The phrase “reinvent yourself” seems to be popping up lately. Just a few days ago a friend asked me how he could do it without starting all over again. His concern was, “How do I move in a new professional direction without sacrificing all the skills and experience I’ve worked so hard for?” The underlying question is: “Is this possible?”
Yes, it is possible to start over without starting over! That is how:
1.) Take inventory of the skills, experience, credentials, and accomplishments you’ve built in your career to date. Know your strengths and weaknesses, your assets and your liabilities. Recognize your transferable skills and how to market them. Describe the breadth and depth of your work experience. Understand the value of your credentials. Match powerful verbs, specific nouns, and quantifiable descriptors to your accomplishments and practice telling stories about them.
2.) Clarify your values. Dig deep enough into yourself to know which values ​​are yours and which are those of your parents, mentors, employers, culture, society, or faith community. Claim yours and release theirs. Look again at any value related to money or security: what you think is a value may not be a value at all, but a mask that covers a group of values. For example, “money,” “benefits,” and “safety” often mask values ​​such as lifestyle, adventure, independence, and security, so record these values ​​as the latter, not the former, if you expect to live them Really. .
3.) Identify the talents, gifts, and passions that drive you. Be honest and real with yourself and, if necessary, seek the objective opinions of others. Claim what is truly yours and then describe it in detail who-what-when-where-by-how and practice condensing your description into a 60-second story. Notice how related talents and gifts seem to cluster around themes of passion. This is not a coincidence, but a sign pointing the way to your life purpose.
4.) Use all the data you’ve collected about yourself in Steps 1, 2, and 3 to brainstorm a list of jobs, careers, employers, and industries that match and make positive use of your skills, experience, credentials, achievements, values, talents, gifts and passions. Use career professionals and reference materials like the Dictionary of Occupational Titles and the Occupational Outlook Handbook to help you. Shorten, refine, categorize and prioritize your list.
5.) Develop a stellar self-marketing package to match each job group, career, employer, and industry in which you want to promote yourself. Create multiple versions of your resume and cover letter to cover a range of degrees, career paths, or related industries. Use the keywords associated with each profession. Distribute your resume and cover letter package to employers strategically through advertisements, online posting sites, networks, recruiters, and targeted mailings.
It really is that simple! Yes, these steps are dense with all sorts of “to do’s,” but if you do everything suggested, you’ll get where you want to be. The worst mistake you can make in reinventing your career is believing that you can’t do it. Aren’t you worth that hope?