Articles
Negotiating: The Single Biggest Mistake People Make
I am excited to share this information with you about how to negotiate with confidence. Let me start by saying that this is a huge topic, so we’ll cover it over this blog and the next 3 following, where I’ll share some golden nuggets that have been helpful to our clients over the years. What are your biggest challenges when it comes to negotiating? Keep that challenge as a goal to improve upon, making the following information more personal and helpful. What specifically do you want to be better at negotiating? Negotiating can cover...
read moreI have a profile. Now What?
By now your profile should be well on its way to standing out in the crowd. So now what do you do? Complete the skills, recommendations and experience sections of your profile. Upload a professional headshot, change your background photo to reflect you and add supporting documents to your profile in the various sections with this feature. Once done, start to connect. Reach out to friends, family, co-worker, former colleagues and members of groups you are in. Build up your connections then begin targeting prospective employers at companies you...
read moreHow to write a compelling Summary
Attention! This is the key to an attraction getting Summary section on your profile. The goal is to catch the eye of your prospective employer and intrigue their interest to make them want to learn more. When you look at a profile, LinkedIn shares the first few sentences of your summary and then requires the reader to click the “show more” button to view the rest of the 2000 characters within this section. Much like reading a newspaper, headlines and big news stories are featured “before the fold.” Same thing with your profile. You have just...
read moreWhat’s in a LinkedIn Headline?
Last week we talked about why you should have a LinkedIn profile. This week and over the next two weeks, we will discuss specific sections you should focus your attention on to help make your profile stand out and attract the interest of potential employers. One of the first things a visitor to your page will see is your headline. Often, individuals use this area to indicate their current job title, such as Career Coach at Career Solutions Group. This strategy is fine if you have no intention of job searching, but it doesn’t tell the reader a...
read moreWhy does LinkedIn matter? Part one of a four part series!
By now, you’ve probably heard of LinkedIn. If you have a profile, you are one of 467 million current users with a LinkedIn account. But just having an account isn’t enough. LinkedIn by definition is a social network, emphasis on the word “social”. With quarterly revenues topping $947 million, LinkedIn derives an estimated 65% of its revenue from talent solutions. And according to SHRM (the Society of Human Resource Management), an estimated 90% of recruiters rely heavily on LinkedIn for sourcing top talent. Can you think of any other career...
read moreEncore Careers. Part 4 – Examples
Now let’s move on to specific examples of people who have transitioned into encore careers—and be sure to check out my 3 previous posts for more details on how to create a successful Encore career. Outside Sales Rep to Bus Driver: One gentleman worked as an outside sales rep for years, and now he drives of students between the local university, and their housing complex. He loves it because it’s just a few hours in the afternoon. He earns a little bit of money. He gets a chance to socialize, and he gets his summer and breaks off....
read moreEncore Careers. Part 3 – Superpowers
In the last few blogs I’ve been talking about Encore careers—a shift into work that you can do later in your career, that may involve greater meaning, part time schedules, and possibly earning some income. I shared a few tips in the last blog post, and now I’ll share a few more, starting with… Build off of your Superpower for a satisfying Encore career! Seven out of ten people on average will not have an idea of what they want to do for their next step, in an Encore career, or just career wise generally. 70% of people typically are fuzzy...
read moreEncore Careers. Part 2 – Journaling
In my last blog about creating an Encore career you love, I promised to provide some tips for helping you accomplish it successfully, so here goes: We want Certainty, with a splash of Uncertaining Most of us really hope for a life of certainty, where we can predict generally what’s going to happen in a day, such as where our food is coming from, what’s expected of us in our work, and what our relationships will look like. We like a little variety–that’s a concept called Uncertainty. This concept comes from the motivational...
read moreEncore Careers. Part 1 – What Is An Encore Career?
One day, after my “main” career is over, I intend to work as a cook in a soup kitchen. I love the idea of being happily busy cooking alongside others who love to prepare food, creating yummy meals for people who especially need one. I’d see myself doing this work part time, for about 15 hours each week. I may or may not receive income for this, and if it don’t I’ll likely be okay with this. What I’ve just described fits the definition of an Encore career, which according to Wikipedia is, “Work in the second half of life that combines...
read moreFinding Solutions
I’ve never been a big nonfiction book reader. While I enjoy learning helpful concepts, the act of digesting the information, most often written without a compelling plot and characters, feels like torture. This was the case until my husband made a helpful suggestion, which came at an ideal time given other things going on in my world. Almost a year ago I made some big changes in my professional life: I moved from the sweet office I’d occupied into a home workspace. I also began taking the first of many steps to shift the focus of my business...
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