Knowing what to do next with the work part of your life can be a daunting task.

Whether you’re an individual coming to me for assistance or a corporate client needing my outplacement services, I’m here to provide the tools you need. When working with individuals needing career direction, I use a three-part approach. Basically, I view the search for one’s life/work direction as a search for information. This information search takes one of the following three forms:

Gathering Information About One’s Self
Organizing information about skills, talents, interests and preferences is critical to one’s career success. In this stage, participants complete a series of information gathering exercises to help create a model of their ideal environment. The completed information will allow one to answer the questions who, what, when, where, how and why as they apply to work.

In this process, we will also ask the question: “What do I want to do with my life overall, and how does work compliment my larger life goals?”

Participants complete the information between the sessions and the information is reviewed and discussed during the session.

Gathering Information About Potential Work Environments
At the end of the second stage, we have a paper model of potential work environments. In this stage, we test out the model.

This is done in two ways.

We discuss how to explore potential interests online.

We also discuss how to talk to people working in a potential areas of interest.

The purpose of gathering the information is to determine how close the fantasy of an environment matches the reality of working in that environment.

The goal is to identify an environment in which the individual could make a contribution and feel successful.

Marketing One’s Skills
Once an area of interest has been identified, the participant is taught the various approaches to use in finding a job.

Traditional and non-traditional methods are explained along with the success rate of each approach.

As needed, written correspondence (proposals, resumes, cover letters, etc.) are developed and their effectiveness explained.

In this step, interviewing and negotiating are explained.

Where appropriate, role-playing is used. The individual is then monitored as they pursue employment.