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Professional people are changing jobs and careers with increasing frequency. In this course, we will explicitly show you the steps for transitioning from your current job to your dream job. Your new dream job can be in the industry you currently work in or it can be in a whole new direction. Either way, the strategy and action steps remain the same. There are so many moving parts in today’s job market so you simply must have a clear plan for how you will not only make the move but how you will identify the ideal company that will complement not just your skill set but your sense of fulfillment. Because of technology, almost everybody is available outside of traditional working hours. This means you need to align your strategy accordingly, it must have clear milestones but also be flexible enough that it can adapt to unforeseen situations. Ultimately this course is about setting yourself up for success – make getting a job your job.

• Your career is and should be a continuously evolving game plan. Some people know exactly what they want to do professionally, however, most are not clear on it. So whether you are planning to make a career shift within your industry or take your career in a whole new direction, you need to plan out your strategy. Although it is important to think about how a job change will impact your quality of life, salary, etc., your first port of call has to be what a potential employer will see in you that will be useful for them. In this lesson, we will reveal some of the key questions to identify your Unique Personal Selling Points and how this particular skill set can be put to use by a potential employer. In this first lesson, we will look at the 4 main areas that will impact your career plan to ensure you can check off each one to clarify your decision making. We must then consider how you will begin to put this plan into action. Your career plan must begin with your CV.

2. CV/Resume Preparation

• Every employer is interested in 3 things: increasing profits, increasing efficiency, and decreasing costs. Your strategy for a new position has to include these ideas at its core and your CV is your calling card. The issue for every single person who is deciding on a career move is that everyone has a CV. To stand out, you need to think like your potential employer. Why are they going to want to read your CV? This document has to be the best representation of you and why you are the person to help the company achieve and surpass its goals. You have to make your CV irresistible for your prospective employer. You have to ensure there is clarity on your achievements backed up with facts and figures. In this lesson, we will look at how to structure this written representation of you so that any potential employer will want to know more about the person it represents. Your CV makes up the first step of your job search strategy.

3. Job Search Strategy

• How are you going to implement your plan for new employment? In this lesson, we give you the most up-to-date tried and tested techniques for strategizing your job search. The approach we want to avoid is the ‘scatter gun’, where we send CV’s to anyone and everyone in the hope of gaining new employment. We want to use laser focus when selecting possible employers. This will allow you to be selective in which companies and key employees you will research so that you are making intelligent decisions about your career plan. This lesson covers how get the right mix of techniques so that you are utilizing as many avenues as possible to get the result you desire like where to find the right people you need to connect with to ultimately land your dream job. When it comes to a job search, you need to be proactive rather than reactive. The most effective way to proactively position yourself for the next step in your career is to be referred for a position. The best way to be referred is through networking.

• You have identified your ideal position in the perfect industry, now what? At this point, you need to know how to bring it to a successful conclusion. Networking in the right way with the right people is absolutely vital for your new job prospects. In this lesson, we consider the tips and tricks you can utilize for each step of the networking process. Finding the right people by entering a room full of strangers and striking up conversation after conversation is a daunting task. This lesson is focused firstly on how to find other people to build mutually beneficial relationships. And secondly, when you have the genesis of a good working relationship, how to move it forward. Networking can be seen as a necessary evil or it can be seen as a fantastic opportunity to meet like-minded individuals who can both benefit from a budding relationship. When you do it correctly, you will be able to leverage these connections to get referrals so that you are in a position of strength entering into the next phase of the plan – the interview.

5. Interviewing: Part 1

• You have networked successfully, have been referred to a potential employer, submitted your CV and now you have been invited for interview. Although you may have met the decision maker through networking, an interview is distinctly different from networking. This lesson will provide you with an introduction to the skills necessary to transition into interview mode. In this first part on interviewing, we focus on the phone and video style interview. In this lesson, we cover off the different techniques, tips, and tricks to use for this stage. We also cover not just the frequently asked questions in a phone or video interview but also the best answers to give that are true to you while avoiding clichés. When you have completed the first round of interviews, you most likely will be invited for a face to face interview.

6. Interviewing: Part 2

• When you have reached this stage of the interview process, you are closing in on reaching your goal of securing a job offer. A face to face interview differs from the phone or video interview in several ways. During this lesson, we will compare and contrast this style of interview to the style from the previous lesson. We will equip you with the skills and tools to approach a face to face interview with supreme confidence. We will tick off the key tasks that need to be completed by you before and during an interview. We also reveal the number 1 crucial thing that most candidates forget to do following an interview. We will cover the types of interview you could face along with the types of interviewer you could be sitting down with. A good interviewer will want to find out about the person behind the skills and experience on the CV and this can lead to some tricky questions. These are key elements of the process as when you have mastered these you will exit the interview knowing you positioned yourself correctly to discuss salary when you are offered the position.

7. Salary Negotiation

• The ability to negotiate successfully is an essential tool for you to have during the final stages of the interview process. Like one of our previous sessions where a person has an aversion to networking some people can dislike negotiation. Usually negotiation is confused with confrontation. The general consensus about negotiating is that it is about butting heads with the other side about something like a yearly salary and sticking to it until the other side gives in. This approach is not a pleasant experience for either side. Just like networking, negotiating is really about finding common ground while putting forward what you will bring to the company in terms of increased profits and efficiency while reducing costs. A negotiation involves, among other things, preparing correctly with the right attitude, controlling the flow of information and building relationships. The key component to any negotiation is getting to a conclusion that both sides are happy with. The reason for this is ‘buyer’s remorse’. If the other side are not happy with the agreement they will simply renege on the deal at a later date.

8. Your Career Roadmap

• There are many moving parts when changing job or planning the next stage of your career. You may even be making your move while working full time which adds its own complications to the process. You need and want the process to be as efficient as possible while also maintaining clarity on your overall career plan. We need to learn how to utilize our time so we do not waste one second, we need to put in place a system for tracking who you have contacted, and when you contacted them and what you contacted them about. You need to know about calendar management, managing your time, and setting goals. Ultimately, you need to know how to get from where you are to where you want to get to as quickly and as cleanly as possible. This final lesson we will delve into planning out your career road map so that you approach the next phase of your career with focussed enthusiasm.