Refocus on Career Self-Assessment

Reposition yourself to re-enter the workforce; join me on my personal branding journey.

The first step in deciding what kind of career or job you want is figuring out what your values, strengths, skills and interests are. We have already looked at the Myers Briggs Type Indicator which offers some valuable insights.   

My Type:  INFP    

• Is driven by values
• Is a good leader
• Is a team player
• Is a visionary
• Is idealistic and a perfectionist (possible negatives)

 These are some of my strengths and weaknesses. For my type, it is especially important to know what my values are.  Following is a list of my top values based on an exercise I did to define them:
   
My Values:

1. Mental Creativity -Need to do work that is creative like marketing.
2. Intellectual Stimulation - Need to be developing mentally, if not, I feel bored. 
3. Humor - Want to have fun at work, being happy is important, want to like the people I work with.
4. Location - Want to stay in one place, do not want to travel more than 25%.
5. Leadership - Want to motivate others to achieve excellence through team work.
6. Work with Others - Want to be part of a team working together towards a common goal.
7. Decison Making - Want the power to make decisions and have them carried out. 
8. Excellence - Want what I do to be good, quality and integrity are important to me.

 No clue what your values are?  If I seem organized, it's because I spent six to nine months working with a career counselor to come up with all this "understanding".  If you can afford it, a career counselor can help get you organized. If not, try this exercise to help you define your values.

Write down ten or more things that are important to you. Rank them from 1 to 10. For each of your top 8 values, answer the following questions. (1)

1. What does the value mean to you? 
2. Describe a situation in which you experienced the value.
3. What does this value tell you that you want or need? 

Sit down and do this exercise and you will have a solid list of what you want and need to be happy at work.

See you next Friday....

1. Weisblatt, Sheila E., M.S. 1994   Defining your Values.

Moms Re-entering Workforce

Reposition yourself to re-enter the workforce; join me on my personal branding journey.

Last week I discussed how women may feel about returning to work. This week I'd like to give you a few resources for moms preparing to return to work. If you search Google for 'moms return to work' or 'mothers reentering workforce', you will find plentiful resources. Here are a few I found especially helpful.

1. Mommytracked.com
2. Revivemycareer.com
3. Lesley Morgan Steiner - Tips

The years you spend at home are valuable years - they give you wisdom, perspective, and a track record of being able to multi-task. Go into the job market with a positive outlook. You will find you have a receptive audience. (1. Sos, Renata)

Yvonne Lefort, a career counselor in Moraga, California who speicalizes in helping re-entry mothers, offers these career re-entry tips:

• Stay in contact with former employers.
• Do volunteer work, ideally something that will help you professionally down the road when you're ready to go back to work.
• Even if you eventually want full-time work, consider taking a part-time or temporary job to start out.
• Make sure your skills are up-to-date or learn new skills.
• Network, network, network!

Good advice to keep in mind as you embark on your journey.

See you next Friday...

1. Lefort, Yvonne, M.A., "Returning to the Workforce:  Former Stay-at-home Moms Rise to the Challenge." lamorindaweekly.com,  5 September 2007.

Moms Returning to Work

Reposition yourself to re-enter the workforce; join me on my personal branding journey.

I'd like to take a moment to address a topic that is very relevant to this blog; returning to work after being a stay-at-home mom. I am in this position myself. It's what this blog is about. So before I delve further into my career-related self-analysis, let me take a minute to talk about this major life transition. That's what it is. And transitions of any type are usually challenging, to say the least. 

Many mothers feel ambivalent about returning to work for a variety of reasons. They may feel guilty, afraid or stressed. They may lack confidence in their abilities and worry that their family will fall apart if they go back to work.  I think a good thing to ask yourself is what is your motivation?  My guess is that your going back to work will benefit your family in some way, or why else would you do it?  We mothers are a protective bunch. We want to take care of our own.

My daughter will be entering school full-time in the fall, and it is the perfect time for me to consider re-entering the workforce.  I only have one child, so I will finally have time to do something else. If I had more than one child, I may not feel the same way.  But, the years I have spent with my daughter have been invaluable. I have been happier in the last ten years than ever before. Why? I feel secure.   

I really needed to nest. I had traveled and moved around a lot and I needed to set down roots. When I worked as a professional single woman at Avon China in the 1990's, I loved and lived for my job, but I was lonely.  After I returned to the U.S. in 1996, I had an early mid-life crisis. I needed to take my life in a different direction, but only in hind sight do I realize that all I really wanted and needed was to get married and to have a family.  It may sound obvious, but I was not raised to value being a stay-at-home mom.

I am glad to have had the education and opportunity to have a solid career beneath me before I embarked on the family track.  I was able to prove myself, and that gave me confidence.  Because I waited to have a child, I had a strong sense of self going into my marriage. I didn't feel like I was missing anything, because I had done all I wanted and more. I was ready to settle down and now, having taken care of the personal side of my life, I am ready to go back to work. 

If you are a mom grappling with returning to work, what is your experience?

See you next Friday...

Career self-assessment - Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)

Reposition yourself to re-enter the workforce; join me on my personal branding journey.

Last week we touched upon the MBTI as an assessment tool that is often used for assisting in career choice and professional development.  In their interpretive guide (1), Hirsh and Kummerow describe how the MBTI functions as an organizational tool in a genereal sense - helping people in organizations to:

• understand themselves and their behaviors.
• appreciate others so as to make constructive use of individual differences.
• see that approaching problems in different ways can be healthy and productive for an org.

Specifically, organizations use the MBTI for:

• communicating more effectively
• solving problems
• improving teamwork
• understanding and adapting to differences in management style.
• understanding contributions to the organization.
• conflict resolution.

Again, I will use my type, INFP, as an example of what you can learn by doing this assessment.

INFP - Inroverted Feeling with Intuition (the questor)-

• Focuses on what might be, not on what is.
• is sympathetic and makes decisions based on values.

Leads by:

• promoting group effort through creation of a positive atmosphere and affirmation of individual members.
• eliciting group consensus to facilitate goals and closure.
• providing vision by speaking about ideals and values.

Irritates team members by:

• being overly perfectionistic or idealistic.
• appearing out of touch.
• becoming fiercely attached to a value not held by others.

Influences team members by:

• challenging, stimulating, provoking, and convincing.
• encouraging others to look at new possibilities.
• focusing on common ideals and underlying issues.

Contributes to team by:

• presenting provocative ideas with "big picture" possibilities.
• creating unity and harmony within the team by listening w/sensitivity.
• motivating and inspiring others to go beyond norm.
• supporting team members and team goals with quiet good humor.

Can Maximize effectiveness by:

• realizing others may value quick results, even if less than ideal.
• cultivating a logical and active orientation to use when needed.
• acknowledging the merit in others' viewpoints.

Is irritated by team members who:

• take themselves too seriously.
• require too much detail or technical logic gets in the way of understanding.
• won't admit when they don't understand an idea.
• won't pay attention to the overall goal and consider all opinions.

I feel this description really describes who I am and gets to the essence of  why I do things. If you do not feel your type description resonates with you, look around and see which type does. 

Next week I will examine several other assessment tools available, specifically Campbell Interest and Skill Survey (CISS) and Skillscan. 

1.  Hirsh, Sandra, K. and Kummerow, Jean. Introduction to Type In Organizations, 2nd edition., Consulting Psychologists Press, Inc., Palo Alto, CA.  1990.

See you next Friday...