Career Max Group

Many of you have heard the saying, “If you don’t know where you’re going, how are you going to get there?” Really pause and think about this for a few minutes. What areas of your life do you feel crystal clear about? Which seem more murky? Do you know, at a detailed level, what you want in health, fitness, family, finances, home, friends, hobbies, sports, and career?

Since I help many of you with career success, here are some things to consider as you get clear:

• What do you want to spend the bulk of your day doing?
• What sorts of people do you want to interact with daily?
• What sort of work environment feels best for you?
• How do you want to feel each day?
• What skills and talents do you want/need to utilize to feel most successful?

Your vision for your career is important because you need to know what you’re striving for in order to create and efficient, laser focused path to get there. The scatter-gun or “I’ll take anything” approach to career (or anything) rarely works because you won’t know what to work for and you won’t know if you’re being successful in accomplishing your dreams.

Clarity is mainly for you but it also helps to let others know what it is you want, who you are, and what makes you unique. It’s the people we come into contact with that will help us achieve our dreams so you might as well tell them what they are in a simple, concise fashion.

If you want to get crystal clear on what’s important to you in your career and life, join me for my upcoming teleseminar, “Know What You Want / Know Where You’re Selling.”
This Thursday, February 11, 2010
12:00 – 1:00 pm Pacific (2:00 pm Central, 3:00 pm Eastern)

This is part of the Job Search Accelerator Program created to help you super charge your job search success and tap into the Hidden Job Market effectively and strategically. Membership details are here.

Regardless of your path – know what you want, know how your dream feels, and go for it!

As always, I welcome your comments.

-Kelly Harrington*

*About the author: Kelly Harrington is a Professional Career Coach and President & Founder of Career Max Group. She helps her clients to achieve maximum success in career and life through a variety of programs and services. She offers practical and holistic solutions to help you achieve the career of your dreams.

I’ve been answering a lot of questions about resumes lately.  Here are some things to consider with respect to making sure your resume is in tip-top shape (regardless of whether you’re employed or looking for a job).

The essentials of a great resume include:

=> Formatting: Make sure your resume is easy to read, ‘clean’, and professional.  Most resumes are two pages or less unless you’re an executive.  Balance white space with copy.  Look at it with the lense of a recruiter or hiring manager who will scan your resume in less than a minute and make a judgment about you.

=> Content: Make sure the majority of your content is ‘results-focused’ and less ‘job description-like.’  Potential employers want to know what you did to help make things better, more efficient, streamlined, etc.

=> SEO / Key Word Friendly: Remember that your resume needs to be found on the internet and in resume databases. Plus, a person needs to be able to quickly scan your resume and catch key words.  Therefore, it’s important to make sure the ‘key words’ relevant to your ideal job and/or industry are clearly stated within the resume.

There are a lot of ways you can get feedback on your resume:

• Ask friends and family
• Ask peers or managers from current or former companies and jobs
• Ask recruiters within companies or at agencies
• Hire a resume writer or career coach to critique your resume, rewrite it, or write a whole new resume

Buyer Beware: Professional resume writers or career coaches who are offering a free resume critique often will only give you very high level feedback on your resume for free.  They will then provide you with a price for a rewrite.  If you’re going to pursue a free resume critique, don’t waste your time… make sure the provider is being upfront with you about what you’ll receive for the free part.

Some of you have been taking advantage of our ‘Live Resume Makeover’. During this session, you’ll receive:

• Very specific feedback and suggestions on formatting, content, and SEO/key words.
• Answers to any / all questions about your resume.
• Up to a 50-minute live consultation via phone.
• Notes and comments delivered back to you within 24 hours with samples and suggestions based upon what we talked about.
• A long list of high-impact verbs to help your brainstorm your results-focused statements.
• Final review, feedback, and comments on your newly drafted and rewritten feedback (from me).

Overall, make sure your resume isn’t the sole focus of your job search. True job search strategy is really not about the resume.  Make sure it’s as great as it can be but also remember that a resume is a living, breathing document that will continue to grow and evolve over time. It’s never done.  So don’t fool yourself into thinking that it’s all you need to change to land that next job.

Do you have a resume success story? Comments and tips for others? Leave them here!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

The new moon is a super-charged day (astrologically speaking) to write down your  intentions/wishes/goals for the month ahead as everything starts ‘anew.’

This month’s new moon is in CAPRICORN. For those of you in the Pacific time zone, it occurs tonight, Thursday, Jan. 14, 2010 at 11:12 pm PST. For those of you in the Central and Eastern time zones, it occurs tomorrow, Friday, Jan. 15, 2010 at 1:12 am CST and 2:12 am EST.

Since many of you reading this are focused on career and life success, use this day to pause and write down what it is you want to achieve. Even if you don’t believe in astrology, the new moon is a good reminder for us all to do a ‘monthly renewal’ or ‘check-up’ on your goals and dreams.

This month’s new moon is important for two reasons: 1.) It’s the start of the New Year and Capricorn emphasizes new beginnings and, 2.) This month’s new moon is combined with a solar eclipse, which makes it an even more powerful time to write down your goals and wishes. Since Mercury is retrograde, be careful to make sure your goals and what you really want and that you want to keep them written down (be clear).

A few tips…

• It is most powerful to write your intentions within the first 8 hours (the 8 hours after the new moon) but they are still strong within the first 48 hours.
• You can write up to 10 intentions… Any more than that and the energy gets a bit ‘displaced’ or ‘watered down’
• It’s most powerful to hand write them (vs type them or think about them)
• Remember to state them in the positive (in other words, don’t write about what you *don’t* want or you’ll get that faster than you can say ‘don’t').
• It is powerful to write new moon intentions in the area that has the ruling sign that month (i.e. – Capricorn) but you can write new moon intentions for any area of your life so don’t feel limited.

I get all of this info from a great book/author called: “New Moon Astrology” by Jan Spiller.  She also has a website that details more of her thoughts on this month’s new moon at: http://www.janspiller.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1865 (it has more details on powerful times to write your intentions).

You can write new moon intentions in ANY area of your life. However, as we move into the various astrological signs, each sign emphasizes certain areas of life. So, if you want to write new moon intentions in the follow areas, it’s a powerful time to do so.

Capricorn rules:

• Future needs, including: time, making decisions, maturity, retirement, old age
• Responsibility, including: self-discipline, adult behavior, keeping commitments, competency, public image
• Goals, including: ambition, defining goals, using opportunities, professions, hard work
• Success, including: accomplishments, recognition, social status, achieving goals
• Management, including: following protocol, delegating responsibility, being in charge, respect
• Authortiy, including: fathers, bosses and other authority figures, tradition, reputation
• Excessive Contnrol, incluing: lack of joy, sternness, fear of new approaches, pessimism, inflexibility, self-justification
• In matters of restoring health, Capricorn rules: bones and joints, arthritis and rheumatism, gall bladders and gallstones, knees, skin, psoriasis and itching

May this be a wonderful year filled with lots of success!

If I can help with YOUR success in any way, please let me know. I put together some New Year packages to jump-start your goals and dreams: http://careermaxgroup.com/services/new_year/
Discounts and bonuses apply through next Friday, Jan. 22.

To your career success,

Kelly

As we all start a new year, we often stop to assess our success in the various areas of our life: health, family, friends, finances, home, and career.  While everyone has mixed feelings on ‘New Year’s Resolutions’ and whether they work for them and/or whether they create the results they want, I do believe the new year is an opportunity for everyone, worldwide, to stop, take a breather, and to re-energize their efforts to create lasting success.

As a Career Coach, I’m always talking to people about what makes them happy, unhappy, passionate, frustrated, successful, lethargic, etc. when it comes to career.  Career is such a central part of our life. Whether we work for someone else or work in our own business, it is something that not only fulfills our financial needs but also gives us a sense of ‘being in the world’ through providing a service and/or product that impacts others.

As you head into 2010, ask yourself:

• What am I doing to ensure my career feels passionate, successful, results-oriented, connected, meaningful?
• What am I doing to make sure I’m living a balanced and healthy life (so that ‘work’ doesn’t take over in an imbalanced manner)?
• What’s next for me in my career success (next quarter, next year, next 3-years, next 5-years, next 10-years, and beyond)?
• What is going well (really well) in my career and what is not going so well and may need attention? Why?
• What resources and tools do I have to ensure continued career success and satisfaction?

These are some questions that will help to get focused and gain clarity with the goal of ensuring more and more success over the coming months and years in your career.  We all know the saying, “If you don’t know where you’re going, how are you going to get there?”… make sure you super charge your efforts to have a clear course.

I often find that folks who are clear with themselves about what they really want, tend to achieve it. My theory is that they, “put it out there” so they are more likely to attract opportunities that match what they want and/or they are more likely to recognize the opportunities when they present themselves. Either way, clarity is when the magic happens.

Let me know if I can help you in your career success in 2010 and beyond! Here are some New Year packages I put together to help you ‘Get Your Career In Gear For the New Year‘.

As always, I welcome your questions and comments.