The Most Important Tool in Your Career Transition Toolkit

This week's post is written by Paul Sigas, a management consultant who most recently has worked with Career Development Services, providing career planning, transition support, training and management development services to individuals and organizations.  Paul is currently a mentor with SCORE of Greater Rochester.

The Most Important Tool in Your Career Transition Toolkit.  Yes, your tool kit.  You know all that stuff that you need to support your job search campaign…resume, reference list, business cards, practice interview questions….and your commercial.

Your 60 commercial (let’s shoot for 45), your intro, your elevator speech.  Call it whatever, but make no mistake, it is the single most important tool you have.

You’ll use it for face to face interviews, for networking, at job fairs on the phone, at social gatherings, when you see someone at Wegmans.  Many of these opportunities will not involve your resume.

And it is not just what you say but how you say it…smile on your face, positive attitude.

But many people are not good at talking about themselves, especially if it feels like bragging or sales.  If that is your situation, here is a structure that helped get me started and has continued to work well.  Stick to the facts.   Let’s develop a fact based intro that we can enhance as we become more comfortable with various situations.

Divide your commercial into 3 sections:

Section 1:  Your career history.  “ I graduated from RIT and began my career with …..as a ….  From there I moved to …. where I ….”

Time: about 50% of your commercial

Section 2:  Where are you now?  Make this short and sweet and positive..

            good eye contact. 

            “I was impacted by the recent downsizing at …….”

Time:  about 1 minute at most

Section 3:  “I am now looking to….”  “ I saw your job listing…”

            Make this fit the circumstances.  This is the focus of your  conversation going forward.  Make sure the person you are talking with understands this piece.

Time:  Balance of 45 sec.

Write these down.  Practice them until you can say them naturally.  Keep a written copy by every phone .  After this becomes natural you can begin to insert some marketing phrases.

Good luck!