Define Brand
Your career search isn’t just about getting a job – it’s about finding happiness, satisfaction and balance in the process of climbing the ladder to the top. The only way to succeed with the right balance is to make sure you match your skills, knowledge, and interests with your vocational decisions. Use our assessment offerings to leverage your strengths and learn how to compensate for your weaknesses.
Assess Personality & Interests
We believe for people to ultimately be fulfilled in their career they must be doing what interests them and what matches their personal style. We offer assessments that will allow you to uncover traits and competencies as part of establishing a solid professional brand. Allow us to uncover traits that help you understand more about yourself and examine your behavior in a specific environment or within a specific situation. This new level of understanding will allow you to transfer that knowledge to your career search. Careers Done Write will review your career history and interests to help you determine appropriate opportunities based on your skill set and level in the workplace to facilitate a productive search.
Catalog Skills & Accomplishments
As part of establishing your goals CDW will help you take an accurate inventory of your skills, prioritize your skills according to your level of interest, and assess your proficiencies to help you understand your true competencies.
Align Career Options & Roadmap
Unsure of how to focus your career? Let one of our certified career coaches work with you to identify opportunities that will help you meet your personal and professional goals.
Define Your Professional Brand
A resume and cover letter doesn’t tell your whole story any more. Careers Done Write will help you build the brand of “you” – coupling written documents with a strategy for ensuring your professional brand shines.
Prepare Assets
Now that you have identified your career path and have mapped out your route to the top – it is time to get to work. Just having a résumé isn’t enough anymore. You need a comprehensive marketing presence online and offline. Your results-driven résumé should be complemented by an executive bio, a set of communication tools that include cover letters, thank you notes, letters of introductions and recommendations, and an online / social media presence. Below are the most critical documents that professionals and executives should have in their arsenal.
Professional Résumé / Curriculum Vitae
Résumés and curriculum vitae (CV) have always been the primary document providing an overview of a candidate’s accomplishments and qualifications for a job. A well-prepared résumé will substantially reduce the time for you to obtain interviews leading to your next offer of employment. Executives and professionals considering multiple career options should maintain multiple versions of their resume to appeal to the hiring managers of these different directions.
Executive Bios
Most professionals and executives today have many needs for an overview of their career in a few paragraphs including speaking engagement announcements, leadership profiles on corporate websites and introductions to clients. This overview must be streamlined to enable you to present the full scope of your credentials in an easily digestible form.
Networking & Cover Letters
One of the most critical activities in your job search is written communication with your target contacts – whether a networking contact, a human resources representative or a hiring manager. It is important to pay extra attention to in the crafting introduction letters, cover letters, thank you letters, resignation letters, etc.
Digital Resume
As the business world continues to integrate digital methods to its business processes, the transition resume continues to evolve as well. In additional to having a resume version specifically formatted for online job applications, most executives and professionals are beginning to maintain resumes that can be found online at a website address. Solutions like CareerFlair provide the perfect combination of easy to use and rich capabilities to create a compelling version of your online resume.
Social Media Profiles
Ninety (90%) of the executives we speak to are using LinkedIn, Twitter and/or Facebook specifically to network for professional reasons. It is essential for any professional or executive today to not only connect with colleagues online, but also use these networks to perform at their current role and find their next career opportunity. Critical to this is a compelling and consistent profile on the appropriate social networks and an understanding of how to use these tools effectively to build and cultivate your professional network.
Online Portfolios & Professional Websites
Many entrepreneurs, freelancers and dynamic executives take their professional marketing to the next level by creating an online portfolio or professional overview website. This can be highly effective in communicating achievements in their career in a visual and concrete way. This also provides and virally shareable asset that can be passed quickly without asking to the right hiring manager.
Network & Search
You have developed your “brand” – now what? In the past you might have sent out a stack of resumes and sat at home watching Oprah waiting for the calls to roll in. No more – the playing field has changed. With Careers Done Write you will be equipped with the most effective careers search techniques to drive immediate success. Learn how to use myriad networking strategies and allow us to provide you with the research and data to give you a leg up with your search.
Identify Target Companies
We have our finger on the pulse of the market. The staff of Careers Done Write continuously conducts market research to provide you with the most relevant and up to date information as part of facilitating your search.
Identifying Hiring Managers
We have our finger on the pulse of the market. The staff of Careers Done Write continuously conducts market research to provide you with the most relevant and up to date information as part of facilitating your search.
Using Job Boards & Applying Online
There are all kinds of job boards – big and small, general or specific, industry and functional and you need to know where to go and how to use them all to maximize their utility. Careers Done Write will craft your strategy for how to use which boards and when.
Working with Recruiters
Given the level of anonymity of the internet, it is more important than ever to extend your network to include recruiters. In addition to the network of recruiters we know, we will also give you strategies to establish and nurture those relationships to your advantage. With a strong network of recruiters, Careers Done Write will help you advance your search and interview prospects by giving you industry contacts.
Offline Networking
One of the best things you can do for your search is to avail yourself of affiliations with industry, academic, and professional networking groups. Let Careers Done Write guide you regarding the groups that are appropriate for you and how to immediately get started.
Use LinkedIn & Network Online
For many of you online networking is a real challenge. How do you engage people online? CDW’s expertise of online networking sites and strategies is unsurpassed. We can help you establish a message and a plan to interact with your peers and solidify viable relationships.
Interview & Investigate
It is not uncommon these days for candidates to go through five or more interviews before getting an offer. Do poorly on any of them and you fall out of contention. Let Careers Done Write help you prepare. Behavioral interviews, “Google” questions, “Microsoft” questions, case interviews, whatever they may throw at you – we can make sure you are prepared.
Prepare for Interviews
If you are uncomfortable with interviewing or just haven’t had a lot of practice, the experts at Careers Done Write can help you develop your natural style to present your qualifications with confidence. Candidates often think about the tough interview questions and how to best answer them. At CDW we can help you formulate the best and most appropriate responses within the framework of your own personal situation.
Take Informational Interviews
Preparing for that all important informational interview? Do not pass up an opportunity to present your qualifications! Let CDW prepare your strategy to turn your “informational” interview to an “informed” and productive discussion about what you can do for a potential hiring manager.
Practice Interviewing
The best way to prepare for an interview is to do one! Careers Done Write is prepared to conduct a mock interview with you as part of giving you the comfort level for the real thing. We also analyze and help you refine your answers so your natural style shines through. Behavioral based interviewing is touted as providing a more objective set of facts to make employment decisions than other interviewing methods. If you need to prepare for a challenging interview, CDW can provide you with the tools and knowledge to skillfully pass this type of interview with ease.
Interview your Interviewer
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Evaluate & Negotiate
The old adage goes, “A successful negotiation is one in which each party feels slighted.” Our negotiation experts will school you on a wide variety of techniques of negotiation utilizing structural, strategic, process, integrative and behavioral analyses to get you everything you want and more. Never again will you walk away asking yourself whether you could have done better.
Evaluate and compare offers
One of the toughest challenges candidates face is analyzing compensation needs. CDW’s expertise in this area is unsurpassed; we can provide you with information regarding direct and indirect compensation to help you make an informed decision.
Research compensation
You only have one chance to justify your value. CDW can give you compelling reasons and rationales to drive successful outcomes during the process of presenting your worth to a potential hiring manager.
Prepare for salary negotiation
Your negotiation strategy is critical to ensuring you are compensated in a manner in accordance with your level of expertise. CDW can prepare you to negotiate and secure a higher salary that is aligned with your skills and abilities.
Negotiate your title, responsibility and team
One of the things candidates forget when negotiating is title and support! In addition to your compensation, CDW can help you get a title that is commensurate with your experience and support staff to drive your success in a new role.
Engage & Achieve
Managing continuous career development requires strategic planning and analysis. Complacency is the death knell of your career. With Careers Done Write as your partner, you will have a roadmap to allow you to achieve ongoing growth. Meet your career challenges with confidence and purpose to move up the ladder of success.
Transition smoothly
If you are interested in transitioning to a new industry or role – something that is a departure from your traditional employment path, CDW has helped thousands of seekers make successful transitions to new roles. Whether it’s a new beginning or a transition, we have the knowledge and resources to guide you.
Engage smartly
If you need a true partner that is committed to your ongoing success look no further. CDW will serve as your career resource throughout your entire career lifecycle, providing you with the information and tools to help you navigate the challenging career landscape.
Regularly assess your career progress
Senior leaders need sounding boards, too. Careers Done Write understands the challenges faced by people in the corner office and can provide you with an unbiased, objective opinion and guidance to make informed decisions.
