by sean@higheredcareercoach.com | Mar 29, 2010 | Career Skills, Coaching, Job Search, The Placement Experience
This guy doesn't need a career coach. But he may need an attitude adjustment. Who are you pointing at, fool?
If you work in higher education, you are probably already a pretty successful person, and have some pretty good ideas about where you want to go in life. Teaching positions require graduate education, and many administrative posts also require at least a master’s degree.
You’re also surrounded by many great resources, including experienced colleagues, supervisors, and even students who help inspire and motivate you. Teaching and advising are activities that stir your soul, as well as your mind. You are periodically, if not frequently, reminded of your purpose, and you probably have more opportunities than some to pursue your academic and professional interests.
So why would you need a career coach? Aren’t you already smart enough to help yourself? Can’t you connect with plenty of people who can help you, who won’t charge you a fee?
Honestly, on some levels, the answers lean toward an argument against spending your time and money for a professional coach. But these answers are also mostly likely arrived at upon a surface-level examination of your life and career, and a certain level of buy-in to some stereotypes and expectations that society applies to being a member of the faculty.
Look a little deeper, and you may discover some very compelling reasons to consider coaching.
First and foremost, getting a coach doesn’t say anything about your intellectual ability. Plenty of really smart people work with coaches to keep them accountable, help them achieve work/life balance, and set and meet personal and professional goals. Prominent CEOs hire coaches. Corporations do, too. In fact, many corporations are hiring in-house coaches to help their employees be more satisfied with their careers and more balanced in their lives.
Second, it’s true that you have friends, colleagues, your supervisor, and your students to help and support you. But can these people dedicate the time and personal attention to you that you need? Will they commit to your personal success over their own needs or the needs of the department or institution? Will they support your personal and professional development, even if it means taking you away from your job, your staff and students, or the institution? Will they keep your concerns, aspirations and goals confidential? Will they hold you accountable for meeting your goals, or do they have their own things to worry about?
Getting a coach is a great way to put your dreams, goals, and even your barriers out there, and to explore them. It’s an investment in your success. It’s also a great way to hold yourself accountable in meeting your goals, so that you can achieve them.
So maybe the question isn’t “Why do I need a career coach?,” but instead “Don’t I deserve one?”
by sean@higheredcareercoach.com | Mar 25, 2010 | Career Skills, Job Search, The Placement Experience
Today was a good day.
It started simply enough. I had a scheduled call with a potential new client, and it went well. She was happy with our consultation and at the end booked her initial sessions (4 of them), and indicated a possibility that she might be looking for longer-term coaching.
Getting this new client topped off what was a pretty good week for me in general. During the ACPA conference, which I could not attend, I remained engaged and involved in the many conversations people were having, via Twitter. I found great ideas shared in people’s tweets. I joined some ongoing side banter about a #fakeacpa conference with all sorts of people from all over, many of which are also members of the weekly #sachat community sponsored by the Student Affairs Collaborative Blog.It was fun to stay engaged and be a part of all these conversations.
During my weekly small group coaching session on Sunday, one client at ACPA called in to say he was offered a campus interview at a school he is really interested in. I’d helped him prep for his phone interview before the conference, and it was nice to see him making the kind of progress he’s been working for and envisioning in our talks. I was able to connect with and encourage several candidates who I’ve connected with via Twitter as well.
When I left my secure job at Penn State last November, I took a great leap of faith into the unknown territory of starting my own business. I did it for a lot of different reasons and in my heart I have never felt like it was a mistake. But it was nice to see that after several months of hard work, and of putting myself out there, that the universe was finally coming around to meet me halfway, and maybe in some way, telling me to stay the course.
After lunch, I got the e-mails about my new client’s payment for her sessions, and another one I couldn’t have expected. Her sister was having a job interview today and wanted to get some coaching to be ready. She asked if I could meet via phone with her at 2 pm today. I called her but got her voicemail, so I sent her an encouraging e-mail, in hopes that she would at get it before her interview and at least know I had tried to reach her. She called back shortly thereafter, and we talked for about half an hour before her interview. She later wrote me an e-mail thanking me for the talk and idicating she would like to schedule another meeting about possibly working with me long-term.
All these varied events reaffirmed for me the value in taking leaps of faith, and trusting that when you follow your heart, trust yourself and work hard, that good things will happen. Reading over the e-mail I sent her, I thought how applicable it is in relation to my own situation, as well as those of the many student affairs job seekers who are smack in the middle of their own searches right now, and trying to evaluate possibilities and choose the right next steps in their lives and careers.
I’ve adapted the e-mail below, and hope it will provide some needed encouragement and inspiration to anyone contemplating not only life and career changes, but the leaps of faith required to bring them to life.
Dear Job Seeker:
It looks like you have great experience. If we don’t get a chance to talk 1-on-1, here are some quick thoughts for you….Faith in yourself and your abilities brought you this far in your job search. Whether you are graduating and looking for that first job, or looking to make a step up, down or sideways on the career ladder, in your heart you know there is a reason, and you know it is good. Your work is good and the fact you have so many great examples to show is a testament to that fact. You don’t need to convince yourself you are successful enough to get your next job. You clearly are.
With most employers, experience is not as important as motivation, talent, and fit. You have the first two for sure. You worked hard to get through grad school, or to succeed in your current or last job. When you committed to this search, you had faith in yourself and felt some possibilities would emerge if you trusted yourself enough.
So you made it this far in some processes, and it wasn’t an accident. You took the leap, and so did they. Something must be working, because they invited you to interview. This doesn’t happen usually out of a sense of charity. If you aren’t good, or your style and temperament aren’t a good match, you don’t get invited to the next step.
Well, you got invited. Go in with faith enough to be yourself and if it is meant to be, fate will open the next door. It may be in the way of offering you the job you really want, or it could be in their faith at giving you a shot, even if they go with someone else. Inviting someone to interview for a position is an act of faith. Taking an interview is another one. If your mutual faith is well-founded, it will survive past the interview, and the next door will open when it is time.
Until then, believe in yourself, be yourself, and go kick that interview’s a** three ways from Sunday. Good luck with your search!
by Shannon Healy | Mar 22, 2010 | Job Search, The Placement Experience
Next!
I have an 0n-campus interview! Let the celebratory dance party start!
But also – I have an on-campus interview! Let the overwhelming fear and worry begin as well. This school is one of my top 3 choices, and I’m hoping it goes well. It’s also the only school I’ve heard back from so far, so I’m trying not to let that affect me too much. Lots of schools are still recovering from OPE, TPE, or NASPA. Some are now on spring break and some are attending ACPA. I fully admit that I stalked down the academic calendar for all the schools I interviewed with to find out when their spring break was and tried to infer anything I could from that. In summary: not so much. Still a waiting game.
But I will not let the fact that I haven’t heard anything lately discourage me. It will sit in the back of my mind bothering me, but I won’t let it get me down. Instead, I will celebrate this one small triumph in the job search process. It does feel good. I like that I have some positive news to post on here. Now it’s just preparing for that very big jump of 30 minute interview to 36 hours spent interviewing. Bit of a difference. I’ve attended an etiquette dinner twice, so I have an idea of how to eat a meal while interviewing. My cohort has had professional development sessions on what to do (and not to do) at an on-campus interview. I think I’ve been told all I can about it. I’m ready to jump in there and do it, while at the same time incredibly worried that I’ll jump in and realize I forgot how to swim.
The nice part is how supportive my cohort has been. There’s 24 of us all out there struggling for jobs right now, and it’s nice when people are truly excited when you call and tell them your good news. They’re willing to jump on furniture with you in celebration, or go for dessert and drown your sorrows when news comes back that isn’t so good. When so many of us are looking in the same region or at the same school or even same position, it’s nice that people are spreading good feelings and not getting overly competitive.
Off to dance while looking over campus brochures and job descriptions. I’ll keep you posted!
by Shannon Healy | Mar 7, 2010 | Job Search, The Placement Experience
Placement is Over...Now the Waiting Begins. Woo-hoo.
OPE and TPE are now done. While it’s incredibly nice to be done with placement conferences, I can’t help but feel a bit antsy about what happens next.
Up until now, my job search has been completely under my own control. I decided which schools I would send interest letters to, which interviews I would accept and when to schedule them, what to say in interviews and thank you notes. Everything was up to me. Now that interviews and socials and thank you notes are all said and done, it’s up to the school and the interview team to decide if they want to bring me to the next step.
This scares me. There’s nothing else I can really do outside of preparing for second interviews, or hopefully an on-campus interview. It’s just sitting and waiting. The ball is in their court, and that makes me nervous. I know I should take this time to relax (and do my thesis), but it’s hard not to go over each interaction over and over again in my head to decide what I should have done differently.
The thing I’m needing to work on now is phone interviews. During a couple of interviews the school mentioned doing interviews over the phone before bringing anyone on campus as a way to save money. I hate the phone. I’m not that great on it, because you can never tell how the interviewer is feeling about things. Are they slightly smiling and nodding and seemingly interested in what you’re saying? Are they frowning and shaking their head “no” and glancing at the clock? On the phone you can’t tell if they’ve already written “no way” on your application and picked up the latest People Magazine crossword puzzle.
Some people have heard my horrible phone interview story from last year when I did interviews for my summer practicum. I talk with my hands, and got very excited during one story and accidentally threw the phone across the room, where it hit the floor and hung up. Completely mortified, I called back and profusely apologized. Thankfully the interviewer just laughed and said the next question was about how I deal with unexpected complications on the job. This is still not a situation I’d like to repeat, however.
So now I’m taking some time to travel the Midwest on my Lake Michigan Circle Tour and get my mind off interviews and job placement and things. I’m fairly confident I’ll get a job – I’ve done well in my classes, have a strong resume, and have (what I think is a) fun personality. It’s just this time in between step one and step two that is probably going to drive me crazy.
by Shannon Healy | Mar 1, 2010 | Job Search, The Placement Experience
I’m finally back on my home campus, trying to adjust to life after OPE. The conference itself was only three days, but it felt like a week and a half! The drive back from Oshkosh to West Michigan was quiet. My passenger and I decompressed a bit from the crazy schedule we had just functioned on, and looked back on how our preferences had changed, our prospects had changed, and how important personality really was.
I heard a lot beforehand about how you are interviewing a school just as much as they are interviewing you. I think this was good to know, and possibly not stressed enough. I know lots of people in my cohort are worried about finding a job, any job, but how well you could converse with the interview team during your 30 minutes with them was important. There were some interviews where conversation flowed well, but didn’t necessarily go so well at the social. There were some schools that I hope I redeemed myself with at the social because the conversation was much better.
Socials are very overwhelming. I definitely felt like the introvert in me was just in pain this whole time. Packed into a room of 500+ people, trying to smile and weave through the crowd, trying to catch the eye of that elusive school that you love. I tried to not look like I was on the prowl too much, so if representatives from a school were currently tied up in conversation I’d try to do another loop of the room and come back to them later. I spent a good amount of time at the social talking to candidates I had met throughout the conference in the lounges. Not only could we be a little bit “off our game” with candidates, but we helped each other look busy while waiting and kept an eye out for our chance to hop in to a conversation with a school. It was great having people I barely knew be so supportive and not be offended at all when you suddenly said “I’m going in!”
Overall, I loved my conference experience, and I really hope that the positive energy I felt I had with some schools really continues as everyone heads back to their home campus to talk about phone interviews and on-campus visits. I wasn’t nervous the whole weekend UNTIL the drive back when I started thinking about where things could have gone better, and wondering if I’d hear from some schools. I guess it’s better than the nerves setting in while interviewing, but I’m definitely anxious about this next step and where things are headed!
My next step? Figuring out what my plan for TPE is…
