HR Discussion

Three Strategies To Make Your Next

Career Move the Best Ever
Nancy Furbee, Furbee and Associates

It is time to polish those dress shoes

and update your rsum. It is time to
move on from your current organization
and fnd a place that appreciates you
more. After all, you have dreams. You
have aspirations. You have a career
path you have been following since
you graduated high school. It is time for
action. But wait! Before you pull up Word
to start editing your outdated rsum,
follow these three must do strategies
to ensure success.

1) Core Personality Review

Take an honest look at your core
personality and what really makes you
tick. And, no, I do not mean falling back
on your desire to be a chief executive
offcer, technical expert, or highpowered salesperson. You need to
spend some introspective time fnding
out what role is going to be a good ft for
your core personality. Start with some
online personality assessments such as
DiSC, Myers-Briggs, Predictive Index,
and many others. Find one that appeals
to you, take the time to go through the
assessment, and spend quality time with
the results.
Personally, I am a fan of the DiSC
personality assessment, where
the letters stand for DDominant,
iinfuence, SSteadiness, or C
Conscientiousness.It is simple: You will
fnd you are either a D, i, S, or C style.
Once you have your results, you will

have a better understanding of why

you like certain work situations and
avoid or dislike other situations.
To take this step to the next level, I
encourage you to do some additional
research to fnd a career coach in
your local area, or someone who can
work with you remotely. Employing a
career coach will give you someone
with whom you can discuss your next
career move and the results of your
personality assessment. My coaching
clients who have taken this extra step
have been incredibly happy with their
subsequentcareer move, even if it
meant staying in their current role with
anew mind-set.

2) Journaling on a Clean
Sheet of Paper
The frst time a work colleague
suggested I do some journaling about
a work issue I was faced with, I looked
at him like he had two heads. After all,
I was above the need to write about my
feelings, was I not? But after another
week or two of frustration over the work
issue and my inability to move things
in a positive direction, I decided to
listen to my colleagues advice. I pulled
out a fresh pad of paper, one of my
favorite pens, and sat down in a quiet
room to start journaling. Thirty minutes
passed quickly as I started an outline,
jotted down thoughts and opinions,
and doodled in the margins. When the

Nancy Furbee has more than 20 years of leadership

experience in all facets of the human resources profession.
Furbee has certifcations in Everything DiSC Personality
Assessments and Compression Planning Facilitation. She holds
a masters degree in human resources management and a
bachelors in fnance from La Roche College, and is a graduate
of Leadership Pittsburgh.

28

alarm on my phone signaled my next

meeting was ready to start, I looked
down at my now-full sheet of paper
and realized I had just given myself a
number of ah-ha moments about my
issue. I walked out of the room feeling
empowered to take some action to
resolve the situation positively in which
the parties could feel we had come to a
win-win-win solution.
Embracing the art of journaling
is a great tool for everyone in any
stage of their careerlife, school, or
retirement. Taking the time to write your
thoughts, impressions, hopes, desires,
and concerns in a private notebook or
Evernote application or Word document
is therapeutic and revealing. Over
the next 21 days, if you set aside just 5
minutes a day in the morning, during
an afternoon break, or before retiring
for the night, you will be surprised at
the clarity of mind you will gain, the joy
you will feel in the discipline in such a
private practice, and the life-altering
thoughts you will fnd written on your
clean sheet of paper.

3) Career Walk: What

Inspires You?
When I started my consulting business
in 2011, I looked back at the jobs I had
performed throughout my career in
human resources (HR). To my surprise,
I was not inspired by the high-powered,
corporate HR jobs in which I was
responsible for a large team. The job
that suited my personality best, and
where I had the most fun, was a job I
held at a large insurance company. I
was one of a team of HR professionals
tasked with transforming the insurance
claim organization. It was a diffcult job
because we were faced with changing
roles, eliminating poor performers, and
interviewing current employees for

newly created jobs. But with my energy

and drive, I was in heaven.
I used my empathy for others
to look at the transformation from
their perspectives, and as a result,
I was successful in helping to lead
the organization through a major
transformation over several years.
My hours were long, my work
was unpredictable, I had to think
on myfeet,and I could not have
beenhappier.
Here is how you can easily fnd
your true inspiration: Draw yourself a
Y- and an X-axis. On the vertical axis,
use the scale of 0 to 10, with 0 being
Not Inspired and 10 being Most
Inspired. On the horizontal axis, start
with the earliest age you can remember
and take it out to the right to reach your
current age. Along the horizontal axis,
list your education and each of your jobs.
Quickly, without thinking too much, plot
each position/role along the vertical
Inspire axis. Go with your gut reaction as
you think through which jobsprovided
you with the mostinspiration.

You should soon see some patterns

emerging. Which of your jobs did you
rate highest during your career walk?
Were you in a leadership role? Were
you responsible for large budgets and
multinational teams? Were you a solo
contributor responsible for your own
work? Were you in a technical role?
Were you able to use your education
andtraining?
Was the work totally unrelated
to your education? Were you in a
role in which you had to think on the
fy and make things up as you went
along? Wereyou to follow a wellwritten scriptand work a set number
of hours per day? Were you putting
in acrazy number of hours but
incrediblyhappybecause it did not
feellike work?
There are no wrong answers! This
is your career walk. Taking the time to
fgure out what inspires you the most
is key to making your next move a
wisemove.
I rated the transformational role in
the insurance company as a 10 when

Your Best Shot

Keeps nodding for the black fuel. Location: Alberta, Canada

Photo by Meiliza Fitri, petroleum and natural gas engineering, energy and
resources engineering department, Chonnam National University, South Korea.

it came to inspiration. As a result of

the self-awareness I gained through
my career walk, I was able to design
my own consulting business to target
clients needing the same type of work
I performed. And, I can honestly say
I am always inspired when helping
organizations and individuals transform
themselves. I rarely feel like I am going
to work.
Take the time to follow these
three strategies. Once you are done,
you will have a better idea of where
your next career move is going to
take you. Youmay end up in a new
organization, starting your own business,
or travelingthe globe in a new sales role.
However, you may fnd that you are
polishing your dress shoes and updating
your rsum to better impress those
in your current organization. After all,
you know the people and now you know
yourself, how to work through your
issues, and what inspires you. Go out
and fnd it. And, do not be surprised
if it is right under your nosein your
current role. TWA

DO YOU HAVE A
JOURNALIST
INYOU?
The articles you read in The Way
Ahead magazine are written
by TWA editors or solicited by
them from industry experts. If
you are an SPE member younger than 36 years of age who likes
to write and discuss industry
trends and technology, become
a part of The Way Ahead and
take your writing to a wider audience beyond LinkedIn posts
or blogs. You will also gain the
experience of being in an international team and improve your
leadership and communication
skills. To know more about becoming a TWA editor, write to
spethewayahead@gmail.com.

Vol. 12 // No. 1 // 2016

29