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How to Plan Wise Career Changes

Editor’s note: Steve Armstrong is the contributor today. His bio is at the end of the article.

New Career?

Tired of being misunderstood, ridiculed, or feel exploited at work? Or do you just think that your skills should be developed further, and that you have already reached the point where the joy of work transforms itself into everyday routine?

It is time to change your career path, or simply find another job, unless you want to work hard without being respected or appreciated.

Career Planning

You need to make a decision about your desire for career changes. If you change your career path, it means doing something completely different. For example, you are a journalist, and now want to work in the field of engineering. Otherwise, you could take your chance to find such a job similar to the previous one (switching from journalism to teaching English Literature). Everyone has his own career path.

Career path may be defined as the way to develop yourself professionally, based on your current personal skills, professional competencies, education and work experience. In order to plan your career wisely, you should analyze your skills well (e.g. responsibility, punctuality, ability to work in dynamic environment, etc.) and to use them for enhancing your professional competencies (for a teacher they could be: knowledge in the specific field of teaching, pedagogy, work with specific documentation, etc.).

Most people do not realize their career plans or do not feel free to choose career paths. It leads to frustration and low self-esteem. Therefore, if you want to change your career path, first you should know more about it. Analyze yourself, ask friends and relatives, ask career counselors. They will help you. After that, start planning your career: its goals, actions you should take to achieve them, expected results.

More specific steps that a person can consider while thinking about changing his or her career include:

Think of whether you are satisfied with your current job or not
Decide if you need to change your career
Try to assess yourself: interests, skills and values
Brainstorm on the list of alternative occupations and explore them carefully
Set your goals
Prepare a career action plan
Train yourself for a career you want to pursue

When to Change Your Career

Now, it is time to reflect on the question: are you satisfied with your current job? If no, why? In what respect do your expectations differ from the reality? Maybe you have planned your career in a wrong way?

Look at your skills, competencies and (especially!) work experience. What kind of job could give you the pleasant feeling of working hard, being respected and well-paid?

Remember: If you are a thesis writer, working as an accountant could put you in trouble (providing you don’t have education or experience in accounting). Thus, look for a job that would be easy for you to adapt to. It’s never late to do it.

Plan and Educate

In conclusion, it must be said that in order to change your career wisely, it requires a lot of critical reflections and self-analysis. Plan your career as precisely as possible, formulate your expectations and work on developing your skills and competencies, to be sure that you will find the right job for you in the easiest way.

Author Bio: Steve Armstrong works part-time for a college paper writing service at http://www.solidessay.com/our-services/thesis-writer, where he consults students on how to format and structure their research papers and dissertations. Read more here.

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by Mark Anthony Dyson

Succeeding in the Job Search Today [INFOGRAPHIC]

At some point or another, most of us will go through the long-winded process that is the job search. It’s a tough business to be in, especially if you’re not getting the results you want. However, when you’ve done your research and have the proper information on your side, the outcome of your job search will likely come out in your favor.

This infographic, compiled by Interview Success Formula, a program that helps job seekers to deliver powerful interview answers, illustrates how job seekers can navigate through the job search today and how to do well in the process. Some takeaways to note include:

80 percent of available jobs are never advertised
20 percent of job applicants get interviews
The average length of an interview is approximately 40 minutes
The most important characteristics in a job applicant are multitasking, initiative, and creative thinking

Some other takeaway points that you should implement in your job search strategy:

Find out what are the job search tools you need to be the most competitive. If you need to have a portfolio find out what is the content that would differentiate you and other candidates.
Understand the brand differentiation for you to stand out in the field. Interviewers will compare and contrast your value versus candidates.
Be prepared to tell and show. Take the guess work from potential employers and demonstrate how your skills would translate to the open position he or she is hiring for.
Your preparedness is as good as your research and industry knowledge. Interviewing requires some anticipation of what questions will be asked to exploit weaknesses. Be ready to show that your weaknesses became strengths and were non-factors to your tremendous successes.

Check out the full infographic below and let us know your thoughts in the comments!

What do you think? What are some other ways to succeed in the job search?

by Bianca Thompson

Employers Will Not Dance with Anyone’s Negative Social Profile

I must admit that I am sometimes quite resistant by social profiles. I personally do not feel everyone, even employers, needs to know everything about me. Nor do I want to know everything about others. We all have opinionated demons that can be extreme to those that do not agree with us.

So what!

Such is life! This is what makes the world unique and interesting. We are not robots.

Some would argue that these technology avenues are good for recruiting because recruiters can use them to get to know their candidates. I totally disagree. Anyone can create an social profile that gives the viewer an image of a workplace angel…the perfect candidate…the right fit for the team.

To me, this makes social profiles unreliable. If someone uses their Twitter account to rant and rave about their passions that may not be common to the masses, does not mean that they will not be an excellent employee. Now, let us turn the table. Someone can have glowing online social profiles but their workplace ethic simply sucks.

My belief is that recruiters should not heavily rely on social profiles in recruiting decisions. It’s an unstable source as we as humans are sometimes unstable. Since I do not have the ultimate hiring power for the entire world, I, in addition to you, must consider the trends of our “social media crazed” society.

Having social profiles on the web becomes problematic when we do not consider our audience. Sure they can delete your friendship on Facebook or stop following you on Twitter but the audience is actually the ENTIRE world. Technology has taught us repeatedly that once something has been sent digitally, it is available forever and for ALL to view.

We must seriously consider all the messages that we send when we post on Facebook, Tweet, text or send e-mails. Our fascination with technology is great and has afforded us ways of connecting with others at a very cheap rate. No one ever really complains of having an outrageous long distance telephone bill these days. We can simply text, email, Tweet or Facebook our long distance friends and family.

Almost everyone desires to be an authentic being. We want to be true to ourselves. What happens when being true to ourselves is “politically incorrect”? Well, if you know this about yourself, you may want to monitor how you use technology and when you use technology. It may help to make an agreement with yourself such as never to use technology when you’re angry or intoxicated.

Another short 1-2-3 “punch to yourself in the face” is to 1) STOP, 2) consider the possibilities of how your social profiles may affect the entire world and 3) choose. You may still choose to proceed after these steps but at least you are conscious of what you are doing and aware of the possible negative impacts of your use of technology. Let us not be foolish to believe that it doesn’t matter or we won’t get caught.

Roland Martin

Mr. Martin had been with CNN since 2007. Last year he released a tweet that seems to have eventually cost him his position with CNN. Two days after his negative tweet regarding the gay community, he was suspended from CNN.

He also met with the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation organization after the tweet in an effort to repair the damage he caused. After last year’s Presidential election, Mr. Martin was seen less and less on CNN. April 6, 2013 was his last day with CNN. Coincident? NOT! I truly believe his tweet cost him his position with CNN. Had he punched himself in the face with my 1-2-3 suggestions above, he would probably still have his job at CNN.

Michael Nodianos

This is really sad. This young man was videotaped while expressing his very strong and probably inebriated opinions regarding the rape of a young girl. In the video, he joked about the rape and his comments were definitely politically incorrect. Mr. Nodianos was wearing an Ohio State University shirt during the video.

The video was deleted but hackers found a way to release it. It went viral. A Facebook campaign was launched to have Mr. Nodianos expelled and to have his academic scholarship revoked. He is no longer a student at Ohio State University.

His irresponsible use of technology has cost him his academic scholarship and education at Ohio State University. All that we do online socially is a part of our electronic profile regardless of whether that was the initial intention.

Richard Cebull

Mr. Cebull forwarded a racist joke. Does he have the right to be a racist? Yes, he does. Does he have the right to be a chief federal judge and known racist? No, he does not. Mr. Cebull’s action of forwarding a racist joke about President Obama was unacceptable and unlawful.

Mr. Cebull wrote a letter of apology to the President in addition to filing a complaint against himself. We must remember that what we distribute digitally to a few individuals potentially is seen by the masses.

The delicate dance of authenticity and political correctness is an absolute requirement regardless of your position in life. Technology connects us all and does it very quickly. If you Google your name, what do you see? More importantly is what do you want your potential employer to see? Being intentional with our use of technology is not an option. Our social profiles have capabilities to extend worldwide. Now that’s a large audience. Do you want applause or do you want to be “booed?”

How important is a social profile to you? Tell us what you think in the comments section.