Retooling your career

Today’s workplace is filled with uncertainty, chaos, and change. We are seeing things happen in business and with employees that is unprecedented. Downsizing, resizing, mergers, organizations simply going out of business is becoming all too common. As a result of this, there are more and more people looking for jobs in totally different industries.
So how do you retool your career? You look within and identify who you are, what your strengths and attributes are, and what you are good at doing and enjoy. Retooling is about being authentic and true to your core values and recognizing how to turn challenges into opportunities. What are you passionate and energized about relating to work? What dreams have you been sitting on? Now is an opportunity to see if you can align your dreams with your passion as you retool your career.
You must get into action and take steps to retool your career. It means reviewing and making sure your resume reflects your strengths and highlights your accomplishments and successes. It requires letting people in your network know you are looking for an opportunity to share your skills and attributes in a progressive company that values stars. This is not a time to sit back and hope someone finds you. Remember it is not what you know or who you know, rather who knows you and what they know about you. You must market yourself!
You must be willing to learn and develop skills in areas that you have not been exposed to before. It might require going back to school for a degree, taking professional development courses at a local community college, or getting a mentor or a coach. It may mean having to do research/reading on an area of interest you know little about. The important thing to remember is you must commit to lifelong learning.
In retooling, you take your transferable skills and apply them to your next career opportunity. If you were good at marketing, technology, teaching, etc. how can you leverage those skills in your next career move? It is vital to build on what you have learned in life and be willing to utilize those same skills in a new career. You can no longer guarantee that jobs you have had in the past will be what you do in the future. You must be open minded and have a willing spirit to adapt to the constant world of change.
Retooling makes you look at what is important to you and then begin a plan of action for moving forward in the face of change to achieve greatness in your life. Remember to ask for what you want, engage others in your job search, commit to life-long learning, look at failure as a detour and not a destination, keep a positive attitude, and continue to walk in integrity and faith.