Are You Ready for Change?

Are you ready if you want to move up the corporate ladder, change careers or companies, etc?  As a resume’ writer and career coach, I too often see people not prepared for these changes.  Is your resume’ up-to-date and does it include quantifiable achievements that show how you contributed to your company’s profitability, savings, etc.?  I encourage people to keep a journal of their achievements and to make sure that they can show what they did and how they accomplished it.  If you don’t keep a journal of your achievements, it can be very difficult to reconstruct it at a time when you need it.  Below are some examples of “quantifiable” achievements from different industries that I have written:

• Executed $2.7M+ in material cost savings through vendor selection, reformulation, and process improvement

• Provided leadership to cross-functional company wide group, maintaining favorable overhead variances with no budget increases in 5-year period.
• Awarded prestigious Pacesetter Award. This award is a rare distinction and only given for achieving 100% or more of budget for three consecutive years.
• Increased new business opportunity pipeline for the XYZ team from under $600K in loans and deposit accounts per month to over $1M in loans and deposit accounts per month through superior mentoring and training in the field.
• Empowered two underachieving account managers earn the distinction of Leader’s Circle for exceeding annual sales quota.

Your “Trust Mark”

Tom Peters who authored the book, “The Brand You 50″, discusses that your brand is not only your trademark, but also your “trust mark”. Your brand gives you the unique value of promise that you can contribute to a company, project, etc. Think about powerful brands such as Oprah, Madonna, Starbucks and Disney World. Oprah is not only known for her talk show, but also for her philanthropic pursuits. Madonna recreates her image with each new album (William Arruda, founder of REACH Communications www.reachcc.com, calls her the “Chameleon Brand”). Interestingly, Starbucks does not spend money on TV commercials at this writing, but most will drive there to pay $4 per cup of coffee rather than to go to a non-branded establishment to only pay $2. Disney World makes you think of family and wholesome fun (examples given by William Arruda in Reach Branding Club modules www.reachbrandingclub.com).

What’s your brand? You can find out more information by visiting www.careerdesigncoach.com

You can take a 360 degree assessment at Career Design Coaching and find out how others perceive you. Is it what you want to exude? If not, having that knowledge of other people’s perception can help you improve your brand and improve the attributes for which you want to be known.