With many years’ experience recruiting the best talent for leading FTSE 100 and multi-national companies, New Career Horizons has the inside view on what employers are looking for and can develop a plan with you to achieve your career goal providing a range of one-to-one support that includes planning, preparation and execution to guide you through your career choices and options.
Planning
Understand your motivations for wanting to change or move job, or consider a new career, including:
- Explore and evaluate your career (the most enjoyable activities, your successes and challenges) to better understand what type of role you are best suited to.
- Evaluate your motives for desiring a career change – are your reasons valid?
- Identify the companies that would offer you the opportunity to the make best use of your skills.
- Learn the importance of networking to expand the contacts able to help you: they may make an introduction to a prospective employer or widen your knowledge of the opportunities in your sector.
- Seek out industry organisations that host networking events or conferences creating opportunities to link up to share professional interests and widen your network of contacts.
Remember the importance of cultural fit in an organisation:
- What are your values and what type of organisational culture do you enjoy?
- Do you perform at your best when given room to make mistakes or do you like to be more closely managed?
Preparation
Identify your unique skills, create a CV that highlights your achievements, develop your plan to market yourself, talk about yourself with confidence in interviews, for example:
- Create a best-in-class CV (and Linked-In profile) that identifies clearly and persuasively your achievements, competencies, career successes and aspirations. A strong CV is clearly laid out and ideally, is no longer than two pages. (Remember that unsolicited CVs are reviewed for an average of ten to twenty seconds .) It begins with a brief outline of your skills, experience and future career aspirations. Describes the position you held with each employer, the dates of employment, your remit and achievements. Remember to use examples that demonstrate the commercial results of your contributions. Employers are interested in your personality: they recruit professionals who have integrity, professionalism, energy and enthusiasm. Include examples that give an employer a broader sense of who you are. Detail any charity or voluntary work you are involved in. Your more recent career experience is of most interest to any employer, (typically, the past ten years): summarise your early career with employer name, position and dates of employment. Use action words throughout. Include both a mobile and email contact.
- Produce a compelling cover email to your CV that truly captures your competencies and defines the contributions you can make to an organisation and explains why you are interested in working with them.
- Communicate with confidence your expertise, skills, strengths and aspirations. Successful candidates get the mix just right. They realise interviews are a pitch. They realise they are to sell themselves and present a mix of language which correctly balances the use of ‘I’ versus ‘we’. If nothing else, it confirms to the interviewer, that they at least think they are the right person for the job.
- Identify your unique skills through developing self-knowledge to be able to talk confidently in interviews. Understand your particular strengths.
- What has been your most significant career success?
- Understand how you are best motivated.
- What management style are you best suited to?
- What is your next career goal?
- Develop the ability to demonstrate, by giving examples, the contribution you can make to an organisation.
Execution
Develop a timetable, do something every day on your job search, keep developing your network, manage the process. Keep an open mind.
- Create a spreadsheet of known contacts and former colleagues able to help in your search; list prospective companies you are interested in and develop a realistic timetable with action points that will monitor your progress.
- Before any meeting, carry out research on the company, review the website, read industry blogs and study the background of the person you will be meeting.
- At every meeting, ask pertinent questions: a prospective candidate who does not ask questions, may easily come across as disinterested .
- Keep an open mind to other career options you may not have thought of.
- Do you have the experience and capabilities to consider taking on a Non-Executive Director role that would complement your existing career?
- What alternative career options match your interests and skills, such as consultancy or taking on the role of a senior advisor .
- Are your skills suited to taking on an Interim Role.
- Successfully manage the interview process.
- At the end of any interview or career discussion, agree a timetable for next steps.
- Do not forget, that you are assessing an organisation as much as they are evaluating you.
- After each meeting send a follow-up email of thanks, outlining why you are a good candidate and what you enjoyed about the meeting.
- Give honest feedback to your prospective employer. (If you have questions or concerns, voice them at the earliest opportunity).
- If you are clearly not interested in pursuing an opportunity, be honest and explain that you do not wish to continue discussions. (Do not waste time pursuing opportunities not right for you or not of interest.)
- Turn a rejection into an opportunity to continue discussions. For example,
- If you are rejected or put on hold for a role, make contact to find out why you are not suitable. Do you lack experience in a given discipline? Are your salary expectations out of line with the budget ? (Perhaps accepting a one-time upfront payment would compensate sufficiently to enable accepting a lower salary?)
- Are you over-qualified, and if so, perhaps some additional responsibilities could be added to the role?
If you are outside the salary range or have more experience than needed, find out if more senior roles exist that may be a better fit.
- Develop a list of Executive Search Firms best able to assist you. Search Firms work, sometimes exclusively, on a high percentage of middle and senior management appointments, and at times on a confidential basis. Search Firms are client driven and if your skills and background do not match a current search, you are unlikely to be of immediate interest. However, aim to set up a meeting with the Industry Practice Leader or relevant senior Partner for an exploratory meeting to assess your suitablility for future searches. Do not rely on a Search Firm to find your next job!