What Do You Really Want To Do?

The other night I gave a presentation on career and personal excellence to a group of lovely women from the Dress for Success organization of Mercer County, NJ. One woman in the meeting asked a question about my career; learning and development.  As a temporary worker in a human resources department she was interested in the field and wanted to know how I broke into it. After going through the ins and outs of my first few jobs and the qualifications/job requirements needed to break in, she got a funny look on her face.  She said, "I've done training but I never thought that those sessions counted for anything.  In fact, it's not even on my resume."  Wow #1.

Yes, I said, they do count and they count for a lot. It turns out that this woman has given several small group sessions within her church and her former place of business on a number of communication topics. She also heard a rumor that a graduate degree is a definite requirement for entry into the Learning & Development field. She never checked out the facts, just assumed it was true and never looked further into a career that she thought she might really enjoy. Wow #2.

The interesting thing is that this woman is not alone.  I've often heard similar comments in my job search sessions.  Other than challenging yourself to dare to dream, the advice I share is this:

1. Know your value. Inventory your skill set, strengths, weaknesses and everything in between.
2. Research the requirements of the particular jobs in which you are interested and see if there is a match.  Look at the Occupational Outlook Handbook and pull up the jobs in several popular job search engines like Indeed.com or Monster.com.  Read the requirements for many similar sounding jobs.
3. Network: Schedule an informational interview with people in your field of interest and make sure one of your questions is, "Do you think that I have the skill set to step into a position like this?"
4. Volunteer.  Develop your current skills or learn new skills as a volunteer and add these to your resume.
5. Identify your Transferable Skills: Consider your entire work and volunteer history and make sure to include the skills, knowledge or behaviors that you picked up.
6. Don't ever think that you're not good enough. Enough said.

I am happy to report that the woman in the session planned to go back home and think about her background, the trainings she presented in the past and plan the next steps.  I can't wait to hear how she does.