When you find yourself in job transition, whether you are seeking your first internship, first full-time role, or you are looking for your next professional role, you need to learn or brush up on a lot of skills. The ones that first come to mind might be writing your resume, updating your LinkedIn profile, and interviewing. These lead to visible results. The ones that don’t come to mind will be the ones that fuel the visible results. These personal growth skills include reflecting, being courageous, and communicating well. Let’s dive into these three.

Reflect

Taking the time to reflect on what we really enjoy doing, what we’re good at doing, and what we want to do in the future may seem impossible. Afterall, you are so busy updating your resume and checking job postings, how can you have time to sit around and think?

“Reflective thinking turns experience into insight.”

John Maxwell

Taking time to reflect when you feel you need to be “doing” seems counterintuitive. If you set aside time to think about where you are going, you can’t use that time for updating your LinkedIn profile or doing informational interviews, right? However, if you do take time to reflect and clarify what you really want to do, the subsequent updates to your resume and profile are going to be targeted. And when you are specific about the types of roles you want, you’ll have a much better chance at landing a role that’s a great fit for you.

Courage

Job transition builds our courage “muscle” in many ways. You’ll need to fill out paperwork, post a profile update and talk to people. You may feel resistance when you think about any one of those. Like building any muscle, start small and build up. For example, make one small change to your LinkedIn profile and publish it. Then make another change and publish that. You can tackle the updates in stages to build your confidence instead of taking on the whole task at once.

“The things that create success in the long run don’t look like they’re having any impact in the short run.”

Jeff Olson, The Slight Edge

When you first start to consistently challenge yourself with small acts of courage, you may not see grand results. You may still be uncomfortable with updating your online profile or reaching out to connect with people. Over time, however, those small steps will compound and those activities that scared you at the start will become second nature. Of course, then there will be new challenges to surmount, but you will be ready to face those as well.

Communicate

Getting clear on what you want to do via reflection and building up your courage muscle set the foundation for communicating your message well. You will need to talk to people, from employment networking groups to old friends and new contacts, to interview panels. When you explain the type of work that really lights you up, people will get excited for you. They will in turn want to help you in some way. Maybe they know of a position for you, or they know of someone you can talk to further.

If talking to people seem daunting, start with friends and colleagues you trust. Practice stating what role you are looking for and why. Then move on to people your friends and colleagues recommend you talk to. Join an employment networking group if there is one in your area. Practicing telling your story will help you articulate it in a way where the person you are talking to understands what you want to do and picks up on your enthusiasm around the role.

Getting good at explaining what you want to do takes practice. And, it might be uncomfortable when you start. Keep telling your story anyway. You’ll find at some point you won’t hesitate or have to think about your answer when someone asks, “What are you looking for?”

Summary

  • Set time aside to think about your skills, talents, experience and how you want to apply that unique combination to a role.
  • Build courage in areas you need it by starting with small, incremental wins.
  • Be great at explaining what kind of work you really want to do by practicing (a lot).