Marlys Hanson INC.

My job/career has disappeared. How do I re-invent myself?

Now is my chance to make the best of the rest of my life!

The Problem: Both “forty-somethings” and “fifty-somethings” may find themselves in this situation.  They might use different words, but the themes are the same:  How would someone define their value in life?  What's the legacy they're going to leave behind? What do they want to be known for when they pass on? If it's about being the top dog on the 50th floor with a wonderful view of the city and having a lot of people you can direct, that's one thing. But if you look beyond that - and this is what we try to get people to think through -- there may be something very different that is yearning to surface.

In this economy, there's a lot of talk these days about the importance of reinventing your career, especially if your industry or profession is dying.  There is not always a direct route from your present career to a new one.   A basic strategy for reinvention is to start by identifying your skills — and then applying those skills to what you want to work with — but the analysis process is really more complicated that those simple statements may lead you to believe.
To adequately prepare yourself to target a new career, you need to know more than just your skills and your basic subject matter.  For example, if you want to “work with people,” just what is it that you want to do with people? Do you want to teach, counsel, persuade, direct, or manage them?  Do you prefer to “work from a blank sheet” and design your own approach or do you prefer to work from an instruction manual?  What results do you seek from your efforts?  What kinds of situations trigger and/or sustain your enthusiasm for your work?  How can you best engage your talents to “bridge” into a new job or career?
    

The Cause: You may be interested in a new job/career because your previous one disappeared — or you may be thinking about “Act II” ? a new name for the period of time in our lives that was previously  called “retirement.” Retirement as permanent separation from the workplace is being replaced with the idea of bridge employment.  Bridging allows older workers to "practice" retirement, to fill labor market shortages or to try a variety of occupational positions after an initial period of retirement — or to “bridge” into an entirely new career.  Remember, the 21st century may be known as the era of lifelong learning and lifelong working!

The Solution: So what can you do if you know that your current job (for whatever reason) is not the “right seat” for you but you really have no idea what that “right seat” would be? This is a very common situation and it can be very paralyzing.

Sometimes it's difficult to “tease out” the kind of comprehensive insight that you need to make a truly informed decision about your career direction.  The SIMA Assessment and Planning Process offers the opportunity to work with highly experienced career analysts who collectively have helped more than 100,000 clients in the past 50 years to find the job/career that works for them.  These consultants will help you to use your work/life history to identify the “evidence” that can serve as your “internal guidance system.”  This process helps you to think precisely about what was going on when you were fully engaged in activities that were personally fulfilling. It could have been in a job, volunteer stuff, something you did in school?.several themes will appear in all of these “motivated” activities from throughout your life.   Many of our clients have previously tried to gain these insights by asking others about what they have done well — or what they should do.  That kind of data only “muddies the water” and tells you more about what that person should do than about you!

GET STARTED NOW WITH THE SIMA® ASSESSMENT AND PLANNING PROCESS!

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