Career Change – Understanding your Worth and Value
Asimo is a robot made by Honda and currently working for IBM Japan. ASIMO works as a receptionist for IBM. He greets guests and shows them around the building. Asimo’s gets paid $150,000 a year (Yearly lease for ASIMO) Compared to the salary of a human receptionist - $35,000. To perform these duties, ASIMO has to be specially programmed to know the layout of the buildings and the appropriate way to greet visitors and answer questions.
What about You!
I recently saw a documentary about a lady that could not smile because of a birth defect. It cost her $70,000 to surgically have a smile created for her. It's close to the real thing but it's still not the real thing. Knowing the value of a rolex watch, how much would you pay for a fake rolex. Now try smiling. Easy? That's priceless but an artificial one would cost you $70,000.
Try squeezing your hand, pick up your pen, throw your pen a varied speeds, pick your ear, play with your hand, do what you wish. Asimo couldn't even do a tenth of what you are doing, yet it is paid a salary of $150,000 dollars. Asimo is a fake version of you. No where near the real thing.
You are priceless and Asimo is worthless compared to what you can do.
Yet it gets paid more than most!
Why?
People will only see you as you see yourself! My father always told me; "If you sell yourself cheap during the day, don't expect to increase the price at night, for you will not find a buyer" You are fearfully & wonderfully made, you probably have been nurtured and cared for by loving parents who in their own rights are priceless. You don't have to be programmed to know the layout of a building, greet visitors and answer questions. You are not made by man but uniquely created and fashioned to invent, innovate, discover, adapt and rule.
Dr, Micheal Denton clearly states – the cosmos (universe) is specially designed whole with life and mankind as its fundamental goal and purpose. Cosmos - The universe regarded as an orderly, harmonious whole. In simple words, The world has been created specifically for you!
Trees have a purpose, gold has a purpose, water has a purpose, salt has a purpose, even micro-organisms have a purpose. What more of you? You are the most intelligent being of all creation - One that wills thoughts to action, one with feelings, emotions, a soul and a mind to invent, learn, discover, communicate, build and rule.
The more physicist, biologists and scientist learn about the universe the more they realise it has been created custom made for human existence. For you are made with love in mind - Psalmist
If the world has been built with you in mind, why settle for anything less. Asimo is a product of your your neighbours invention and how much is it worth?
The question I need to ask you is this:
How do you see yourself?
The most valuable things in life are not things but people. You and I.
Celebrate and value yourself daily and everyone else will treat you the same way.
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Setting Up Appointments When you Need a Career Change
The key is to job hunt smarter not harder. There is no point spending all day applying to over 50 companies and get so frustrated at the end of the day because non of the employers have responded to your applications.
Don't join the rat race. Many are called but few are chosen. Why join the many when you can be among the few chosen ones without joining the crowd.
A bird at hand is better than 10,000 in the forest. You can always use that one bird to catch the many thousands in the forest because birds of the same feather flock together.
The same applies to the job market. Why apply for the thousands of jobs on job boards when you can use a contact person to attract or be introduced to many other key contacts that could help you attain the job you are looking for.
For example, if you want to start a career in project management, start networking among your friends. There must be someone you know who knows a project manager. Build rapport and create a network ladder to get to your main contact person.
Once you have established contact, you can try using this appointment generating email:
Hi Steve,
Thanks for taking my call earlier today. In relation to our conversation, Sally mentioned you were the best person to speak to in regards to starting a career in project management.
Your reputation precedes you and I feel I have much to learn from you. This is clearly obvious just by looking at your outstanding record of proven achievement within the field of successfully managing global projects.
Please find attached a quick summary my resume / CV. It explains and details what I have been doing and how it can be of benefit to you and your department.
I am available for a meeting on either:
Tuesday the 9th of Jan
Wednesday the 17th of Jan
Thursday the 25th of Jan
Which day will suit you or do you have a more suitable time?
Kind regards
James Thomas
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Need a Career Change-apply These 7 Prinicples
2 years ago, we re-packaged our winning formula for helping people attain the career of their dreams and doubling their salaries. The results have been phenomenal with 100% success rate and thousands of people attaining the right career change and getting job of their dreams.
However, before we tell you what this winning formula is, let us establish the key reasons why people develop the need for a career change:
There are two deciding factors for this:
External Factors
A lot people develop the need for a career change due to a number of external factors and these can be related to their working relationships with fellow colleagues, an inability to grow within the company, poor location, an unpleasant environment or family related reasons.
When any of these factors become the need for a career change, there are questions you need to ask yourself before making that life changing decision to change your career.
"Am I sure the problem does not lie with me?"
1. How well do you relate with people? - Would you say your attitude welcomes or drives people from you? If the problem has got to do with your attitude, you'll have the same problem elsewhere.
2. How competitive are you within your current role? - Employers value employees that help grow their business and will give anything to retain that person. Are you exercising your natural talents at work daily? Your natural energisers (PASSION)! Do you have any for your current job?
3. Location, environment and family related reasons are also external factors that puts us in a position to make life changing choices, but they must never be at the risk of loosing our identity. what makes us whole and fulfilled in life.
Internal Factors
These factors are probably the most valid reason when it comes to experiencing the need for a career change.
It's battle between what your conscience is telling you, your dreams, hopes, aspiration and your current situation. The need for a better life, a more fulfilling career, the ability to exercise your natural talents and engage your passion.
A Combination of External & Internal Factors
On the other hand, it could be a combination of both external and internal factors, which can be very dangerous because it can lead to a life of frustration, despair. Inevitably leading to envy and jealousy for the progress of other people.
When this happens, you could find yourself wanting the success of others and dedicating your life to getting it.
This is a road that will always lead to a dead end.
Little progress is made when you try to be someone else. Most times, your weaknesses become more evident and people begin to see an incompetent employee rather than a competent one.
So Why Do You Need A Career Change
This is what it's all about. Finding the answer to your 'WHY's in life.
As Stephen Covey once mentioned at one of his seminars, if you can find the answers to your 'WHY's in life, you can handle any 'WHAT', 'WHERE', 'WHEN', 'HOW' or 'IF'.
Why do you need a career change?
If your answer to this question falls under the need to attain career fulfilment, enjoy going to work and getting paid a fortune for what you do so naturally, then our successfully tried and tested, easy to apply principles can help you make the right career change today.
Here is a quick summary of the 7 easy to understand and apply principles to changing your career and attaining the job of your dreams:
Step 1: The 12 Laws of Discovering Your Purpose
- Give a dog a bone and you've got it working, give a dog your month's wage in cash and you'll be working extra hours to make the money back.
"Where purpose is unknown, abuse is inevitable"- Myles Munroe
Step 2: Creating Your Unique Selling Point
People will only see you as you see yourself. When you pay to watch a play or a movie, you are not just there to see the actors but to enjoy the characters they portray - 100% of our candidates have potentially doubled their salaries and gotten the career of their dreams because our eWorkshop has taught them how to create their Unique Selling Point (USP).
Step 3: Knowing What The Employer Wants
A doctor never tries to treat a patient without trying to first diagnose the cause of illness. Diagnose the Employer - Joyce attained two great job offers because of this.
This eWorkshop will teach you how to do this in relation to your chosen career.
Step 4: Job Hunting Smarter Not Harder
70% of jobs are never advertised and 1 in 4 jobs are duplicated online at least 5 times out of the 30% of jobs actually advertised. You need to be looking for the 70% of jobs. How you do this requires thinking outside the box.
Step 5: How To Rebrand & Remarket Yourself To Win
80% of employers overlook key details on your Resume / CV and to every job advertised nationally, there are 1000 applicants to each job. If your Resume / CV does not stand out, you might as well stay out. Our sample Resume and CV templates got Joyce a job of a life time. Triple her previous salary.
Step 6: How To Network From The Top Down
If Bill Gates was your best friend, would you need to contact HR? The internet has made networking as easy as a piece of cake. James has been using this concept since he graduated. Today, he is an Investment Banker for one of the world's Investment banking companies.
Step 7: Selling Without Selling At Interviews
No one likes to be sold to. We like to feel like we are buying for our own reasons. When you go fishing and you want to catch a fish, do you bait the hook with your favourite food or with the favourite food of the fish. Bait the hook according to the fish type. Maria applied this principle and she is earning double her previous salary.
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Dealing With Career Change and Transition
Career change and career transition are real concerns nowadays. People lose or give up their jobs for various reasons. Today's aggressive, performance-oriented business ethos mean that career change and career transition happen to a lot of people; this is quite unlike before when one could get into a job and stay in it for life.
Considering a Career Change
If the change is a voluntary one, then the person undergoing the career change should take as much care as possible. Not only is one's income-less (or non-existent) during such a time, but change itself always puts stresses on a person as he or she strives to steer his life in a new direction.
Nevertheless, not all is doom and gloom: the time spent between careers offers a chance for value appraisal and career assessment. The shock of finding one's self adrift may provide a good impetus to accomplish a useful task that has often been set aside because of lack of time or lack of motivation. Indeed, once in the middle of a career change and career transition, you may find yourself exploring new and better career paths that you thought were closed to you.
Marketing One's Self to Potential Employers
In the midst of your career change and career transition, you must carefully assess what job you wish to take on next. You must list down your credentials and skills, your interests, and your goals (house, car, salary grade, position, prestige, etc). Your credentials and skills will be your basis for assessing your worth to potential employers. Your interests will dictate the direction that you can possibly take. Your goals will be your basis for choosing the specific direction that you will take.
The time spent reevaluating one's career direction is followed by a time of writing cover letters, updating one's resume, leveraging whatever influence one has on people in a network that might help one get into a new job or completely different line of work (which is one reason why it's nice to cultivate friends). It's not necessary to have experience when shifting into a whole new profession, as long as you stay educated, can play up your strengths to the recruiter, and transfer the necessary social skills to your new setting.
As you sit down to write your resume, it is helpful to remember something that salesmen and marketers know but others often overlook: you must be able to sell yourself in order to profit in the job market. To increase your value to potential employers, recruitment agencies or headhunters, you must do your best to highlight your value so you will always remain on top of the recruitment heap. Only then can you be sure of a successful career change and career transition.
Career Change Time? Consider Software Testing
The profession of software testing emerged in the early nineties when personal computers became more popular as they became more affordable. The fast-growing population of PC users created new opportunities for software companies as well as strong competition for the consumers business.
The new generation of software users quite naturally expected their applications to work as advertised. At the same time, market forces encouraged the fast release of new software often at the sacrifice of thorough testing. Defective software does not sell.
The software industry soon recognized that, to achieve success, they would have to set quality standards prior to release and create thorough end-user testing procedures in-house.
In 1992, I got my very first job as a Software QA Engineer literally by accident: an old friend introduced me to a small startup company in Newark where he worked at the time. My job there was to identify functionality and performance problems in a client-server database application.
I searched for fellow testers for professional networking; but I found none. I approached over two dozen software developers asking if they knew of anyone who tests software for a living. They had never heard of software testers and could see no use for them since they tested their own software.
I found myself wondering what growth potential, if any, there may be in this career. In particular, I wanted to know how much I could earn as a software tester. I approached our VP of Engineering with this question. He suggested that, if I stay with the company for five years and do really well, I might hope to make up to $40,000 a year.
A small group of developers who had heard this exchange were clearly skeptical. I read the look on their faces, "That'll be the day!"
In May of 1993 the startup I worked for collapsed. In the course of a week, there were five advertisements in the San Jose Mercury News for software QA positions. I sent a resume to each, which resulted in two job interviews the following week and one on-the-spot job offer.
My new employer was a multimedia startup. And guess what - that job paid 25 percent more than my previous one. Three months later I got a raise, which brought me to a $40,000 salary, exactly the projected five-year target thought to be unrealistic. My new employers were exceptionally successful. They sold the company profitably six months later. The new owners restructured the business and I was back in the job market again.
What I discovered in my new job search amazed me. Where I had found only five software quality assurance listings over the course of a week, I was now finding 10-12 listings a day. I had 3-4 interviews a week, sometimes two interviews a day, and received many offers within a month. The market had grown dramatically within a single year and the demand for software testers far exceeded the supply.
I chose the company that offered me strong exposure to automated testing, my passion at the time; but I could not help mulling over the amazing growth in demand for software testers and the equally amazing lack of supply.
In the mid-90s, software testing was still a new profession. Between 1994 and 1997, half of QA graduates of many small and big local QA schools became the first person in their companies specifically hired as software testers.
Today, most software companies have a dedicated quality assurance department with one or more managers and a staff ranging from junior testers to senior quality assurance engineers.
Before the recent recession, starting salary in QA was about $60,000 on average with 2-3 weeks spent on job search. Those who liked to change jobs every year or so as they acquired experience, saw their salaries grow to $90,000-95,000 within two-three years. When the recession hit Silicon Valley job market in 2001, there appeared to be no jobs at all for the inexperienced software tester.
But in the year 2007, the recession is over. On average, an entry level QA job seeker in Silicon Valley would get 2 job interviews a week. It seems to take only 3 or 4 interviews to land an offer. Finding a QA job today seems to be no more difficult than it was in the 90s.
Software QA is a unique job niche in many ways: Maturity is an asset in software testing unlike other IT fields. Maturity is easily marketed as patience, attention to detail, and tolerance for routine tasks, all of which are highly valued in software QA.
Whatever your prior education or work experience, it is likely to be an asset because there is likely to be software that specializes in your field of expertise. If you have experience in education, accounting, banking, publishing, workflow or contact management, sales, client relations, drafting, stock or bond trading, image processing, to name but a few industries, you will find software companies that target your field.
Testing software is basically about finding the discrepancy between the expected behavior of the application and its actual behavior. If you have an accounting background, for example, you are better positioned to understand what the expected behavior of a software application should be and how an accounting department would use it.
Testing is not a difficult concept to learn. We all have some experience testing something. We test new recipes, test-drive cars, double-check our change at the convenience store. In each case we are testing to see that the actual result meets our expected result.
Entry-level jobs in software QA do not require a computer science degree. The field covers a broad spectrum of technical proficiency. The niche is large enough to accommodate you.
We see individuals of all ages transitioning from H1B visas to green cards, for example, becoming two-income families and homeowners, and establishing themselves in their new country.
Software testing is definitely a consideration for college educated people of all the ages and professional background looking for a career change.