The seven habits of highly motivated re-inventers
By Maureen Futtner
Encore career, transition, reinvention. Do the corporate to nonprofit career switch!
One of the results of the financial industry’s excesses that led to the Great Recession was a sour taste for corporate employment among a number of people. It only makes sense that many who lost their jobs are looking to the nonprofit sector for purpose work.
After learning about the upcoming Nonprofit Career Conference in Oakland on June 29, I was reminded of someone who pitched me a blog idea on a group of job-seekers who recently left the corporate world and were seeking work in the 501(c)(3) sector.
I first met Celia Carrasco when she took my Marketing and Communications class for nonprofits at SFSU’s College of Extended Learning. Celia was pursuing the certificate in nonprofit management because she was committed to working for social good, after many years having worked for a large Bay Area corporation. Celia later followed up with me to let me know about an affinity group she was part of, as a result of her job search.
While receiving job transition coaching from San Francisco’s Lee Hecht Harrison firm, Celia and several other corporate “refugees” began meeting monthly to share leads, offer feedback and generally support one another through not only a difficult economy, but the challenging work and life change they were pursuing.
While the group’s members have a variety of work backgrounds and skill sets, they share a desire to put their knowledge-base and many years of experience to work for social causes. The group was kind enough to let me sit in on a recent session, where the members flexed their elevator pitch muscles and digested the wisdom of their year-long career transition and employment search.
Following are some highlights of their discussion. I’ll call these these the 7 habits of highly motivated re-inventers.
1. Form a group - otherwise you’ll feel like an outlier; you’re not. There are millions of job-seekers just like you who have done their time in the corporate sector and now are ready to devote their livelihood to improving their communities. Inquire with a local career coach to see if their company could help put a group together.
2. Join a nonprofit board - if you’ve never worked in the nonprofit sector, board service is a great way to cut your teeth and learn about the priorities of mission-driven work. And nonprofits need board members who have for-profit know-how and networks.
3. Join a committee - perhaps board service is too demanding on your time right now. You could simply join a committee. Maybe it’s a fundraising committee or an event committee. This work is a fabulous channel for networking and also demonstrates your work style, skills and commitment. Seeing a project through to the end will engender great respect and trust from the organization. Who knows? Might even lead to a job offer!
4. Include your nonprofit/volunteer/board/committee experience on your resume - don’t fear this; if you made a substantial contribution of time and energy to an organization, then you can absolutely count that among your experience - right up there with your job as project manager at X Corporation.
5. Acknowledge your awareness of nonprofit salaries - If you’re not getting offers because you believe nonprofits think you wouldn’t be satisfied with non-corporate salaries, don’t be afraid to stress your willingness to work within nonprofit compensation levels in order to contribute to the greater good.
6. Utilize Linked In - a recurring theme, all members of this group were working their LinkedIn profiles. One member connected with the founder of Kiva through LI. Anytime you apply for a position, you should be mining your LI connections to see if anyone has any connection whatsoever to your target organization.
7. Learn all you can about the nonprofit sector - whether it’s training in nonprofit management, attending workshops at the Foundation Center or subscribing to this blog, you should be sure to keep up on trends in the sector so you know what’s happening where, who’s making change, how this is impacting that and why!
Source: SF Examiner
