“Until we take the next step into the unknown, we will never know our own potential” – Alan Rufus

Whatever your personal circumstances, no transition or change is ever easy. That is certainly true of career change. Whether moving out of your current career role is your choice or a choice made for you by circumstances or your organization, there will still be inevitable discomfort. As humans, we resist moving out of our comfort zones. But it is OUTSIDE of comfort zones that we find the impetus to grow, evolve and thrive.

At Right Management Great Lakes, we have a wealth of experience helping and guiding people to make career transitions well, and profitably. And we have advice if you are facing an imminent job change.

First, like the highly successful Jeff Bezos (of Amazon fame), we advise candidates to develop a process-oriented mental model that Bezos calls his “regret minimization framework.”  Think of your next several decades. What will bring personal remorse if you don’t explore a path toward it?  Are there areas you have always wanted to master or new industries to which you want to contribute? If so, isn’t a period of career transition also an opportunity to grow and learn? Will you eventually be disappointed if you don’t consider all your options?

Where you go next is not always a straightforward decision. At Right Management, we consistently recommend that individual clients take a breath, do careful thinking, and (with our help) create action-oriented plans, based on research, data, assessments and more. 

We have a robust process that encapsulates the following steps and much more:

• Assessment – our data-driven scientific assessment tools afford outplacement clients significant insight into their own personal strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and areas of expertise, in even more objective detail than before. We recommend that a candidate bring awareness, curiosity, and openness to understanding personal assessment results. The insights often reveal vistas that an individual may never have considered before.
• Personal brand development – we have a lot of experience with curriculum vitae/resumes, coupled with a deep understanding of what human resources experts and recruiters look for. We help our candidates develop their own personal “story” and assist a individual candidate to modify it, as new opportunities appear.
• Research and uncovering opportunities – for our candidates, we provide robust market research sources that strengthen understanding of what might be available, suitable, and attractive.
• Career coaching – every step of the way, we provide support for the career search process. We help with interview skills;  we identify new openings; we function as realistic and empathetic counselors as candidates embark on landing interviews; we provide negotiation and communication training that empowers the pursuit of  new career options. We provide feedback, and answers, any time you need them.

And then, as you move through the process, we also invite our candidates to dream, in a very practical way!

Or in the words of renowned poet, Mary Oliver, we help you decide: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”