When you are thinking of changing jobs or careers, the first question that comes to mind is often what you want to do and what you feel you would enjoy, not to mention what you might be qualified to do.
I recommend that you take time at the beginning of the process to do a lot of self-reflection and introspection. Consider what your core strengths, abilities, and aptitudes are.
Not sure? Then start by asking someone who knows you well--a spouse, sibling, or close friend--someone who knows you and will be honest with you--and ask them to outline what they perceive to be your strengths, talents, and strong suits.
You might be surprised. We often have blind spots about what we do well, mistakenly assuming that if we can do something easily, everyone else can as well. That's not so.
After that, I also recommend that you check out some of the available assessments. Some are free. Some are low fee. Others may cost more, but it would be worth it by offering you the information you can't get anywhere else. For example, I offer a Pathway Planner Assessment that measures personality preferences, aptitudes, and cognitive abilities. It is also connected to O*Net, the government's online occupational handbook. If you would like to learn more about that assessment, reach out to me about the costs at kittyboitnott@gmail.com. For general information, you can download the brochure here: https://go.aws/38jnhUR
When you are thinking of changing jobs or careers, the first question that comes to mind is often what you want to do and what you feel you would enjoy, not to mention what you might be qualified to do.
I recommend that you take time at the beginning of the process to do a lot of self-reflection and introspection. Consider what your core strengths, abilities, and aptitudes are.
Not sure? Then start by asking someone who knows you well--a spouse, sibling, or close friend--someone who knows you and will be honest with you--and ask them to outline what they perceive to be your strengths, talents, and strong suits.
You might be surprised. We often have blind spots about what we do well, mistakenly assuming that if we can do something easily, everyone else can as well. That's not so.
After that, I also recommend that you check out some of the available assessments. Some are free. Some are low fee. Others may cost more, but it would be worth it by offering you the information you can't get anywhere else. For example, I offer a Pathway Planner Assessment that measures personality preferences, aptitudes, and cognitive abilities. It is also connected to O*Net, the government's online occupational handbook. If you would like to learn more about that assessment, reach out to me about the costs at kittyboitnott@gmail.com. For general information, you can download the brochure here: https://go.aws/38jnhUR
Are you a teacher who's feeling stressed out and overwhelmed? Do you worry that you're feeling symptoms of burnout or are you sure you've already gotten there? Have you started to dream of doing some other kind of job or perhaps pursuing a whole different career, but you don't know what else you're even qualified to do? You don't know how to start a job search. You just feel stuck. If that sounds like you, I promise you're not alone. My name is Kitty Boitnott. I'm a career transition and job search coach and I specialize in helping burnt out teachers just like you deal not only with the stress and overwhelm of your day-to-day job, but to consider what other careers might be out there waiting for you. Join me for"Teachers in Transition." In some episodes I'll be speaking to stress management techniques and how you can manage your stress on a day to day basis. In other episodes I'll be talking about career transition. What tools do you need to be successful in a job search when you're moving from one career into a totally different track? These are questions that you need answers to and I can help you find those answers. My name is Kitty Boitnott. Welcome to"Teachers in Transition." Welcome to Episode 49 of the podcast and YouTube channel"Teachers in Transition." My name is Kitty Boitnott. I am the owner of Teachers in Transition and Boitnott Coaching, and if you've listened to this podcast for any length of time, you know that one week I talk about stress and stress management strategies. The next week I talk about career transition strategies and today I'm going to talk about career. One of the things that most of my clients struggle with, at least in the very beginning of their transition from teaching into a new line of work is identifying what it is that they would like to do instead of teaching. For many of them, they've only ever considered that they wanted to be a teacher. They've never thought of themselves in any other context, and the very idea of leaving teaching strikes fear in their hearts and makes them feel in many ways stuck. They are stuck as far as identifying their hard transferable skills, the achievements that can translate from an education career into another endeavor. And it can, it can be tricky[inaudible] unless, unless they have some other kind of background that they can more easily plugged themselves into. And so one of the things that I recommend that you do right from the get-go if you're thinking about making a career change is that you take a complete inventory of your skills, your aptitudes, your God-given gifts and talents. Consider the things that you enjoy doing and that you're good at. And then think about the things that you don't enjoy and you're not particularly good at and you'd rather not have to do again. And then think of a Venn diagram where the place in the middle, where it all intersects in includes the things that you love to do, that you enjoy doing, that you would like to continue doing, that you, um, have an aptitude for. And with the kind of work that would be in including those skills, those abilities that kind of work would feel not so much like work that you would feel like more like something you are in total alignment with. Now, how do you determine what those skills and aptitudes are? Because for many people they don't even know they haven't yet begun to or they haven't thought about it for forever. What their natural talents, skills and aptitudes are. One of the simple exercises that I recommend that you do that won't cost anything except a little bit of your time and the time of a friend or a spouse or a sibling and that is to sit down with someone who knows you, loves you, respects you, and is willing to be brutally honest with you about what it is that they perceive to be your strengths and your weaknesses and what you're going for is their perception of what you can do well that you assume everybody can do. Because if you can do it, you don't think it's all that special mean you're the rare individual. If you have been able to distill all of your strengths, abilities and aptitudes and you're in full ownership of how unique that makes you. Because most of us just think we're one of the crowd are, we're not that special. We're not that different from anybody else. And we're not good at identifying those things that we are really good at. So we need the perspective of someone else, especially when it comes to identifying the strengths that you have that aren't so easily replicated in other people. So have that conversation with someone. You may not hear anything new, but I'm going to put my money on. You may hear something that surprises you and make note of what they tell you that your strengths are, what your particular aptitudes may be. And start there in terms of trying to discern, determine what kinds of work would make the best use of those skills, those abilities, those aptitudes. Uh, that's when you can go back to the research, uh, a podcast episode that I did recently on how to research different kinds of jobs, companies and target markets. You can take what you've learned about your strengths and aptitudes and, and look for jobs that cater to those particular strengths and aptitudes. Another thing you can do is to try, there are a number of online assessments that you can take. Many of them, there's a S a small fee, some of them are free, but most of them are going to want you to pay something in order to get a full report or a full accounting. But some of them are worth the money that you might pay to get the information. I'm thinking in particular of Myers Briggs, if you've never taken the personality profile on named after Myers Briggs, you might want to take a look at that. I think you can get the full version of it for about 50 bucks or at least a fuller version than the free version 16 personalities is sort of a takeoff on the Myers Briggs, uh, or algorithms and you might be able to get something useful from that. It is free. Um, I was just looking at, uh, Kirsi K. I. E. R. S. E. Y. Uh, it measures temperament. Um, and I, I took the F the free version of the test and it came back that I'm a guardian, whatever that means, in order to learn that I need to pay them 24 95, which I may decide to do at some point, but I didn't do it yet. Today there are other assessments that you can take as well. Now I do offer for people who might be interested in a really comprehensive assessment, I actually offer an assessment called the pathway planner, uh, that you could take that would not only get to your thinking style, your personality preferences and your cognitive ability, but it is also connected to the occupational handbook maintained by the U S department of labor O net. So if that is something that you would be interested in, there is a fee that's involved, but it includes the full report and a one hour consultation. So if you're in learning more about that, I'll include a link in the show notes today and you can reach out to me and find out what would be involved in taking that assessment. There are many books that have perfectly fine assessments in them as well. My group, a coaching group was talking just last night about the pedal exercise and what color colors my parachute and several of them were finding it to be extremely helpful. When I was working with JT O'Donnell, I found her book career oralism to be extremely useful because there were assessments embedded in there that helped to identify learning styles as well as work preferences. Um, and so, Oh and then of course I love, love, love the five strengths by Tom Rath where for the cost of the book you can get a key code that will allow you to take an assessment that will for the cost of the book, that will allow you to identify five out of 34 strengths and they can be extremely helpful in helping you to identify those things about yourself that you're not as aware of as you might otherwise be. Now, what's all the point of all this self-study and assessments and doing all of this work. It's to get to know who you are and what you may have to offer in a new work position that is different from what you are currently doing, whether you're a teacher or an accountant or whatever it is that you're currently doing. If you're ready for a career change, the first order of business is to figure out what it is that you would like to do next. Now that's usually the$64 million question for the people that I work with. Maybe maybe you are clearer about that. Then I've, my folks who come to me are that. That's where we start is what would you like to do next? And more importantly, what would you be good at? What would feel easy for you as opposed to making you feel like you're constantly swimming upstream against the current, which is exhausting and the stress and the, and the exhaustion and that sense of overwhelm can get to you after a while and it can make you sick. I've talked about this in the stress management, uh, episodes of this podcast. Stress. It's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when, if you are not managing your stress, if your job is keeping you constantly stressed and stretched and feeling overwhelmed, it's not a matter of if you'll get sick. It's just a matter of when. So you need to be finding work that doesn't feel like it's constantly stressing you out and on the verge of making you sick. It's important for us each to understand and appreciate what we have to offer the world. It's not an accident that we're all different. I think it's part of the grand design. We are all different so that we can blend our strengths together to make for a better world. And we can only do that when we join together and each one of us uses our unique superpower, if you will. Think about the Avengers and how each, each of the Avengers has their own unique superpower, but we're like that and if we're working together for good, then blending our strengths together can make us a powerful and undefeatable. It's when we're lost and uncertain of who we are that we become weak. Find your superpower, whether it's a quiz that you can take online or a exercise you can find in a book or whatever it is for you that can help you to find that conversation with your spouse or a sibling or friend, whatever it is for you that can help you to identify what it is that you have to offer as far as your strengths and your talent, your unique ability to make the world a better place. Identify that at the beginning of your job search and I guarantee that job search will begin to fall into place. It's identifying what it is that you're good at and what you want to do. That's the hardest part of this whole career transition business, and on that note, I'll offer that. If you have questions or comments you want to reach out to me to find out more about how I help clients figure out what it is that they would like to do in their next career. Please do that. Reach out to me@kittyboitnottatgmail.com I'd love to hear from you, do review this podcast so that other people can learn about it and benefit from it. If you find the information useful for yourself, it's likely that other people will also find it useful, so please make it possible to share the podcast or the YouTube channel with others. And on that note I'll say so long for this week and I'll see you next week. Bye bye for now. This is kitty Boitnott of teachers in transition, so there you have it, an episode of teachers in transition. I hope So there you have it, an episode of"Teachers in Transition." I hope you enjoyed the information and I hope you'll plan to come back. Please subscribe to"Teachers in Transition" so that you can be alerted of future episodes. And let me know if you have any questions or topics that you would like me to specifically cover in a future episode. I'm more than happy to help with individual questions as well. So email me at KittyBoitnott@BoitnottCoaching.com. If you are interested in finding a new career or just enjoying your life more, this is the place to start. Hi, I'm Kitty Boitnott and this is"Teachers in Transition."