6 Professional Practices For Job and Career Searching

We all aim to present ourselves as professional at a job interview. We like to think we’re professional in doing our job. Other people will soon tell us if we’re not. Or we won’t get the job or stay in one. So it makes sense for our professional development to become a habit, something we continue to sustain throughout our working lives.

Yet, I have met many people in their 40s and 50s who entered the job market and bounced around aimlessly from job to job, wondering ‘how did I end up here?’ 20 years later. Part of the reason is they did not take their personal and professional development seriously enough at an early age. It didn’t become a habit.

So how can young people avoid that pitfall?

Understand and commit to lifelong learning. Start building good habits. Show employers your professionalism before, during and after getting a job.

Be professional, be employable

Continuing Professional Development (CPD) is integral to professions such as law, accounting and engineering. Formal, planned and recorded as a way of demonstrating you maintain set standards in your chosen field and retaining your status with a professional body.

It is now used widely as colloquial shorthand for keeping up-to-date with work-related subjects. Informal, spontaneous and disposable as a way of demonstrating you are on the ball and interested. Technology and social media have opened up CPD to everyone, anytime and any place.

A recent HBR article revealed a lack of research in the US into what professionalism meant in other countries. The authors suggested the American model was based on devotion to work and the Protestant work ethic. The Industrial Revolution shaped its meaning. The Social Revolution is shaping it again. Smart working with impact AND meaningful.

The word professional has shifted from a noun to an adjective and a verb. For example, employers want young people to show they get what being professional is before employing them. They demand evidence from work experience and gaining the basics before they arrive.

So being professional has become synonymous with being employable. Professionalism sounds less like jargon than employability.

Yet, being employable is not just about equipping young people for their first job when they leave education.

It’s also about fitting in and staying in a job when you get one.

Once you are in a job, expect to contribute and add value to the company’s performance straight away. In other words, maintain your professionalism.

Personal and professional development is relevant for your whole working life. Sustaining your professionalism involves lifelong learning if you have several careers and many jobs.

Whatever your generation, know your unique offer to employers. Package it in a way that reflects your professional identity. Re-invent yourself on occasions. Learn new skills or risk losing your job.

Learn to leap

Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn, calls this permanent beta. A permanent temporary state where you test yourself out like new software. Uncomfortable for some, a thrilling ride for others. You turn your talents into strengths through constant practice. You learn from your experiences. You equip yourself to survive and thrive in uncertainty and through change.

I call that learning to leap.

Our lifelong ability to develop personally and professionally.

Think of it as learning to navigate your boat on the ocean whatever the sea conditions. You have to deal with the next wave because it's immediately in front of you (the next job), but leave it at that and you'll sink. So learning to leap is about building a robust boat and learning how to sail with skill.

The key is being open to change and continuous personal growth. How you approach your job and career search reflects on your professionalism as much as what you do when you succeed.

“The decision about how professional you are may be made long before you get into the interview room” says Recruiter.com

A virtuous circle for success

Follow these 6 professional practices at any life stage if you want to learn to leap towards a meaningful future of your choice:

1. Explore you as a unique person (who am I?), potential career interests and what it might be like in a specific job.
2. Reflect on what makes you tick, your strengths and weaknesses, what you like doing and don’t like doing, how you feel when you are flying high and in what circumstances, what you believe in and what is important to you in the world (your 'why?').
3. Capture your reflections, experiences (good and bad) and how you respond to them to build up a knowledge bank (your what?) and wisdom bank (your so what?) about you and how you operate at your best.
4. Translate into the employer’s language for their specific organisation, industry or sector to build your professional identity (what you want to be known for).
5. Position yourself beforehand and when you leave through online and offline networking to build your professional reputation (how you want to be perceived)..
6. Sell yourself by attracting employers towards you and giving more than taking; be magnetic.

What does professionalism mean to you today?

(Images: author photos)

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If you liked this post, please share it and click the FOLLOW button above to get more! Or consider subscribing to my mailing list at www.learningtoleap.co.uk

David Shindler (@David_Shindler) is an independent coach, associate with several consultancies, founder of The Employability Hub (resources for students and graduates), author of Learning to Leap: a guide to being more employable and co-author with Mark Babbitt of 21 Century Internships. He is committed to promoting lifelong personal and professional development and to tackling youth unemployment. He works with young people and professionals in education and business.

To read more of David's work - visit the Learning to Leap blog.

And check out his recent published article on LinkedIn:

6 Warning Signs Of Risking Your Well Being With An Employer