Managing Career Change in a time of Covid-19 and a looming Brexit

For many, the lockdowns across the world, have brought a time of uncertainty upon us. Many feel insecure in their position or have unfortunately had their position made redundant already.

Whatever situation you find yourself in, even if you find that you are busier than ever, now is a good time to get on top of your career management.

We must all prepare for a job market which will look very different in the future. Once Covid-19 is under control, those living in the UK, are still facing BREXIT, which will bring even more change to the job market.

Through my work with people in career transitions, I have experienced a wide array of reactions when candidates are met with a redundancy or for other reasons have had to leave their job. Some are chocked and feeling self-blame; “I worked so hard all these years, so why did I have to leave” is a common reaction. One important thing to remember here: It is not you but your position which is made redundant. You need to trust you made a good contribution to your company - many other factors can have affected why exactly your position was made redundant.

Others, on the other hand, might have been unhappy at their position and meet the redundancy with excitement of what the future holds.

Wherever you are on this spectrum, I encourage you to take time out and allow yourself some time to reflect and explore before you jump to your next application.

As with many tasks, preparation makes a good foundation for a successful outcome.

To manage career change in a structured process I have split the process into three main chapters. Spend the time you need in each chapter before moving to the next.

Reflect & Explore

In the “Reflect & Explore” phase there are a number of different routes you can end up with.

You might quickly find out that you want the exact same kind of job and get moving. Some will also have financial commitments which means they need to take this into account.

But a group part sees this as an opportunity to explore some of what I call your “what if’s”.

What if you had not ended up in the that company, or that line of work. Many of us find ourselves caught up in the career wheel and before we know if we have spent many years following a straight line of roles and never really questioned whether this is really what we want.

Therefore, I encourage you to spend some time to reflect and explore your true self, your value and passions.

There are a number of great tools you can use to help guide you in the process.

Prepare

Once you have established a framework for your future job search, it is time to get your house in order. By this I mean making sure your CV, your LinkedIn and myGwork profile are positioning you correctly. Then you can start to create a shortlist of companies or positions you will go after. It is essential you get this right as many application processes are digitalised and automated, so you need to make sure the algorithms work to your advantage.

Engage

Now that you have done your homework with the two first phases, you have created a good foundation and you can start to engage in your job search.

Make the digital possibilities work for you. Get job alerts set up and start position yourself in the category you want your next work to be in.

As you are potentially competing with a lot of other candidates, networking becomes a crucial part of the work which is going to land you an interview. LinkedIn or MyGwork are excellent platforms for making sure your application ends up on the shortlist for interviews.

Join me at the Work Pride conference from June 22-26th, where I will go deeper into the process with useful tools to help you through the process as well as share my own experiences of managing my career change.

Register to my webinar via the link here.

About the Author:

As a Coach I am combining my experience from the corporate industry with my passion for digital media and people development. Running 1:1 career consulting and workshops on everything digital.

• 15 years of experience in International Brand Management and Marketing across Northern Europe at companies like Colgate, Beiersdorf and GSK.
• Consulting start-ups and medium-sized businesses on growth strategies, brand management and marketing.
• I have been involved in large scale organisational restructures and supported regional deployment as a change agent and ambassador.
• Certified as a coach in Cognitive Behavioural Coaching and studying for a MA in Digital Media Management (graduating 2020).
• Originally from Copenhagen, Denmark, but have been living in London since 2017. A passionate explorer of the world and besides the UK, I have also lived in the US, Australia and Germany.
• Areas of expertise:

(https://www.linkedin.com/in/laualbjerg/)