Success for highly sensitive people / Все о высокочувствительных людях
  • Home
  • Highly Sensitive People
    • Test - Are you a Highly Sensitive Person?
    • Test - Does your work environment support your sensitivity?
    • Test - Are you heading to a burnout?
  • Articles & Videos
  • Freebies
  • Get in touch!
  • Главная
  • Об Анастасии
    • Пресса
  • Высокочувствительные люди
    • Тест: Вы - высокочувствительный человек?
    • Тест - Подходит ли вам коучинг?
    • Тест - Близки ли вы к выгоранию?
    • Тест - Чувствительность на работе
  • Видео
  • Статьи
  • Связаться

Three Inspiring Ways to Work on Your Resume

12/5/2015

1 Comment

 
Picture
I have never come across a client who felt enthusiastic about working on their CV. Of course, they know that a well-written resume is a must and not having it stands in the way of getting a dream job. And yet, they can spend weeks caught up between blame and procrastination, complaining of not being able to choose the right words, not knowing how to describe their responsibilities or unsure of what their dream job is.
If you recognize yourself in this description and want to create a great CV at long last, you may find the following three tips useful:

1. Tell your story in your own words
When a client brings her resume to our meeting, I don’t look at it. Instead, I ask her to tell me a story about the person from this CV. I ask the following questions to make the storytelling easier:
  • What did this person enjoy doing? What did she hate?
  • What is she proud of having accomplished (if nothing in any of the jobs, what was she proud of having accomplished at school/university/in extra-curricular activities)?
  • What were some of the things that worked well for this person in her previous jobs and what things didn’t work so well?
When a client starts telling a story about themselves, all of a sudden she feels more alive and engaged, and stops using bureacratic language to describe her work experience, replacing it with vivid and lively wording.
If you’ve spent a lot of time on editing your CV and haven’t made much progress, it’s often a good idea to close the old version altogether and write a completely new one from the scratch as answers to the questions above. Your story will come much more fluid and natural, and you’ll enjoy working on it.

2. Focus on the future, don’t dwell on the past
If you want to be inspired, your resume should look into the future, and not reflect your past.
Often people who want to progress in their career get caught up in labels. For instance, if their last job was called “personal assistant” or “marketing manager”, in their resume they may still use terminology of a “personal assistant” to describe their responsibilities and achievements, like “scheduling meetings”, or “booking flights”. However, if they don’t want to be a personal assistant anymore, they need to change the language!
Because they feel uninspired about what they did, they often choose uninspiring words to describe this experience. No wonder they get really bored working on their CV!
If you want to progress from “marketing manager” to “marketing director”, you need to start thinking as a marketing director, and choose the words and experiences accordingly.
Start with inspiration. Imagine that you’re already doing something that you have always wanted to do. Think about your daily life, how you get to your office and what it looks like, what you are wearing, what people you sit next to etc. Imagine this in every possible detail.
Now think about what in your previous job helped you be successful in your new role? Very important - think about it as if you were already in the desired position. Perhaps, as a “personal assistant” you learned to organize well the work process for your boss - how can you reframe this skill in your new, more senior role? Perhaps, something like “operational management”? Write it down and repeat for every major responsibility.
Do you instantly feel yourself more accomplished and inspired?

3. Unsure about the dream job? Be curious and follow the heat
People often get blocked working on a resume because they don’t know what their dream job is, and so see no sense in improving it. The good thing is that you don’t need to have a clear picture in mind to get inspired if you use the following trick.
Remember a child’s play “hot and cold”? A person hides an object and others go searching for it. If they get close to the hidden object, the person says “warm” or “hot”, if they get further away from it, he says “cold” or “freezing”.
Use the same principle in your job search. Open an empty Word doc, then go to a job search website and browse through every possible vacancy on it.  Go through a job description of a dentist, driver, CFO, geologist, and copy-paste to your doc all phrases or words that catch your attention and make you feel "warm" or "hot". It can be a name of a brand, industry, location or responsibilities that make you ignite - keep copying them in the same document.

Don't limit yourself to a particular sector or job you think you might be suitable for. Instead, go totally crazy!
You’ll soon start seeing a pattern, and your “ideal” job will emerge. Maybe you’ll discover it’s all about travel, or helping others, or being in a luxury environment - you’ll notice what really makes you tick and feel inspired.
With that information in mind, you can now think about the industries or companies where these qualities are represented. Check their websites to see how they formulate their job descriptions, and use some of the words from them to tailor your resume for your dream job.


Allow yourself to have fun, and working on your resume will be really easy!

Want more tips like this?

Sign up for free coaching tips newsletter! 

You'll get only one email per month and can unsubscribe any time (and your email will never ever be shared with anyone)
* indicates required
1 Comment

How to survive the job search marathon

24/4/2015

0 Comments

 
Have you left the job you really hated to look for something more fulfilling, or planning to do so in the nearest future? There are three key things you need to aware of if you want to transition through this period painlessly.

  1. Frustration is inevitable.

Let’s face it - job search is not the most exciting way to pass one’s time. Even if you completely hated your previous job, after the first few weeks euphoria will pass and you may discover that freedom is not as attractive as you had depicted it to be.

Your real challenge will start after you’re done with “enjoying the beautiful weather” and have caught up with all the friends you planned at least twice. Life may start feeling meaningless, especially if you aren’t quite sure about what you want, and just know what you don’t want to (stay in the job you hate!).

Be prepared that your days will consist of endless follow up emails and calls accompanied by a blunt mixture of fear and frustration. You may stop picking up your friends’ calls because you’ll dread the question that will be asked - so, how is the job search?

What to do about it:

Create some structure and routine for yourself throughout the day you can stick to no matter what. The fact that you aren’t working does not automatically mean you should wonder half-naked around the house.

Looking for a job will become your full-time job, but it should be structured just as any other job. Set yourself some goals for the day, so that you continue feeling that you have accomplished something - i.e. send out 10 resumes per day. Make sure you have goals outside your job search as well - you can sign up to volunteer, start learning something new online, reading 10 pages of a book, doing 50 squats etc.

A famous psychologist Viktor Frankl who spent years in nacist camps concluded that people who survived genocide had one thing in common - their lives had some meaning and they had a goal (like helping others, or thinking about a scientific problem they’ll be able to explore once they are out of the camp). Set goals up for yourself.

2. You’ll eat yourself alive with self-criticism

The worst thing that can happen is no that you don’t get an interview or job offer, but that you start asking yourself questions when things don’t work out for some time.

What if this is forever? What if I don’t find anything more meaningful and am just a dreamer? What if I am not good for anything else and should have just stayed where I was?

We really excel at creating a hell for ourselves with our own hands. People who are especially good at that are those who have been more successful, as they tend to have many more expectations about what they should do and what the world should look like.

What to do about it

Give yourself time and space. Figuring out what you really want can take some time, and it’s a matter of trying, not thinking. If you are really limited with your funds, you may want to have a temporary solution in place not to get into survival mode.

You are not doing yourself any service by demanding results right now and not giving yourself permission to recover (honestly, does it really help that you are torturing yourself again and again and again)?

Be kind to yourself. Your situation is not easy by itself. The frustration you are experiencing can be tremendously reduced if you stop demanding from yourself immediate results and give yourself time.

Please, know that there’s nothing wrong with you. Start re-building your confidence - if you’ve spent time in an unsuitable role or environment, chances are that it is strongly undermined. Ask your friends to mention your great qualities to you, or write down all the experiences when you felt like a winner and re-read them on a daily basis.


3. You’ll start postponing your life until you find a job

You might start running out of money, and so decide that you should not be entertaining yourself until you’ve found something.

Even when they have enough funds, people in such situations often get into the “scarcity” mentality and stop denying themselves every single pleasure that costs money (and any other, too), not because they really can’t but because they are essentially postponing their lives until they find a job. This is what makes the job search situation so unbearable for most of them.

What to do about it.

Your life might be frustrating at times, but it can also be fun - and fun does not necessarily cost you money. Please, know that your feeling of happiness and fulfillment does NOT depend on whether you find a job tomorrow or not, and you can choose to be happy any time of your life.

Do something on a daily basis to help yourself maintain the positive mode. It’s especially important because when you are trying to achieve something, you need to make sure that you have enough energy to keep yourself going. Negative thoughts and experiences deplete your energy, and positive ones build it up.

So treat it as a marathon preparation - it can be hard at times and you may need to limit yourself for some things. It’s up to you how to remember this period of your life - as something that you were hoping that will pass ASAP, or something that was quite challenging, but also full of new great experiences.

Did you like this article?

Sign up for free coaching newsletters, and get similar useful tips by email every month. You can unsubscribe anytime and your email will never ever be shared with anyone
* indicates required
0 Comments

    Need that kick to get your life going? 
    Sign up for free coaching tips!

    * indicates required

    Who is Anastasia?

    Chief inspirator, start-up mentor, professional Co-Active life coach and career coach, systems worker and passionate tango dancer. Get to know me! 

    Categories

    All
    Being A Great Leader
    Bodywork
    Business Owners
    Coach Yourself!
    Digital Detox
    Highly Sensitive And Successful
    Highly Sensitive People
    How To Write A CV
    Innovation
    Inspiration
    Interview
    I Own A Business
    Job Search Tips
    Management Tips
    Money
    Podcast
    Productivity
    Q&A
    Stress Management
    Tango
    Team Coaching
    The Money Marathon
    Tuesday Tips
    Video
    What The Heck Is Coaching?

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.