Embracing Your Skills to Attract Your Next Career Opportunity

As an independent consultant and parent, Polly was seeking to transition into a 9-to-5 role that would provide great benefits and compensation as well as a high level of flexibility. Polly is a social impact leader with over 20 years of experience in strengthening systems and communities. She is passionate about volunteerism, corporate social responsibility, and philanthropy.

After two years of looking on her own, she reached out to Erica for support with her job search. Through Erica’s group program, within weeks, Polly built her confidence in her skills and her clarity about her priorities. Learn what happened when she invested in her learning and growth.

Making the Decision to Work With a Career Coach

“When I reached out to you, Erica, I felt like I had hit rock bottom. I had been in the search process, casually, for close to two years.”

Although Polly was a finalist for several roles, she was receiving a lot of rejections and employers were ghosting her. It was frustrating to keep making it so far in the hiring process, only to receive a rejection or no communication whatsoever.

“I knew it was time to shift something, so that’s when I reached out to you,” she shared.

When Polly decided to work with a career coach

Tapping Into Your Strengths to Lead an Effective Job Search

When you’re a candidate for a bunch of roles and you’re not getting offers, it’s natural to start questioning what you have to offer.

As part of her participation in Erica’s group program, Polly completed the SkillScan Assessment, which generates an in-depth, personalized report. The report affirmed many things Polly knew about herself, while also helping her realize some new career possibilities.

Being clear on her strongest skills helped her hone in on roles focused on those areas. And, once Polly learned Erica’s strategies for effectively analyzing job postings, she had a greater understanding of how to present her experience and qualifications in a relevant and compelling manner.

Getting to Know Your Strongest Skill Areas

The SkillScan report visualizes your top skill categories from among the following:

• Communication

• Management/Leadership

• Creative

• Relationship

• Analytical

• Physical/Technical

Polly’s report showed that she’s particularly strong in Management/Leadership and Relationships.

How about you? What might your strongest skill categories be?

Articulating Your Strongest Individual Skills

Through volunteering, extra-curricular activities, working, and being a member of a family and/or community, we develop skills. We also develop a sense of what types of skills we most enjoy using. But when we’re hitting a wall, it’s common to question what we’re good at and it can be helpful to have a reminder. Sometimes it can be difficult to articulate our skills and how we can transfer them from one setting to another.

Initiating, planning, managing projects, building a team, envisioning, and coaching are individual skills within the Management/Leadership category.

Collaborating, respecting diversity, serving as a liaison, facilitating groups, and serving clients are examples of individual skills within the Relationship category.

What might your strongest individual skills be? How might you transfer your top skills from one type of setting to another?

Using Your Self-Awareness to Find Great Work Opportunities

By increasing her clarity about her strongest areas, Polly shared, “I was able to start honing my job search in more of a service-oriented direction.” That adjustment enabled her to target the role of State Community and Volunteer Engagement Director for AARP Massachusetts.

Before she participated in the coaching program, “engagement” was not a job title keyword that caught Polly’s attention.

Getting clear on your skills

Landing a Job Interview Within 24 Hours

Polly used the skills she learned from Erica’s coaching program to tailor her job application materials. She learned to adapt her materials quickly, which enabled her to submit job applications right away for roles she was interested in.

Within 24 hours of submitting her new and improved job application, Polly received an invitation to schedule an interview for the State Community and Volunteer Engagement Director role. “Through the skills that I learned, I was able to show the best version of myself,” said Polly.

Feeling Confident in Job Interviews

Through 1:1 interview preparation with Erica, Polly felt confident going into job interviews. “You helped me hone the interview skills as well…coming into the interviews, I was prepared.”

As a finalist, Polly felt confident asking the employer questions to give her insight into whether it would be a good fit.

Feeling confident in job interviews

A Rewarding Career That’s A Great Fit

Polly used what she learned in Erica’s coaching program to clarify her skills and priorities, build her confidence, consider new possibilities, and successfully transition from independent consulting to a full-time salaried role with benefits.

As State Community and Volunteer Engagement Director for AARP Massachusetts, Polly draws upon her many years of experience to build community partnerships and leverage resources to achieve the organization’s strategic engagement goals at the state and local levels.

Through investing in herself, she sped up her ability to connect with this career opportunity that is a great fit for her skills, interests, values, and priorities.

Explore how investing in career advising can help you create a rewarding career that’s a great fit for you.