Job hunters and career changers are facing unique challenges during this historic period. We have been struck down by the health crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic that has the country in its grip along with the economic fallout of closing down all non-essential services in an effort to slow the spread of the deadly virus.
You don't have to stop your job search during this period, however, and in this episode of
"Teachers in Transition," Heart-Centered Career Transition and Job Search Coach advises people about how they need to adjust their approach right now.
Companies may not be hiring at the moment, but when things start to get back to "normal"--whenever that might be--you want to be ready. That's why staying on track and working on your resume, cover letter skills, your LinkedIn profile, and your interviewing skills is so important. If you slack off while everything is slowed down, you won't be ready when it is time to start applying again.
You also need to adjust your networking approach. You need to find ways to meet people virtually through LinkedIn but also through webinars and seminars and online social get-togethers.
Listen to this episode to hear how Kitty advises you to approach your job search during this unusual time.
#jobsearch #careertransition #careerchange #jobsearchtips #careeradvice #teachersintransition
Job hunters and career changers are facing unique challenges during this historic period. We have been struck down by the health crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic that has the country in its grip along with the economic fallout of closing down all non-essential services in an effort to slow the spread of the deadly virus.
You don't have to stop your job search during this period, however, and in this episode of
"Teachers in Transition," Heart-Centered Career Transition and Job Search Coach advises people about how they need to adjust their approach right now.
Companies may not be hiring at the moment, but when things start to get back to "normal"--whenever that might be--you want to be ready. That's why staying on track and working on your resume, cover letter skills, your LinkedIn profile, and your interviewing skills is so important. If you slack off while everything is slowed down, you won't be ready when it is time to start applying again.
You also need to adjust your networking approach. You need to find ways to meet people virtually through LinkedIn but also through webinars and seminars and online social get-togethers.
Listen to this episode to hear how Kitty advises you to approach your job search during this unusual time.
#jobsearch #careertransition #careerchange #jobsearchtips #careeradvice #teachersintransition
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. This is Kitty Boitnott of"Teachers in Transition" and Boitnott Coaching. And this is episode 55 of the"Teachers in Transition" podcast and YouTube channel. If you listened to this podcast before, you will know that I alternate topics. I speak to stress management one week because I happened to be a stress management coach. I also speak on alternate weeks to career transition and job search strategies because I'm also a trained and experienced career transition and job search coach. So this week we're talking about career transition and the added challenge of changing careers or looking for a new job during the middle of a pandemic. As I have advised my clients, this is a time when you need to adjust and modify your expectations because the fact of the matter is with so much uncertainty not knowing exactly when, um, not, not if, but when the economy will start to uh, fire back up and, and companies will start to hire again and, and restaurants will be open again and in some semblance of normal quote unquote, life gets back on track. Whenever that happens to be, it may be as late as mid-summer or early fall before companies start to feel comfortable about bringing on brand new employees. The advantage that you as a job seeker have if you happen to be in that category that you're thinking about changing your career or looking for a new job. The advantage that you have is right now during this sort of period of lull, you have an opportunity to really like work hard on getting your resume up to speed and getting it ready for prime time when the time is right. Learning the skill of writing a compelling cover letter that will actually get read instead of tossed into the trash. You've got time to be working on creating a complete and stellar optimized LinkedIn profile. You have time to be learning what you need to know about interviewing well and all of those are the basic parts of any job search or career change: resume cover letter, LinkedIn and interview skills. There are also other skills that you need to know about. However, and I teach these skills as part of my Jumpstart Your Job Search 2.0 Program. You need to learn how to write your resume for the applicant tracking system. You need to understand what the applicant tracking system's purpose is and how you can work with it and on occasion how you may need to work around it. You need to understand the importance of rebranding yourself when you're creating your LinkedIn profile. You want to create a profile for the person that you are becoming or the person you aspire to be professionally, not the person that you were in the past. And you need to keep that in mind. That's part of the rebranding process. Thinking of yourself differently because what you aspire to do and be and have in your future career may be very different from what you've been doing for the past or in the present. So these are all important parts of a job search as well as networking. And you have the added challenge right now of needing to know how to network virtually since nobody's meeting in person. It's not even recommended that you meet in person. You would be not doing your part if you were to try to meet someone in person for networking or coffee date. Everything right now needs to be done virtually. And that means to the extent that you need to, you use the social media platforms that are available to you. LinkedIn is certainly top of line as far professionally interacting with and networking with people in the industry that you're interested in joining or the career that you're interested in pursuing. But other platforms are viable as well. Facebook, uh, every company has their own Facebook company page. So you need to check that out and follow it so that you can learn what the, uh, employees and customers are saying about it. And Twitter as well. Twitter has a, almost all companies, all major companies at least are going to have a Twitter page and the others as well. Pinterest, Instagram, you name it, there's going to be, if it's a, if it's a business that has any kind of footprint in social media platforms, you'll be able to find that company's page on one of those platforms that you've been using. And the reason you want to follow those companies on those platforms is that on occasion you'll find out that they are hiring or getting ready to hire quicker on Facebook or Twitter than you might even on LinkedIn, because they start sort of a, an informal chat or back and forth on those social media platforms as opposed to posting a major announcement about hiring a thousand employees and an area, um, on LinkedIn. So do follow Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, as well as LinkedIn. Follow the companies. And to the extent that it's possible, connect with on LinkedIn people within the company. Now you've gotta be careful how you do that. You don't want to just go click, connect, click connect, click connect to all the people that you might like to be a first tier connection with. You want to send a customized message and you want to be careful about indicating that you're on the prowl for a new job because that may be a turnoff. You also want to be careful about looking like everybody else. Recently as a business owner, I've been getting a lot of the same kind of tired old messages from companies that are reaching out to me because I'm a coach because I have a business presence on LinkedIn and almost all of them to the person are writing from a template that says,"Hey, I'd love to talk to you about how I can help" or"let me know how I can be of assistance to you and your company" and I've stopped. I've stopped responding to any of them. I they don't set themselves apart. They don't make me interested there. I'm not curious about what it is they have to offer because they are looking in sounding like everybody else. They want to sell me something and I'm not interested in buying anything, right? So I'm not going to respond to those messages. So you need to figure out a way to make yourself stand out, not in a quirky or or weird kind of way, but in an interesting, unique way that would make someone who is sitting at home working from home right now instead of sitting in their office, if they, if they run across your invitation to connect, you want to be authentic. You want to be sincere. You want to be honest without saying,"I'm looking for a job." You may say something like, Hey John, and you can call them by their first name on LinkedIn we're all pretty much the same. Hey John, I see that you work for fill in the blank of the company. I am interested in and, and by this point you want to be specific about what it is that they do, their mission, their vision, their customer service, whatever, but be very specific. I'm not, I'm interested in a new job or I'm looking to get employed by, I'm interested in and fill in the blank with something specific because that will indicate that you know something about the company and that you have a genuine interest. Now that means you may need to do some research before you ever send that connection request. And I urge all of my clients to do lots and lots of research about companies that they're interested in working for, uh, industries that they're thinking they might be interested in joining or people who work for those companies. And there is certainly lots of information online. There's no reason why you wouldn't be able to know about a company's specific mission, their vision, a specific challenge they're facing, a specific goal they're trying to meet. So you would fill in the blank with, I'm interested in and fill in the mission, the vision, the challenge, the goal, whatever. And then all you need to say beyond that is, I'd love to add you to my LinkedIn network, or I'd love to join your LinkedIn network, or I'd love to connect here on LinkedIn. And then you sign your name. And then you send the connection request. Now don't be hurt if you don't get a an immediate response. People are busy, people are distracted right now. There's a lot going on. They may or may not be checking LinkedIn every day. They may not be checking it every three or four days. They may not be checking it, but once a week, depending on how busy they are, if you don't hear back from them, don't take it personally. You know, but the thing is nothing ventured, nothing gained. If you don't send out the invitation, certainly never going to be connected so it, you know, give it a shot. And don't be upset if you don't get an immediate response or if if you don't get a response at all. There are plenty of other people on LinkedIn who work for that very same company that you can send a similar message to and chances are several of them are going to respond. Now I know this strategy works because just recently a client of mine told me that she had connected with, and this is this stay with me now because it was kind of a long string of connections. She started with listening to me on a summit that I was on a few months ago. I had invited my clients to take a listen to this particular summit. She had not only listened to my interview, but she had listened to some of the other interviews. She had reached out through LinkedIn to one of the individuals who was interviewed by that same person who did the summit. That individual that she reached out to had responded and accepted her request and they had started communicating through LinkedIn, back and forth. Through that connection, she was then either introduced to or found by someone out in California. She's, she's down South, someone out in California who was interested in what she was doing and reached out to her through LinkedIn. They became connections through LinkedIn. One thing led to another. They've been on the phone two or three times since then. Just to chat about what each one of them is up to. Now she's not, she's not gotten a job, but she is establishing relationships and a relationship on LinkedIn is very much like tossing a pebble out into the middle of a pond. You don't know where the ripples are going to finally wind up. So use your use the virtual technology that we have LinkedIn as well as other virtual networking opportunities that may pop up. Um, do get yourself on the list for your alumni association. They may be doing some virtual happy hours or get togethers. Do find organizations that may be doing webinars or seminars or face to face ah zoom meetings that you might be able to get yourself invited to are on the calendar for. The main thing is to stay active virtually during this time when you can't be out and about meeting people in person. And then when the time comes that you can get out and meet people in person, you'll have already established a rapport. You will already have a hopefully develop some good a sense of good will and then people will be more willing to meet with you in person and help you to find what it is you're looking for. The bottom line is during this time of uncertainty, we have to adjust to the situation that we have. We don't have any control over when or how all of this is going to be resolved. You know, the predictors are from, you are going to open up the 1st of May to, we may still be closed down all the way into the fall. Who knows? And there's the possibility of opening up too soon and then having another wave where we have to lock down again. We don't know how any of that's going to play out. And if you're listening to me today, I'm going to suggest that you're probably not one of the people who will be making those big decisions. You're just trying to figure out in your own life how to make a change, how to change your career direction, how to find a new job during this, um, strange time in our history. And what I'm suggesting is that this is a good time, in spite of it not being such a great time. It's a good time to be using your time wisely for laying the foundation, creating the relationships, virtually getting your resume ready so that when people do want it, you will be ready to shoot it to them in a heartbeat. Learn how to write that compelling cover letter that again doesn't look like a template of everybody else. You want to look different, you want to be authentic, you want to be unique, otherwise people just aren't gonna read it. So do what you can. Now to lay the foundation, create the plan so that when things do start to open up again, you'll be ready. And also use this time for creating as many meaningful. I'm not suggesting that you just start collecting LinkedIn connections for the heck of collecting connections. You need to make them meaningful and you need to establish a rapport and a relationship with the folks that you think you might like to meet in person some day down the road if that's possible. So main thing is stay in, stay well, be well, be healthy, take care of you, take care of your family. I wrote about the importance of helping your children with their stress. If you have, if you're a parent who has children at home, we're all in this together. We get through it and we just have to be smart about how we use the time we've been given right now and I'm offering that. One way you can be smart is to start preparing for your career change. Now have a good week. Hope to see you next week. Until then, like I said, stay in, stay well, be healthy, 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."