​A good life is the result of wise decisions. A life filled with negative consequences is the result of poor decisions. It might be impossible to make good decisions every time, but you can significantly raise your odds!
 
Do you have a decision-making process, or do you fly by the seat of your pants? Given that you’ve made a lot of good and bad decisions over the years, you can use those to your benefit and enhance your decision-making process.
 
Most people don’t have a defined process for making decisions. This is unfortunate. Consider how your life has been affected by your best and worst decisions.
 
Learn how to make a great decision and your life will grow in wonderful ways.
 
Use these strategies to sharpen your decision-making skills:
 

1. Know your desired outcome. What are you trying to accomplish? When you know what you want, the solution becomes clearer. What is the point of considering a given option? Is it to maximize your income? Enhance your health? Find a spouse? Hire the most reasonable cleaning service you can find? Define what you’re attempting to accomplish.
   
   
2. Be rational while making a decision. Most decisions made under duress aren’t the best decisions. You’re don’t think as clearly when you’re stressed, tired, or uncomfortable in any way. When you’re not at your best, your choices will likely consider your immediate comfort more than they should.
   
   
3. Keep the long-term in mind. Consider how your decision will affect your life in weeks, months, or even years down the road. What will you gain and sacrifice in the long-term? Decisions made with an emphasis on the short-term often ruin your life down the road.
   
   
4. Know how you’d handle the worst possible outcome. When you know that you can handle the worst, it’s easier to make up your mind and get on with your life. Think about everything that could go wrong and determine how you would handle it.
   
   
5. Take enough time to make a good decision, but not longer. Some decisions take longer than others but avoid allowing yourself to be paralyzed by a decision. Procrastinating won’t enable you to make a better choice. Ask yourself what you hope to gain by waiting. If there’s no benefit, make a decision and move forward.
   
   
6. Use your past experience. What can you use from your past to help you make a wise decision now? All of your previous good and bad decisions are resources you can call upon now.

 

1. Can you trust yourself to follow through? A good decision that you can’t complete is no better than a poor decision or no decision at all. Sometimes the solution with the best likely outcome is too challenging to implement. Do you have the skills and the stamina to follow through?

 

1. Get assistance from an expert. If you don’t know enough to make a good decision, get the help you need. There are so many people in the world that one of them is certain to have the expertise you need to make a great decision.
   
   
2. Take action immediately. After making a decision, it’s important to do something about it. You’ve made many decisions in the past that you never acted upon. Make it a habit to take at least a small step that supports your decision.
   
   
3. Know your values. When you know your values, your available options shrink. This makes it easier to choose. What’s most important to you? How does the decision you need to make relate to those values?

 
Making better decisions is one of the best ways to enhance your life. A poor decision isn’t generally fatal, but it can be challenging to recover from.
 
A great life is the result of a steady stream of great decisions. Develop your own step-by-step process for making wise decisions. Leverage your past and a long-term perspective to choose more wisely in the future.

If you’re thinking about handing in your resignation, you may have more company than you expected. Many workers plan to move on if their company discontinues remote-work options.

Meanwhile, many businesses are reporting that they’re having trouble finding enough employees to hire.

This may be an ideal time to make changes in your career, especially if you’re ready to deal with the latest conditions.

CHECK OUT "3 SURE-FIRE SIGNS ITS TIME FOR A CAREER CHANGE" 

Keep these trends in mind as you search for a new position.

Prepare Yourself


Labor Department figures show that there are more job openings now than before the pandemic. Plan ahead, so you can focus your efforts and stay organized.


Keep these strategies in mind:

1. Set priorities. Remote work may be at the top of your mind, but there are other factors to consider too. What kind of office culture are you seeking? What benefits would support your work-life balance?
2. Create a timeline. You may want to act quickly, or you may want to see how your current company adapts to reopening. However, much lead time you take, use it to make yourself more competitive.
3. Boost your skills. Continuing your education and training is one of the most effective things you can do. Read books, listen to podcasts, and complete certification courses online.
4. Try again. If you were job hunting during lockdown, you may still be feeling discouraged. Remember that you’re more likely to succeed now, and you may be able to apply for higher positions that seemed out of reach before.

Go Online


Even with modern vaccines, you’ll probably be doing more networking and interviewing online.


Use these strategies to make a positive impression in the virtual world:

1. Test your equipment. It’s easy to become complacent when zoom calls are a familiar routine. Ensure that your technology is working before any important event.
2. Arrange your space. Staging can help you look more professional at home. Create an appealing backdrop. Minimize distractions, including kids and pets.
3. Make eye contact. Look at your camera instead of watching yourself on your monitor. It also helps to put your camera at eye level, so you may need a stack of books to prop it up.
4. Check your posture.  Sit up straight and smile because you may be scrutinized more closely on screen. Skillful lighting and makeup can help you appear at your best. 
5. Practice interviewing. Ask a friend to rehearse with you or book a session with a career coach. Use their feedback to catch habits you may not be aware of and to strengthen your performance.
6. Warm up old ties. What if you’ve lost touch with colleagues while you’ve been spending more time at home? Refresh your network by reaching out to see how others are doing. Set weekly goals for scheduling coffee dates and attending events.
7. Join groups. You can meet new contacts without going outside. Sign up for groups related to your profession on LinkedIn and Facebook. Participate actively by commenting on discussions and posting your own topics and materials.
8. Say thanks. Your manners can grow rusty if you’ve been talking with automated virtual assistants more than with humans. Express your gratitude and appreciation, including sending thank you notes after interviews.

Take advantage of the abundant opportunities in the current job market. Clarify your career objectives and find a job that can keep you engaged and fulfilled.

As I have observed over my many years as a coach, there are many paths to creating the freedom you want to feel in your life.   Sometimes it's your mindset and  approach and sometimes it becomes clear that the environment in which you are operating is causing the frustration and needs to change. 

Sometimes, the desire to make changes in your life  leads to a career pivot, seeking a promotion or a  job change.

Experts agree there are at least five times when working with  a career coach is not only a worthwhile investment but also key to your success.

1. When you are feeling flat out stuck and can't seem to get out of your own way  and make significant progress. When it's time to create some clarity and concrete movement forward. Let's talk.

2. You've sent out (insert huge number here) resumes and or 'feelers' and are getting little or no traction. It's time for a strategic intervention. Reach out and let's talk. I'll review your entire process and help you make the course corrections needed.

3. You're considering a Major Career Pivot. A robust job search contains many moving parts and when you are also switching industries or positions you'll also need to make sure you are rebranding your experience and skillset effectively so you are standing out for all the right reasons.  I know the ropes and can help you side step the overwhelm and get the job done effectively.

4. Interviewing paralyzes you. You're getting interviews, which is huge in such a competitive market, but then you feel as if you crash and burn and don't make it past the first round. Allow me to help you prepare the right way for your best success with confidence.

5. You'd rather have your wisdom teeth pulled than deal with networking. If this is you, you're in good company. This is a big hurdle for a lot of people. It's so hard for some people that they avoid it all together and continue to only apply for job after job online. To accelerate your search you'll need to get comfortable with engaging your network. I can help you practice doing just that.

To continue to wallow in any of the above situations is not useful to your moving your life forward in a way that energizes you.

When the decision to make a job change or career pivot become evident, working with an experienced coach to tackle each step of the often, overwhelming and deflating process with confidence and grit makes increasing sence. 

You can

• Successfully identify the most viable opportunities for you
• prepare a killer resume
• Bypass the gatekeepers​
• ace your interviews
• negotiate the offer that works for you. 

Let's talk about your goals.  ​

Your Resume: Is it Your Piéce de Résistance or the Piece you Resist Most?

Time and time again I've seen the most strident and accomplished professionals literally blanch at the thought of working on their own resume.   
I can understand why.  
Even in a strong economy, it is becoming increasingly difficult to break away from the pack and there can be a lot of indecision around what to include, or not include, in a resume or LinkedIn Profile that will get you noticed and get your resume in front of the decisions makers.  

Its not just their resume. Common struggles include: 

• Being cut after a round because of a  misstep during an interview
• Getting to the final round only to find that the hiring team has decided to ‘go in a different direction’.  Or
• Putting all your energy into an  application for a position only to receive a ‘thanks but no thanks’ type rejection letter seemingly minutes later without any feedback as to why or, perhaps worse, no response at all.  

None of us have 'putting ourselves on the line and facing rejection' on our top list of things we like to do. 

What We Longing For

And yet, there’s a longing.  The desire to take our career or life in a different direction, perhaps at a different pace or in a different environment.  The longing remains.   The feelings of being between a rock and a hard place increase and the chest squeezing notion of feeling stuck begins to overwhelm. 


The Wrestling Match with Ourselves

Time and time again, I’ve observed that people get in their own way the most during a career pivot when they avoid tackling their resume in an intentional way.  

They don’t want to deal with it. They want to farm it out. They sabotage their best efforts by allowing it to become something that they wrestle with, drenched in feelings of  ‘not enoughness’, when they could be hoisting the completed, amazing, witness of their growth and development as a professional over their head in triumph.   


How it can be. 

Even though most professionals now realize we are definitely well past the days of a one size fits all resume that they can farm out to a resume mill, many people still don’t understand how to set themselves up for their best success and make their career pivot as smooth and enjoyable as possible.  

They turn a time that can be one of excitement, adventure and discovery into a time dripping with anxiety, dread and procrastination, all elements that don’t play well going through the job search process or during interviews. 


What Needs to Happen

I work with my clients privately, in groups or on line to  

• Get clear on the best next steps for their career
• Master their trepidations
• Develop a bullet proof resume that becomes the crown of their marketing pieces for their best target job market.
• Navigate todays job market with confidence and success. 
• Ace each round of interviews and negotiate their offers successfully

Even if…


Even if you believe that resumes are obsolete (they are not!) and the your LinkedIn Profile is really your primary marketing device (not so), it is still your resume that gets submitted for online application and is the document that must clear the ATS. 

It is still the document that gets passed along from hand to hand, or e-mail to e-mail when someone wants to recommend you. 

It forms the basis for both your pitch and your LinkedIn profile, and it is still the document that your interviewers will have in front of them when they meet with you.  It’s likely the first document added to your employee file.  It counts at all stages of your process. 


What Your Next Best Steps are 

Creating your resume is not the first step in an effective career pivot but it is a key element of  your job search success. 

We specialize in helping clients across multiple industries, including not-for-profit and federal resumes. 

If you are

1. clear about the direction you want to go in, and
2. clear that there is a job market to support your direction in the location of your choice, then
3. it’s time to tackle your resume, pitch, LinkedIn Profile and Interview approach in a way that speaks directly to that job market and locale.

If you still need help with steps 1 and 2,   lets have a conversation and get each of these three steps tackled with confidence. 

Looking forward! 
 
The Guy Bridge Group Approach
Get Clear. Master Fear. Move Forward. ​

As I have observed over my many years as a coach, there are many paths to creating the freedom you want to feel in your life.   Sometimes it's your mindset and  approach and sometimes it becomes clear that the environment in which you are operating is causing the frustration and needs to change. 

Sometimes, the desire to make changes in your life  leads to a career pivot, seeking a promotion or a  job change.

Fortunately, when this happens,  I am uniquely qualified to support my clients through this process.

Experts agree there are at least five times when working with  a career coach is not only a worthwhile investment but also key to your success.

1. When you are feeling flat out stuck and can't seem to get out of your own way  and make significant progress. When it's time to create some clarity and concrete movement forward. Let's talk.

2. You've sent out (insert huge number here) resumes and or 'feelers' and are getting little or no traction. It's time for a strategic intervention. Reach out and let's talk. I'll review your entire process and help you make the course corrections needed.

3. You're considering a Major Career Pivot. A robust job search contains many moving parts and when you are also switching industries or positions you'll also need to make sure you are re-branding your experience and skill set effectively so you are standing out for all the right reasons.  I know the ropes and can help you side step the overwhelm and get the job done effectively.

4. Interviewing paralyzes you. You're getting interviews, which is huge in such a competitive market, but then you feel as if you crash and burn and don't make it past the first round. Allow me to help you prepare the right way for your best success with confidence.

5. You'd rather have your wisdom teeth pulled than deal with networking. If this is you, you're in good company. This is a big hurdle for a lot of people. It's so hard for some people that they avoid it all together and continue to only apply for job after job online. To accelerate your search you'll need to get comfortable with engaging your network. I can help you practice doing just that.

To continue to wallow in any of the above situations is not useful to your moving your life forward in a way that energizes you.

As I work with clients, and the decision to make a job change or career pivot become evident, my clients have the extra security of knowing that l am trained and experienced in helping them tackle each step of the often, overwhelming and deflating process with confidence and grit.

You can

• Successfully identify the most viable opportunities for you
• prepare a killer resume
• Bypass the gatekeepers​
• ace your interviews
• negotiate the offer that works for you. 

Lets keep talking about getting your started in Phase 2: Recruiting Your Next Employer
​
​I've got you covered. 
​

​Bolstering your network and network skills well in advance of any future job search is the secret sauce to your success.  Focus on getting better at this starting .. well... ah... now!

#Networking #CareerCoach #JOBSearch