At the core of effective career transition activity is a sense of focus and direction, represented by an individual’s Personal Market Plan. To be efficient, it is to anyone’s advantage to fully utilize available technical resources in all phases of career transition:

• Assessment… Many of the widely used psychological profiles are available within web-based applications, skills and experience can be recorded within a spreadsheet to identify key competencies… but there seems to be no replacement for the interaction with that experienced and knowledgeable, human sounding board, the Career Consultant.
• Resume Building… Certainly it is easy to accept the time management that word processing allows… but the multitude of career decisions that come in to play in order to develop a high quality resume is beyond the artificial intelligence available in today’s technology. Within MS Word, for example, applications of AUTO TEXT and MAIL MERGE can be significant boosts to your efficient use of time. Getting to know ones-self through resume development is an irreplaceable portion of the process.
• Networking development… Technology can help us broaden, speed up and dig deeper in the information gathering, "keyword matching" and identification of traditional marketplace opportunities (in the published market)… There is no proven replacement for the person-to-person interactions prerequisite to effective recruitment and selection activity. This HIGH TOUCH reality can be enhanced through skilled use of the HIGH TECH tools and resources.  One such example are the electronic networking communities, such as www.linkedin.com
• Interview and selection… It has been said that the best "FIT" is one that both sides can feel. We can reproduce much of human interaction using audio, visual and other electronic means: teleconferencing and video-conferencing can save a lot of time and expense. However, with much the same impact as personal networking, the multitude of subjective decision making and assessment is best done person-to-person.
• Job and Career SATISFACTION… The acid test… IS there a HIGH TECH way to experience this desired feeling? Which leads us to my simple point:

Put (HIGH) TECHnology to work for you in leveraging your time and efforts in the implementation of your Personal Market Plan… but never let it replace the High TOUCH necessary to assure your career goals and objectives.

BE PREPARED For Your Transition…

An old coach of mine once told me that “Success is where preparation meets opportunity.”  He meant that if I practiced hard and developed my skill, we’d win more ball games.  I have always tried to apply this mentality to the game of career success.

Are you prepared for the career transition ahead? Have you…

ü      Thought through how your personality, work habits, skill sets and experience “FIT” the work that you seek?  Self assessment is always best, and it can be enhanced with the guidance of a skilled and experienced “coach.”

ü      Crystallized and set your career objectives, the next steps along your career path?  Positioning and targeting yourself in the marketplace creates efficiency.

ü      Developed a GREAT RESUME template to communicate the first two items effectively in the open job market?  This process should be your first steps in creating high impact written collaterals to support your personal marketing effort.

ü      Coached your references to confirm your assessment as others see you, engage their support… and to kick-off your network development?

ü      Conducted initial research to identify trends and potential employers (targets) to fuel and confirm the validity of your personal marketing efforts?

ü      Created focus to your efforts with a personal contact list and list of potential employers? 

A well conceived Personal Market Plan can bring you face-to-face with "insiders" and even with unadvertised positions before anyone else learns of them. It is tempting, in our age of electronic communication with emailing and voicemailing and relaying information rapidly to one another, to want to over rely on electronic job searching activities.  You’ll hear me repeat a simple phrase often in my training and coaching… job seeking is the business of developing relationships with others.

All it takes is being willing to share information, ideas and resources.  Further, many employers prefer to hire someone they know personally or hire someone who has been referred to them by a mutual acquaintance. Familiarity and referrals reduce much of the uncertainty involved in hiring a new employee.