Teachers in Transition

Teachers in Transition - Episode 80 - How to Approach a New Job Search or Career Change

October 08, 2020 Kitty Boitnott Season 1 Episode 80
Teachers in Transition
Teachers in Transition - Episode 80 - How to Approach a New Job Search or Career Change
Show Notes Transcript

If you are ready for a job or career change, the first place is in the space in your head. You need the mindset of a job seeker, and you have to believe that you can successfully navigate a job or career change if you want to be successful.

Once you have developed the proper mindset, then you need to do research about the type of job you are interested in along with doing research on the companies and the industry. You don't want to switch to an industry that may be on a downward trend, for sure.

You will also need to create a marketing plan for yourself. This is a document that contains all your skills and competencies. Make a list of everything you might bring to a potential job or career that you are interested in. And then make a list of all the companies and industries that you might be interested in pursuing.

If you are interested in receiving a template of a research/marketing plan, email me at kittyboitnott@gmail.com.

If you are interested in attending the webinar workshop that I mentioned in the episode on stress management for teachers, use this link to register:  https://event.webinarjam.com/register/18/77l4rag.


Speaker 1:

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 burn 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 to 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 and transition. Welcome back to episode 80 of teachers in transition the podcast and the YouTube channel. My name is kitty Boitnott and I'm the owner of Boitnott coaching and the founder of teachers in transition. I specialize in working with burnout teachers who are ready to make a career change or ready to undertake a new job search. And I also help individuals with their stress management teachers are under a tremendous amount of stress right now. And in fact, this morning, I scheduled a webinar workshop for teachers on how to manage their stress during these days of the pandemic. If you're interested in attending our offer a link at the bottom of the show notes and today's episode, but today the topic is career transition rather than stress management. If you've listened to this podcast before you know that I alternate topics each week, one week talking about stress management and another week talking about ways to undertake and successfully maneuver a job search or career change. So this week the topic is career transition. And what I want to speak to today is part of what goes into the initiation of a job search. When the very beginning of the process, when you have made the decision that you need to do something different, you know, know yet what it is, you just need to know. You just know that you need to be making a change. It may be because of the stress that you feel in your current job. It may be because you're bored. There are any number of reasons. It may be that you've been let go. And then it's not even a choice. I often speak of career change that occurs sometimes by chance and sometimes by choice, regardless of how it happens or why it happens. There are certain things that you, as a job seeker or career changer in the beginning of the process, things that you need to be aware of and to understand. And the first, the very first thing you need to do is develop and create for yourself and adopt a mindset of a successful job circuit seeker, or a career changer. You have to believe in your ability to make this change that you want to make. You can't be one foot in and the other foot out, you can't straddle the fence. You need to be all in and you need to believe that this is a change that is possible for you, because if you don't believe it's possible, guess what? It will not work out like you want it to, you have to believe in yourself. You have to believe in your abilities. You have to believe that you have qualifications that can translate into a different job. And so a lot of what happens in the job search happens in the beginning, between your two years, it's, it's a head game and you have to be all in. You've done that once. You've decided, yes, I'm making this change. I don't know how it's going to look or how it's going to play out. I just know I need to do something. Then you need to start thinking you don't start writing your resume yet. If you've heard me speak to this before, you know, and if you haven't now, you're now you're hearing it for the first time. You do not write your resume. The very first thing after you've decided you're ready for a career change or a job change, you don't, you don't need to waste your time right now, writing a resume. Because if you don't do this, pre-work first, your resume is going to wind up sounding like the resume of a teacher and the HR director or the hiring manager, or the recruiter who receives it's going to be looking at it going well, this is a nice person may be and has a of good teaching background that their teacher, why did, why did they even apply for this job? They're not qualified because you ha you don't know yet that you need to make yourself a good fit for the job that you're applying for. Not making the case for how good you were in your previous job as a teacher. If you're making a change from education or, and teaching from the classroom and to any other line of work, you've got to take the skills that you have and translate them into the language of the job description that you're of the job you're applying for. Otherwise, you are wasting your time. So I offer a program on how to go about approaching a job change or a career change. And in that program, writing a resume is not until module number seven, it's halfway through the program. Cause there are 15 modules. So don't waste your time, writing your resume. First thing, the first thing you need to do after you've created the mindset you've, you've adopted the attitude of a successful job changer or career changer. What you want to do is to think in terms of assessing yourself, doing serious, self-reflection assessing your skills, assessing the experiences that you've had and consider how you can use those skills and that experience in a totally different line of work. Where will those skills translate? How can you use the experience in a totally different line of work and that kind of self reflection and assessment that doesn't happen overnight. You don't flip a switch and suddenly know everything you need to know about yourself so that you can make the case that you're a good candidate for a job. That's completely different from what you've been doing for the last 10 or 15 or 20 or more years. It takes time. That's probably the hardest thing that job seekers need to know is that you can't, even, if you feel a sense of urgency, it won't matter. It won't help you to speed up your search. And in fact, it can drive you from jumping from one bad situation, into an equally bad or worse situation. If you don't take this time upfront in the beginning of the process to do the pre-work, it's kind of like, you know, think about when you're doing it. When you're fixing dinner, you have to take the food out of the refrigerator. If you're, if you're fixing vegetables, you have to do the chopping. If, if you're creating, if you're creating a chicken dish or, uh, a state dish, you may want to marinate the meat for a little while, so that it's tender and tasty. You don't just throw everything into the oven without doing any pre-work. You have to wash everything and you know, you have to do the work that pre-work the preparation and job search is no different. You have to do the pre-work. So do these assessments. You can find loads of assessments online and in books that can help you. If you're not crystal clear about what you can do really well, use the assessments to help you, and they can help to point you in a particular direction. You may also have a sense of the kind of work you would like to do. And that means you need to research that line of work. Is it really something you're interested in or do you know enough about it to even know? Is it possible that you don't know enough about it and you're not able to make yourself qualified no matter how interesting the job may sound, excuse me. So do your research research kinds of jobs that you think you might be interested in research, the markets that you think you might be interested in pursuing the industries. What are the industry trends? You need to know that you don't need to be pursuing a job in an industry that's on its way out of existence. You want to be looking for new trends, new ways of work that may be on the horizon. You want to be on the cutting edge. You want to, perhaps you will need to get some training so that you can be on the cutting edge. You want to be forward thinking and future thinking, not past thinking. And all of this requires you to be able to separate yourself from whatever preexisting thoughts you might have about a type of job or a type of industry, and actually do the research so that you can know for sure if it's something you're interested in and along the way, you'll eliminate some things that you thought you might be interested in and turned out not what you thought. I got an email from a client a few months ago and she was all excited. She said, I've had a breakthrough. I've decided exactly what I want to do. I'm going to pursue being a copywriter. Oh, that's fantastic. You know, a lot of teachers can become two referral copywriters, but then within the week she had done some research. And that, that wasn't what she thought it was. And so back to the drawing board, trying to figure out what it is she would rather do instead. So do that research and create, this is the final thing I want to share with you today. Create not only a research plan, but also a marketing plan. You want a marketing plan where you have written down every single thing that you can do, the competencies and skills that you have to offer, the kinds of jobs that you are researching and finding that you really are interested in pursuing the companies where you might find those jobs, the industry you want to be sure not to overlook the industry trainings, the locations where these companies and, and markets might be. You may have to consider whether or not moving is required. If you want to be successful in your search. And then you want to be writing down the names of all the companies, where you might want to do some deeper research or to be thinking about actually looking to apply for jobs with those companies. And along the way, you want to be making connections with people who work in those companies, through your LinkedIn network or other networks that you may have going for you. Job searching is a multipronged process. And in the beginning, you have to lay the groundwork by doing the research and by doing the marketing plan so that as you proceed with your search and you get ready to write your resume after you've learned all that you can about the applicant tracking system, by the way, then you're ready to start writing your resume and your cover letter not before. So if you want to know more about marketing plans and research plans, email me@kittyboynineatgmail.com. I have a template that I'd be happy to share with you, but I'm not going to post a link to that. I'll only respond to an email request and I'll send you a copy of a template that I offer my clients. So email me@kittyboitnottatgmail.com. The link that I'm offering today at the end of the show notes is a link to the webinar workshop that I'll be offering on stress management for teachers. This is specifically geared to teachers and it will be aired live on Saturday, October 17th at 2:00 PM Eastern standard time. So if you're interested in learning some stress management strategies and techniques and tips to help you to manage your stress during these pandemic days, when you were overloaded with in person teaching possibly or hybrid teaching or teaching remotely or all of the above with more and more being added to your plate. And I guarantee nothing being taken off this workshop might help you to figure out ways to manage that overload that you're dealing with. And I know a lot of teachers are feeling it because I'm hearing it more and more every day. So that'll be the link. If you're interested in the research and marketing plan, email me@kittyboitnottatgmail.com and that's it for today. Have a wonderful week, stay safe, stay well, and I'll see you next week. So there you have it, an episode of teachers and 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 kitty Boitnott at Boyd, not coaching.com. If you are interested in finding a new career or just enjoying your life more, this is the place to start. I'm Katie Boitnott. And this is teachers in transition.