Have you been forced into a career shift with the changing world we live in? Maybe forced is too harsh of a word and you gracefully slid into a new role that you were silently hoping someone would give you permission to take on? Do you feel like a cat on their seventh life and you are sick of landing on your feet AGAIN, just to start over and smile at those who ask about your job saying "I'm agile! I'm always learning!" when deep down inside you are soul tired? The reality is the shakeup in our current employment environment isn't a one size fits all puzzle and it's not going to be a one size fits all solution to helping someone find a great employer/ employee fit and help the worker shortage! One thing that this post-pandemic environment has given us, is the ability to separate the wheat from the chaff, the go-getters from the sit back and wait-ers. If you have your eye on a role that you don't currently have, you can most likely find it in a search right now since there are SO MANY openings. A new location, a new work model, better benefits, a different job altogether. What you need to be prepared for is to negotiate on your own behalf so that you get the job you can KEEP! This is the same idea for anyone looking to move internally in a company. Know what you can negotiate for. There is a very real amount of pain in worker shortage and that pain is experienced by the employer. What are you going to do to alleviate that pain by you following through with what you are asking for? How are you exacerbating that pain if they don't give you what you are asking for? (Trust me when you ask for a raise, most of the time it is cheaper to give you a raise than it is to hire a second person, and right now, they can't afford to lose you OR find another person so ask for the raise ;)) Here's the caveat... don't be an empty suit. If you are asking for a raise, know you are worth that raise and be able to speak to why. If you are proposing a virtual office space 3 days a week, be prepared to speak to your productivity over the virtual space and the benefit to the company when you work from home, not in the office. If you can't follow through with what you are proposing, eventually there will be someone who was initially a sit back and wait-er who will slide into your role that you built and they speak to do better. Don't let someone else benefit from your creativity and drive. When debriefing negotiations for a change in role or interviews, very often it gets lost on at least one party that both sides need to ask questions and have their questions answered. This sounds so extremely elementary in theory, however, all too often someone says "what questions do you have?" and the answer is "All good!" or "I think we covered it all." We are talking about a change in the thing that you do in life more than anything else in life! WORK! You spend time with these people more than your family, you are physically in that location more than you are home, it is how you pay your bills and get a portion of your needs met, and "I think we covered it all" is how you choose to seal that envelope?! There has to always be something so that it is a two-way discussion. Even if your question is "If you were in my shoes, what do you think I should be asking?" or "What would you choose when you were at this stage in your career?" You will learn a lot about someone that you are about to engage with long-term based on their previous decision-making processes and how they got where they are today. This goes for the interviewer too. Occasionally we do see interviewers who are just so excited to talk all about the opportunities that await and leave the room so excited, later to realize it was them that did all the talking and the hire was mediocre at best. The reality is that no one who has already walked a path you may find yourself on, will judge you as you walk it. They already know that it is bumpy and where the potholes are..... Where the roots of trees are sticking up and where the shady spots are to rest. That path may not be well worn, but those before you walked it and remember the path well. Those that may be casting judgment on you haven't seen that path yet or at all. They may even fear that path because it is unknown and they are unprepared to be on that path right now. So blaze your trail. Do your work and do it authentically, because no one else can combine your skills, your experiences, and your life to create a unique employee asset like yourself! Be a part of #TheBigShift and one day you can tell the story about when..... https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:ugcPost:6821487426100359168?updateEntityUrn=urn%3Ali%3Afs_feedUpdate%3A%28*%2Curn%3Ali%3AugcPost%3A6821487426100359168%29