No one has been spared the consequences of COVID-19 whether you had succumbed to the virus or not. Because of the massive shutdown we all experienced as a country, as some states start to open things up and others cautiously consider their options, it occurs to me that the economy will never be quite the same. We are going to need to approach the post-pandemic world with caution and look for opportunities that may seem like challenges at first.
The truth is that this is a massive upheaval that rivals periods of upheaval from the past. And upheaval requires adapting to new circumstances and new realities and it is not easy nor it is enjoyable.
But that doesn't mean that there won't be plenty of opportunities. If you just graduated college or you just lost your job because of the pandemic, instead of being angry about it look for the silver linings.
We need people who can be innovative, creative problem-solvers.
We are also going to need artists including comedians, musicians, and architects.
We need more scientists and lab researchers to help prepare the vaccine for this virus and prepare for the next one.
We are going to need more mental health professionals, too. Lots of people are going to need lots of help emotionally as they grieve the loss of normalcy and perhaps the loss of a loved one during this period.
And we need more doctors and nurses.
Look for the opportunities. That may well be the #1 challenge of every job seeker and that is what I talk about in this episode.
For the transcript, click here: https://bit.ly/2LlPH7w
Also, next week, on May 21, 2020, I will be offering a free, live webinar workshop entitled, "Start Designing Your Dream Career in a Post-Pandemic World." Don't wait until this pandemic is behind you to start planning for your next job or career. Use your time now. Plan for the career--and the life--you want moving forward. Join me by registering here: https://event.webinarjam.com/register/11/w0364tk
No one has been spared the consequences of COVID-19 whether you had succumbed to the virus or not. Because of the massive shutdown we all experienced as a country, as some states start to open things up and others cautiously consider their options, it occurs to me that the economy will never be quite the same. We are going to need to approach the post-pandemic world with caution and look for opportunities that may seem like challenges at first.
The truth is that this is a massive upheaval that rivals periods of upheaval from the past. And upheaval requires adapting to new circumstances and new realities and it is not easy nor it is enjoyable.
But that doesn't mean that there won't be plenty of opportunities. If you just graduated college or you just lost your job because of the pandemic, instead of being angry about it look for the silver linings.
We need people who can be innovative, creative problem-solvers.
We are also going to need artists including comedians, musicians, and architects.
We need more scientists and lab researchers to help prepare the vaccine for this virus and prepare for the next one.
We are going to need more mental health professionals, too. Lots of people are going to need lots of help emotionally as they grieve the loss of normalcy and perhaps the loss of a loved one during this period.
And we need more doctors and nurses.
Look for the opportunities. That may well be the #1 challenge of every job seeker and that is what I talk about in this episode.
For the transcript, click here: https://bit.ly/2LlPH7w
Also, next week, on May 21, 2020, I will be offering a free, live webinar workshop entitled, "Start Designing Your Dream Career in a Post-Pandemic World." Don't wait until this pandemic is behind you to start planning for your next job or career. Use your time now. Plan for the career--and the life--you want moving forward. Join me by registering here: https://event.webinarjam.com/register/11/w0364tk
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 back to Episode 59 of"Teachers in Transition," the podcast and the YouTube channel. My name is Kitty Boitnott,, the owner and operator of Teachers in Transition and Boitnott Coaching. If you've ever listened to me before, you already know that I speak alternately between career transition topics and stress management topics because I am both a heart centered career transition and job search coach and a stress management coach. This week the topic is career transition and it occurs to me that I haven't talked, at least not for a while. I don't think about the number one challenge that every job seeker faces. Now may have talked about this back in the early days of this podcast, but with all of the changes that I think are probably at hand or will be at hand after this pandemic business is behind this, eventually it will be behind us. But I've been thinking a lot about which careers and professions and jobs are going to survive and be available still when all this is over, which jobs are going to simply disappear or not survive for whatever reason. I think we're going to see some fundamental changes and a lot of our areas including in education and entertainment, I think we're going to be seeing massive changes just this summer in sports. So that goes with the entertainment. Um, and people are going to be called on to be more innovative than ever. More creative than ever and more thoughtful perhaps than ever about how we go forward and how we design our lives in such a way that it's not only supports us, but supports our community and supports our society in general. So I don't have a crystal ball. I don't know which jobs are going to survive and which ones will will not make it. But as an individual, what I would encourage you to do, whether you are a brand new graduate, and let me just say I'm sorry if you didn't get a traditional graduation, if you're in the class of 2020 graduating from one of the thousands of colleges and universities across the country and because of the pandemic, because of covert 19 you were deprived of a traditional walking across the stage and getting your diploma. I am sorry that that ceremony like like a marriage ceremony, like funerals, I mean we've been deprived of all of those things during this pandemic times when we gather together to celebrate an achievement or a loss or a union. So if you were one of the class of 2020 who didn't get to graduate in the traditional way, I do want to say I am truly, truly sorry for that, but that's not going to stop you from the need for looking for work. Now that you're out of college and you may need to re think what it is that you originally thought you wanted to do. You know if math, if going for your master's was the next step for you and in colleges and universities are operating differently in the fall because the pandemic is not behind us or because another wave is coming, then you might need to rethink that plan. Lots of people will have to put plans on hold or we think they're playing. The thing is whether you are a brand new graduate looking for your very first full time job or you are mid-career professional is decided and this pandemic has been a wake up call and you've not been enjoying your job for the last five years and it's time to make a change. Or you're a veteran worker who's decided, you know, I'm just done with that and ready to try something new. Wherever you are on the of job seeking there. There's a number one challenge that each one of you faces, and I've seen it in every client I've ever worked with, with every individual I've ever talked to who found themselves either by chance or by choice looking for a new career. And that number one challenge is answering the question, what do you want to do next in your career? You know, I have talked to hundreds of people over the years and I often ask them this question, if I were to give you a magic wand and you could have beer do anything in the world that you wanted, do you know what that would be? And my experience is that two out of a hundred can tell me without hesitation. Oh yeah, I know, but that would be the other 98 are just stumped. It's like, Ooh, gosh, I don't know. And I have a theory about that. I think that part of the reason for that is that we've not been encouraged to think about what we want. We are encouraged to think about what we can get or what we might need to settle for. You know, when I graduated from college, uh, Oh, so many years ago, I wasn't given the option of thinking about what I might want to do because frankly what I wanted to do was to go to graduate school and become, uh, uh, get my masters in library science. Uh, wanted to go to chapel Hill in North Carolina to get, uh, my master's degree in, uh, from an accredited college or university in library science. But I couldn't afford to do that. And my dad had made it clear I had a sister coming up right behind me in school. He had made it clear he would help me get through the first four years. Anything beyond that would be on me. And I didn't have the imagination and I didn't have the go, you know, the, the, the kind of possibility thinking back then that I have now, so I didn't even investigate what it would take for me to get to chapel Hill. Maybe I could have gone and worked part time and gotten scholarships. I had the grades I probably could have, but I decided to forego that dream and get a job teaching as my first job was as an elementary school librarian and it turns out I loved that job. And so I gave up on getting the library degree and I just stuck with being an elementary school librarian for most of my career. And that wasn't a bad thing. I always said I had the best job in the building and I still think that I probably did. I enjoyed it. I remember one afternoon in my second year of working in a new school with a new principal that I absolutely adored and I thought I would do this job for free and they're paying me for it. How lucky is that? So the thing that I want to encourage you to do, the challenge that you have before you, and as you start to create your job search strategy is what is it that you want to do? And if what you want is not possible for whatever reason, financially you can't afford it, or you know, practically you're, you're beyond the age. I mean, if you want to be an NBA ball player, it's probably in your, in your forties it's probably too late for that dream. Frankly, there are lots of things that may not be possible, but I still would encourage you to let yourself imagine what it is that you would love, love, love to do. So job seekers, number one challenge is usually figuring out what they want, and part of the problem is they don't give themselves time to think about what they want. They go immediately to what they think they can get or what they might have to settle for. Now, in order for you to get started on a job search, you need to think deeply about what it is that you want. You also need, however, to do an assessment of your skills, your aptitudes, your talents, your gifts, your previous experiences and your education level. I often have people who tell me, I think I might be interested in HR just as an example. Okay. Do you have any HR certifications or credentials? No. Have you ever taken an HR course? No. Well, you might need to start with at least a basic course and you might need to do, you know, some low level administrative work in an HR department before you could go straight for an HR directors type position. Just saying, um, I'll have people who occasionally tell me, well, if I, if I could do anything I wanted, I would write, Oh, that's great. What have you written? Nothing. If you want to be a writer, you're going to need to write. If you want to be a artist, you need to be creating art. Whatever, whatever your have a medium happens to be. Think about what it is that you want to do and then think about the ways that you might be able to make that happen. Now, you may not have the imagination that you need to help yourself see what it is that you want or to figure out ways to make it happen. That's where somebody like me, I'd not mean necessarily, but somebody like me can come in handy. A third party objective individual who can be there for you to bounce ideas off of, for you to brainstorm with. I don't recommend that you pick a family member to do this exercise with because they're not going to be objective. They all feel like they have an opinion about what it is that you should do and they may actually discourage you from doing the very thing that you want to do, that you feel your heart throwing you to. So don't, don't damage your possibilities by engaging in conversation with someone who's going to rain on your parade so to speak. Talk to somebody who doesn't have any opinion one way or the other about what you're capable of doing and allow them to present possibilities to you that you haven't thought about. Maybe that you are then given permission to go and explore because that's the next step. You first decide what it is that you want to do and then you explore what that actual possibility might mean for you. You may discover it's not what you thought it was at all and then it's not something you want to do, but you need to explore the possibilities and then after that you want to start to put together a plan. Once you figured out a direction you want to create a plan, a plan of action, you need to make a list of all the things you need in order to make your job transition or your career transition. Uh, more of a reality. You'll need a resume, you'll need a cover letter, you'll need a LinkedIn profile, you'll need to do some networking and right now all that networking is probably needing to be done virtually. That's where LinkedIn can be helpful. You need to rebrand yourself. You need to think in terms of what is it that you're doing now that's different from what you were in the past. In the first 33 years of my professional life, I was an elementary school librarian for most of that time, for the last seven years I've been a career coach and a stress management coach, but I didn't just go from elementary school librarian and VEA president to coach overnight. I didn't snap my fingers and suddenly start thinking of myself differently. It was a process. So the rebranding process is something you also need to give time and attention to. There are lots of moving parts to any successful job search. The number one challenge of every job seeker I maintain is knowing what it is that you want and then figuring out what you have to do to get yourself there. If you find yourself in the midst of a career transition right now during this pandemic, I'd like to invite you to attend a webinar workshop that I'm going to be offering next Thursday the 21st of May at 1:00 PM Eastern. I'll put the information in the show notes and the title of it is start designing your dream job now for a post pandemic world because I suspect that there are lots of people who won't have a job to go back to when this is all over and you'll need to think about what it is that you want to do next. And if you're going to have to find a new job anyway, why not think about your dream job and then there are going to be the people who will have a job to go back to. But this whole episode in our history will have forced you to think about your life in fundamental ways. What's important to you, what is essential to you and what isn't. What are the things that you want to accomplish in your life before your life comes to an end? You may not want to go back to that job, even if you still have a job or you may have started thinking about things that you'd like to do instead of that job. So if you would be interested in hearing more about my thoughts on what the post pandemic world might look like and what you need to do to be prepared for it. I hope you'll decide to join me next Thursday. It's a free live webinar workshop and I would invite you to come and take a listen and we can have a conversation about whether your thoughts about what the post pandemic world will look like and what my thoughts are are in coordination or not. I don't know. You don't either. Nobody knows what it's going to actually turn out to be like after everything gets back to quote unquote normal. I think we need to be prepared for a new normal, at least for the next short term as far as months, maybe even the next year or more. So it's time to be thinking about the future and planning for the future. Now you don't wait until the future to plan for the future, then you're always waiting. Plan now for what you want your future to look like and that's what I'd like to invite you to come to the webinar for. If you have any questions, thoughts, ideas, please feel free to email me at kittyboitnott@gmail.com please leave a rating or review for this podcast, teachers in transition or take a look at the YouTube channel and subscribe if you're interested in hearing more of these messages. That's it for today. Thank you so much for listening. Have a wonderful week. I'll see you next week. 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."