There’s something that can cut deep into the benefit of changing jobs.
Before you actually look for new employment, make sure you understand the benefits you currently have, like health insurance, and how those will be affected. Health insurance is a complicated thing so you have to be aware of how a job change changes your status. In a recent survey, almost a quarter of the respondents said that their insurance benefits and out-of-pocket expenses worsened their financial situation more than anticipated.
That survey is cited in an article at the NAIC (National Association of Insurance Commissioners) consumer site, Insure U. Job Seekers Beware: Prospective employer’s financial offer is about more than salary is part of some very helpful resources on Job Change that would be good to keep in mind.
NAIC Recommendations For Job Changers
To avoid surprises, consider the following before saying goodbye to a current employer:
See if your current group life insurance plan has a conversion privilege. If so, you may have up to 31 days after leaving your job to apply for coverage.
Find out if you can convert current group disability coverage into a portable disability plan that stays with you from job to job.
If your job change includes a move, check your homeowners’ policy to make sure personal possessions are covered in-transit. If not, consider a trip transit or floater policy.
Insurance rates and coverage vary greatly from state to state. Before a move across state lines, contact your state insurance department so you know what to expect.
Before accepting a new job, compare your current health plan with plans offered to assure the available mix of deductibles, co-pays and coinsurance will cost-effectively meet your needs.
Find out if your new employer has a mandatory waiting period before health insurance coverage takes effect. If so, consider a short-term plan through new health insurance exchanges to cover the gap. More than 10% of NAIC survey respondents said their overall financial situation was worsened by issues related to “the effective date of new health insurance coverage.”
If you have children and anticipate a coverage gap, you may also look into government-sponsored programs such as Children’s Health Insurance Plans (CHIP). These plans may provide coverage at low or no cost.
Finally, if you’re thinking of starting your own business and plan to use your personal car to make deliveries or visit clients, consider business auto coverage. If you’re involved in an accident while conducting these tasks, most personal auto policies won’t cover the losses.
One More Thing To Think About
Before you decide to search for a different job, get acquainted with all the job search resources on our site. You don’t have to explore each one, but the more you know about what you are getting into, the better prepared you will be for making that switch. Something as elementary as health insurance gets missed by many in the promise of a bigger paycheck, so plan carefully.
Well, it’s happened again. The relentless wheel of history has rolled into another season, and that’s actually a pretty positive thing because every new season is a great reason to look at what you are doing, decide what needs to change, and set some strategic goals that will get you where you want to be.
Look At What You Are Doing
It doesn’t matter if we are talking about your job search, your workplace, or the balance between your home and career. Everyone needs to look at what they are currently doing and see the good points along with the bad. Write it down and celebrate what is working for you, even if there are some scary situations you need to deal with soon.
Decide What Needs To Change
Even a small change can make a big difference in how your workday goes, and doing some updates in your LinkedIn profile or resume will be good investments that give profitable returns. Perhaps deciding that each child does one activity at a time will give everyone some margin in their lives. You don’t need to change everything (particularly if it’s working well) but changing something around is like a breath of fresh air.
Set Some Strategic Goals
Where do you want to be ten years from now? How about next year? Are there steps that can begin to get you there? Many times a career coach can help you figure out which steps will get you there, and what will be a sidetrack you regret. If you are not sure what you need to be doing now in order to reach your goals, get some advice from people who have made it to where you’d like to be. Even if you decide not to take their advice, it gives you a better idea of what is involved.
A change in the season is always fun because it’s an excuse to mix it up a little bit, but it also is an excellent reason to revamp your strategies for success.
LinkedIn is one of the most important places to have an online presence because it is currently the top networking site for professionals of many industries. This is where a potential employer will look you up to see if you are a good fit for the job opening and where many people find the connections that bring them a career. It’s a very valuable resource and worth taking the time to make sure your LinkedIn profile is complete and contemporary.
If your profile is out of date or incomplete, how is being on this vital networking site doing you any good? In fact, an out of date, incomplete profile will probably be doing your career harm because it reflects badly on you. So make the investment and get that profile in shape because good things will happen as a result.
5 Ways To Start Updating Your LinkedIn Profile
Turn off the notifications while you are editing. Nobody but you needs to know that you are updating your profile until you are ready to present it in complete perfection. Do you want to know when others are tweaking their stuff? I didn’t think so.
Be very, very picky about your profile pic. There are plenty of professional photographers or good amateurs who can do the job and give you a polished, professional photograph for your polished, professional profile. No selfies can match that.
Keywords are how the search engine finds you. That means your profile has to use the words you want to be found by. Put those keywords in your headline, your summary, and the various sections in a natural manner.
Add personal details. You are a unique individual and this is one place you can show that individuality with volunteer work, publications, and more. Look at all the possible additions to your profile and consider them carefully.
Create a custom URL that is easy to remember; it is an easy process on the right side of the page when you are editing your profile. Keep your name and lose the numbers and look like the professional you are becoming.
LinkedIn Profile Development is an ongoing process because you should be adding to your completed profile regularly as you progress in your career. It’s much easier to update a professional profile once you have done the foundation work.
Many times, someone will look at the price of having a professional resume writer develop their resume and wonder if it is worth the cost. There’s a way to put the cost of a professional resume service into perspective: How much will it cost you to stay unemployed and searching for a job?
Say you are hoping to find a job that pays $52,000 a year to make this exercise easy. That means your pay before taxes is $1,000 because there are 52 weeks in a year. If you have been looking for a job and nobody is calling you back, your resume usually has a lot to do with that, so your current resume and job search methods have already cost you however many weeks you’ve been using them.
Now take a look at the prices of the various a la carte services or packages. Look at those prices in terms of the salary you are hoping to earn and the time you have been searching for a job — and think how improving your resume or distribution will improve your chances of finding that job. It may cost you less than one day’s worth of future salary to have your current resume critiqued and know how to improve it. It could be less than a week of your future salary to have a professional resume written.
There’s no guarantee that you’ll get hired with a professionally written resume, but you almost certainly will get called in for an interview, and the rest is up to you. It’s costing you quite a bit in lost wages to use an inferior resume that is not getting results.
Criticism is kind of painful, because nobody likes to be wrong. But without constructive criticism we’d all be in a fantasy world assuming everything is fine and wondering why things aren’t happening the way we imagined they would. Particularly when it comes to your career, criticism is a valuable tool. But that tool has to be in the hands of somebody who knows how to use it for your benefit.
A Professional Critique of Your Resume/Cover Letter Does 3 Things
Professional Perspective — A Professional Resume/Cover Letter Critique should be just that: professional. You want someone who is going to look at your cover letter and resume with the same perspective that potential employers, recruiters, and HR people will be looking at them. After all, these are the people who you are hoping to impress with that cover letter and resume, so it makes sense to write them with that goal in mind.
Experienced Advice — It isn’t that helpful to find out what’s wrong with your cover letter or resume if you don’t know how to fix it. A resume critique from Professional Resume Services includes concrete steps you can take to make improvements and provides insights on why these steps are suggested.
Immediate Return on Investment — As soon as you get your critique back, it includes a plan of action that you can immediately implement to get your career search back on track. The 3-4 page report catalogs every detail that needs to be improved and how to go about that improvement.
It doesn’t cost as much as you’d spend on a big date night, but it is worth every penny. A resume/cover letter critique from Professional Resume Services will give you an understanding of the problems and a way to fix those problems, making this criticism something you’ll appreciate getting.
It happens to everybody: You make a mistake about something during your important interview. It my the way you dressed for the occasion and you went too formal or too casual. It might be addressing your interviewer by the wrong name. There are lots of ways a candidate can make a mistake, and it’s true that a mistake can possibly cost you the job. It’s also true that the way you respond to your own mistakes can be what makes the interview successful and gets you the job.
Mistakes Can Be Opportunities
Everyone makes mistakes, but those who are confident enough to admit their mistake and correct it appropriately are valuable in any workplace. If you walk into the interview without having done anything to hone your interview skills or research the company, then your mistakes will be more like learning opportunities and use the interview as a reminder to be prepared next time. But a mistake by an otherwise qualified candidate is an excellent opportunity to display how you will be on the job.
It’s helpful to remember that most interviewers will give you cues for correcting something. If you are not obsessing about being dressed too formally or whatever your mistake was, you can pick up on those cues and correct it. It shows that you are able to see past your discomfort and effectively respond to a problem.
This is a skill that everybody needs. When you get defensive and defeated about making a mistake, it’s making that mistake worse because you are amplifying and distorting it instead of seeing that mistake as another reminder that you are human like the rest of us. It’s a skill because it has to be learned, and you learn from your mistakes. If you make a mistake in your interview, that’s an opportunity. Learn from it.
When someone has been been promoted often enough, they know what it takes to advance a career. Marillyn Hewson, who is Chairman, President and CEO of Lockheed Martin shares from her experience in 5 Habits That Can Lead to a Promotion.
There are advantages to staying with a company and working your way up the ladder, but these habits will be good ones to develop no matter where you are working in the next decade or so. Here is what she looks for and encourages:
Look for ways to solve problems on the job. Anticipating, identifying, and creatively addressing issues shows leadership potential. You can share your suggestions and let your boss decide what to do with them; even if your ideas go unused, your efforts will be noticed.
Accept assignments that stretch you. Meeting those challenges gives you more opportunities.
Keep track of your results. When there’s a hard number to point to, it should be on your resume. Recording the evidence of your efforts validates your work experience when applying for another position.
Understand your company’s leadership values and look for ways to develop those qualities.
Success is a team sport — every leader is part of a group that works together for a greater good. Work on making your workplace a better place to work and your efforts will be appreciated.
Marillyn Hewson speaks from her position as someone who has worked through many levels and positions at Lockheed Martin. She knows what your higher-ups are looking for. She says,
“Senior leaders spend a lot of their time focused on developing talent, building succession plans, and identifying who is ready to take on a leadership role. The success of an organization rides on doing this effectively. By practicing these five habits, you could be at top-of-mind when the next leadership position opens up.”
Do you ever feel like “Casual Friday” in the summer months is like looking at an artistic photo that’s supposed to mean something? The problem is, everyone interprets that meaning in a slightly different way. Business Casual is tricky anyway (the link is to all the blogs on this site that address the subject), but summer heat and vacation mode seem to make “casual” more important than “business” for a lot of us. The problem is that the wrong kind of casual keeps you from being taken seriously.
Break The Code In Your Workplace
It doesn’t really matter what anybody else says about how to dress in the workplace. Really. What matters to you is the written and unwritten dress code that is being used right now where you actually work. So start with the written code — ask for a copy of the official “how to dress for this workplace” dress code that Human Resources should have on paper.
Now take that paper home and pull out everything in your wardrobe that works within the guidelines. Some people even keep their work wardrobe separate from their non-work wardrobe so that mornings are easier on business days. Figure out a basic “work uniform” that will be the foundation of what you wear all the time. Many suggest switching out only one thing on casual days to lighten up the look but stay professional.
Having the written code down lets you evaluate the unwritten code you see around you at work. Notice who is showing a lot of skin, and who is wearing flip flops — what positions do these people hold? Unless you work at a scuba diving shop on the beach, it’s probably not your boss. Every company has a culture, and the clothes we wear reflect the culture. But every company also has a hierarchy and the clothes we wear send signals about where we see ourselves in that hierarchy. If you want to break the code for your workplace, pay attention to what your supervisors and the higher-ups are wearing. You’ll start to see that those who are taken seriously at their job take their wardrobe — even summertime casual Fridays — seriously, too.
