Career Transition Services

Strategic Job Search

Wouldn’t it be nice to feel a sense of direction and control over your career moves? When you start a job search in a rush, without preparing, you dramatically decrease the likelihood of landing something you really want and deserve. 

When you pursue or explore job opportunities, you are joining the market for talent and that means that you will usually be in competition with others for jobs and it means selling your offering to buyers, aka decision makers. In all cases, your job is to induce someone to say yes to you and ideally, you should have a specific idea about who that someone is. 

In fact, there are significant risks to not being market ready for your career transition. One of the problems with career transitions is that for many people, they have to happen Now! And that means entering the job market or the promotion shoot-out without being sufficiently prepared. Urgency is sometimes unavoidable, but when urgent replaces common sense preparation, there is a long list of risks you run into including: 

• Little or no response to your resume
• Poor interviewing performance
• Not being able to go for what you really want, or not knowing where you fit and what you want.
• Feeling like you don’t have choices and saying yes to the wrong opportunity (usually the first thing that comes around) and then spending months and years feeling trapped in the wrong job.
• Saying no to the right opportunity because you weren’t clear about your true values were or where you really fit.
• Precious time wasted.
• Longer job search, and perhaps a longer period of unemployment.
• Settling. Not getting your true value.
• Confidence crisis. 

6 Career Transition Steps to Get You Ready for Market


The 6 Steps form the foundation to effective career transitions. After conducting thousands of interviews, reviewing hundreds of thousands of resumes, and working personally with hundreds of clients, I can tell you with great certainty that effective job search is very much about good process. 

Successful job search and career change to a large extent is about good process. Following proven steps increases the likelihood that you will be in a situation where you feel like you are choosing, rather than settling for something that you really don’t want. 

As an executive, senior manager or senior professional, you are familiar with strategy. So, what is your strategy for your next move? If you don’t have a strategy, don’t false start. The biggest and most common issue in career transitions is a lack of preparation, forethought, strategy and focus.