Gain Skills…Move Ahead

Following is a two-part article on continuous career development for relocation professionals. Part one focuses on identifying the gap between the skills you have and the skills you need to remain employable in the future. Part two offers practical steps for learning and developing critical career skills.

Part One
Imagine being called into a meeting with your boss, who says, "We have decided to outsource your area to an outside company. Unfortunately, we will no longer need your services, effective immediately."

Once you regain your composure from the news, and assuming that you need to find another source of income, what alternatives do you have for continuing your career? Which other career positions are you ready to move into?

The relocation industry, like so many others, is undergoing rapid change. Companies increasingly are developing a web of suppliers, customers, and outsourcing partners to provide specific expertise at the right time, instead of managing all aspects of business internally. Service providers are merging with or acquiring other firms to enhance their competitive position in the market.

The technology revolution is creating new opportunities for efficiency and customization in all aspects of the business. And the increasing globalization of the workplace means international assignments and relocations will increasingly become a part of career paths. These trends are causing many relocation professionals to take a closer look at how they manage their careers.

"Without a well thought-out career development plan, many professionals react to a job-ending notice with shock and panic. They may try to replace their old job with the exact same job at another company, if it is available. Often it is not," said Laura Herring, SCRP, president and CEO of The IMPACT Group, a global employee/spouse/ family relocation assistance firm based in St. Louis, MO.

"A more effective approach is to continuously develop career skills that can readily transfer to new employment situations that have more opportunity for career growth and self-fulfillment," said Herring.

Your Career Skills Gap
A primary purpose of continuous career development is to enhance your ability to remain employable and perform effectively in the workplace. By analyzing the difference between your current skill set and the skill set you will need to perform effectively in the future, you will identify your career skill gap. This gap can be defined as the difference between the skills you have and the skills you need to remain employable and satisfied with your career in your future.

"Remaining flexible and adaptable to the changes taking place within the workplace is a sure way to remain employable," says Sandy Palmer, SCRP, manager of relocation and recruiting services, Cargill, Inc., Minneapolis, MN.

She should know. Having begun her career as a licensed Realtor, she has managed her career through a series of increasingly responsible positions, including managing a department for a third-party relocation firm, managing corporate relocation services, and now managing the recruiting services center within the selection department for Cargill.

"Staying aware of the skills you have and the skills you need to develop has been a most important lesson for me," she said. "Staying current through continuous professional development, recognizing changing marketplace conditions and what they mean to your company will enable you to identify opportunities to add value to the company. Often this means moving out of your comfort zone, but it is worth it in the end."

Self-assessment is a Critical First Step
"Take advantage of career assessment opportunities to identify your strongest skills and the implications they have for the next steps in your career," said Michele Hermansen, national accounts director, Nexstar Financial Corporation, St. Louis, MO.

Before reinventing her career, Hermansen took self-assessment classes and formed trusting relationships within a mentor group that provided her with honest feedback about her blind spots.

"After 16 years in corporate human resources, I felt like I wasn't learning anything new. I was tired of being in a staff role and wanted to be in a position where my income was directly related to my contribution. Everything pointed to sales, yet I never thought of myself as a sales professional.

"The feedback from others convinced me that I was very effective at selling benefit plans to employees, and ideas to others throughout the organization, as long as I believed in what I was selling. I've loved every minute since I made the move to sales.

"I have learned that there is not one 'right' formula for top performance or for personal fulfillment in sales or any job. It's cultivating the right combination of knowledge, experience, and individuality. Being true to myself has helped me be consistently successful, rather than striving to be what I perceived to be the 'mold' of the perfect HR manager, or relocation service provider."

Caught up in the many pressing day-to-day duties, many relocation professionals have not taken the time to identify personal career goals and values, make an inventory of their skill set, or obtain feedback from key internal or external customers. Yet a proactive assessment of these areas is critical for remaining competitive in the marketplace.

Identifying key skills can be as simple as keeping a journal or log of daily activities, noting key activities that are most enjoyable and the skills involved. Determining which skills and strengths you most enjoy using is important because those are the ones that should be central to your next job.

A more in-depth approach to skills identification involves identifying your accomplishments or how you have added value to your employers, then analyzing each one to identify the specific knowledge, skills, and abilities used to make it happen.

One Web site that is particularly useful for self-assessment can be found at www.gsia.cmu.edu/afs/andrew/gsia/coc/student/assess.html. The site, from the Graduate School of Industrial Administration at Carnegie Mellon University, provides several questions worth answering about one's career. Additional pages such as "Your Ideal Job Description" and "Your Ideal Job Components" help bring focus.

An excellent site to help with skills assessment is the "Corporate Competency Profile for Middle Managers of the Government of Canada," at http://learnet.gc.ca/eng/comcentr/manage/building/profieng.htm. This site also helps with the preparation of personal action, learning, and development plan based on the results of the self-assessment, which can include feedback from several persons (360 feedback evaluation).

A similar site is the "Directory of Competencies," from the University of Ottawa, which provides behavioral descriptions for 17 key competency areas.

To expand awareness of blind spots, seek out feedback from others about your skill strengths and the areas you still need to develop. Many companies have implemented 360-degree feedback systems to provide this type of feedback on specific skills or competencies that are most valued within the organization. Soliciting feedback from others on how they perceive your capabilities, skills, style, and performance adds the important ingredient of objectivity to the assessment process.

Skills Sought by Employers
"Dedication to proactively offering solutions, taking personal responsibility for the customer, and a passion for achieving more than expected," are keys to success, said Ron Whitmill, senior vice president of Relocation, Pleasanton, CA.

Whitmill said he hires people because they are able to focus on customer service; have strong written and verbal communication skills; and are able to make sound decisions because of strong problem-solving skills.

"It is critical to be able to deal with novel situations and apply learning from previous experience to obtain successful results for the customer," said Whitmill.

Said Palmer, "A strong 'can-do, will-do' attitude combined with skills such as critical thinking, being able to innovate, knowing how to market ideas, being flexible, being an early adopter and champion of change, communication and interpersonal skills, the ability to use technology effectively, self-confidence, and ability to take reasonable risks, are the things we look for when making hiring decisions."

As a company's business and workers become increasingly globalized, employers increasingly will seek knowledge of international business practices and labor laws, multicultural sensitivity, and multiple languages.

One expert guide that lists the key skills sought by organizations is "The Value-Added employee: 32 Skills to Make Yourself Irresistible to Any Company," by Edward Cripe and Richard Mansfield. The authors have more than 50 years of experience in corporate job analysis, skills assessment and development and provide a step-by-step plan for identifying and developing the skills employers most desire.

Transferable skills combined with the right mix of specialty skills will enable you to readily transfer into a new career position if and when the time comes to do so.

Specialty skills are those learned in the various functional areas of an organization. They include in-depth knowledge and skills in some aspects of business such as sales, employee benefits, employee relocation, training, information systems, purchasing, or other job areas directly related to the core business of the employer. Sometimes they can be learned on the job; more often, employers seek at least a basic level of specialty skills for professional level positions.

Specialty skills combined with transferable ones provide a higher "market value." Those who can quickly add value to the employer's core business have the highest market value and are more competitive for available positions. Those who are still learning how to add value have a lower market value and a less competitive skill set.

Career changers, having more to learn, often have less market value and must make an extraordinary effort to demonstrate the potential to add quickly value to the potential employer's business.

Anticipating Your Future Employability
Because learning new skills takes time, it is important to plan ahead and identify the types of skills that will make you most employable in your future. Beverly Kaye, President, Career Systems International, Sherman Oaks, CA, suggests asking yourself and trusted colleagues the following types of questions:

· How do shifts in the market and workplace apply to you? · What opportunities do those shifts create for you?
· How can you prepare yourself for the possibilities of the future?
· What trends in the marketplace, your field, and your organization's culture are most likely to affect your current career plan?
· Which doors will open to you in the next five years and which will close?
· What actions do you need to take to be ready for the opening doors so that you can walk away without regret from the closing doors?
It is critical to stay current and be aware of what new skills are needed to remain most employable. Tune in to formal and informal information channels that relate to your work, especially in the areas of competition, customer feedback, technological developments, economic influences, legislation, and globalization. Discover where you can use your strongest, most enjoyed skills to meet a need or solve an important problem with potential employers.

One traditional resource is the "Occupational Outlook Handbook," at http://stats.bls.gov/ocohome.htm. It provides trends for 300 of the most popular jobs in the United States. Fast Company (See www.fastcompany .com) magazine and Business2.0 (See www.business2.com) are two popular periodicals for staying current with the new economy.

When spotting critical changes on the horizon, it is most important to undertake learning projects to prepare yourself to deal with them. In fact, the ability to learn effectively is one of the most important skills to have in this world in which knowledge doubles every five years. Continual self-directed learning is a critical skill for continued employability.

Part Two Gain Skills...Move Ahead-Relocating Your Skill Set
What have you learned today that enables you to perform better in your role? How about last week-what did you learn then?

If you were asked these questions by the president of your company, how would you respond? Could you point out the specific ways you have learned to perform your job differently or better to meet the needs of your current and future customers? In today's organizations, we are expected to per form our roles and learn from them simultaneously.

For organizations and individuals alike, being on the competitive edge means being on the learning edge. It is not enough to simply perform as we did yesterday or last week. We also must constantly build "performance capability." Increasingly, our degree or professionalism is determined largely by our ability to quickly acquire new information and synthesize it with our experience to create new, higher-value solutions to the practical problems of customers and clients.

Being a continuous learner is at the heart of effective career development. But, being a continuous learner is not synonymous with attending formal training programs or even simply acquiring information. Although formal training programs can play a role in career development, the most meaningful learning and development almost always takes place during the day-to-day tasks of a job. In fact, a key measure of learning is how well the acquired knowledge is applied and converted into improved performance.

Experience Counts
Learning from experience may occur in a variety of ways. It often occurs intuitively, not consciously. It also may occur incidentally, when something unexpected happens. Typically, such learning happens in hindsight. Reflecting on past experiences and reaching conclusions about them for future application is another method of learning.

The most effective approach to learning from experience is intentional. It includes both proactive planning to learn from an anticipated experience and reflection afterward to determine what was learned.

Intentional learning from day-to-day experiences is a powerful way to accelerate the learning required for performance improvement. Some individual benefits of intentional learning include:
· attaining a greater sense of self-confidence, purpose, and work satisfaction;
· remaining employable as opposed to being shuffled aside or fired;
· keeping ahead of and attuned to change;
· adding an interesting, extra learning dimension to all that you do
· establishing core skills of effective leaders; and
· performing more effectively and creatively in your role.

Learning from the Daily Routine
If learning to learn is the key career development skill for the 21st century worker, what can you do to become more effective and efficient at learning-especially with regard to improving our day-to-day work performance?

Following are ways to enhance your ability to learn from your job:

· Determine what you want to learn from your experience. Focus on one or, at most, two knowledge or skill development goals at a time that will help you improve your performance the most. Consider what you would like to learn as well as what would be most valuable to you individually and to your company. Ask yourself, "Where will development add the greatest value to my performance?" "What is important to my company's success in the next two years?" Consider your motivations and what you want to learn: "What capability do I most want to develop?" Be as clear as possible about what you want to learn and why-then follow your interests.

· Learning goals may include improving your current assignment, preparing for a future assignment, remaining competitive, improving your people and leadership skills, increasing your awareness of personal blind spots, and keeping yourself on the cutting-edge of your profession.

· To keep your learning project manageable and on track, develop a specific plan of action to achieve your goal or sub-goal in three months or less. Your learning plan should identify a target date for achieving the goal and the resources you will need and how you will obtain them. It also should address what barriers you anticipate and how you will address them, how to measure whether you have achieved the goal, and what benefits you and the organization can derive from the project.

· Identify where your learning can take place, and implement your developmental activities every day. Identify situations, people, or events that will be the targets of your learning.

· Commit to learn mindfully from your everyday experience. Brainstorm ways to make learning from experience a daily priority and identify learning opportunities each day. Make it a daily habit just like exercise. Create reminders that direct you toward developing the habit. Continually ask yourself, "What can I learn from this particular situation?" and "What have I learned in that particular situation today?" You may find it helpful to block out time in your schedule each day, week, and month to focus on your learning.

· Adopt a "beginner's mind" and decide that learning is equally important to knowing. Ask yourself, "How has a situation changed since the last time I encountered it?" or "What can I learn about it?" Be curious and ask lots of questions. Resist the temptation to mindlessly treat new situations like similar situations.

· Conduct a personal "knowledge audit" to determine what you need to learn, relearn, and unlearn. Think about where or how you learned information or skills. Did you learn from proven experts? Rigorously identify and challenge your assumptions and biases about a situation. When did you learn it? How current is it? How can you test your knowledge and understanding to see if it is current and accurate?

· Make it safe to make mistakes and learn from them. Remind yourself that you are learning and it is okay not to be perfect. Separate learning from performance by asking yourself, "What did I just learn?" instead of "How did I just do?" Think of your developmental activities as "experiments" with new approaches to tasks to learn what works and does not work. Ask others to allow you to learn, to be patient with your experiments and attempts to learn, and to allow you the freedom to make mistakes and learn from them.

· Understand the continuous process of learning from experience (doing something or being in a situation); then reflecting on the experience to identify what you can learn from it; and then applying what you learned to a new experience. Identify your strengths in each part of the process to understand your personal learning style.

· "STOP" to make time for reflection. One of the biggest barriers to learning from daily work experiences is the perceived lack of time. We are so busy doing that we do not step back and think about what we are doing. STOP is key to learning from experience. STOP stands for:
· Step back from the action of the experience;
· Think (reflect on the experience); · Organize your thoughts into a plan to improve performance; and
· Proceed (go back into the experience).

Tim Gallwey, author of "The Inner Game of Work," suggests using the STOP points at the beginning and end of each workday, at least once or twice during the day, and at the beginning and end of any work project.

· To gain perspective and self understanding as you learn on the job, you may want to keep a learning and development journal. In it you can write out the details of a situation, event, or other experience: What you did and why; what you learned; and how you will apply your learning to improve your performance next time. Your learning journal becomes a record of your experiments and enables you to track your progress and growth.

· Work with a professional coach. One increasingly popular strategy for many professionals is to employ a professional coach who can facilitate learning from experience. The coach's role essentially is to ask the kind of probing questions that help an individual learn more effectively from an experience. Professional coaches help individuals identify short- and long-term goals, raise awareness of assumptions and values, and overcome the personal barriers to learning that inevitably arise. Effective coaches can help an individual convert insights and ideas into new capabilities and stronger performance.

The Certified Relocation Professional Program (CRPTM) offered by ERC is another way to master extensive knowledge on the principles and practices of relocation.

Reprinted with permission of Mobility Magazine