IU #007: Three Questions From Coaching Clients Around the World

My coaching clients were everywhere this week.

From Tunisia, Nigeria, England and Dubai to across the USA.

New Jersey, Atlanta, New York City and L.A.

Different situations.

Different problems.

Different solutions.

I learned so much from 15 sessions in 4 days (and hopefully they did too).

I was teaching them to land a job through online networking. It was so much fun.

Today, I’ll answer 3 questions that were asked by my coaching students in the past week.

Before we begin, I wanted to announce that I have a shiny new website! It has all my coaching products and services (and a couple of free e-books too!)

I’d love to hear your thoughts. Reply to this email to get in touch. You can also find me here on LinkedIn.

Let's dive in.

Read time: 2 mins.

1) How can I handle rejection?

Handling rejection is all about expectations.

Before you apply for a job, or reach out to someone, consider what you are trying to achieve.

It’s not about getting everyone to reply to you. That’s not possible or necessary. Focus on the opportunities when someone replies.

2) How can I leverage my past experience for a career transition?

I posted about storytelling last week. I said that if you want to convince a hiring manager that you can add value, you need to tell them a story about your value. One that lines up with their goals.

Basically, you need to explain how YOU make THEIR lives easier.

Let’s say you always considered yourself analytical. Your resume should be a story about all the wins you achieved from your analysis.

However, the place where people go wrong is when they change their objective.

The key thing to remember is that if you want to change your objective, you have to change your story.

For example, now you want to become a manager.

Now, you don’t want to convince hiring managers that you are analytical. You want to convince them that you’re managerial.

The first step is to reframe how you think about yourself.

Go back through every big career experience, and start remembering them differently.

You have to start thinking of them through the lens of a manager. Stop talking about analysis and start talking about leading teams, working with people, setting goals and being organised.

That is how you begin to make the most of your past experience.

If you want me to do a full strategy on this, find me in the comments here.

3) Should I tailor my resume to each job I apply for?

If the job roles and industries are similar, use the same story. And therefore, the same resume.

If you applied for a data analyst role, but now want to become a data engineer, I would create a new resume with a new story. One less about data analysis and more about data pipelines.

If the roles are similar but you want to go above and beyond, your time would be better spent writing a short cover letter highlighting your most relevant points. You could also reach out to people and use the time to network. If you want a deeper strategy guide on that, let me know here.

If you enjoyed these tips, hit subscribe so you get next Friday’s newsletter.

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Finally, do you fancy some 1:1 career coaching? Got a question? Want a resume or LinkedIn review?

Next week is mostly booked up, but a couple of sessions are left.

Here is a flavour of what I offer:

If this sounds useful, check out my shiny new website:

www.michaeldillon.co.uk

See you next week,

Michael

P.S.

Here are some kind words I got this week. Everyone’s results made me so happy.

Thanks, everyone.