I’ll still post here and I’d like to meet and help as many people as I can along the way. But for now, head to the new Facebook Fan Page “The Great Career Planner”.

You can search for it within Facebook or click here: http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Great-Career-Planner/296752763114?v=app_4949752878&ref=ts

There you’ll get all the help and resources you’ll need for careers planning.

You might also like to check out my personal blog on steering and advancing your career here: http://markmoore.posterous.com/

If you sign up to posts you’ll get priority special offers!

Start 2010 by getting your career on the right track!

Technorati Tags: career, career change, career planning, careers planning, ideal career

Most people are far from it, and unfortunately it’s the way people think that’s holding them back. Many people think that to find and get in to the ideal career is a really straight forward thing to do.  But then, most of these people are not in it.  Why is that?  I’ll be blunt and realistic.  It’s because they’re wrong.  It’s not as easy as they think.  And there lies the problem.

I come across lots of comments online, sometimes even disguised as advice that make light of the situation. They don’t mean to, in fact the intentions of people is to help.  But unfortunately it’s having the opposite effect.

Many people post comments like, ‘just find out what your passions and skills are, and make sure you use these’.  Thanks for that.  Is that the magic wand we all needed?  Does that mean a miraculous shuffle is about to occur and everyone is going to leave their current jobs for their ‘ideal careers’?  No.

Some people say, ‘just do what you love’.  Where do they get these gems of advice from?  I hadn’t thought of that.  Look, sorry to be sarcastic here, but I’ve seen so many comments like this that I want to raise awareness that they are not helping and they are part of the problem.

Yes, it’s true, certainly strive to do what you love.  But that’s a bit vague and doesn’t tell people HOW to start moving in the right direction.

Let me tell you ths - coming from someone who made it their mission to identfy and get in to my ideal career (6 years ago).  It took a fair amount of time and effort to work through a methodical thought process to identify my ideal career.  It was not straight forward, but NEITHER was it boring or dull.  It was very exciting, really motivating, and I don’t want to sound all fluffy but obviously it changed my life like no other decision I ever made.

And I learned a way to contiually keep myself on track and happy in my work.  I use the same process every so often.  Those who don’t, begin to slip in to career problems again.  Everyone should know how to do it.  The more you do it, the easier it is to naturally think in the right way. And you begin to make smarter career decisions.

So folks, please listen to my advice here.  I’ve done it.  Most other people you are listening to (many careers advisors and coaches included) have NOT done it.  They claim to know the theory.  But they have not made a transition in their life in to another career successfully (of course some may have, and you need to hunt them down).  Do not listen to anyone who has not done it themselves.  They literally do not UNDERSTAND what they are talking about.  It’s like someone teaching you how to swim who has never got in the water themselves.

Finally, I hope you understand the importance of getting in to the right career.  If you don’t yet, you will one day when your career situation begins to hurt.

I regard it as one of your most important decisions in life, because earning a living IS your life.  You spend more time working than anything else, and you owe it to yourself to earn a living in a way that you enjoy and are best at.

If you’re not yet there, you need to be there.

Any thoughts or questions?  Post them below and I’ll answer.

The comments following the article were even more interesting. Is getting a degree part of your careers planning strategy?

Here’s my thoughts:

Many people are getting things the wrong way round when planning. Remember Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People?  ‘Begin with the end in mind’ was one of the seven.  Many people don’t know what they want to do for a career, but go for the degree anyway, which kind of violates this rule.

Yes, it may increase your prospects. But equally it may waste a lot of time, money and effort if your degree becomes irrelevant to get in to your ideal career which you hadn’t gone to the effort to identify first!

Get it the right way round.  Identify your ideal career first, BEFORE choosing whether to get a degree (let alone which degree is the right one).

Once you know with a high degree of certainty what your ideal career is, then work backwards with your planning. Is a degree the fastest, easiest or best way in to it?  If yes, decide which one and where best to get that degree.  If ‘no’ then consider the path you’ll take to get in to it as fast, easily and enjoyably as possible.

You’ll need to talk to people who are already there about this.

Don’t forget to sign up to get my ideal career planning kit: http://www.careersplanningkit.com/

http://blog.bincsearch.com/?p=571

1. Identify the RIGHT career/job for themselves BEFORE job hunting. Most job hunt without doing this, and end up complaining about how hard it is, and how long it takes with knock back after knock back. It’s hard to get through an interview and be offered a job if you’re a round peg trying to get into a square hole!  People - competing graduates, who are naturally better suited to the role WILL HAVE THE EDGE over you.  It’s very hard to compete with that.  So you’ve got to get this right first.  When you know that you’re a round peg trying to get in a round hole, YOU have the edge on everyone else and you’ll find it easier. Ignore this advice at your peril!!

2. Increase your VALUE to your potential employers. If they perceive (from evidence that you provide them) that the value of your contribution to them is higher than that of your competitors (or at least that you can increase it fast) then you’re in.  Simple as that.  You do this by strategically learning and studying USABLE ideas that can be applied on the job, to the company or to the industry.  This is EASY in this day and age as you have the internet to help. You can do it almost anywhere so long as you have internet access.

I know times are supposedly ‘tough’ - so all the more reason not to complain, think negatively, or mope about!  Come on graduates (or anyone for that matter), if you’re not working right now then you have time to find the RIGHT LINE OF WORK for yourself.  This is more than half the battle.

More help:

I’m giving away (to the first 50 people who help me out…) an E-course that helps you to identify the ideal/right career for you. This e-course is in development and I need your help if you’re willing - just 3 minutes of your time - to answer a few questions for me. Once I have your responses, I can use them to help me polish up the e-course and ensure I’ve addressed all your questions and concerns!

Click here to read more, and if you’re one of the first 50, you get it for FREE.  After that, I charge for it.

FREE (to first 50 people) E-Course on Finding and Securing the Right Job/Career - click here for more

I Can Help You Find it….

(cost to you: $0.00 - just 3 minutes of your time)

From: Mark Moore 25 January 12:24

Director

Excelerated Performance International

Note:

Put your money away - there is nothing for sale here…..just give me 3 minutes of your time and you’ve earned what I’m offering…

Hi,

Are you working in (or about to head in to) the right career?

This is one of the most important questions you could ever ask yourself.  Because the answer will indicate how happy you are with your entire lifestyle.

If the answer is ‘no’, or ‘I’m not sure’, then your lifestyle will take the hit and it will likely get worse.  You need to do something about it.  You need to shut off all distractions, get some focus and read on, because you can change your situation much faster than you think. ..and for now, this solution is absolutely FREE to you!

My name is Mark Moore, and for a long time I struggled to enjoy earning a living.  I was a square peg trying to fit a round hole.  I knew I had higher potential, but worked in jobs that either didn’t challenge me, or where I felt undervalued, unrecognized for my efforts, didn’t relate to the people I worked with, or just found the work plain dull and unrewarding.  But…

…I kept battling on because I didn’t know what to do about it or how to change my situation for the better.  I continued banging my head against the wall, beginning to even make mistakes as my mind drifted, and nothing ever got better.  Until one day, I had enough. I decided that there MUST be another way out there to earn a living that would be perfect for me, my skills, strengths and my interests.  Outside of work, people respected and recognised that I had potential in certain areas.  I wanted the same thing, the same feelings, inside work.

Ever heard of the quote from Stephen Covey, author of ‘The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People’; 

 
“It’s incredibly easy to get caught up in an activity trap, in the busy-ness of life, to work harder and harder at climbing the ladder of success, only to discover it’s leaning against the wrong wall.”

Is your ladder up against the right wall?  Because getting that right is the essential step 1 of your career.  Get it wrong, and you’ll know about it one day…maybe years down the line.  Get it right, and you’ll put yourself in the best position to climb that ladder, with energy, enjoying it and performing at your best.  And once you’re on the right ladder, you can look forward to some future products of mine on how to climb that ladder super-fast! (by taking up this free offer today, I’ll notify you in time about these).

So What Did I Do About it?

I realised that to earn a living, you just need to exchange value with enough people - to add value to their lives or their business.  And I realised that I was good at, and enjoyed doing certain things, and these things came easy to me, whereas many other people struggled with them.  All I had to really do was match up the value that I could fairly easily and enjoyably provide, with the same value that others wanted and would be prepared to pay for.

On realising this, I came across an idea that really got me moving;  I heard that there’s not a single job or task out there that someone somewhere in the world wouldn’t pay you to do.  That kind of opened up my options!  It was a useful starting point to my thought process.  I could practically do anything, and someone out there, if I could find them would pay me to do it, so long as I could get an effective solution to them.

These thoughts sent me on a new mission.  I made it my goal to identify what my ideal career would be, and then to get into it as fast as possible.  It’s now 6 years later, and I still run my own successful business which I love doing.  It didn’t take me long to identify my perfect career, but it DID take 3 things:

1. a DECISION to commit totally to the goal of finding and getting in to it
   
2. an investment of time, effort and a small amount of money to LEARN and EXPLORE how to do it - aka ’strategic careers planning!’
   
3. persistence in carrying out my plan

The 1st and 3rd points you can decide to do right now.  If you’re feeling enough pain from your current career situation, or you just don’t know what to do for a career, then you can mentally tick both those boxes right now.  That’s easy.

If you don’t decide to do those, I can’t help you, no one else can help you, and you won’t help yourself.  Things will likely drift and get worse for you.

Point 2 of the 3 may seem the least exciting for some of you, but I’ve made it easy for you!  And you don’t even have to worry about the money either, because you can get this for FREE from me…

…I spent a lot of my own time digging up resources and learning how to identify my ideal career. I read plenty of books on the subject, and on strategic planning in general, talked to the right people, did a lot of thinking, and once I’d identified my own, I helped others to do the same using what I had learned.

I’ve finally decided to share this knowledge with everyone who wants it, and guide them through the most important parts of the process I went through. I also want to update it for 2009, particularly for today’s economic climate, and provide you with other resources, free online tools and all sorts to help you find and get into your ideal career as fast as possible.

I’ll include:

1. how to identify various ideal career fields for you
2. how to narrow these down to your ultimate ideal (and realistic) way to earn a living
3. how to ensure that you’ll earn a sufficient living this way before committing to it
4. how to get ahead of the competition and secure employment or business in this role
5. how to pick out and use useful career tools online, rather than trawling through the many online career based gimmicks out there
6. how to get the most from careers consultants and advisers
7. smart strategies for planning for any desired outcome in your work or life
8. plenty more tips and answers to your own questions….(read on)

And, you’ll be pleased to hear that I’ll avoid ‘fluff’, hype and any ‘you can do it!’ approaches. I’ll just guide you through a sensible, solid and logical process that will make things much easier for you, and save you a lot of time, energy and frustration.

To Get Your Free E-Course/E-book Read On…

Note: this is free to the 1st 50 people who fully respond to the survey.

Why?

Because I need your responses to help me create a better quality product. Once I’ve completed the product, after sending it to you for FREE, I will charge for it for everyone else. I’m giving it to you, to say thanks very much for your help.

The link to the survey is below, and I’ll need all questions answered for you to qualify.  If you’re serious about making this work like I was, then the process will work for you, and this is your chance to help me refine the product.  Consider it like you’re working more closely and directly with me.

I should add though, that I’m only giving away 50 for free - the first 50 people who fill out all 9 questions (in as much detail as possible).

Remember, earning a living is adding value to other people, so please make your answers useful to me, and I will return the favour by making the e-course useful to you.

Why Learn How to Do This From Me?

3 reasons:

1. I’ve been there, done it, applied it and got it to work wonderfully for me. That beats the majority of careers advisers out there who, themselves are not in their ideal role.  It’s nearly always best to learn from people who have already achieved what you’re setting out to achieve.
2. I’m the Director of Excelerated Performance International, and help people to get better at their careers in order to enjoy more pay and rewards (for less effort, and more enjoyment!). The first essential stepping stone to achieving this is to get your ladder up against the right wall - get into your ideal career.
   I’m not some strange Internet nut marketer who just promotes products without any expertise in the area!  I work with big corporate clients, provide a high value honest service, and I believe in providing real value and help to people to earn a living. This is just a side project I’m working on.
3. I’ve got plenty of happy customers over the last 6 years - you can read plenty of testimonials and client comments by clicking here!

(You can see an example of another e-course of mine by clicking here. The new e-course will take a similar format.)

So, if you’re ready to take 3 minutes right now to respond to this survey, click on the link below,

Once I have created the e-course/ebook, I will send it straight out to you.

Note: the survey is hosted on another site, once you have submitted your responses you can just close the window. ANSWER IN AS MUCH DETAIL AS POSSIBLE (remember, you’re not answering just for me, you’re answering in full FOR YOU!  You will create the quality of the solution I deliver by the quality and usefulness of your own responses.  You’re interacting with me and it’s your chance to get your questions answered.  Help me, and I’ll help you.)

Technorati Tags: career assessment, career help, career planning, career specialist, career test, ideal career

• Planning your ideal career - by katie George. When first thinking about planning your career and finding yourself a new job, you should be realistic. Look at what experiences you have, the skills you have gained and what your strengths and weaknesses are. (more…)

• tips for successful career planning - some important careers planning tips are given below. • never stop educating yourself. the world is constantly changing, and most companies are looking for new ways to conduct business. once you have confirmed that your current skills …

Technorati Tags: career planning ideal career career specialist career h

Looking for them works, if you persist and if you take the time.  But creating them is proactive, and puts you in control of exactly what you’re trying to achieve.

6 years ago, I decided that enough was enough drifitng between various careers.  I decided that I had to take the time and effort to IDENTIFY EXACTLY what my ideal career would be.

So I studied everything I could on the topic of ‘finding my ideal career’ and ‘careers planning’.

I soon realised that once I narrowed down the ideas and fields, that it didn’t matter if there weren’t opportunities to do what I wanted.  I realised that so long as I was sure that I would provide VALUE to other people’s lives or businesses, and they perceived it as VALUE and were prepared to pay for it, then I could CREATE opportunities to do this.

And that’s what I did.

My advice for employment opportunities, and opportunities in general is this:

If you can’t easily find them, create them.

I determined that there was a market, and made plans to connect myself with the right people, to say and do the right things with these people, and to CREATE OPPORTUNITIES for me to deliver the value I had chosen to in exchange for payment.

If you are looking for employment opportunities, I urge you to give this thought.  It can be quite a PASSIVE process, unless you make it active.

Ever seen this quote from George Bernard Shaw?

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

Most people are ‘reasonable’ in this respect.  But if you can be ‘unreasonable’ and adapt the world to suit you, your market, your skills, talents and interests, then you can end up making a highly enjoyable living, and you increase your chances at becoming good at it too!  That’s progress.

If you would like to know how I created my own employment opportunities, then I strongly urge you to start with the book on the right of this page - The Pathfinder.

If you’re in the UK you can buy it at Amazon UK  - click here.

If you’re in the USA, by it at Amazon.com - click here.

It’s a great start to this entire life changing process, it costs very little, and the return on investment for such a small price is huge.  Of course you’ll only know and believe that if you buy it, study it, and put what you learn into action.  Otherwise….for now…I can’t help you.

Once you’ve been through this book, keep checking back to this site where I’ll be adding plenty more resources to help you in your careers planning and creating employment opportunities.

All the best.  Stay tuned.

Technorati Tags: employment opportunities

I don’t like the words ‘careers planning’.  It sounds dull and miserable if you asked me.  Because many of us associate negative feelings with the words ‘career’ and ‘planning’.  Of course if you’re reading this, you are interested in looking at getting out of your career (or starting a career) so if you’re looking at getting out, then that’s probably where these negative associations come from!

And there’s only a handful of people out there who genuinely like ‘planning’!  But that’s because they’re associating planning with planning other things in their lives or work, that perhaps was a bit dull.  Planning your career on the other hand is a surprisingly energizing and enjoyable process.  The thing is, you might not believe me, but then you haven’t done it properly have you?  So what have you got to base this on?  Because if you have done it properly, you wouldn’t be sitting here now reading this!

Still with me then?

Your Ideal Career is Out There and YOU Must Find it

I want to help you to identify the right career for you; your ideal career. Because I believe there is one out there (more than one actually) for everyone.  But only you can find it.  Don’t think for a second that someone else will find it for you.  Or that an online careers test will tell you correctly.  That’s a common trap of thought that holds so many people back.  And there are other things that get in your way too….

Avoid This Approach

My concern is that there’s plenty of weak advice out there on the internet. There are short articles that skim over what careers planning is all about.  They offer things like ‘10 Things to Think About..” or similar.  I worry that people take these 10 things and think that they are embarking on an adequate careers planning process.  You’re absolutely going to need to dig much deeper than this.  These articles are not sufficient.

Who am I to Tell You This?

Having gone through the process myself sufficiently (I know I did it sufficiently because I’ve been working in my ideal career for 6 years now, getting steadily better and better at it as I go along because of the drive I earned myself by making the right choices), I know what it takes.  And as I said, I also know that it was thoroughly enjoyable.  How can thinking about the things you’re good at, the things that people respect you for, the things that people admire you for, the things that you can do to help other people with, the things you could do that you love that you’d get paid to do……how can this not be enjoyable??

The Right Way

It takes time, a small amount of money (to buy the right resources - I sincerely doubt you’ll dig up adequate resrources online for free - sure you’ll find tasters and teasers that may provide value and set the ball rolling, but I genuinely believe that if you want to take the process seriously, you need to be prepared to exchange value for value) and of course it takes an amount of your effort or energy (although I’ve already said, you get this back as you’re doing it!)

My advice to you for now, is to stop procrastinating and to jump straight in to a sensible methodical planning process.  You just need your brain, your eyes, and pen and paper.  And I strongly suggest you start off with the book ‘The Pathfinder’ which you can see on the right of this screen.  Check out the customer reviews on Amazon to be sure (it’s consistently spoken highly of), order yourself a copy, and get going with it.

And stop the slow, tedious, lengthy process of just posting comments in online forums that say, ‘please help me’.  Because you attract people’s OPINIONS when you do that.  And opinions are just that….opinions.  The problem is, opinions often get acted upon and lead the wrong way.  The best people to get advice from in any field or area in business or in life in general, are people who already have achieved what it is you’re trying to achieve. They have experienced what works.  The opinion or advice of anyone advising you on your career path who are not themselves working in their ideal career, should be taken with a pinch of salt.  As should online careers tests.  You need to create peace of mind in yourself that you’re making the right career decision, and you don’t get that from opinions.  You get that from facts and figures, a sensible, logical careers planning process.  Don’t say I didn’t tell you!

Checkout ‘The Pathfinder’ (to the right of your screen).  It doesn’t tell you what to do for a career, it tells you how to find out what to do.…It’s a small investment with perhaps the biggest return you’ll ever get in your life.