A Time for Career Reflection and Planning 

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During this extraordinary period in world events, you may well be finding yourself in lockdown, forbidden by your business to travel and working most days from home on your own. Lots of things are on hold and you feel very much like you are treading water with your job, career and life in general. If you are unfortunate enough to have contracted the coronavirus, hopefully you are on the road to a full recovery but you may be facing a prolonged period of self-isolation. And of course boredom may well be setting in. 

On a daily basis right now, we are having frequently recurring dialogues with our current and potential individual clients who whilst, wishing to embark upon an important career transition, are finding it difficult to make progress with companies delaying recruitment and hiring decisions and executive search agencies experiencing the same slowdown as everyone else.  

Our strong recommendation to all talented and aspiring career professionals is to turn the unfortunate current situation on its head by investing newly available time, whilst you can, to think hard about your career. You may be happy and settled for now and not looking for a new role in the short term or you may already have made the decision to move on but are frustrated because you cannot make a start.  Either way time spent in doing some simple tasks right now when you might have some surplus time will payback massively whenever things return to normality. 

 Simple career-related tasks you could be undertaking include:

  • A quick career assessment I.e. stand back from the daily challenges and ask yourself some key questions. How is my career progressing, am I gaining the experience and capabilities I want in my current role and organisation and is my job truly fulfilling? Do I have clarity about what I want to do next and will my current organisation be able to fulfil my aspirations? Make yourself some notes and think about what your responses tell you about if and when you need to be thinking about moving on

  • A review of your CV and LinkedIn Profile - are they up to date and do they tell an accurate story about who you are and what capabilities and experiences you might have to offer to other organisations. How good is your upfront profile statement? Does it succinctly and accurately capture your distinctive career DNA? What could you do to improve it? Use this work to then ...

  • Messaging - decide  how you would in 2 to 3 minutes respond to a headhunter phone call out of the blue where they pose the question “Tell me about yourself” - what is the compelling and impactful narrative that you would want to get across in a brief answer. Write down your response; review and modify it and practice saying it out loud. This can then become your own personal marketing statement when you choose that the time is right to project yourself into the jobs market.

  • Networking - review and refresh your network. Most of us today have extensive personal networks, but for many these networks are often very passive and sometimes incomplete. Whenever you decide to reach out and search for a new job role, your network will be a massively important potential source of opportunities. So why not take time-out to enhance and update your network so it is fit for purpose when you are ready to move into job-seeking action.

    Go back over each period and chapter in your career and think about who were the people in each period who you valued most and who in turn valued you highly. Then ask “where are they now”? Am I actively connected with them or have I lost touch? What kind of roles do they hold and in what type of organisations? How could I gently reactivate my contact with them so they can also update themselves about me and my experiences? Make yourself a priority list of those individuals in your network who might be most useful to you when you decide the time is right to move on. 

      

Our extensive experience of coaching individuals in career transition, is that serial job winners, even when they are settled in a particular role, use marginal time wisely, little but often, to think and plan ahead to a future time when they may want to move on swiftly; such individuals are always well-prepared and as such invariably have a distinct advantage over others in a highly competitive jobs market. 

If you would like to know more about Brosna’s Career Transition coaching services and how we might help you with the next stage in your career journey, please contact tim@brosna-consulting.com to arrange a confidential initial discussion. 

Tim Chapman

March 2020  

Photo by Hannah Olinger on Unsplash