Want To Make a Career Change Happen? Use The 4N Approach

The bulk of my career coaching clients are seriously contemplating or undergoing career change. They want to enter a new job function and/or industry, but the process to getting there feels like a big mystery.

I get that.

Soon after I started working with college students in 2003, I found that career change was a reality for most of them within a few years of graduating, but helping these alumni navigate that change felt fraught and foreign. I’d help them get their resumes in tip-top shape, and use their strong liberal arts skills to write beautiful cover letters and then…crickets. They’d get absolutely no response to many, many, (many!) applications.

It was frustrating for both of us, and is a big reason I started learning coaching methods and, years later, underwent certification in the Pivot method to career change with author Jenny Blake.

Jenny’s approach is phenomenal, and I use her four stages (plant, scan, pilot, launch) in every single coaching session I hold.

While working with clients using the Pivot method, I found that clients and I kept revisiting the same four overarching short-term goals within Jenny’s structure - and the more I encouraged focus on these four short-term goals in particular, the more quickly and effectively they made it to their big career change goal.

These four short-term goals are the focus of my latest piece for Forbes Careers, The Four Ns Of Career Change: How To Make Them Work For You., where I lay out all my secrets to an effective and efficient career change strategy.

Have you had success getting these “4 Ns” to work for you? I’d love to hear your stories. Hit me up at rfrasert@gmail.com any time.