Managing your career change on top of a full-time work load and personal responsibilities

Week Three:  Get Organized

One of the biggest challenges my clients face is implementing their career transition strategy while managing a full-time work load and personal responsibilities.

Of course, this challenge can feel quite overwhelming.  Unfortunately, it prevents many women from even starting the process of launching a career transition - leaving them stuck in the wrong job and the wrong career.

Orchestrating a career change while working full-time and managing your home life is indeed very challenging.  The good news is that it is also very doable.

I help women hit this challenge head-on in my “Discover Your Authentic Career Fit” program.  We break the process down into simply organized and manageable action steps. 

This month, I cover four steps to help you cope during your career transition.  This week, we’ll focus on step number three:  Get Organized.

Get Organized

Managing a successful career transition requires organization.  If your efforts are well-coordinated, you’ll effectively use the limited amount of job search time you have each week.

For example, one of my clients was putting in her weekly job search office hours, but wasn’t making the headway she desired.  When we took a look at how she was spending the time she allocated to her job search, she realized she was all over the map and needed to get organized.

First, she cleared her desk of personal projects and tasks.  This included:  completing her daughter’s school paperwork, paying bills and filing personal papers.  Now she had “cleared the decks” to be able to fully concentrate on the search. 

Next, she bought all the necessary office supplies – file folders, a small filing cabinet and desk lamp.  Now, she had a functional workspace.

Next, she organized all her electronic job search files on her computer and created easily manageable directories and sub-folders.  This was necessary because she realized she had files in all different places on her computer which reduced her efficiency in responding to job opportunities.

To help you reach your current career goal, I invite you to ask yourself the following powerful question:

How can I better organize my personal workspace to maximize my
time and effort?

Until next week…
Maret

This entry was posted by Maret McCoy on March 19th, 2007 under Career with keywords .

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