Executive and Leadership Coach, Lecturer, Founder of unabridged – engaging your power and potential for greater personal and social impact.
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Sylvia, a senior executive with over 25 years of experience, invested a tremendous amount of time preparing for an interview. She researched the company, practiced her answers and thought of clever questions to ask. She spent so long on this preparation, that 10 minutes into the interview, she realized she had forgotten to brush her hair!
Sylvia’s story is not uncommon. As a professional coach, I have worked with senior women with impressive backgrounds who have found themselves out of work during this pandemic. They offer potential employers an exceptional set of skills and experience, but it’s been decades since they last looked for work. For some, their job-hunting skills are rusty; for others, the way positions are posted and filled has changed since they were last "on the market." They are taking all the steps that a senior job-seeker might be advised to take, but in ways that are neither efficient nor effective.
If you’re an experienced professional looking for work after redundancy or job loss, your job-seeking practice may need refreshing. Several of my senior clients lost their jobs during the pandemic, and although their job-search skills served them well 15-20 years ago, the same tactics are no longer effective. Let’s explore some of these challenges and two practical ways to update your job-seeking tool kit in this two-part series.
Time To Think
Finding yourself out of work may feel scary — especially when you have financial responsibilities such as rent, mortgage and bills due. Adrenaline kicks in, even panic, and there’s an impulse to rush, be busy and show results. It can feel counterintuitive to slow down, reflect and plan your response to the job hunt. But this thought-through approach is a necessary one for success.
Consider Nathalie, a newly single parent in her late 40s. In the middle of the pandemic, Nathalie suddenly found herself as a business owner with no clients and had to enter the job market after 20 years of running her own business. The combination of becoming a single mom and losing work elevated her stress. Rather than pausing to plan and inventory her skills and experiences, her knee-jerk reaction was to act — desperately and fast. Before we started working together, she was spending hours applying for jobs that did not correspond with her background and skill set. Not only was this a misuse of her time and energy, but the inevitable rejections severely undermined her confidence.
Some of our foundational work was to simply get Nathalie to slow down. She gave herself permission to move out of this unproductive doing and being busy mode and instead take time to reflect on her goals, needs and experiences in order to thoughtfully plan her next moves. Nathalie targeted her job search and has recently received invitations to interview for roles she’s in a great position to achieve.
When beginning your search, quick action doesn’t guarantee quick results. Invest in some strategic reflection time so that you can ultimately find a position that suits your current needs and goals. Here are some foundational questions to ask yourself:
• Where do you want to be at this period in your life?
• What do you need at this moment in your life?
• What skills, experiences or other resources do you have to call on?
• What avenues feel realistic and exciting?
• Who can help you?
• What is the most important next step for you to take?
Your Support, Your Network
I see it all the time in my practice: Many women still find it a challenge to reach out to a colleague or friend for help, let alone someone they don’t know well.
Take Samantha, a recently unemployed senior executive, actively searching for a new leadership role. She had applied for numerous positions at different organizations, but she had not reached out to the senior contacts she already had at those companies. She explained that doing so felt too “transactional,” even though she agreed that this step could provide her with valuable information, strengthen her application and improve her visibility.
In coaching, we revisited both her job-search goals and her own leadership goals — both of which involved leveraging her resources. She started a weekly practice of reaching out to former colleagues and contacts to discuss her plans, seek advice and ask for introductions.
Connections are important. Your job search will be easier if you have contacts in multiple categories: Strategists who will review your CV and cover letter and help you to role-play interview and leadership scenarios, influential others who can make things happen or champion your cause and cheerleaders to offer you emotional support before or after an interview.
If you confine your networking to a small group of close confidantes, you might be hitting only one of these categories and you are unlikely to be mining deep enough to strike true gold, nor getting the breadth of support you need.
Consider these steps:
• Identify individuals whom you know can provide you with the different kinds of support you need and want for your job hunt. Then reach out to them and ask if they are willing to be a member of your support team. Don’t forget to include any head-hunters who might have reached out to you in the past.
• Identify five people outside your immediate network with whom it would be helpful to speak or meet with and reach out to them. Connections on LinkedIn? People employed in an organization you’re interested in? Call them or invite them for a coffee. Ask them for specific information, help or advice. People are generally happy to help when asked!
Take a considered approach to plan your job search based on your own goals and needs, and grow and leverage your network of contacts to get support and improve your chances of success.
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