Career Change Four Mistakes To Avoid When You Tell Your Story To Employers And Recruiters

Career Change? Four Mistakes To Avoid When You Tell Your Story To Employers And Recruiters If you’re making an attempt a career change â€" from one business to a different, from one functional position to a different, from a sabbatical or household leave to getting again to work â€" you'll be telling employers, recruiters, and others in your community your STORY. You are sometimes requested for a general story: Tell me about yourself. Walk me via your career. Or you may be asked particularly about your profession change: How did you come to this new sector? Why are you returning to work? Either method, as a career changer, you need to convincingly and compellingly get the listener excited about you in your new profession. Notice how I stated you in your new career, not excited about your new profession or testing out your prospects or anything but you a hundred% all-in together with your new career. Career change mistake #1, then, is speaking too much about hopes and goals and not sufficient about actions and results. Dreams over actions is one key mistake career changer s make once they inform their story. Here are three more errors to keep away from if you tell your career change story to employers and recruiters: Giving the “actual” reasons on your profession change I coached a career changer who transitioned from analytics to communications and from financial providers to healthcare. She loves her new profession however really fell into it by chance â€" after having her first baby, she wished to go away banking, so she started freelancing, and her first project happened to be healthcare communications, however she beloved it and stored going. So being the honest person that she was, her story all the time included how she fell into her new function, how the change was prompted by her newborn, and the way she NEVER anticipated to be on this new career…The story, while factually correct, just underscores her outsider standing (and her working mother status which isn’t a selling level with most employers). Life can only be understood backwards; but it should be lived forwards. â€" Soren Kierkegaard I love this quote for career changers. We live life forwards â€" picking up opportunities as they come up, adjusting to circumstances corresponding to parenthood. These ahead-transferring actions put us in the profession we have now. But when you assemble your story, you need to take the backwards view and pull out the threads and patterns that make your transition story comprehensible, even inevitable. In the above instance, the profession changer may absolutely have acknowledged that the first healthcare communications project was opportunistic, however her choice to remain was deliberate, not unintentional. And while private reasons are all the time a part of the choices we make, why reveal them? That’s TMI â€" too much info. Get to know your new profession story trying backwards, and inform it that method. Emphasizing your beginner status with the phrases Change, Transition, or New Another good reason for making your transfer into new career sound deliberate and deliberate out is to give you credibility and make you seem less like a newbie. The employer, recruiter, or perhaps a networking lead who needs to refer you must be assured you've arrived and may 100% do the job. They don’t need to hear about your change journey, simply the vacation spot. They aren't hiring you (or referring you) to be able to be taught on another person’s dime and time. If you’re used to telling your story apologetically, “I just started…” or “I have just one project…” or “I’m new…” construct your story around results, not time. “Currently I’m engaged on X.” Talk about initiatives, actions like memberships, expertise-builders like conferences. Tell your story within the thick of the brand new career you’re in to attract the listener into seeing you in that new profession and out of your old one. Sure, you could be requested about your former profession , especially when you’ve had significant time and accomplishments in that space. Don’t get drawn into speaking about your old profession on its own. Always draw a parallel to how it’s relevant to your new career. Do not assume that your listener will know how it relates. If you get absorbed into your former career, you'll sound like you miss it. If you might be rather more accomplished in your old profession than new one, you'll just underscore how raw you might be in your new space. Never spend nearly all of time talking about your previous; at all times drive the conversation back to the present and your future contributions to this new employer. Getting defensive about your career change story Yes, you'll have to proactively design your story, follow telling it to stay on message on your new career and put together yourself for reluctance, even suspicion from recruiters and employers. Don’t get defensive, don’t assume you’re hiding it well. When I even have shoppers w ho are frustrated or anxious with their job search (and career change is a tougher job search), the purchasers usually think people don’t discover the frustration or anxiety. But these adverse feelings are very noticeable. You must prepare for pointed questions about why you left your former profession â€" repeated questions, disbelief at your preliminary solutions, and extra probing. Expect this and practice staying in your message in a neutral, confident voice. The recruiter or employer you’re talking to at that moment could have made a really different alternative â€" perhaps they’re an aspiring career changer. They may secretly be rooting for you, and the doubts they express could possibly be their own private projections. You have to have a profession change story that satisfies all types of listeners â€" the ones who probe for the “real” reason, the ones who take a look at your credibility, and those who put you on the defensive. Practice a constructive story, and st ick to it! This submit initially appeared in my Forbes Leadership column. Update to authentic publish: I blog about my career change after forty and it did require that I inform an entire new story, particularly to myself (in my case, it led me to Costa Rica and a whole new enterprise and life!) Our FREE job search mini-course is out there now! Register HERE to get the course delivered right to your inbox.