At the root of failed career changes, bad job choices or an inability to make that next professional step is some level of what I call fuzziness around who we are professionally. Getting a clear and appreciative view of your professional assets is vital, foundational career development work. My friends at VisualCV, a leading online resume-building software provider, invited me to write a guest post. In response, I wrote an in-depth, step-by-step guest article for their blog on what to do if you'…

Updates on our Career Coaching Service Options

I've made updates to the career coaching service options available on the site with the addition of quarterly arrangements as well as the already existing monthly coaching packages. Much of my client work is done a project basis - either with in-depth career move programs, or specific deliverables like LinkedIn profiles, resume writing, etc. In some cases, a monthly or quarterly schedule works great. In the words of one my current clients working on …

Lessons in How to Manage Your Career & Personal Impact from My Dad

My Dad, David Christie, passed away peacefully on Sunday after a long but dignified journey with Alzheimer’s. Reflecting on his life and career, four themes occur to me that serve as valuable reminders for our professional and personal lives. My Dad started his career with the Royal Bank 3 days after completing high school and retired with the bank 43 years later. Here’s what comes to mind as being key lessons from his life.

Old fa…

How Well Do You Know Your Industry?

One of the valuable skills I learned during my years in the executive search industry was industry mapping.

I would receive an assignment for let's say a VP Logistics in a 3rd party supply chain company and over the course of a couple of weeks I would create a document that mapped the names and locations of the key players in the industry, their relative sizes, the names and titles in each company of the people related to the job and even try and figure out the …

Many professionals and executives have made a significant step in their career or even changed the trajectory of their career thanks to riding a wave. While it can happen accidentally, paying attention to your environment can significantly increase the likelihood of catching your next industry wave. Learn how to ride a career wave.

What is an Industry Wave?

Nothing more than a ripple far from shore, a wave slowly begins to pick up energy and size. The art of surfing is to spot the right wave, catc…

Bullet-Point Valuation

Your professional value is communicated through your conversations, word-of-mouth, your work, and through what you write on your resume, cover letter, LinkedIn profile and other branding materials. For your written branding materials, resume bullet points are the sound bites, the encapsulation of what you’ve done. In one to three lines per bullet, your professional contributions are described. It’s a moment of truth when it comes time to write-up your experience. The intent…

There’s a pattern to how we feel at the end of our workdays. It wasn’t too long ago when frustration consumed me. In that job, I was missing key ingredients important to me. How I felt impacted my marriage, my kids and my overall well-being. I worked on bringing some of these into my job, but finally determined that I needed to create my own environment. So, I made a change.

The Taking Stock Question

What’s your pattern? Are you in the right place, doing the right work, for you, at this point in y…

Targeted Planning

The prospect of making some form of career change is both exhilarating -- and daunting. If you’ve decided to change careers -- and you know exactly the new career you want to pursue -- it’s important not to be stymied by the enormity of the challenges associated with the career-change process. So, how do you get the ball rolling? Drawing from my experience as an executive recruiter, director of an MBA career centre and as career coach, here are some powerful strategies you can e…