by sean@higheredcareercoach.com | Nov 19, 2009 | Career Skills, Coaching
My relocation is now complete, and I am in my new home in Athens, GA, though not completely unpacked. Glad to be back online! I am ready to dive in full-time to this new adventure.
Besides all the moving-related stuff (buying a house, selling the old one, packing, unpacking, frequent trips to Goodwill, etc.), I have been meeting with my first round of clients. So far, I really enjoy the interactions I’ve been having, and it’s really neat to see people start to set goals for their lives and careers, and to see them make some progress.
Though I do miss State College and Penn State, I haven’t really missed my old job yet. I guess I really haven’t had the time, but if I have, then I’ve filled it with excitement about my new path as a life and career coach. I will be back to blogging about working in higher education, managing your career search, preparing for placement, and related issues, and developing this blog as an informational resource for higher education professionals seeking to take their career to the next level.
By January, I will have hopefully completed my certification requirements, and my goal is to have 10-15 paying clients by the end of March, and to be ready to offer workshops, in-person and online, to help higher education job seekers prepare for placement and succeed in their jobs.
Stay tuned as well for new editions of “Take 5″ and a series on getting ready for placement. If you have topics you would like to see me cover, please drop me a line at sean@higheredcareercoach.com.
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by sean@higheredcareercoach.com | Nov 2, 2009 | Book Reviews
How to Self-Destruct: Making the Least of What's Left of Your Career
Have you ever thought to yourself “Success is too hard!”?
Jason Seiden has the answer for all those beleaguered by their search for success: Stop trying. Fail instead.
How to Self Destruct: Making the Least of What’s Left of Your Career outlines 14 ways to destroy your career, whether you are in your first job or “retiring in place” in senior management. Divided into four sections: Taking Down Your Career, Kicking Your Career When It’s Down, Laying Waste to Your Personal Environment, and Mastering the Self-Destruction Process, the book offers many pearls of wisdom for those who’ve finally had it with being successful and are ready to just give up. Some that I found particularly good:
- Take advantage of casual Fridays….”The unpressed, only-worn-once-since-you-washed-it-last Banana Republic uniform is still the most subtle yet effective way to keep yourself off everyone’s ‘next in line for the presidency’ radars.”
- Develop Champagne Tastes and an entitlement complex….“This will maximize the number of things you want but cannot afford and will heighten the feelings of inadequacy you experience when you repeatedly don’t get them.”
- Stay humble…. “At worst, you’ll get a personal note from the CEO admiring your work ethic, reminding you of the fond days when he worked under you and wishing you well now that your red Swingline has been confiscated and you’ve been laid off.”
To balance things out, Seiden ends each chapter with advice for those who don’t have the courage to fail. Some sage advice I could relate to:
- Be prepared to meet with a client or with your CEO at any moment. …“if you want the interaction to go well, appearances matter.”
- Embrace your inner grunt….“Escort your ego to the curb and give it a good kick in the ass so it doesn’t come back. Return to the office and relish your role as low man on the totem pole. How low? Let’s put it this way: all the people you work with were told they were special too. So, chance are, you are of average specialness, which means you’re not special at all.”
- Work hard? Yes, and have fun, too. If you’re not having fun, you’re not engaging others. If you’re not engaging others, you’re not building the network you’ll need to achieve your big dreams. If you’re not having fun, you’re wasting your potential and slowly turning into a pessimist who will try to convince others to abandon thier dreams the same as you abandoned yours.”
With a unique mix of humor and wisdom, Jason Seiden has created an engaging and thought-provoking guidebook for failing (or succeeding) in today’s workplace. The cover price for this book is $12.95 and you can learn more about Seiden at www.howtoselfdestruct.com and at his blog, www.seidenleadership.com.
by sean@higheredcareercoach.com | Oct 29, 2009 | Coaching
Thanks for visiting! I hope you will find Higher Ed Life Coach to be a useful source of information and inspiration as you plan a successful transition to college life for yourself or your student. If you are new here, you might want to subscribe to the RSS feed for updates on this topic.
Thanks to all who expressed interest in the free career coaching. I have now exceeded the number of clients I need to meet with for certification, and do not have any further openings for free coaching.
If you are interested in one-on-one coaching around life, transition, and career issues, and you are a college student, or higher ed professional, please contact me for a basic consultation and/or to get on my waiting list. I expect to be able to take on an initial client load of 10 to 15 clients starting in January. If interested, contact me and we can go over what to expect, rates, etc.
The big news from Happy Valley this week (or at least MY news from Happy Valley this week) is that I will be leaving Penn State early next month, after 14 and a half years (mostly good ones), and relocating to Athens, GA, so me and my wife and kids can be closer to our extended families. We found a great house and it even looks like we might be able to sell our current one soon enough. I’m looking forward to warmer weather and giving this whole business thing a good honest try.
I’ll miss my friends and colleagues, but I won’t miss winters up here, and I am so looking forward to the changes that will come with not being part of a big beaureaucracy or being “on call” for campus emergencies. Wish me luck!
In other news, I am lining up some possible guest bloggers for this site and for HigherEdLifeCoach.com during my packing and moving period. If you work in higher education or have some great perspectives to share, send me a message at sean@higheredcareercoach.com and we can talk.
by sean@higheredcareercoach.com | Oct 15, 2009 | Career Skills, Coaching
During my 15-plus years as a Student Affairs professional, I have had many opportunities to coach students and young professionals through their efforts to explore graduate schools, navigate the graduate school application process, and to prepare for placement conferences and job interviews.
I have a master’s degree in Counseling and Guidance Services and a generation of work behind me, at one of America’s best universities. I’ve served on many screening committees, and conducted interviews by phone, at placement exchanges, and in-person (individually and as part of day-long processes). I’ve always felt good about my skills in this area, and my track record for helping students and young professionals with their resume preparation and interview strategies has been pretty good. Many people who I have coached have been able to find jobs and get into graduate school. I think that having read through a few thousand resumes and conducting several hundred interviews has given me a pretty good idea what people on the hiring side of the table are looking for. Let me put this experience to work for you.
These experiences led me to my own career exploration, and eventually to the path I am currently on, toward certification as a life and career coach, and starting my own independent coaching and consulting practice.
Over the past few years, a confluence of events caused me to take a harder look at my life, and weigh the security of my current position against a few other things: the satisfaction the position was giving me, and the opportunity costs associated with staying on this secure path. I realized that my current position wasn’t rewarding to me in the ways it had been before, and that changes in my personal life (becoming a father, seeing my parents get older and have health challenges, and discovering I have a neurological disorder) had pushed me to reevaluate how I spend my time and energy. In the final analysis, I realized that I’d moved beyond my job, and that it just isn’t a good match for who I want to be, and how I want to spend my time and energy, at this point in my life.
So I decided to take a major leap of faith and try to work for myself, and create a position that would allow me to do the things I enjoy and feel that I do well, every day. I decided to leave my job, in order to move forward in my career. I’m not leaving my profession (Student Affairs in Higher Education)…I’m just going solo.
I recently began a coaching certification program, which started with a five-day intensive class, and is followed by independent work, a critique of my business plan, review of work with practice clients, and a final exam. From here, the program is self-paced, but I intend to finish by the New Year, if at all possible.
In pursuit of this goal, I need to begin coaching and I need practice clients. I’m seeking 2 to 3 clients, and would like to find higher education graduate students and young professionals and help them explore their career possibilities and manage their job search.
Practice coaching clients will receive 4 free coaching sessions (a $300 value). During these 45-minute sessions, we’ll explore current career interests and directions and any roadblocks in the way of your successful search, so that I can help you plot your course, refine your job search strategy and hopefully, land a fulfilling new position. I’ll be using techniques that are part of the Life Purpose Process ©, a proven coaching method that has assisted thousands of people in finding their purpose and setting new goals for leading successful and balanced lives.
If you are interested, please e-mail me at sean@higheredcareercoach.com and we can set up a time to speak on the phone or chat online, to discuss the parameters of the coaching process. If it sounds like something you would be interested in doing, we’ll set up a regular time to speak on the phone or over video chat weekly, to discuss any issues you are dealing with, and to work toward setting and meeting your unique life and transition goals.
A couple of other notes if you are interested:
- These 4 to 6 sessions are offered for free, and no further obligation will exist on either side of the coaching relationship.
- I will not be asking you for money, credit card information, or enrolling you in anything.
- All sessions will be confidential (between you and me) unless you specify otherwise.
- If you are interested, I need you to commit to a minimum of 4 sessions between now and December 31, because I will need to submit evidence of having practice clients as part of my certification process.
- This is not psychotherapy, and I am not a licensed therapist. If issues arise that are better suited for work with a therapist, I will advise you to meet with one.
- If you are interested in continuing with coaching past the 6th session, we will need to discuss a separate agreement, and those sessions will be billed at a regular rate of $75 an hour.
- While we will discuss ways to improve your resume and cover letters, to target them toward your search, extensive resume and cover letter writing and editing are not included as part of this coaching. Resume and cover letter consulting or editing can be arranged separate from the coaching, and we’ll negotiate a rate that reflects the amount of editing/rewriting/redesigning needed. The minimum rate for resume revision/editing is $125, with additional work billed at $75 an hour.
If you know of anyone else who might be interested, please pass this information along. If you have any questions, e-mail me.
by sean@higheredcareercoach.com | Sep 25, 2009 | Book Reviews
Career Renegade by Jonathan Fields
In Career Renegade former lawyer and self-proclaimed “serial lifestyle entrepreneur” Johnathan Fields take us through his personal journey from being a high-powered Manhattan attorney to owning his own yoga studio to becoming a speaker, writer and business coach.
I stumbled upon this book during a recent trip to our local Barnes and Noble, where I had gone with my almost 4-year-old son, Brendan, to play with the train table and buy a book for bedtime reading. After B inflicted some serious train-crashing on poor Thomas the Tank Engine and friends, he chose Dr. Seuss’s The Cat in the Hat, and we headed up front to see if I could find a book that would help me in developing a business plan for my coaching practice
The title screamed out at me, and the subtitle, “How to Make a Great Living Doing What You Love,” hooked me in. I skimmed the table of contents. Fields divides the book into four parts
- What Makes You Come Alive? explores the connection between personal passion and finding a career you will love.
- What Kind of Renegade Will You Be? introduces Career Renegade paths, and provides a lot of interesting ideas for finding and filling needs for information and stuff, teaching what you know and planning and protecting your vision.
- How to Master Your Passion and Build a Worldwide Following helps readers explore their personal readiness to build a reputation and a following, and provides some great ideas on ways to market ideas and use social media tools to build a community around your vision.
- Let the Revolution Begin engages readers in determining how ready they are to build a “Career Renegade” mindset and build support among family and friends.
As someone currently engaged in redefining my life and career, and seeking to help others do the same, I found Career Renegade to be a very enjoyable and engaging read, and it really helped me solidify my own commitment to this big change I’m planning that will take me away from the security of my current position working for a university. Fields’ practical information and the steps he takes the reader through to imagine their journey are powerful. I especially like his advice about weighing the security of a job against the costs of inaction. This helped me to not only explore my motivations, but to confront my fears about taking such a huge step.
If you are exploring ways to take control of your career, and need some inspiration to overcome your fears, as well as some practical advice to get you up and running, Career Renegade is the book you are looking for. Now that you know this, feel free to spend more time at the train table. Just take it easy on Thomas and his friends. They get enough of the rough stuff from the kids.
