Finding Your Way Through Career Change

Do you want to be more excited about your work? Instead, are you dissatisfied with your job and feel stuck and/or frustrated? Often, people are unable to move forward because they don't know what they want to change. That's where the ADESA model comes in. The ADESA Model can help you build skills and experiences that will ensure your long term career success and satisfaction. This model offers a specialized process that will help you

* Discover and make use of your natural talents, skills, and strengths

* Find top interests and career motivations

* Make sound career decisions

* Change your career field, workplace, or job

* Transition to self-employment

Through the career transition process using this model, you will also become more aware of your own answers to some pretty big questions such as:

Who are you?

Why do you want to work?

What do you want to do?

Where do you want to do it?

Introducing the ADESA Model:Assess, Differentiate, Explore, Scribe, Achieve

How it works, step by step:

Step 1: Assess: Find clarity regarding your core needs, talents, interests, and motivations.

This essentially means you need to take the time to get to know yourself, get a handle on what you're good at, what you like to do, and what you really want. Assessments give you a way to organize, identify patterns, and discuss what you know about yourself, so you can relate this self-awareness to workplace possibilities. While these benefits are extremely useful in the career transition process, it's important to emphasize that career assessments do not tell you what to do or be when you grow up.

There are a wide range of career assessments available to help you clarify what's most important. To get the most out of career assessments, you may want to consider working with a professional career services provider. Good career service providers are qualified to administer a full range of career assessments to help you organize and discuss what you really want and find important for your next career decision.

Step 2: Differentiate: Create demand for what you offer that's remarkable and unique.

This means you need to take the time to develop a clear understanding about all that you offer. You have natural talents and developed strengths that serve you well in your work. The question is how aware are you these attributes? It's important for you to be able to speak with ease about the remarkable qualities you can bring to a new work experience.

To begin the work of identifying these qualities, ask people you know to tell you a story of a time they've seen you at your best. Review all the examples you receive from your friends and colleagues. Consider what themes emerge. Pick the example you like the best, and practice talking out loud about what that experience was like for you. You may wish to use these three questions as a guide:

What was the Challenge you faced? What Action did you take to address the challenge? What was the Result of your actions?

For those of you who love acronyms, the three questions above help you focus your example on three relevant facts - the Challenge, your Action, and the Result - CAR. This is a very simple, yet surprisingly effective approach that can help you start talking about your own remarkable qualities with ease.

Step 3: Explore: Become enlivened by calling forth new career field, job, and workplace possibilities for your future.

This means you need to research what all is available that aligns to what you want and what you offer, both of which you clarified in the previous two steps. Now that you've taken the time to clarify your core needs, natural talents, interests, motivations, and working style preferences, you can use this information to identify new career, job, and workplace possibilities that align to your preferences. Many career assessments provide reports that show top jobs and job families that people who share your interests, needs, and values find most satisfying. You can use these reports to Identify and begin researching top interests by exploring every job listed that appeals to you. Many web sites provide detailed information about jobs you're interested in, including:

* Educational and training needs

* Average earnings

* Anticipated job prospects

* Typical work activities

* Work environment

Another thing you can do to continue researching top interests is identify people already in the field you're considering. Ask them for an informational interview. You may also wish to engage in other kinds of active experiments such as job shadowing, internships, or joining professional organizations to help you more thoroughly explore this new possibility.

Once you've completed the exploration, you can consider the following:

* Which job(s) had the best congruence between what you want and what they offer?

* What additional information do you need to decide whether this is your best career target?

Once you have all the information you need to identify your career target, you'll be ready to establish a career goal that will set the direction and define your focus over 1-2 years.

Step 4: Scribe: Get prepared by creating high quality resumes, cover letters, professional bios, and more.

As you're creating these documents, remember that people who win interviews for the job they want differentiate themselves and sell their skills to prospective employers. You may want to use the following evaluative questions to help you orient your Resume, Cover Letter, and/or Professional Portfolio towards these goals.

Personal Branding and Marketing

* How are they a well-branded presentation of your value?

* How do they sell what you offer that adds value to prospective employers, that's compelling and unique?

* How easy are they to read and understand quickly?

* How do the documents clearly and quickly define your goal?

* How do they focus in on what's most important to achieve your career objective?

* What's compelling about them?

* How well do they quantify your professional accomplishments and highlights?

* How do they showcase and demonstrate relevant transferable skills?

Appropriate Appearance, Style and Format

* How does the length support your experience and objective?

* How does the layout help grab the attention of busy hiring professionals?

* How does the style enable the reader to find the most important information while scanning?

* How does the format (chronological, functional, etc.) support your goal?

* Is the text error-free? * How do the design elements support the readability?

Step 5: Achieve: Enjoy success by bringing your goals for your career to life.

This final step of the ADESA model involves creating a realistic plan to achieve your career goals. You will use this step to consider:

* How will you get to your goal?

* What specific objectives do you have?

* How will you achieve these objectives?

* What will you do specifically?

* When will you do it?

* What resources can you use to help you with these actions?

* What commitments do you need to make to yourself in order to reach your goal?

To find your way through career change using the ADESA model, you may decide you'd prefer to work with a professional career services provider. This can be a helpful option if you find yourself struggling to generate meaningful answers to these questions, and want professional assistance putting what you have to offer on paper. There are a wide range of professional career and resume services available for job seekers. Some of them specialize only in resume services, while others are prepared to help you throughout your career transition process. If you choose to work with a Professional Career and/or Resume provider, take the time to find a reputable service. You can identify such services when you know they belong to professional career organizations, are qualified to administer a full range of career assessments, and /or are certified resume writers. Services with these credentials are a good investment to the job seeker.

Explore the Possibilities. Then Narrow your Focus.

The career transition process can be quite comprehensive, enabling the following outcomes: greater self awareness; ideas for new occupations; heightened motivation - a new sense of excitement; an active, successful job search; and moving beyond job-related fears or inertia.

This article is provided by http://www.srpcareertransitions.com: Helping people clarify their goals, differentiate themselves, sell their skills to prospective employers, and get on a path to more enlivening work. Stephanie Peacocke is a career coach, certified professional resume writer and specialist in career resilience and differentiation. http://www.srpcareertransitions.com