Week 4 - It Seems, Your Bags are Already Packed!!!

The Trip
One of the best, most rewarding jobs of my life was awarded to me even though I had no experience in the field…or so I thought.

I wanted to enter an emerging industry and quite frankly at the time, there weren’t many people out there who knew how to do the job. So I was fortunate enough to get an interview with a company that was looking for someone that had other skills that were “related” to what they really needed. After a series of meetings, I got the gig and loved working in an environment where I was free to shape the course of that company’s future success.

This week, our guest speaker at Dress for Success Hudson County’s Going Places by Walmart workshop, was Ms. Pamela O'Halloran formerly of Dress for Success Worldwide. The topic of this session was Transferable Job Skills; in other words how to identify and use what you've already got.
Pamela started off the discussion by asking clients to think about how to apply their life experiences to:

• Asses the skills they already have
• Extract key terms from those life experiences
• Come up with language to put in their resumes

This task may seem like a waste of time to some, but a couple of really cool examples of how to apply this exercise to roles a few of us take for granted:

   BUSY MOTHER                          EFFICIENT MULTI-TASKER
 

EXPLAINING A PROCESS               TRAINING PEOPLE


Your Guide

• Networking is valuable – Talk to friends and reach out to former colleagues to help refresh your memory about certain results you accomplished
• Borrow Language - Use wording from job postings in your resume
• Volunteering builds skills and your network – let the people you’re working with and for, that you are serious about working there full-time if an opportunity presents itself

Words from Your Fellow Travelers

“Treat volunteer work like it’s your real job!”
“I like the energy in this group!”
“Looking forward to working on my resume more to change some of the wording.”
“When I get feedback about certain skills I lack, I go out and get training to learn that skill.”
“I have MANY interviews now!”
“Create the highest, grandest, vision possible for your life because you become what you believe” - Oprah Winfrey

Travel Advisory

Rising Tide Capital – The Community Business Academy
Linkedin – Get the most from your professional network