Contributed by Caroline Ceniza-Levine of SixFigureStart
As my last 15 years of experience has been specialized (contract negotiations, mortgage loans, and asset and mortgage backed securities), how do you successfully convey that your past experience and skills set is transferable to a new industry, such as health care?
How to translate the details is the crux of the career changer’s mission. You have worked in an area with a specific set of protocols and a unique language, and you now need to position this in a way that someone else accustomed to a different set of protocols and a different language will understand. Your ability to do this determines if you will be able to change careers and at what salary and title.
Start with the basic word translation. We all have seen the funny ways big companies get into trouble when they market outside their home country and get the ad slogan translated wrong. So we realize that translating is more than just getting the right words. However, it’s a good start, so go line by line in your resume and cover letter and networking pitch and pull out any words or phrases that specifically reference your initial area, and replace them with words or phrases that reference the new area or are at least generic. So in the above example, mortgage loans become transactions.
Capture the essence, not the protocols. You can’t wordsmith everything of course, and you don’t want to omit that you securitized financial products if that was a big part of your job. But many would-be career changers drown their new prospects in very technical descriptions of their work environments and responsibilities, instead of highlighting what they achieved and what they did functionally in a way that the new prospect can appreciate. I am currently coaching a reporter transitioning to PR. She needs to highlight her media experience generally, not reporting specifically because PR people relate to media not reporting. She needs to talk about researching, developing and promoting stories and profiles because that is the essence of what she did, even if her colleagues would say she is covering beats.
Actively make the leap. Don’t make the prospective employer have to translate at all. After you tell them about your work with mortgages, give a specific example of what you could do in a hospital or insurance setting. Use their language, their protocols as you detail what you might bring to the table. You will change before their eyes from a mortgage person to a healthcare person. You will seem like their peer, and they will then be comfortable and excited to hire you. When you don’t make the effort to translate the details for the new sector you are targeting, you are effectively asking prospective employers to take you on your word. If all they see in your resume and pitch and dialogue is wedded to your old career, you are not giving them any tangible proof that you have changed. Think of the old boyfriend with past behavior that you no longer want who says, “Trust me, I can change.” Would you take him? Would you hire you?
Caroline Ceniza-Levine is co-founder of SixFigureStart (www.sixfigurestart.com), a career coaching firm comprised exclusively of former Fortune 500 recruiters. Prior to launching SixFigureStart, Caroline recruited for Accenture, Booz Allen, Citigroup, Disney, Time Inc, and others. Email me at caroline@sixfigurestart.com and ask how you can attend a free SixFigureStart group coaching teleclass.
100 Women in Hedge Funds: Dinner Gathering during Milken Global Conference
NewsThe Los Angeles members of 100WHF have organized a dinner to come together after the Milken Global Conference, held here in Beverly Hills.
After hearing 500 CEOs from the world’s top-tier companies, senior elected and appointed foreign and U.S.
government officials, high-level executives in the American and foreign capital markets, global academic experts and leaders in education, health care and philanthropy, continue the discussions of the financial crisis and the global economy, as well as on government’s growing role in business and our lives over dinner and cocktails.
Seating is very limited. Register here
The Women’s Recession
Newsby Sima Matthes (New York City)
A recent article in the Financial Times stated that men held 80% of jobs lost in this recession. This would seem to indiate that, across the board, men seem to be suffering the most from the current economic crisis. But contrast this to the findings set forth in a stunning report released by PricewaterhouseCoopers in the UK on April 15th in which they found a disproportionate effect of the recession on women in banking. According to Ruth Sealy, the Deputy Director of the International Centre for Women Business Leaders at Cranfield School of Management, who was quoted in the Times Online commenting on the report, “There is a sense among … women in banking that this is very much a gendered recession.”
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2nd Annual Women in Project Management Conference
NewsWhere women gather to seek the best of themselves and every woman experiences herself as the leader she was meant to be!
Speakers include:
Genevieve Bos – Keynote Speaker
Secrets and Insights from America’s Most Successful Women in Business
Patricia Shafer
Powerful & Connected:
An Interactive Workshop for Women Transforming Their Work Environment
Sandra Yancey
Relationship Networking
Register here
Women in IP Breakfast Series – Recent Developments in Patent Law
NewsRegistration:
NYC Bar Member Price : $15.00 Register
Non City Bar Member Price : $25.00 RegisterThis is the second breakfast of a four-part series on Women in Intellectual Property. This program will feature leading law-firm and in-house patent law practitioners who will discuss their experiences as attorneys involved in patent litigation, prosecution and counseling, with a focus on the impact of recent significant decisions on patent lawyers and their clients.
Moderator:
CAREN KHOO, Assistant General Counsel, IP Litigation, VerizonSpeakers:
LEORA BEN-AMI, Kaye Scholer LLP; LESLIE MORIOKA, White & Case LLP
Ask-A-Recruiter: The Language of Career Change
Ask A RecruiterAs my last 15 years of experience has been specialized (contract negotiations, mortgage loans, and asset and mortgage backed securities), how do you successfully convey that your past experience and skills set is transferable to a new industry, such as health care?
How to translate the details is the crux of the career changer’s mission. You have worked in an area with a specific set of protocols and a unique language, and you now need to position this in a way that someone else accustomed to a different set of protocols and a different language will understand. Your ability to do this determines if you will be able to change careers and at what salary and title.
Start with the basic word translation. We all have seen the funny ways big companies get into trouble when they market outside their home country and get the ad slogan translated wrong. So we realize that translating is more than just getting the right words. However, it’s a good start, so go line by line in your resume and cover letter and networking pitch and pull out any words or phrases that specifically reference your initial area, and replace them with words or phrases that reference the new area or are at least generic. So in the above example, mortgage loans become transactions.
Capture the essence, not the protocols. You can’t wordsmith everything of course, and you don’t want to omit that you securitized financial products if that was a big part of your job. But many would-be career changers drown their new prospects in very technical descriptions of their work environments and responsibilities, instead of highlighting what they achieved and what they did functionally in a way that the new prospect can appreciate. I am currently coaching a reporter transitioning to PR. She needs to highlight her media experience generally, not reporting specifically because PR people relate to media not reporting. She needs to talk about researching, developing and promoting stories and profiles because that is the essence of what she did, even if her colleagues would say she is covering beats.
Actively make the leap. Don’t make the prospective employer have to translate at all. After you tell them about your work with mortgages, give a specific example of what you could do in a hospital or insurance setting. Use their language, their protocols as you detail what you might bring to the table. You will change before their eyes from a mortgage person to a healthcare person. You will seem like their peer, and they will then be comfortable and excited to hire you. When you don’t make the effort to translate the details for the new sector you are targeting, you are effectively asking prospective employers to take you on your word. If all they see in your resume and pitch and dialogue is wedded to your old career, you are not giving them any tangible proof that you have changed. Think of the old boyfriend with past behavior that you no longer want who says, “Trust me, I can change.” Would you take him? Would you hire you?
Caroline Ceniza-Levine is co-founder of SixFigureStart (www.sixfigurestart.com), a career coaching firm comprised exclusively of former Fortune 500 recruiters. Prior to launching SixFigureStart, Caroline recruited for Accenture, Booz Allen, Citigroup, Disney, Time Inc, and others. Email me at caroline@sixfigurestart.com and ask how you can attend a free SixFigureStart group coaching teleclass.
Voices from the Field: a day in the life of a Microfinance Institution CEO
NewsYou are invited to WAM-NY’s ongoing Voices from the Field series and High Water Women Foundation’s preview of its Master Class in Microfinance™ series, with this panel discussion about what banking looks like from the perspective of 4 MFI CEOs. Come join us for a global panel of women microfinance CEOs and Managing Directors as they discuss what it is like to successfully manage, lead, and start up an MFI, and the challenges they and their organizations face in these demanding times.
Register on-line at: https://www.
Building Networks to Develop Leadership Skills and Opportunities
NewsRegistration:
NYC Bar Member Price : $40.00 Register
Non City Bar Member Price : $50.00 RegisterTime and again, women attorneys express the need for greater opportunities to network with other women and to develop and earn recognition for their leadership skills. Join us for cocktails, during which we will introduce you to other women lawyers through an informal networking event designed to both expand your professional network and develop your leadership skills.
Sponsored by:
Committee on Women in the Profession, Subcommittee on Leadership Development Registration is necessary. Please register online
Reinventing Ourselves: Envision Your Perfect Career
NewsPlease join 100 Women in Hedge Funds as our panelists’ diverse expertise will provide sage advice for key aspects of career search in the hedge fund industry. They will help you learn how to find your own path by taking stock in yourself.
Plan your next steps, whatever the stage of your career – neophyte, in transition or career changer. Hear how these experts open doors to opportunity as they discuss:-How to make outplacement work for you.
-How professional coaching and practical guidance can help you move to the next stage in your career.
-How to make your resume stand out.
-How to market your qualifications and increase your value.
Register here
100 Women in Hedge Funds: Paris Networking Event During EuroHedge Conference
NewsPlease join 100 Women in Hedge Funds for informal drinks, the first evening of the Paris EuroHedge conference, in a lovely French Gallerie.
Equal Pay Day, April 28th
Money TalksToday is Equal Pay Day. The day, always a Tuesday in April, represents how much longer a woman must work, on average, to earn as much as a man earned the previous year. And even though President Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act in January, the work is not done. The Ledbetter Act reversed a Supreme Court ruling from 2007 so that women can file discrimination claims 180 days from their last discriminatory paycheck, not 180 days from their employer’s initial decision to pay them less. But women still earn, on average, only .78 cents for every dollar a man earns.
As we have previoiusly reported, there is more legislation pending designed to help fight the wage gap. The Paycheck Fairness Act is pending in the Senate. This legislation will, among other things, deter wage discrimination by prohibiting retaliation against workers who inquire about employers’ wage practices or disclose their own wages.
But can legislation really help close the wage gap? After all, The Equal Pay Act of 1963 made wage discrimination on the basis of sex illegal 46 years ago. And yet pay discrimination still occurs at alarming rates.
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