Creative Job Search Series: A Career Planning Overview

As you apply and prepare for an interview for your next better paying job, it’s probably giving you some ideas about future career plans. In the same way that concrete action helps you figure something out in a way that simply thinking about it can’t do, getting and starting a job will give you ideas for planning a career in a way that thinking about career planning without action cannot. Along with that, this post overviews Chapter 1 of the CareerForce Creative Job Search guide, which has good information to know if you are currently unemployed and looking for work or ever end up losing a job for any reason. The chapter also includes additional career planning links and good questions to ask yourself about what type of work you want.

-            Use your next, better paying a job to help you figure out longer-term career plans

-            Good information to prepare you if you ever are put in a job loss situation

-            Steps to take for either career planning or reemployment

Use your next, better paying a job to help you figure out longer-term career plans

If you’ve been taking action as recommended in the ALRS posts so far, you’ve created a complete professional portfolio (your resume, cover letter, and job application) and you’ve already applied for at least one job. You’ve completed assessments to get at least a basic idea of what you are good at, what you like to do, and what jobs are available that at least somewhat fit what you have to offer. While you continue applying to jobs and await invitations to interviews, keep reading one ALRS post per day to make the most of your waiting time; the posts will guide you through additional CareerForce resources and more for career planning beyond getting your next job.

There are two advantages to starting a job and then making or updating further career plans: first, starting a better paying job gives you more financial breathing room right away, and second, the experience you gain from the job will help you see things about work and what you might want from a career that you can’t see when you’re not working. Feel free to start drafting a career plan to document any ideas you have now, but keep it flexible and update your plans as your work experience helps you better understand what you really want for your career. Your actions on the job will help you figure out over time what you truly are best at and like the most, rather than just what you think you are best at and like the most. It’s common for people to think for a long time that they really want to do something, then they finally try it and decide that it’s not everything they thought it would be.

Good information to prepare you if you ever are put in a job loss situation

These days, it’s very common for people to lose their job at least once in their career, even if they are high performers at work. Don’t feel bad if this happens to you. Instead, be prepared; today’s chapter of the CareerForce guide provides some useful information to help you manage financial and insurance needs, self-care, and steps you can take when you’re ready to search for new employment. Preparing for this possibility ahead of time can reduce your anxiety at work and give you peace of mind in a time when job security can’t be taken for granted.

While not mentioned in the guide, here is another page from CareerForce providing more job loss information: Job Loss Resources | CareerForce.

And here is a page from the U.S. Department of Labor with more: Audience: Job Seekers and Unemployed Workers | U.S. Department of Labor.

You don’t have to go through these sources right now if you don’t need them, but take a brief look and make sure you bookmark these pages in a place that you’ll find them if you need them later.

Steps to take for either career planning or reemployment

Whether you’re just about to start your next job or want to be prepared if faced with job loss, there are some excellent resources the CareerForce guide mentions, as well as some thoughtful questions to ask yourself on page 5. Along with using experience you gain in your next job to flesh out plans for your professional future, look for more assessments to get a deeper sense of what you are good at, like to do, and how that fits in with growth forecasts for jobs you think you want to advance into over the next several years.

For this post, just read the first chapter of the CareerForce guide. Additional posts coming soon will help you navigate three other resources worth exploring, but don’t overload yourself by trying to go through them all today:

-            My Next Move

-            Careers and Career Information - CareerOneStop

-            O*NET OnLine

Conclusion

This series of posts will summarize one chapter of the CareerForce Creative Job Search guide each day so that you cover it in manageable chunks. Some information in the guide will be new, and some will be information you’re already familiar with, but that is still good to review or reinforce. Be aware of tips and good practices for getting through a job loss situation, in case you’re ever faced with that in the future or dealing with it currently. And while you continue to plan your career based on experience gained at work, keep exploring career resources and completing assessments both to deepen your knowledge of yourself and what options are out there for you to pursue, as they interest you.

Read through Chapter 1 of the CareerForce Creative Job Search guide today!

The next step on the roadmap: Creative Job Search Series: How to Research Organizations for Work

Accelearnate is not officially associated with CareerForce, but cites the website often as an excellent resource for job seeking and career planning. Accelearnate aims to make job and career content from CareerForce and other sites easier for job seekers to effectively act on by providing curated step-by-step guidance for getting a better paying job and launching a successful career.

Sing to Boost Confidence

Do you wish you were more confident? When you know you’ve got a chance to do something you want to do that’s a little bit nerve wracking, do you feel an invisible wall holding you back? Building confidence is something that takes time and results from many small actions, but there’s one you can do that is free, anytime you want, so you don’t have to wait to encounter an opportunity to build your self-confidence with it: singing. Can you imagine a person who is comfortable singing in public but is not confident? Probably not. Try making regular opportunities for yourself to sing, both alone and with others, and see what a difference it makes if you try for two minutes per day for three months.

-            Practice alone at first

-            Find other so-so singers to practice with

-            Measure your progress and notice over time how it boosts your confidence

Practice alone at first

If you’re not already comfortable singing in front of other people, begin by practicing on your own. You might find it more comfortable to seek out places out of anyone else’s earshot, and you might start more quietly. When it’s safe to do so, you might sing if driving someplace by yourself, where anyone who sees you singing in your car almost certainly won’t cross paths with you again. And if you really feel like you can’t bring yourself to sing just yet, start with humming softly for a week and then loudly for another, and then try singing. Take whatever baby steps you need to; the most important key to success here is consistently taking steps toward being comfortable singing in front of other people to boost your self-confidence!

Push yourself to sing with a stronger and stronger voice over the first several days, knowing that a stronger voice is going to sound more impressive and confident to others even if you’re not an expert singer. Pick easy songs that aren’t long and don’t require much vocal range. Classic nursery rhymes are a great place to start, if nothing else; you’re giving your brain, ears, and voice practice to get the hang of singing.

Find other so-so singers to practice with

After practicing on your own for a month, seek out a group where people sing. You could join a church you like or look online for a singing group where you don’t have to be a superstar to fit in. Join a group where the stakes are low and you could easily leave if you had to. When you’re with a group like this, you can keep reminding yourself that most of the other people aren’t great singers either, and you are all boosting each other’s confidence by practicing singing in front of each other!

By joining some sort of singing group, you’ll also get to practice more advanced songs. You’ll gain more awareness of different musical keys and vocal types, and with practice and careful listening to others, you’ll get a better feel for where your voice fits best in any song. Use this group practice time to keep gradually getting better and don’t rush yourself or create unnecessary stress with self-imposed expectations. Remember that your ultimate goal here is to use singing as a free and effective way to boost self-confidence.

Measure your progress and notice over time how it boosts your confidence

Take some recordings of yourself, one on your first day, and one each week after that. Your recordings don’t have to be more than a minute long, just enough so you can identify what you want to improve about your singing in the next week. Listen to every recording again at least at the end of each month. At first, you’ll probably cringe hearing yourself sing. This is perfectly normal; don’t give up over it, otherwise you’ll never boost your self-confidence through singing. You just have to power through the cringe and keep going.

After each month, you’ll notice your singing skill and comfort both increase by small amounts. By the time three months pass, hopefully singing has boosted your confidence by at least a small amount and you find it slightly enjoyable, even though you won’t be a pro by then. At that point, ask yourself if you feel more confident in general, day-to-day, even when you’re not singing. You probably will, and if you don’t, what will you have lost by trying?

Conclusion

Try singing to become more confident in yourself. It’s hard to start doing, but even if you take tiny steps in that direction, you’ll get more comfortable with it over time. Start by practicing alone to get yourself used to it and build up a voice for singing. After a month or so of that, find a low-stakes group where others are also working on becoming better at singing. Take short periodic recordings of your singing and listen to how much better you get over time. Make sure you practice regularly and don’t succumb to any feelings of doubt because you don’t like how you sound. Singing to boost confidence doesn’t cost you anything and will help you feel better about yourself even when you’re not singing!

Start singing to boost your self-confidence today!

The next step on the roadmap: A General Success Virtual Field Trip

Don’t Do’s in Job Interviews

While the resources in the previous post about interviews provide a lot of good advice to prepare for interviews, it’s important to be aware of common faux pas in job interviewing that could negate all the hard work you put into getting an interview. You don’t want to unwittingly commit an error that eliminates you from further consideration and then realize afterward that you did something wrong without realizing it. So, here’s a post and some helpful sources to inform you about things you should avoid doing in a job interview.

-            Top job interview faux pas

-            Reframe things that tempt you to commit a faux pas

-            Put yourself in the interviewer’s shoes ahead of the interview

Top job interview faux pas

Across the four articles from three sources given below, they mention many different things to avoid doing or saying during job interviews. While it’s worth reading through each article and noting each critical mistake to avoid, four were mentioned consistently enough to be identified up front:

-            Tardiness

-            Lying

-            Disparaging others (such as past colleagues or employers)

-            Interviewing unprepared (not preparing questions to ask or researching the organization beforehand)

You can think of these four as the top faux pas to avoid, but remember that part of being prepared for an interview is to also know about other “don’t do’s”, as enough of the more minor ones could collectively sink your chances of advancing as well. Here are the four articles reviewed for this post, but feel free to look around the web or elsewhere for others:

-            17 Things to Avoid Doing in a Job Interview | Indeed.com

-            15 things you should NOT do in an interview | Michael Page

-            Five Things You Should NOT Do During A Job Interview | Forbes

-            10 Things You Should Never Say in a Job Interview | Indeed.com

Reframe things that tempt you to commit a faux pas

If you know you might struggle to resist any interview faux pas, try to address that before an interview, not on the fly during the interview. Simply telling yourself beforehand to not do it and not preparing any further could cause you to accidentally commit the faux pas in the heat of the moment; you’d be surprised at how easy it can be to forget or abandon decisions like that when you’re put into a stressful situation like a job interview. Instead of simply telling yourself, “Don’t do it!”, figure out how you can handle the issue in a more positive way.

One example might be if you’ve had a negative experience or relationship with a colleague or boss, past or present. Instead of criticizing them in an interview (even stumbling into it when you didn’t mean to), find one positive thing to note about that person and one thing you learned through your difficulty working with them. Refusing to mention the conflict or tension you've had with them is avoiding conflict, and that’s not going to score points with the hiring manager, either. Instead, acknowledge that you’ve struggled to get along with this person but explain how you made the best of it and mention anything you can think of about how the other person tried to help the situation. Giving credit where credit is due to someone you’re struggling to get along with will impress your hiring manager!

Another example could be reframing to prevent tardiness, if you tend to run late a lot. Many people end up late for appointments because they are trying to maximize their productivity; they try to do just one last task before leaving for the appointment. Then, they hit a traffic slowdown or some other delay, and punctuality slips out of reach. Reframe this by thinking about how tardiness kills your chances of advancing past that interview, thus making that interview a likely waste of your time (not to mention the interviewer's). The last task or two you cram in that makes you late for the interview almost certainly can wait until after the interview, and they probably aren’t anywhere near as important as succeeding in your interview. Make an alarm on your phone to stop doing other tasks plenty early and allow ample transit time, with an explanation on the alarm to remind you why you set it.

Put yourself in the interviewer’s shoes ahead of the interview

As you review and consider all the different interview faux pas to avoid, think ahead about how the interviewer would feel if you committed any of them. They are trying to assess not only your qualifications for the job, but also how well you’re likely to get along with them and the rest of the team. Practicing empathy by putting yourself in the interviewer’s shoes will give you strong motivation to prepare well and avoid faux pas, because you’ll better anticipate how anything you say or do in the interview, good or bad, will make the interviewer feel.

“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

                                                                                  ~ Maya Angelou

Yes, the interviewer(s) will probably take notes on what you say and do, but how you make them feel is every bit as important as anything they remember about your words or actions.

Conclusion

Ignorance is no excuse when it comes to job interview faux pas. While there’s no exact number of them, there are probably a total of one to two dozen noteworthy ones you should at least be aware of to consider yourself prepared to avoid them. Some will tarnish your reputation in the interview more than others. Try to identify the ones you’re most vulnerable to and look for ways to deal with them in a positive, constructive way. Finally, take a short time to imagine you’re an interviewer and the person you’re interviewing commits a major faux pas against you; how would that make you feel?

Review the sources above, and others if you want, to learn what interview faux pas to avoid today!

The next step on the roadmap: Networking: People Helping Each Other