Tag: jobs

In the middle of it

Since I was informed that my job was going to be eliminated at my current company, I have been in the middle of it. What is the middle of it you ask?

Photo by Ryoji Iwata on Unsplash

Well, let me explain what being in the middle is at this juncture of my career. It is about finding balance despite being stuck in the middle and being simultaneously pulled in multiple directions.

Part of me knows that I need a job to continue to pay for a place to live and put food on the table. You know life’s basics. The longer my search goes the more this point starts creeping into my conscious.

On the other hand, my mind is telling me that I should take advantage of this opportunity to take some time and find something that I would prefer to do. Maybe this will go hand in hand with the previous point but it might not. This not only entails looking for a job but also identifying skills and continuing education to help me better position myself for those opportunities.

Finally, there is a part of my mind that is pondering a massive career change. Although I have been in the world of business, finance, communications, and systems for a long time, I have always been drawn to international relations and especially Latin American politics.

Lots to ponder and think about at the moment, but sometimes being stuck in the middle deciding what direction to go does have its advantages.

Working Content & Happy

With Covid-19 hitting the world hard in 2020 and still feeling its effects in 2021 I took a hiatus from my career planning and job searching. I did not feel it was the right time to up-end a large portion of my life with so many other things in flux.

Now that things are starting to get back on track, I have opened my career “folder” yet again and back to some career soul searching. Although many things have remained constant since I started to seriously consider a career change many have also sprung forth such as my ever more fervent desire to work remotely, solidly identify with a company’s value pillars and culture, and want to bring in an international component to a future endeavour.

To better organize things this time around I have taken a step back to help better define exactly what it is that I am looking for. With so many varied interests there are many things that I find appealing about a number of jobs or careers for that matter.

As I sought to focus my interests an idea came to mind. Instead, of just writing a resume/cv focused on my results, responsibilities, and the usual stuff, I started to rewrite what I would call an “Enjoyment Resume”.

Pure Enjoyment
Photo by Andre Hunter on Unsplash

What an “Enjoyment Resume” is to me is going through each job that I have had and identify what it was that I really enjoyed doing in that role or at that company. As I started to go through my nearly 20+ year career I began to notice some trends. Some of these included: love to work on varied projects, seem to prefer a smaller company so I can wear many hats, found happiness in working with people from all over the world, loved more strategic and “big picture” work as opposed to more detail-oriented.

Now with this information on hand, I feel that I have a much better sense of who I am in a professional sense and just exactly what type of role and where I am the best fit moving forward in my career.

Can’t wait to get started. So if you are feeling stuck in your career search give an “enjoyment resume” a chance and perhaps you will find it as helpful as I did.

Staying on Track

I started this blog several weeks ago as a source of inspiration and motivation as I begin my career transition journey. After a little bit of success I have hit a snag. I am struggling to “re-brand” myself and pivot my career experiences to a different career path.

Photo by Tom Sodoge on Unsplash

You might say that this should be simple and your right. However, where I am struggling is I am not sure what I am trying to pivot to. Perhaps I can blame my liberal arts education that exposed me to many different ideas, topics, and issues that I feel going in one particular direction will close me off to many other areas. I have found that this hurts when I am networking and people ask me what I am interested in doing? According to many career sites, this should be a fairly easy and straightforward question that can be answered in a couple of sentences. Not in my case, as when I am asked something along those lines I can ramble on for minutes covering a wealth of topics and interests.

Part of me says that this is bad and I need to focus my career interests on something more specific. The other part of me refuses to do this as in doing so I would not be true to my authentic self. I feel that I can leverage my authentic self to help a company or client meet a host of different problems. However, I have not found the way to convey this to others.

I will keep trying and persisting as I know that this journey can be long and full of setbacks. Patience is key.