Project you

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Maybe you once aspired to be a graphic artist but find yourself editing commercials that bore you, or are a frustrated journalist who got sidetracked into marketing. Perhaps you’re “in transition” (careerspeak for between jobs), and know you don’t want to pursue your old path but doubt you’re good at much else. Whether you’re considering a new job or a whole new field, the first step in any transformation involves a frank assessment of your skills and experience—and a freewheeling look at the things you’re good at and like doing. You’ll likely find you’ve got a lot more going for you than you thought. But arriving at this conclusion—and actually believing it—will take some work.

Think positive
You could start with psychiatrist Sudpeeta Varma’s three-session course “Career Self-Esteem: The Power of Positive Thinking,” at NYU’s School of Continuing and Professional Studies (NYU-SCPS) (212-998-7200, scps.nyu.edu), which is designed to tackle career dissatisfaction, promote self-awareness and, in the process, kick-start change. “The way you think fundamentally affects how you behave and how you feel,” says Varma, clinical assistant professor in psychiatry at the NYU Langone School of Medicine. She helps participants to embrace their accomplishments, identify the correlation of different personality types with job suitability and, using cognitive behavioral therapy, recognize and alter negative thought patterns. “You may not be able to change your circumstances,” she says, “but you can always change your attitude.”

Look inward
A trio of one-off workshops at the 92nd Street Y (212-415-5500, 92y.org) this fall are designed to shake you up—in a good way. Life coach Sharon Good’s “What to Do When You Don’t Know What to Do” is primarily for those who have lost their job and are confused about their next step. “I hope to open people’s eyes to what’s possible, and not necessarily what’s practical,” Good says. Fear, she says, tends to shortcut the process of moving forward: People can get trapped in their own thought patterns and limit their options because of it. Her hope is to get people thinking in new directions—ideally outside the realm of what they believed was possible.

The aim of “Career Match: Connecting Who You Are With What You’ll Love to Do,” taught by coach, author and consultant Shoya Zichy, is in some ways the opposite of Good’s approach: It’s all about narrowing your possibilities to the ones that best suit you. Her Color Q assessment, based on the teachings of Jung and the Myers & Briggs model, identifies which of 16 personality types you have. From there you explore a wealth of topics—from the type of work environment and culture that best suit you and what kind of boss you’ll work best with to the implications of your attitude toward money.

She urges participants interested in changing careers to recall their life’s peak experiences, then ask themselves what they were doing at the time of each and why they felt it was of value. “If you write those things down, there’s a good chance you’ll find the thread tying them together,” she says. “And that will tell you a lot.”

The third workshop, “Learning to Take Risks,” is taught by Judith Gruber, a holistic psychotherapist and coach who has taught courses in the so-called Law of Attraction. Its purpose is to get participants to overcome their uncertainty about the future and their inability to move forward by making a leap of faith—in themselves. “We create a safety space in which participants articulate changes they want to make, be it in a job or a relationship,” she says. “Once we become conscious of these things we can integrate them into our lives and make them happen.” Much of taking action, she says, has to do with letting go of false or unfulfilled expectations and accentuating all you’ve got going for you.

Be creative
A common workplace complaint is that one’s creativity is stifled or going untapped. For those who know they want to get into a more creative field, 92Y Tribeca’s three-session “New Career: Pursuing Your Creative Passion” is ideal. Instructor Marc Scoleri, director of career services at the Art Institute of New York City, aims to help you develop a career vision and come up with the game plan you’ll need to make it happen. He provides concrete means of action every step of the way, including assessing the need to return to school and how to go about talking to people in the industry that interests you.

The School of Visual Arts’ (schoolofvisualarts.edu/ce, 212-592-2000) 12-session “How to Think Your Way to a Job,” taught by advertising pros Tony Romeo and Neal Gomberg, investigates the power of ideas and the criticality of how they’re communicated. “How many times have you seen an ad and thought, I can come up with a better idea than that? This is about learning to think things through: coming up with the best way to communicate the idea of an idea,” says Tony Romeo, group creative director and stand-up comic. It’s designed for creative professionals—writers, artists, performers—with an interest in advertising, but can benefit anyone who wants to harness the power of media.

Rebrand yourself
Once you’ve clarified your direction and felt the motivation, it’s time to seriously market yourself. If the whole concept of branding is a mystery, you may want to start with the New School’s “Imaging: Communication in the Era of the Brand” (212-229-8903, newschool.edu), an in-depth look at the power of imaging taught by Deanne Dunning that explores how to “define, develop and communicate a marketable personality” without forsaking soul. It explores the difference between branding and imaging (“Branding is about selling; imaging is about telling,” Dunning says) and looks at information intake mechanisms—how the brain responds to and is shaped by the 2,000 to 4,000 messages it gets every day—in hopes of tapping into your uncensored creativity.

A vital yet often overlooked step in moving you forward is to unbundle your skill set—that is, to extract your particular skills from the ways (or jobs) in which you used them—by revamping your résumé. Pull out an old version and it’s probably a chronological list of job descriptions that convey a sense of what you did where and when. Yawn! The employer (or client) in today’s highly volatile job market doesn’t care about your past so much as what you bring to the table right now—that is, the skills you’ve developed and what you’ve actually accomplished on the job.

“There is an art to this,” says résumé expert Karen Palevsky. “It’s a marketing tool, so it’s got to showcase what’s unique about you.” Her NYU-SCPS course “Resume Strategies for Career and Life Transitions” can help you identify those nuggets by deconstructing your résumé into statements that reveal your problem-solving abilities (skills) and the creative solutions (a.k.a. achievements) you came up with. Tedious as it may sound, the process will validate your work, demonstrate your qualifications—and amply lift your spirits.

Exploit new technology
As for the nitty-gritty of learning the skills you’ll need to succeed with your pitch, 92Y Tribeca’s “Six Self-Promotion Strategies” provides a good overview of key networking channels and self-branding tools, from informational interviews and creating an online presence to working with recruiters. However new Web-based social networks are, they’re growing by the day and are being used with increasing frequency by job-seekers and hiring professionals alike. The NYU-SCPS workshop “Effectively Utilizing Social Networking Tools 101” is a valuable intro, but its three-session course “Online Tools for Career Advancement” reveals the minutiae of Facebook and LinkedIn features and offers tips on how to create and maintain a strong online profile, practice online etiquette, and how to best utilize the sites when searching for job opportunities. A more esoteric look at these Web resources that may put the online trend into perspective can be found in the New School’s “Social Media Mashup,” which explores the impact these new media are having on the way we communicate with and build communities.

One further way to extend your presence on the Web is, of course, to create a website of your own. Whether you’re a cabinetmaker or a comedian, a website is your best online billboard. SVA offers two 12-session courses this fall—one in the morning, one at night—that teach the software Dreamweaver, a product that essentially does HTML coding for you. “It will take you about one-quarter the time it would take you to do the same thing hand-coding,” says instructor Sharon Fleischman. You’ll leave with a website of your own design that can be made live via a Web host for as little as $5 a month, she says. Fleischman also teaches a two-weekend course in Dreamweaver that’ll give you the tools to pull off the same feat on your own.

Get out there
Despite the importance of online resources, good old-fashioned face-to-face networking is still vital. Share your plan with friends, attend as many gatherings as you can and set up informational interviews—even with people you’ve never met. (Be sure whomever you’re meeting with knows you’re looking for advice, not a job—and keep it under 30 minutes.) All those connections should eventually pay off: Studies have shown that about 70 percent of newly landed jobs come as a result of people knowing people who’ve heard of or have a position to fill.

Promote yourself shamelessly
“I believe that most people stink at interviewing,” says Jeff Griffith, a creative director and the instructor of NYU-SCPS’s four-session “Now, Get the Job: How to Interview and Impress Everyone Along the Way.” But it turns out interviewing is just the tip of the iceberg: What people really have a hard time with is talking about themselves, period. “Whether you’re at a wedding, a movie premiere or a get-together, you may only have 30 seconds to present yourself to someone,” he says. “And most people aren’t prepared for that.” Enter Griffith’s self-proclaimed “interview boot camp,” which not only covers such rudiments as interviewing etiquette and topics to avoid (such as job perks and salary), but has people talk about themselves so much it becomes second nature. (Visual artists may want to head to Griffith’s course at SVA instead: “Interviews: The Do List” covers similar ground but is tailored to those with a portfolio in hand.)

If a boot camp sounds intimidating, it may be because you’re an introvert. (Half of all people are.) In that case, check out “Interview Skills for Introverts” at the 92nd Street Y. Instructor Nancy Ancowitz, business communication coach and author of the forthcoming book Self-Promotion for Introverts, due out in October, knows what it’s like. “You’re an introvert if you enjoy downtime, think deeply before you act, prefer being around small groups of people and are good working independently,” says Ancowitz. Introverts also have a marked tendency to undersell themselves. A common pitfall during interviews is that they try to be something they are not, such as breezy or chatty. Ancowitz stresses that introverts need to focus on their “own quiet strengths”—being good listeners and great researchers, avoiding tangents—and practice talking about their expertise (which they tend to have a lot of> in specific terms. “Once you’re attuned to your strengths, you’ll be better able to adapt to extroverts,” she says. “After all, they’re everywhere. And we all need each other, right?”

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