It’s never too late to shed a lousy job description. Learn to bridge the direct experience gap and stop enduring work you hate.
Why it’s critical to translate your skills (and the #1 way people fail when trying).
How can you stand out and avoid becoming a commodity?
Mentor relationships require as much give as take.
What is the direct experience gap, and how can you bridge it?
Learn the XYZ technique to gauge the needs of potential employers and determine how your skillset can apply — even if your background is in a completely different field.
While it was perfectly normal for our parents and grandparents to stick with the same job for decades, Forbes reports that job hopping every four to five years is the new normal for millennials. People today are learning how to defy the limitations of old-fashioned job descriptions and transfer their skills across seemingly unrelated fields to land better-fitting jobs and happier lives. With a change of perspective, you can, too.
In episode 418 of The Art of Charm, we talk to Kevin Kermes, a man who knows a thing or two about changing perspective. He’s served two combat deployments as an infantry officer in the Army, worked as a headhunter for 10 years, and now owns Career Attraction, a digital publishing company that focuses on various stages of career management. Here, he tells us how you can adapt your skillset to bridge what he calls the direct experience gap and find a job that’s right for you — instead of settling for one that makes you miserable.
A Gallup poll last year found that 87 percent of the world’s gainfully employed describe themselves as “actively disengaged” at work. If you count yourself among them, do you stick around because you feel like you’ve painted yourself into a corner with a job description that limits your options? You wouldn’t be alone; self doubt is the biggest hurdle to overcome when you’re looking to make a life-changing choice.
Rather than marketing yourself around the restrictive label of a job description, career manager Kevin Kermes suggests that you identify the skills you possess and find ways that their relevance can transfer to other fields. What you’re really trying to do is find out the problems that potential employers or clients — Kevin calls them your audience — are trying to solve, and how you can serve them in achieving this.
Fixating on what they don’t have and navigating by job description.
Not doing due diligence and finding out what’s truly valued by former employers and former colleagues.
What did I do to make your life easier?
When you think of me, what’s the first thing that comes to mind?
If someone asked you why they should hire me, what would you say?
If these conversations are happening by phone, try to record them. Listen to the responses. Absorb them. Listen for recurring themes — try to pick out the problems that you’ve solved and what people find valuable in you.
I help X do or understand Y so that Z.
X is your audience. Y is the problem. Z is the outcome that the audience seeks.
That you want to do it.
That you have the aptitude to do it.
The third point is a big one, and has the power to sway the pendulum in — or away from — your favor. Most hires are made in one of two ways: internal referrals or external referrals. The common thread? You’re a known quantity. Having a trusted advocate who can vouch for your credibility and viability as a candidate is enormously beneficial, but it’s up to you to make the personal connection that will seal the deal. Listen to the full podcast for more pointers on how you can bridge the direct experience gap and check out Kevin’s Job Search Toolbox in the resources below.