Six Week Career Makeover Book is Coming!

It’s almost here! Yes, I’ve been busy with my “day job”, but the updated Career Transition Workbook is expanded into a full book and getting published in 2023! Links will be added soon!

The Six Week Career Makeover:

Career Transition and Career Management for Professional Women

About the Book

Whether you are purposefully seeking to change jobs, advance your career, or shift it in a new direction—or if a career transition has been thrust upon you by an unexpected job loss—this six-week workbook is designed to give you a structured and proven approach to getting to where you want to be in your career. By completing 12 assignments designed to help you get Ready for your search, How to Aim your search at a clear target, then Fire your resume and communicate your value to land a great position.

It’s about career transition—getting from your current position or most recent job—to a new one. But it’s also about managing your career: whether you are currently working in your “dream job” or not. The book includes stories and examples from the author’s long career helping high-potential employees reach their career goals, and also the research and stories of how professional women can navigate and overcome the often hidden barriers they face in the workplace. The workbook helps you navigate a career transition, first by defining and understanding your value, then including how to write a resume that will get seen, how to effectively pursue a new position, work with recruiters, how to “network” even if you’re an introvert, and how to integrate the priorities in your life even when work-life balance is impossible. Tips and strategies used by large outplacement firms and seasoned recruiters provide an inside view of transition strategies most job seekers never know.

Table of Contents:

Before You Begin

  • The Career Lifecycle
  • Successful Transitions
  • When Bad things Happen to Good Employees
  • Get Ready before you Aim & Fire

Part One: Ready

Week One: Gather Your Posse

  • Half of High Potentials Aren’t, Even More Are Never Identified
  • You Need a Posse
  • Assignment 1: Gather Your Posse
  • Warning: You aren’t Networking. Yet.

Week 2: Know your Value

  • Do-be-do-be-do.
  • Grand-mère
  • Assignment 2: Know Your Value

Part 1.5 Intermission:  ch-ch-ch-changes

Part Two: Aim

Week 3: Exploring Your Options, Visualizing Your Target

  • Getting Started
  • Assignment 3: Applied Genius
  • Explore
  • Assignment 4: Explore
  • Experiment
  • Consider Your “Wiring.”

Week 4: Start Your Search & Write Your Resume

  • The Applicant Tracking System & Online Dating: Why Matchmaking is so Hard
  • Raising the Odds to Get Seen
  • Assignment 5: Identifying Positions and Key Words
  • Write Your Resume Bullets and Create Your Master Resume(s)
  • Assignment 6: Write Your Resume Bullets
  • STAR Stories to Resume Bullet Worksheet
  • Focus On Outcomes & Results
  • Assignment 7: Format Your Resume
  • Resume Format
  • Your LinkedIn Profile
  • Cover Letters

Part Three: Fire!

Week 5: The Hunt Begins

  • Reach Out
  • Working with Recruiters
  • Look Past the Job Boards
  • Assignment 8: Start Applying for Jobs and Engaging Your Network
  • Interviewing 101
  • Assignment 9: Use your STAR stories to prepare for interviews.
  • Accepting the Offer
  • Assignment 10: Do Something Fun for yourself

Week 6: Your Career is an Asset: Manage it Well

  • Radar Screens and Career Paths
  • Your Individual Development Plan (IDP)
  • Pick 2, but make them SMART
  • Assignment 11: Write your IDP
  • Career Management: Yourself within the Organizational System
  • Extra Credit Assignment: The Integrity Game
  • Barriers & Bridges to Career Management for Women
  • Assignment 12 (Women): Build Bridges over Barriers
  • Assignment 12 (Men): Workplace Poker
  • Lather, Rinse, Repeat

Epilogue