Bill Vick :: Thinking Home Business | Practical Tips For People Who Work From Home

Talking about Boomers Next Step

Last Thursday, US time – Friday my time – on my Des Walsh & Friends show on BlogTalkRadio I had a great chat with my friend and colleague Bill Vick.

You can listen to the episode – or download it to listen later – at this link Bill Vick on Des Walsh & Friends.

Although separated by thousands of miles of Pacific Ocean, Bill and I have worked together for a few years now. It is a mark of how business has changed in recent years that we have been able to collaborate, co-author books and now begin planning for an ambitious new project, without ever having met face to face and without spending a vast amount of money on communications. In fact, most of our communication is via email and Skype, which means there is no cost to either of us, apart from the regular internet connection charges we incur anyway.

We have produced, with publisher Happy About, the book LinkedIn for Recruiting, which went through two editions and which we finally “retired”: the e-book version of the second edition is now available free of charge and can be downloaded from the link in the sidebar here. We also published, independently, the audiobook – DVD and e-book – Big Biller, based on a series of interviews with highly successful recruiters and other industry leaders.

And now, as we discussed in last week’s BlogTalkRadio session, we are about to launch our Boomers Next Step project, to help boomers meet new challenges, especially in terms of career and business.

Bill, never a man to let the grass grow under his feet, has in fact already got the project going, with a stack of resources and a series of fascinating video interviews on the Boomers Next Step project site.

We’ll be making some specific announcements over the next couple of weeks. If you would like to know more and be kept in the loop, check out the Contact page on Boomers Next Step: if you give us your details there or get the RSS feed link, we will be able to keep you posted.

We’re both excited about this project and I’ll endeavour to provide the occasional update here on Thinking Home Business too.

Alexandra Levit, careers columnist WSJ Many Baby Boomers are looking, voluntarily or involuntarily, at career change: Wall Street Journal careers columnist Alexandra Levit has some sage advice to offer.

Several years ago a friend of mine lost his job and was obviously feeling devastated. In his fifties, he clearly lacked confidence in being able to be employed again.

I knew he had a lot of skills and a lot of experience which could be applied effectively in a range of situations, some no doubt beyond the confines of the career path he had pursued for some years.

I tried, unsuccessfully I believe, to get him to do an inventory of his skills.

The good part of the story is that after a fairly short interval he found a job in the field he had worked in for many years.

But that might not have happened and at the back of my mind was the nagging question of whether I could have done more to help him realise what he had to offer, other than what might appear on a standard resume.

The answer came today when I was watching and listening to an interview by my colleague Bill Vick with Wall Street Journal columnist Alexandra Levit who specialises in writing about careers and has authored several books, including New Job, New You: A Guide to Reinventing Yourself in a Bright New Career

Responding to a question from Bill, about Baby Boomers who are looking at career change options, Alexandra said she encourages people to sit down and do a self assessment. ”Boomers, like everyone” she says, “should take the time to do a self-assessment.”

They should write down (or type) what are their values, how do they prefer to work..” And then, she says, they need to make an inventory of their skills. Work out what they have accumulated that is transferable to other areas. The idea is to “build a profile of themselves”, so they can see how they can transition easily to a field they might not have worked in previously.

So the inventory of one’s skills becomes part of an overall self-assessment.

The whole interview is a gem and I recommend it heartily to anyone looking at a career change or who knows someone who is doing so. It could make the difference between making a successful transition and getting stuck in the doldrums, or worse.