Welcome back to part three of my video series making a career change after the age of 50.
So as a refresher in week one video, we talked about making your career change based upon
your core values and not necessarily your skillset you see, skills can be learned, but
your core values are what's going to really make you happy in this next career. In the
second video, what we talked about was, um, based upon your core values, exploring industries
out there that compliment those core values. So you know, for example, if money was one
of your core values salary, and that's something that's really important to you. You might
not want to be considering a nonprofit industry, but rather maybe a sales industry, commercial
real estate for example. Um, it really is based upon your core values and what's most
important for you. But last time around we did, you know, we, um, identified some, uh,
some companies out there.
What we did was I used, um, educational management as one of the industries and I use nonprofit
organizations as another one of the industries. And in today's video, I want to take two of
those examples from the last week. And by the way, if you missed any of these videos,
I have a link to them in the upper right hand corner. But today what I want to do is show
you how we can now start forming relationships within these industries. Because here's a
fat, you know, only 10% of jobs are actually filled through job boards and it's probably
a lot less if you are doing a career change. If you're doing a career change out there,
you need to have some support system behind you. And I'm going to show you how to start
building that support system. So remember we, last week we, um, put together a target
list of companies using an example of say three to five industries and companies that
we discovered within those industries.
Now I want to show you how we can actually take those companies and start leveraging
some connections within those companies. So let me go ahead and share my LinkedIn with
you again and how to do this. So as you've gone through the core value exercises and
you've discovered what your strengths are and you've begun to identify industries that
resonate with you and companies within those industries, you've probably also begun to
take note of some of the positions that you've seen that are within these companies. Now,
some of them they may require going back to school or getting a certifications. You know,
for example, maybe you see yourself as a software engineer. Maybe that's, you know, based upon
your core values and, and something that's of interest to you. But you're currently working
as a pharmacy technician. You're likely going to need to get some training.
But I've got to tell you there is a lot of technical bootcamp schools out there. And
by the way, don't let age get in the way. You know, one of my, uh, clients a couple
of years ago was actually a technical boot camp school. And what I was doing was career
readiness workshops every month for this school. And then the students that were attending
these career readiness workshops, they had just graduated. You know, they would get a
couple of hours of coaching time. And I will tell you that I had a number of students who
were well into their fifties making a career change. So please don't let age get in the
way. And by the way, you know something, I read back in an ARP newsletter, I think it
was in 2017 it's been a couple of years ago, something like 60% of the workforce over the
age of 65 did a career change after 50 you know, I did, I mean I was in technology and
I'm now a certified professional career coach. I had to go back and do some training. I did
an 18 month program, but a lot of times we already have the skills necessary for a position.
They're just going to be transferable. So let's play this out. You know what I'm going
to do here is I'm going to go ahead and open up LinkedIn
and if you remember in the last video we played around with a couple of industries. We played
around with the nonprofit organizations and we played with educational management. But
something that I want to bring up to you again is that when you're doing this exercise, you
really want to have three to five industries listed and at least 10 15 companies under
each one of these industries. That's going to be your target list there. And I'll show
you how we can actually use this target list in a moment. But for right now, let's see
what kind of relationships that we can form within these companies. So what I'm going
to do is I'm going to go to life moves cause life moves was one of those, um, under the
nonprofit organization. And we take a look at that too. When I type this in, it comes
directly to their LinkedIn page and I want you to notice right over here it says see
all 208 employees on LinkedIn. So I'm going to click on this link
and come up with these individuals and I want to just take a look at something. I'm going
to go over here to first connections. I pretty certain I don't have any because I've never
even heard of this company, but I already noticed I had some second connections. I actually
have six people. In fact, I have, let me see here in every one of these connections, um,
these second connections, uh, or the first connections to the second connection. Like
say for example the director here, behavioral health and life moves. I know all of these
individuals here. I can easily reach out to one of these people and ask them if I could
get an introductory, um, email from them to this person. Or if I could just simply drop
their name. Let's take a look at the other one. Uh, Cogswell college. Remember that was
one that we also took a look at as well.
Here it is down here and this one was under educational management. Again, I'm going to
go over here and then take a look at all 186 employees on LinkedIn. And I'm going to go
up here. Again, I don't think I have any first connections. I don't, but let's just take
a look at second connections. Okay. So I have a four second connections here and as I'm
looking at these, um, one of them I could probably use for this individual here, the
human resources director, I think I could definitely use that. But I want to show you
something else here. So let's say that there wasn't someone that I could, you know, that
I felt comfortable using or maybe I, maybe I felt like I could use them, but I wanted
to reach out to somebody else. So over here we have all filters and when I click on all
filters, I can go down here and I can look at title.
And a lot of times when I am working with my private clients and maybe they're going,
you know, they're making a lateral type of move, let's say from a, uh, chief technology
officer at XYZ company to achieve technology officer at possibly ABC or CDF. What I'll
have them do is search out who the, uh, you know, who some of the hiring managers are.
Maybe in this case you'd could be the CEO or, or you know, the CFO. Oftentimes we'll
manage a CIO or a CTO. But in this case here, let's just take a look at, see if we can find
any director level positions at Cogswell college. Okay, we do look at this, chairman president.
Actually I do have a couple of connections with that, so now something I didn't speak
of earlier, but if you're looking to make a career change out there, especially into
a new industry, one of the things I believe that could be very important to your success
is using the LinkedIn premium feature and it's like $30 a month.
There's a lot of benefits that come to LinkedIn premium and I'll put a link to a video I have
on LinkedIn premium in the upper right hand corner, but for right now I just want to talk
about one of the benefits and that is the benefit of InMail. So if you had a free account
and you wanted to reach out to this individual right here, your only option is to connect
with that individual. And then I highly, highly encourage you to do this, but you're going
to want to put a message in there. Otherwise, why would they even want to maybe consider
connecting with you? Here's the thing, you only have 300 characters. So you're going
to have to make this very, you know, to the point strategic. Um, because that's, that's
not where it says characters. So you can sit there and say, you know, I, uh, for DOD we
have a mutual connection.
And so, and so he suggested I reach out to you. I'm very interested in working in the
educational management arena and would love to get on your radar and possibly even, um,
ask or request a informational interview. And by the way, informational interviews are
really important in doing this. And I will give you a script in the notes section below
for informational interviews. So, but here's the thing, if you have the premium version,
you can click on this individual here and go to message. Now, anybody that has a free
version can message somebody else that they're connected to directly first connection. But
when you have the premium version, you can actually reach out and send a message to second
connection, even a third connection. And you're not really limited by those characters and
not only that, you could maybe attach your resume, you can have a subject line here,
you can write a lot more into this. So for example, let me just give you some.
So imagine for a moment I have found the director of a nonprofit organization and I want to
request an informational interview and we have a second connection that I'm going to
leverage so I could have something like this. Hi Mary. Your LinkedIn profile appeared as
a recommended connection as a result of a mutual connection. We both have Kelly Kelly
and my daughter Elisa. So what you want to do is you want to share with this individual
how you know that second connection, our best friends, and I asked Kelly through Facebook
if I could drop her name when I reached out to you, I noticed you're the executive director
for let's just say a company out there and you seem to have a great deal of nonprofit
experience throughout your career because I've also looked at their LinkedIn profile.
The reason for my unsolicited through LinkedIn was to ask if you would have a 15 to 20 minutes
for an informational interview.
I assure you my intention is not to talk with you about the possible employment opportunities
with XYZ company, but I'd like to ask for your feedback on my resume and skills in regard
to the industry. I'd like to transition over to the nonprofit industry after working 18
years in corporate America as a vice president of information services, it's been a struggle
getting the attention of hiring managers, even with positions I believe I'm a good fit
for. I'm hoping for some solid critique from someone like yourself who would make these
kinds of hiring decisions. Would you be available for a phone call sometime within the next
couple of weeks? Thanks and again, I promise I would not take up more than 20 minutes of
your time. This is a real informational interview message that I actually sent to someone who
is the executive director in a nonprofit organization who responded promptly and we got on the phone
and to this very day, we are still connected out there now.
I would never want to work in the environment that she's in, but I have a hunch that I would
be on her mind if she actually had an opening that would be a fit for me. So these are how
you can do informational interviews, but let's just say for a moment that you don't know
the person involved it. Let's say that you don't know, you don't have a second connection,
you don't have a third connection within. What you really want to do is you want to
take a look at their LinkedIn and try to find something that you can use in common with
that individual. So here's an example. Hi Nina. I was researching executive coaches
in the Bay area and came across to none. When I dug a little deeper, I found not only are
you the CEO and founder of XYZ, but also a master of applied positive psychology through
Martin Seligman's program.
Since my first experience with the via character strengths assessment, I'd been interested
in positive psychology. However, I was never certain if I could leverage it with career
coaching, at least until I watched the video on your website. I'm now enrolled in the Coursera
course, positive psychology, Martin EAP, Seligman's, visionary science, and looking forward to
adding this knowledge as an additional coaching resource to my toolbox. So Nina, the reason
I'm reaching out to you directly is that I'd like to be part of your XYZ team. Look at
that. I've just flat out asked her for a position. I'm a certified professional coach and career
and leadership development with a little over 600 coaching hours. I also have a master's
degree in leadership. I recognize as a little unorthodox, but I also know that some of the
best positions are seldom advertised. I'd love to speak with you further about my skills
and experience and what I can bring as a coach to XYZ company.
I did this several years ago and she got back to me within probably an hour. She thought
my note was great, but she said they're not hiring executive coaches at that time. However,
I did use something very similar to this with another organization and I ended up doing
some independent contracting work with them. So these are two ways that you can really
leverage connections out there. One, if you have a second connection or if you simply
are reaching out cold. But remember what we had out there with the target list of companies.
You know, I mentioned something about using, um, your target list of companies and in having
three to five industries and 10 to 15 companies within each one of these industries. So let's
take this away from LinkedIn for a second. Just imagine for a moment, I'm putting together
a list of 15 to 20 individuals that you believe would be most influential in your job search.
Reach out to these individuals, you know, reach out to Laurie who maybe is your neighbor
next door or Marie, you know, the, um, the woman that is a friend of your, your, your
child's out there and say, you know, Marie, um, I'm actually looking to make a career
change and I just had my resume redone, professional resume and I would really like to get some
opinions on it. I'm not asking for any jobs or anything like that. You know, I'm not looking
for a job at your company, but I would really like to get your feedback on my resume. Would
you be open for like a 15 or 20 minute coffee meeting or even I can send it to you or we
can get on a zoom call however you want to work it. And most people I have learned over
the years, they want to help others and they will so sure to this.
So you go and you meet with this individual, and by the way, talking about a coffee meeting
here, I actually have a video on these that goes a little bit more into detail and I'll
link that in the upper right hand corner. But what you do is you, you sit down and you,
you know, you catch up with the individual and you let them know that you're out there.
And, and then what you do is you show them your target list of companies after they'd
taken a look at your resume and say, you know, this is actually what I'm looking at. What
do you think? If they know someone at one of these companies, they're going to let you
know. And now you may be thinking to yourself, well, what is, what are the chances that they
will know someone? Well, that's why I just did that exercise right before this one where
I took a couple of companies that had never heard of before and yet I had second connections.
There's a pretty good chance that people that you're going to be meeting are going to know
people at these companies. So you throw a little bit of networking in there because
remember what I've said before, 80% of the jobs out there are filled through networking
and referrals, not by just sending your resume to job openings, and especially if you're
looking at a career change into a new industry or into a new position. You need these people
behind you. You need that tribe. So let's have a quick review. You've now understand
ways to connect with people within targeted companies. You've learned ways to connect
with recruiters and make sure that you're on their radar. You've learned ways to obtain
informational interviews. You understand the importance of simple coffee meetings. Most
importantly, you are on people's minds. And I want to go back to a statistic that I've
quoted before.
80% of positions out there that are filled are through networking and referrals, not
by looking at job boards. And I think that's extremely important when it comes to making
a career change because you need those people behind you. So you've done everything up until
this point. Now you're being called into an interview, and I want to remind you in the
note section below, I have a link to the five top interview questions that every hiring
manager really wants to know about you and best practice ways to answer these questions.
So check that out. I hope you found this series informative and useful, and if you haven't
already done so, make sure that you subscribe to this channel as I do. Upload new career
tips and strategies every Tuesday. Thank you for joining me and I will see you soon. Bye
bye.