CHICAGO — Do you remember, about 365 days ago, when you raised a champagne flute and pledged to find a new job in the coming year? Well, here you are, still hunched over the same desk, still itching for a change.
So 2016 it is. For real this time.
Now the hard part. What might you want to do next?
Here are 10 tips for jump-starting your job hunt before inertia relegates it to the trash heap of dead New Year’s resolutions.
• Find your objective strengths. Review the results of your Myers-Briggs or another personality test and remind yourself of the keywords that describe you and what you’re good at, said Karen Cates, a management consultant, executive coach and adjunct professor of executive education at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. Never taken one? A popular assessment is the Clifton StrengthsFinder, first published by Gallup 15 years ago, which you can take online for a fee. Plug those keywords into job databases to get ideas for career paths in growing fields, like health care, that don’t necessarily require technical expertise. “If you have been involved in sales, find that you have a passion for helping others, are an extrovert and are considered an exceptional communicator, patient relations may be for you,” Cates said.
• Embrace what comes easy. Take a hard look at your resume and pick out the five things that were really easy for you to do and that you enjoyed doing, because playing to those natural talents will help you distinguish yourself, said Whitney Johnson, author of “Disrupt Yourself: Putting the Power of Disruptive Innovation to Work.” “Often the things we do so well are as natural as breathing, and we overvalue what we’re not good at and undervalue what we are,” Johnson said. If you’re not sure what those natural talents are, think about the compliments you get that you brush away, or what calms you down during a stressful day at work, she said. For example, Johnson, a former Wall Street analyst, said that despite the passion and pride she derived from building good financial models, she felt most at ease when she was coaching others or connecting people with one another, because it was effortless and made her feel in control.