Happen To Your Career - Meaningful Work, Career Change, Career Design, & Job Search

It isn’t just things you’re good at, or things you’ve been praised for - although that’s part of the equation. Instead, we see it as the intersection of two things: Your strengths: what you can truly be great at — maybe even the best in the world if you spent the time and energy developing them! And Your passions: what you enjoy and love. Then add in your skills, experiences, knowledge and predispositions… and voila! You’ve got YOUR “signature strengths.”   We’ve put this 6 part audio course together as a guide to using your strengths to make a career pivot to work that makes you more happy more often. If you haven’t already, start with the first episode as each one builds on the previous episode to help you learn how you can make a career (and a life out of your strengths) and why many others have chosen to do the same thing.   Want to get a free cup of coffee on us? (HTYC was built on lots of coffee and early mornings) Leave a review in Apple Podcasts (or your podcast player of choice) and email a screenshot of your review to scott@happentoyourcareer.com. To binge-listen to more career happiness success stories, find all the podcasts at https://happentoyourcareer.com/podcast Or to tell us more about your situation and schedule a conversation with our team go to https://happentoyourcareer.com/schedule-htyc

Let’s start with a question: Why do you care about your strengths? Maybe you’ve spent time looking at job opportunities online, getting depressed at how few jobs you’re qualified for, interested in, or willing to do for low pay. Or maybe you’ve recently had the realization that “this can’t be all there is” to work You might have even taken every assessment, personality test and quiz out there only to find out that you’re still in the same place. You, just like many of the people we work with, found out the hard way that the knowledge that being a “relator” or “achiever” or “learner” is interesting, but you still don’t have a raise, a new career, or work that makes you happy.   We’ve put this 6 part audio course together as a guide to using your strengths to make a career pivot to work that makes you more happy more often. If you haven’t already, start with the first episode as each one builds on the previous episode to help you learn how you can make a career (and a life out of your strengths) and why many others have chosen to do the same thing.   Want to get a free cup of coffee on us? (HTYC was built on lots of coffee and early mornings) Leave a review in Apple Podcasts (or your podcast player of choice) and email a screenshot of your review to scott@happentoyourcareer.com. To binge-listen to more career happiness success stories, find all the podcasts at https://happentoyourcareer.com/podcast Or to tell us more about your situation and schedule a conversation with our team go to https://happentoyourcareer.com/schedule-htyc

If you look into your past, you’ll see many different experiences, from hobbies, volunteer work, to career experiences. Many times, these different things may seem disconnected. They may even seem insignificant in the scope of your career. But, the threads of your experiences come together to create the person you are. When you discover the connection between these threads, you can begin to identify these “secret” strengths that have always been in your life. When you know what these are, they help you unlock your ideal career. Today, Jennifer Seaver Stokes shares how she followed the threads in her life, and they led to her ideal career.   To binge-listen to more career happiness success stories, find all the podcasts at https://happentoyourcareer.com/podcast Want to know high-performers discover their ideal career and find meaningful, well-paid work without starting over https://www.happentoyourcareer.com/career-change-advice-guide-backed-by-research/  Or to tell us more about your situation and schedule a conversation with our team go to https://happentoyourcareer.com/schedule-htyc

Big Decisions. You know how these work. Our brains usually fight us and want us to stay in our comfort zones. Plus if you’re like me you can turn nearly anything into logic. Yes I know that I’m not loving my work and my boss is a overbearing but there could be another opportunity 4 months from now. Many people find themselves torn when it comes to staying in the same place vs. making a change. They know and feel deep down inside that something isn't right, and they struggle with taking a chance to actually make a change in their career. Why do we fight what we know to be true in our core? We see how others reach their goals and we think we must follow in their footsteps to reach the same success. But, the truth is: we don't have to follow them. If you want to take more control of your career or you are about to have an awkward conversation with your boss, this episode is for you.   To binge-listen to more career happiness success stories, find all the podcasts at https://happentoyourcareer.com/podcast Want to know high-performers discover their ideal career and find meaningful, well-paid work without starting over https://www.happentoyourcareer.com/career-change-advice-guide-backed-by-research/  Or to tell us more about your situation and schedule a conversation with our team go to https://happentoyourcareer.com/schedule-htyc

There’s never an ideal time to get laid off or completely change your career, but a professional setback might actually lead to a far better opportunity you’ve never considered before. Melissa Shapiro was already contemplating a career change, but then was laid off before she could position herself for the next move. She discovered that evolving and adapting weren’t only important for success – it was absolutely necessary to move up in the professional world.   Melissa took her new-found time and energy to focus on asking herself big questions that led to her successful career change.   To binge-listen to more career happiness success stories, find all the podcasts at https://happentoyourcareer.com/podcast Want to know high-performers discover their ideal career and find meaningful, well-paid work without starting over https://www.happentoyourcareer.com/career-change-advice-guide-backed-by-research/  Or to tell us more about your situation and schedule a conversation with our team go to https://happentoyourcareer.com/schedule-htyc

This might come as a bit of a shocker, but we don’t always post our job openings for our company. [Gasp] “I thought you were in HR for years, Scott. How could you?” I was. I worked in many different companies and sectors. Government, Manufacturing, Fortune 500. I’ve been on all sides of the table too. When a hiring manager has a need, they usually are doing their best to make sure they’ve got someone in mind already. I saw with my own eyes each of those organizations also hired without posting publicly and hired outside of their “normal policies and procedures.” Does this make them bad companies? No, I don’t think so. In fact, I think in some cases it might even make them more responsible! But, all the situations that were “exceptions to the rule” (i.e. not posted) were either better jobs, higher paying than normal, or jobs created specifically with a person in mind.   To binge-listen to more career happiness success stories, find all the podcasts at https://happentoyourcareer.com/podcast Want to know high-performers discover their ideal career and find meaningful, well-paid work without starting over https://www.happentoyourcareer.com/career-change-advice-guide-backed-by-research/  Or to tell us more about your situation and schedule a conversation with our team go to https://happentoyourcareer.com/schedule-htyc

Let me ask you a question: When do you have the most power to negotiate? Out of all the possible times, the very best time to negotiate your pay, job, terms or anything else is when you’re making a career change to a new company and new job. Specifically right after they’ve made you an offer. Why is that? Well, Let's talk about some truths from their perspective. Once you get to where they have given you an offer it is a big deal for you and for them. Very often they have spent a huge amount of time going through the process to decide they want you. That is an important factor. They are emotionally invested and have decided it's going to be you in the role, not someone else. Depending on your level, they’ve likely had other people involved in the process and the probably had to have different approvals from their boss or finance or HR or the CEO. Someone else probably had to say yes or commit to you so they aren’t excited to change anytime soon. Because of that you have more power to negotiate than any other point in time. Keep in mind this is only after they make an offer. None of this applies while they are considering it.

Have you wondered how you can move from being a good job candidate to being a great candidate? Have you identified your big “value-adds” from your past job experiences and how you can apply them to any industry? Have you wondered how to open more doors of opportunity during informational interviews? Several times over the past several months, we brought some past guests back onto the podcast to catch up with where they are now and how things have changed since we last had them on the podcast. So this week, we are bringing Mike Bigelow back onto the podcast. Tomorrow, I’m going to share the recent conversation I had with him, where we explore how his life is going now that it’s been 2 years since his career change. But to help us understand where he is now, today we’re going to hear Mike’s story from the last time he was on the show.   To binge-listen to more career happiness success stories, find all the podcasts at https://happentoyourcareer.com/podcast Want to know high-performers discover their ideal career and find meaningful, well-paid work without starting over https://www.happentoyourcareer.com/career-change-advice-guide-backed-by-research/  Or to tell us more about your situation and schedule a conversation with our team go to https://happentoyourcareer.com/schedule-htyc

To binge-listen to more career happiness success stories, find all the podcasts at https://happentoyourcareer.com/podcast Want to know high-performers discover their ideal career and find meaningful, well-paid work without starting over https://www.happentoyourcareer.com/career-change-advice-guide-backed-by-research/  Or to tell us more about your situation and schedule a conversation with our team go to https://happentoyourcareer.com/schedule-htyc

I've been studying high performers and top performers for approaching 20 years now. Lots of things have surprised me about how top performers do things differently. But quite possibly the most surprising is how high performing people ask for help. It’s completely different than the average person. I found that most people don't think about this as a skill set. What I've learned though by studying top performers, there are actually very specific things that they do when they go to ask for help. I want to be able to teach you these to you so that you can be able to get the type of help that you need so I've created a formula with five very simple parts to show you how to do this and break it down.  Before I show you those five key parts of how high performers ask for help, let me ask you a question:  What do you think is the secret to why high performers get help so easily (and we enjoy helping them) and why it’s so painful to have to help many other people? Is it that they are genetically endowed with likeability, or that we’re just biased as human beings to want to help people who are already doing well? Maybe, but I don’t think so.   To binge-listen to more career happiness success stories, find all the podcasts at https://happentoyourcareer.com/podcast Want to know high-performers discover their ideal career and find meaningful, well-paid work without starting over https://www.happentoyourcareer.com/career-change-advice-guide-backed-by-research/  Or to tell us more about your situation and schedule a conversation with our team go to https://happentoyourcareer.com/schedule-htyc