need work right now. Most people know what is important to them at some level, but this discussion is really about where are they going to put their energy now to focus on their values. One client I work with wanted to do something to contribute to his local community but didn’t want to be tied to a specific time each week or day. What we discovered was that by raising his chickens, collecting eggs and donating them to the local food pantry, he was using his time the way he wanted but was still able to contribute to his local community in a positive way.

I’ve found that by spending one week on strengths, another week on passions or interest, and one more week on values, my clients then have a chance to process and think about each of them separately. Then our work begins to connect these different areas to find that “sweet spot” for his / her next move, whether it’s paid or volunteer. Remember that you might be the first person to ask these questions, and to initiate discussions which are often very thought-provoking for your clients. I’m working with a client now in one of the mid-Atlantic states, and I’m always so impressed with how much thinking he has done each week.

So when working with clients keep in mind that whatever their next move is, it is likely to involve trying to find that “sweet spot” between passions, strengths, and values. The power of the discussion is that this is where much of the thinking happens. Our job as coaches is to help them find words that mean something to them and to help them find ways to group them together in meaningful ways that make sense to them.

What do you do to help your clients find the “sweet spot?”

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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. He is the author of A Field Guide for Career Practitioners: Helping Your Clients Create Their Next Move

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Overcoming Obstacles. Four tips when you break your ankle or need to find a job.

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Dear Diary,

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My lesson on overcoming obstacles is in progress. When I see anyone on crutches in the future, I will open the door for them, help them carry anything they want, carry their coffee to their office, and simply say, “I know what you’re going through”.

We all face obstacles but breaking my ankle gave me a whole new perspective and has made me think about the many clients I work with who face their own obstacles, many much more difficult than my broken ankle.

Here are 4 tips on helping our clients deal with their obstacles.

LESSON 1. Ask for help and advice.

I decided as soon as I was crutching around the house that I was going to ask for help. Even the simplest of things like opening a door were sometimes difficult for me. Five days after breaking my ankle I was presenting a pre-conference workshop at a conference in New Hampshire and knew I’d need lots of help there.

Our clients, who are looking for work need to know when to ask for help. A good friend and former colleague was at this same conference and is ready to make her next professional move from her current position. I asked if she had told anyone here that she was looking for a new job?

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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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