If you’re reading this, it means you’ve registered for Guidance Counselling for Adults – welcome!
This post outlines the main job search and career change approach we’ll be taking in GCA.
If you’ve been reading my posts or emails for a while, some of this may sound familiar but please read through to the end as it includes some very important foundational info.
Program dates
Just a refresher, the program runs for 5 weeks from Monday, November 11th – Friday, December 13th, 2019.
Great news!
Here’s some great news if you’ve been wanting to figure out what’s next in your career…
You can stop waiting until you know exactly what you want to pursue – you don’t even have to know what you want to do next before you start job searching.
And here’s some even better news…
You can stop with the resumes and scrolling through online job postings. It’s almost always a waste of time and effort and it can be incredibly painful and discouraging.
As a Career & Salary Negotiation Coach, it makes my heart hurt to see people focusing all their efforts on resumes and online postings.
That used to work – that’s the Old Way to job search. But you’ve probably realized that things have changed.
These old job search strategies are what most of us were taught, but they’re not very effective, especially if:
- You’ve had a non-linear career
- You’re a generalist
- You have a lot of soft skills
- You’ve had a gap in your work history
- You’re changing careers
Plus, the Old Way job does absolutely nothing to help you get career clarity or figure out which job or organization is right for you.
How are you feeling about your job situation?
If you’re at the point where you’re thinking about your next step, it’s usually because you’re unhappy at your job, (re-)entering the workforce (hi, grads and new moms), have been job searching for a long time already, or you’re in some other equally stressful and panicked situation.
It can also be because you’re bored and want to level-up your career with a new challenge (this can be stress-inducing because you’re not using your strengths or feeling engaged).
People who take Guidance Counselling for Adults usually fit into one of the above categories.
When you start thinking about your next step, I want to make sure you’re taking strategicaction that’ll give you RESULTS.
If you’re reading this, it probably means you’ve already spent a lot of time figuring out what’s next for you….
You’ve read a million blog posts about finding your dream job. You’ve watched TED Talks about following your passion. Maybe you’ve even read books like, “What Color is Your Parachute” or “Lean In.”
All in search of an exact title to pursue or the perfect dream job but…No luck.
This approach is frustrating, confusing, and exhausting. You may have learned about more career options, but it’s information overload and the choices are paralyzing.
And it leaves you in a bit of a catch-22 situation—how do you apply for a job if you don’t even know which job you want?
You’re determined to make some (or any) progress, so you scroll through job boards and edit resumes and cover letters until your eyeballs feel like they are going to fall out of your head.
The result? Hours spent hunched over a computer with very little to show for it, except for a few stock responses thanking you for applying and stating only qualified candidates will be contacted for interviews (no phone calls please).
And even if you do get contacted for an interview…
How do you know if the job will actually be what you want? What if the organization/colleagues/your boss is everything you hate? And what if it’s worse than your current situation? WHAT IF YOU DON’T LIKE IT?
Give yourself permission to stop.
Stop waiting until you find the exact job title to go after—so many great opportunities are passing you by while you wait.
Stop applying to online postings—you are only one of hundreds or thousands of applicants and your resume is not the best representation of your experience or transferable skills.
For the rest of GCA, I’m going to ask to put a pause to scrolling through online postings (unless you get sent an amazing job, in that case, email me and we’ll discuss next steps).
So what do you instead? The NEW way to job search & change careers
Instead of figuring out your next step using The Old Way, start using the strategies I’ve cleverly titled, “The New Way”.
You focus on getting referred or connected to job opportunities.
The New Way makes sure your resume is at the top of the pile.
The New Way implements strategies so that by the time your resume is submitted, it’s really only a formality, an HR detail, because the employer already knows you’re the right person for the job.
The New Way is the focus of GCA.
“But isn’t this only a job search strategy? How will it help me figure out which job I want?”
Let me unpack this…
There are TWO parts of figuring out your next step (and they can happen simultaneously):
- Figuring out WHAT your next step is going to be (i.e. career exploration – which job, field, impact, company you want to pursue)
- Figuring out HOW to get there (i.e. job search strategies)
Yes, the end goal is to get referred or connected to a job, but the career exploration happens as you go through the process of accomplishing this goal.
Before this, you go through your career exploration and job search by using your priorities to help with decision-making (no more analysis paralysis – this is the focus of Module 2), leading with your transferable skills (this is the focus of Module 3) and experience, and leveraging people as human search engines and human LinkedIns (this is the focus of Module 4).
The Old Way to job search
The New Way to job search
It’s a lot of work but it’s worth it
Let me be honest…
The New Way involves a lot of work but it’s work that is intentional, streamlined, and sustainable.
Does applying for job postings with resumes sometimes work? Of course. But it’s draining, ineffective, and very difficult to get any insight into whether the job, organization, or field is right for you.
Plus, searching through job postings and editing resumes is very, very, boring.
With The New way, you spend less time on career exploration and job searching with more effective results.
GCA can be a lot of work but it’s worth it
We’re all adults so we probably all know that the more effort you put into something, the more you get out of it.
GCA will be an intense 5 weeks but it’s really worth it to put in the effort for this short amount of time.
Yes, you’ll have access to the course content afterwards but you only have 5 weeks to take advantage of the accountability and my career coach brain.
Below are some kind words from past GCA students about their experience going through GCA (you may have seen some of these on my website already).
I’m including these here not to further convince you that GCA works (I’m guessing that’s why you’re here) – I’m included these here so that you can see what’s possible when you fully show up and do the work.
Any pics that have names in them are done so with permission.
And here are unsolicited two blog post written by GCA alumni.
4 women who guided me into tech
No such thing as a classically trained content strategist
In summary – take advantage of all that GCA has to offer over the next 5 weeks 🙂
You’re ahead of 99% of other people
Sound overwhelming? Don’t worry—thats why I do what I do.
If you’re thinking this, that’s actually a good thing. These strategies can often seem difficult because they’re new and unfamiliar. And it definitely does take guts to go out of your comfort zone and try something new.
However, if you actually follow through on these strategies, you’re ahead of 99% of other people. Most people give up easily. Use this to your advantage.
In my experience, these new career exploration and job search strategies are not much more difficult than writing resumes and applying to a ton of online postings.
The GCA approach to job searching & changing careers that doesn’t rely on resumes (it’s also your career insurance)
Let’s talk about the core strategy behind figuring out your next step and the four building blocks you need before you start.
By the end of GCA, you’ll have your building blocks ready!
Coffee chats: The core of The New Way to job search
At the core of this two-pronged strategy is talking to other people and tapping into their brain trust.
You can figure out both parts of your next step by applying the same strategy: Talking to other people.
Or, as I like to call it, “coffee chats.”
Through coffee chats, you leverage other people as human search engines and human LinkedIns to help you determine the WHAT and the HOW of figuring out your next step.
It seems simple but it’s elite-athlete-kind-of-simple—when someone is so prepared and practiced that they make it look easy and powerful, but really it takes a lot of time, effort, and training to make it work.
It’s the same with coffee chats…
To do it effectively and not embarrass yourself or waste your time, there’s a ton of work that needs to be done beforehand. I’ll help you avoid getting stuck or making the mistakes I’ve seen other people make.
And if this sounds scary or daunting – don’t panic. We’ll cover how to prep for this and plan for your fears. Module 4 is all about coffee chats – who to talk to, how to find people, templates for how to approach warm and cold contacts, what to actually SAY in a coffee chat, and more.
Already tried coffee chats?
Awesome! If they weren’t very effective or didn’t work for you (or maybe you’ve been on the receiving end of a bad one) you can focus on optimizing them.
In GCA, I’m going to teach you several key strategies that can drastically improve your coffee chat game.
We’ll get into the four building blocks of figuring out your next step later on in this post but first…
Are coffee chats really worth it?
YES! Since you’re here in GCA, you probably want to know how to do coffee chats (or optimize the ones you’re doing already).
Either way, it can seem overwhelming and it’s easy to lose motivation so I want to highlight 9 reason why coffee chats are incredibly powerful and effective. Remember these when if you ever feel frustrated in GCA or your job search:
- Career insurance that helps you avoid job searching
- Other people connect the dots for you
- You get choose how to frame your experience by leading with skills, not titles (this is incredibly useful if you’ve had a non-linear career, you’re changing careers, or you’re a generalist)
- Helps with decision making and analysis paralysis
- Boosts your confidence
- Saves you time
- Saves you money
- Expands your network
- No more information overload or overwhelm
Let’s dive in…
1. Career insurance that helps you avoid job searching
You never know when you may need a new job due to a layoff, your job becoming obsolete, or a change in lifestyle is needed (like having kids or taking care of aging parents).
With coffee chats, you can build your network and keep your options open. It’s as close as you can get for preparing yourself for something that you can never totally prepare for.
We’ve all heard the scary stats that say people will now have to change careers many times throughout their lives.
And sometimes, you may just want a new job because you’d like to feel more engaged or want to make more money (job-hopping is the best way to get an increase in salary—not just a small one but a big jump like $55k, which I’ve helped my clients have accomplished).
The great news is that if you learn this skill now, it will serve you for the rest of your life.
That’s why coffee chats are like career insurance.
And if you’re like me and hate feeling trapped in a job, the insights and connections you build up through coffee chats are like having an escape plan in your back pocket.
If you’re coffee chatting often (when I was in my last job, I was doing it 2-4 times a month), it is very possible to land a job before you even leave your current job.
That means you get to avoid the job search altogether!
2. Other people connect the dots for you
This is true both in terms of WHAT your next step is and HOW you can land that next step.
When you take action and talk to an actual human instead of continually Googling or just thinking about what you should do next, the contact can share their ideas about which roles or organizations might utilize your skills.
This is HUGE! This is where the person starts to figure out your next step for you.
Do you know every job that’s out there? No. And I don’t either. Often, job titles don’t even really give us insight into what the job actually IS.
Organizational culture is often a reason people stay with or leave an employer. Maybe you’ve been burned by this before? I know I have.
But how do you know what an organization or company is actually like without working there?
By tapping into other people’s brain trust you get a different perspective on your skills and get insights into other fields, jobs, and organizational cultures.
Another way people can connect the dots for you is that they can share job search strategies that have worked for them.
They can also share job postings (people prefer to hire through referrals).
NOTE: This is not the same as just applying to an online posting. When a contact sends you a job posting, it usually means they have some influence and can either refer you as the best candidate (yay!) or at the very least, can get your resume to the top of the pile.
3. You get to choose how to frame your experience by leading with skills, not titles
We are not our job titles. Have any of your job titles totally represented ALLLL of what you’ve done in that job? Probably not.
Our lives are not just our jobs, either. We have lives outside of jobs (at least I hope you do).
That means that experience outside of a job is exactly that—experience.
Regardless of where your experience is from—school, volunteering, a personal project, etc.—those skills are still part of the value you will bring into your next job.
Resumes restrict our experience to a narrow 1-2 pages of chronological employment experience.
Gaps in employment stand out.
Employers won’t spend the time to connect the dots between a wide range of experience and skills.
When you figure out your next step by talking to humans, YOU get to lead with your skills and experience, not your titles (unless it supports your experience, in which case, that’s great).
YOU get to craft the story of your experience and connect the dots in the way you want to.
YOU are more than a resume and this strategy recognizes that.
4. Helps with decision making and analysis paralysis
Remember that the person you’re having a coffee chat with is much more than their current job—they usually have had several jobs (or careers!) prior to their current one.
You can learn a lot about what your next step could be and how to get there by learning about their career path and how they ended up in their current job.
Even if you’re not totally interested in their current job, you can gain insights about their previous roles and employers.
People can also give you valuable insights into how to get hired at their organization or the ones they’ve worked at previously.
Resumes can’t do this.
All you usually have to work with is a job posting that often doesn’t truly represent what the role will entail.
I’ve been on the hiring side and can assure you that job postings can sometimes be sloppily thrown together due to time constraints or lack of knowledge (it’s not always an HR person putting it together).
5. Boosts your confidence
It can get depressing when you’re sending out resumes and not getting much response.
It doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re unqualified, the employer probably just has someone who has already been referred as the best candidate (see the pattern here?).
Your resume may not have even had a chance.
When you actually talk to a human it can show you that, yes, finding a job is possible. And it’s extra amazing when you really hit it off with the person.
6. Saves you time
Coffee chat contacts can share what the day-to-day life of a particular job or career is like. Don’t underestimate this!
I’ve found that people often overlook what the nuts-and-bolts of an actual day are like in a job. I have even overlooked this myself…
I’m actually a trained elementary school teacher (one of my many previous career chameleon lives) but I didn’t pursue it after getting my education degree.
Although I love helping people develop their potential, halfway through my teaching degree I realized that the the day-to-day of teaching didn’t allow me to do enough of that.
When you know what a particular job involves, you can make an informed choice whether to pursue it or not.
This strategy also saves you time because you don’t have to spend hours upon hours of editing and sending out resumes.
7. Saves you money
It breaks my heart when people decide to go to school (or back to school as the case may be) because they think it will help them figure out their next step and land a job. I just hear the sound of money going down the drain.
Let me be clear: I don’t hate education.
I believe that education is a business that doesn’t always give us the results we expect.
Do you truly need to go school for a particular job?
Will a specific program or degree give you the skills you want?
Are you going to school because you’re hoping it will give you answers?
Or provide an escape?
That is a very expensive risk to take. I know this because I paid my own way through my two degrees (Bachelors degree in Psychology & English and Bachelors of Education).
So if you’re going to school, I want you to be sure you’re making an informed choice and going for the right reasons.
If you’re considering school or a training program, there’s a section in Module 2 in the Career Compass exercise that can help you identify what’s important to you in a learning situation.
And all of the questions above can be answered by—you guessed it—tapping into other people’s brain trust through coffee chats.
8. Expands your network
You can get access to the network of the people you have coffee chats with. Good people tend to know good people.
If you think about the fact that each person you’re talking to has at least 3 great contacts…That means a lot of great new contacts for you.
You can expand your network in a massive way through coffee chats.
This is incredibly useful if you have a small network, weren’t born into a family that had connections (I definitely was not), or if you’ve just moved or are just starting out.
9. No more information overload or overwhelm
Coffee chats cut through the noise. When you are leveraging people in this way, you’re talking to a trusted source with lived experience.
This can really help filter out information that is not accurate or useful. When you read something online or in a book, it’s hard to tell if it’s from a trusted source with real experience.
Often, it is someone writing about a popular topic (Careers! Millennials are doomed! There are no jobs!) who doesn’t actually have the real experience.
If Google provides quantity, coffee chats provide quality.
The four building blocks of figuring out your next step
To make coffee chats work for you, you need to get your four building blocks ready:
- Establish your priorities
- Know how to frame your experience – identify transferable skills
- Focus area(s)
- Preparation and practice
1. Establish your priorities
If you don’t know what’s important to you in a role, organization, work culture, and other areas of employment, it’s very easy to get sucked into whatever role seems slightly interesting.
This is especially important for people who have “shiny object syndrome,” have lower confidence, or have been job searching or unhappy in their job for a while.
Your priorities help you figure out (and filter out) whose brain trusts you want to tap into.
2. Know how to frame your experience – identify transferable skills
As we’ve already touched on, you are not your job titles or your resume.
When you lead with your experience and the results you’ve achieved by leveraging your skills, it brings the focus to what you have done.
If you have impressive titles that will add to your credibility, reference them as necessary.
Identifying transferable skills requires knowing which skills you WANT to keep using that may be useful in other fields or industries.
That’s right—just because you are good at something or have experience in it doesn’t mean that you have to keep doing it.
This requires diving into all of your current and past experience, which can be tedious if you’ve been working for many years. It’s worth it, though.
If you’re staying in your current field, focus on deciding which skills and strengths you want to share.
Then it becomes a matter of creating a cohesive elevator pitch and key messages about your skills and customizing what you share about your experience based on who you’re talking to.
3. Focus area(s)
You don’t have to have an exact job title in mind to start having coffee chats but you do have to narrow it down.
If you’re interested in Human Resources, it doesn’t really make sense to talk to someone in woodworking, you know?
A focus area could be an interest (like cycling), an industry (like tech), an impact (like women’s rights), or a skill (like sales or project management).
A focus area could also be a specific title if you know it (like chemical engineer or computer programmer). These are all real examples from my clients, btw!
You may have multiple focus areas and that’s ok! At one point in my career I had FOUR: project management, facilitation, education, and technology.
4. Preparation & Practice
Although I’ve been referring to this strategy as “coffee chats,” they are so much more than that and you need to prepare accordingly.
From prepping your key messages, to finding the right people to talk with, to requesting a coffee chat, to tapping into your contacts’ brain trust, to following up and maintaining the relationship…
It doesn’t happen without preparation and practice.
And guess what? These four building blocks are a major part of what we work on in GCA.
Here’s the process that we’ll work through in GCA
Module 1: Set yourself up for success (in GCA and the rest of your career)
We’ll walk through a step-by-step goal setting process to help you set and achieve your goals during GCA and beyond.
We’ll also cover concrete strategies to deal with the stress and overwhelm of career transitions and what to do if you get stuck or paralyzed with fear.
Module 2: What do you want?
We’ll walk through a structured process to uncover your strengths, interests, and priorities, and to separate what you feel you should want (or you’ve been told to want) from what you actually want.
You’ll also create your own decision-making tool for career and career-related decisions (like whether to go back to school or move for a job)
Clients have consistently found this module to yield surprising and energizing results.
Module 3: How to market yourself
Everyone has skills and experience that can be unpacked and distilled to identify your marketable skills and transferable experience.
If you’re a generalist or have had a variety of roles, you’ll develop a coherent story of your experiences.
We’ll also frame it all in your own words.
Module 4: How to find the job that’s right for you (no resumes necessary)
Narrow your options to a short list of titles and organizations
Simultaneously job search while exploring careers
Apply strategies to help you find and land your target role without relying on resumes or gross networking.
How to leverage and build your network so that you can
Identify the low-hanging fruit opportunities
You’ll leave the 5 weeks with a clear, actionable plan to find and land the job that’s right for you (which you will have started implementing *during* GCA).
Time Commitment
All combined, please expect to spend 4+ hours/week on GCA. Less than that and you may not get the results you want.
Program dates
Just a refresher, the program runs for 5 weeks from Monday, November 11th – Friday, December 13th, 2019.
Have coffee chats worked for me?
Yes! They are the key strategy that have helped me become a successful career chameleon, working in a range of industries from non-profit to tech to consulting and landing high-level roles by age 28.
For reference, here is my background:
- Undergraduate degree in Psychology and English Literature
- Bachelors of Education degree (qualified to teach grades 4-10)
- I’ll acknowledge that I am a white woman which puts me in a place of privilege and can give me an advantage.
What I love about these strategies is that I have seen them help people who don’t have access to networks or contacts.
Being raised in a low-income working class family meant that I didn’t have access to contacts through my parents, so I had to learn these strategies as well.
It’s breaking down strategies that many folks who are in positions of power or privilege already know (and they’ve leveraged to get them to that place). It demystifies the hidden job market.
The Job: Director at Tech Company
How I Landed the Job:
- It started with a tweet
- I had been to a tech workshop for beginners and noticed that the woman who ran it also was running a tech workshop for people in education at a tech company (where I eventually got hired)
- I asked for the details and went to the workshop
- I approached the woman, shared my experience, asked her for coffee
- At coffee, I tapped into her brain trust and learned more about what she did
- She ended up offering me a volunteer position at the organization
- Six months later when she left her job, she recommended me as the best candidate
The Job: E-learning Consultant at a National Organization
How I Landed the Job:
- A contact (who I had built a relationship with through coffee chats) was being recruited for a role but she wanted to stay at her current job
- She recommended me for the role
The Job: Project Coordinator at a Non-profit
How I Landed the Job:
- I went to a workshop and met a woman there
- Asked for a coffee chat
- Two months later, she sent me a job posting for a role they were hiring for
The Job: Account Manager at a Private Consulting Firm
How I Landed the Job:
- Had a coffee chat with a former colleague
- She sent me a job posting for her organization, which was hiring
- Got recommended for the job
The Job: Fashion Magazine Stylist
- This was while I was in my 4th year of my undergraduate degree, when I was trying to figure out my next step after graduating
- Told another student at my school that I was interested in becoming a stylist for fashion magazines (I had even paid the application fee to a few fashion schools for the next year)
- She introduced me to her aunt who ran a stylist agency
- We had a coffee chat (before I knew that was even a thing! Ooooh, I was so desperate and scared in that final year of university…)
- I learned about the industry and realized I was not interested in the day-to-day work or the competition
- A few months later, she offered me an entry level job – I declined
- This was useful because it helped narrow my options
- I stopped my applications to fashion school, saving me a ton of time and wasted money
What do these examples have in common?
I had my four building blocks ready.
I was also sowing many seeds, meeting with as many people as I could without knowing which opportunities would bloom.
Did I know that a random tweet would turn into a job? Of course not! But I got into the habit of cultivating every opportunity I could and didn’t dismiss anything or anyone that could act as my human search engine or human LinkedIn.
Does this coffee chat strategy only work for me?
Nope. I’ve seen it work for many of my clients.
I’ve even had a client who wanted to switch from non-profit management to HR recruiting in the tech industry…She turned a 15 minute phone chat into a role that was especially created for her 6 months later!
That example also goes to show that coffee chats don’t have to be in person and can help you change industries.
WAIT!
After I’ve shared this deceivingly simple strategy, some folks will go out and try applying it right away.
Don’t do it yet.
Wait until you’ve finished GCA.
And if you get an amazing opportunity for a coffee chat that you can’t delay? Email me so we can discuss next steps.
The biggest job search mistakes I’ve seen from working with 300+ clients in 9 countries
I’m a huge information-gatherer so I get it – collecting more and more information feels so good.
It’s feels good because it’s almost like you’re doing something.
And because it feels like you’re taking action, it prevents you from taking real action because you feel like you’re doing it already.
I’m going to outline the things that prevent people from moving into action and implementing The New Way to job search or change careers.
If coffee chats (aka The New Way) were easy, everyone would be doing them effortlessly and getting connected to jobs all over the place.
I wouldn’t have started GCA and you wouldn’t be in it right now.
Because I’ve had the honour of working with 300+ clients in 9 countries, I have a pretty unique view into what makes or breaks career exploration and job search strategies.
I should ask for a job in a coffee chat
Your contact has made time for you, you’ve got their attention, maybe you already know that you want to work at their company or in one of the jobs that they have posted on their website.
It would be stupid to waste this opportunity right?
Nope. This is not a job interview, it’s a coffee chat and it’s essential to be respectful of that.
By having a coffee chat with you, your contact has signed up to answer your questions for 15-20 minutes (longer if you make a great impression). Your contact has NOT signed up to be asked for a job.
The two main goals of coffee chats
There are two main goals coffee chats will accomplish (if you’re doing them correctly).
- The short-term goal is to get your key questions answered about the job or organization.
- The long-term goal that is using your coffee chat to get you referred or connected to a job.
This means you have to be able to market your skills and experience and build a relationship with your contact during the coffee chat and afterwards.
This usually doesn’t happen instantly and it definitely won’t happen if you annoy your contact or pressure them.
You want to basically make friends with your contact. Make a great impression, follow up with them expertly, and then build on the relationship.
If you ask for a job or send them your resume without them asking you to, you’re coming on too strong and they probably won’t want to maintain a relationship with you.
That being said, I’ve seen the long-term goal happen quite quickly…
It starts as a coffee chat and then, because you’ve made such a great impression, the contact either suggests you apply for an opening they have, they’re willing to refer you to a friend who is hiring, or they follows up within a few days to offer opportunities.
I’ve had this happen for myself several times in my own career and I have watched this happen to my clients as well.
It’s also possible that the contact may ask you if you’re looking for a job.
Be honest (never lie in a coffee chat). This is your chance to tell them what you’re looking for.
Don’t know what you’re looking for? I’ll talk about how to answer this question in an upcoming blog post.
The whole point here is that achieving both the long-term goal AND the short-term goal of coffee chats most likely WILL NOT happen if you ask for a job.
To be clear this advice also applies to anything that even implies that you’re looking for a job…
Things like sending a resume to your contact without them requesting it, saying that you’re looking for a job, or looking to discuss “opportunities or where I fit in with your company.”
It all has the same effect on your contact as asking directly for a job. Don’t be that guy!
I should wait until I’ve quit my job
Please don’t. For the sake of your career and your sanity.
It is often much easier to start doing coffee chats while you’re still employed (or in school, as the case may be) for THREE main reasons…
#1 People often look more favourably upon people who are employed.
Annoying, I know, but it tends to be true.
I suspect part of the reason is because folks are concerned that they will be asked to give you a job which, of course, you won’t do because that is a sure-fire way to ruin a coffee chat (remember how we just covered this?).
But yeah, that’s what people are worried about.
#2 Chances are you will be less stressed and therefore more confident tapping into people’s brain trusts if you have a job.
If you’ve already quit your job, that means you may be burnt out, feeling negative, and/or have lost a lot of confidence.
And if you’ve come from a traumatic work environment, you may need to take some time to heal which postpones the ability to figure out your next step.
PRO TIP: If you’re wondering when you should quit your job, I usually recommend anticipating when your burnout point will be and then leaving a few steps before that point.
Yes, I realize that not everyone may be in the financial situation to do so—there’s a lot of privilege in being able to quit your job before you have another one lined up.
However, there is also a lot of mental health privilege in being able to stay in a job that is traumatic or difficult for your mental health.
#3 ABCC – Always Be Coffee Chatting.
You never know when you may need a new job due to a layoff, your job becoming obsolete, or a change in lifestyle is needed (like having kids or taking care of aging parents).
Coffee chat often, coffee chat strategically.
THIS is how you can avoid job searching altogether. It’s your career insurance.
“But what if I already quit my job?”
Don’t panic—you can still leverage coffee chats. It may take a bit of extra guts to get up the courage to start doing them but it is totally doable.
Start doing your coffee chats as soon as you’ve worked through your four coffee chat building blocks (your priorities, experience, focus area(s), preparation and practice).
And guess what? You don’t even have to say that you’ve left your job or give the reason why.
This is one of the huge benefits of leading with skills, not titles, when you talk about your experience.
No one will coffee chat with me
If you craft your coffee chat request to meet strategically and effectively, you greatly increase the chances that people will respond AND say yes.
Don’t underestimate the effort needed for your coffee chat requests, though.
Coffee chat requests are usually sent by email and you need to make sure you’re writing an email that makes it easy for people to say “yes” to your request.
I can’t start until I know the job I want
This is totally not true!
You have to have at least one focus area. Having more is fine but you have to start with one.
Whether that’s an interest, an industry, an impact, a skill, or a specific title, you have to have a focus area to be able to figure out the people whose brain trusts you want to tap into through coffee chats.
You don’t have to stick with your focus area but you do have to start somewhere.
This means you have to make a choice but you’re not married to it.
If it’s helpful, think of it like an experiment—an idea you’re testing out.
Chances are, it may evolve as you learn more (kind of like my example of my coffee chat about fashion styling).
Coffee chats have to be in person
Nope. They can be a phone chat, a Skype chat, or even an email chat.
And coffee is not always a part of an in-person meeting.
Why call it a coffee chat if it may not involve coffee?
Well, because it usually DOES involve coffee. And even if it doesn’t, it implies you only need a short amount of the contact’s time.
Plus, it sounds good.
I’ve already tried coffee chats before
How did it go?
If you’ve figured out your next step and landed the job that’s right for you as a result of your coffee chats—awesome!
You can stop reading now because you probably don’t need it anymore.
But if you weren’t able to market your skills, build a relationship with your contact, get recommended for a job, or get connected to your contact’s network…
It means that something in your coffee chats process or building blocks isn’t working.
Not promoting yourself confidently & seamlessly
If you think you’re the only one with this challenge, I assure you—you are not alone. At least 75% of my clients struggle with this. Talking about your skills and experience can be especially challenging if you:
- Have had a non-linear career or are a generalist
- Feel like you don’t have any skills or aren’t sure of what your strengths are
- Have a range of skills and experience that don’t cohesively fit together (I see you generalists and multipotentialites out there)
- Are low in confidence, modest, or introverted and aren’t sure how to talk about your experience without it sounding awkward and feeling painful
- You’ve never really had feedback from your employer about your strengths
Regardless, learning how to come across as confident and how to frame your experience is essential for career exploration, the job search, and eventual job interviews.
And there’s a fine line between marketing yourself seamlessly and coming across as rehearsed.
With coffee chats, this is also one of the biggest missed opportunities I see in clients…
If you don’t share your experience, how will your coffee chat contact know which jobs, people, or organizations to refer you to?
Not doing enough coffee chats (or not doing them at all)
Confidence and motivation is a real doozy. They are probably the biggest reason why people don’t do coffee chats at all (or even reach out to contacts).
Folks wait until they’re perfectly confident (no such thing) or wait until they feel super motivated (may not happen) and yet it’s action that’s often fuel for our confidence and motivation.
And if people do end up doing coffee chats, they often don’t do enough of enough them.
Doing coffee chats is like planting seeds—you have to do a lot of them because it’s difficult to know which ones will grow and blossom.
I tell my Guidance Counselling for Adults students and 1:1 clients to plant as many seeds as possible—expect to do at least 5 coffee chats per focus area. The more you do, the more opportunities you cultivate for yourself. It also helps to get a range of insights so that you don’t get stuck with one person’s bad experience with their job.
Doing MORE coffee chats actually means LESS pressure on each individual coffee chat. If one doesn’t go well or the the contact is a dud, you have other ones to fall back on.
It’s ok to be afraid
This is not to minimize fear, it’s more to highlight that it’s possible to do coffee chats even while you are afraid or nervous.
Approaching potential coffee chat contacts incorrectly
What do I mean by “incorrectly”? Anything that doesn’t result in an enthusiastic coffee chat. This can include (but is not limited to):
- Reaching out to your network without having your building blocks in place
- Using language that sends red flags to contacts—”I’d like to pick your brain” is one example of this
- Asking your immediate network to intro you in a way that doesn’t set them (or you) up for success
- Responding haphazardly to introductions made by your contacts so that both your contact and the potential coffee chat person are turned off
- Doing coffee chat outreach but getting a “no” or not getting a response at all
- Cold emailing without results—you haven’t communicated your key messages clearly enough, you’ve come on too strong, or not strong enough (it’s such a delicate balance!)
And even if you do approach coffee chat contacts strategically, I’ve learned that many people don’t even end up asking the questions they want to.
Sure, they may have made a friend but they haven’t gained any insight into the career or job search strategies their trying to find out about.
PRO TIP: If you have super effective coffee chats, contacts may be willing to introduce you to their networks. This is how you can massively grow your network and get access to more coffee chat contacts.
Your guidance counsellor did not prepare you for this
We are not taught the kind of career exploration and job search strategies that the new economy requires. Your high school guidance counsellor definitely did not prepare you for this.
Learning the methods is only one piece of the puzzle…
Confidence, motivation, working with your fears (overcoming them is not required), and hustling sustainably and kindly are the other essential pieces that enable you to actually APPLY these methods.
Remember, you are not alone in this. So many people have the same challenges.
This is why Guidance Counselling for Adults exists.
I’ve streamlined this process through hundreds of hours of work with my clients. I’ve done the research and tested out these methods so you don’t have to. This is the 9th or 10th time I’m running GCA!
Have you completed your GCA questionnaire yet?
Complete this questionnaire to focus your motivations for joining GCA. It should take 30-40 mins.
The questionnaire is your first piece of homework, due Sunday, November 10th at 5pm EST.
You should automatically be sent a copy of your responses for your reference (it may come in handy with future GCA homework).
Please fill out the questionnaire as thoroughly as possible.
I review everyone’s questionnaires – it gives me an in-depth sense of who you are and what you’d like to work on in GCA.
Welcome to Guidance Counselling for Adults!