Tag Archives: Coaching
On Wall Street, IT Career Change Now Blowing In The Wind
…but more like a class F5 tornado just swept through Manhattan.
Similar carnage occurring in London’s Square Mile.
Smart and able IT professionals are having to rapidly rethink careers, lives and even country of residence.
Take a look at this Mar 24 Bloomberg article by Lisa Kassenaar and Stephanie Baker. The title certainly grabs eyeballs: “Fired Doctor of Derivatives Waits To Cry As Finance Job Evaporate”
It’s a well written piece – with the subheadings from page one alone telling a particularly torrid and alarming story (e.g. Quarter-million jobs, Self-worth, No Callbacks, Transaction bubble, Nobu’s Retreat).
Tokyo IT (Expats) Hit Hard Too
According to my Tokyo headhunter contacts, most all the Foreign Banks are in lock down mode for IT hiring. Good people are being let go, sent overseas (Singapore is popular) or outsourced.
Interestingly, Lehman Japan seems to be a special case – as this Reuters article explains: “Tension Simmers at Nomura As Lehman Bonuses Loom”
Future Prognosis?
Here’s where I leave the professional pundits to do their thing – the end of the FIRE economy? Global Depression? The demise of over-leveraged, debt-based economies?
In all honesty, I don’t know. (And based on their track records so far, I doubt if most pundits and forecasters know either!) But things are changing, for sure.
Read on ONLY If You’re an IT Professional In Financial Services
My best guesstimate is…
12 months from now some of you will be doing just fine (bonus might be minuscule, though…).
Others will have unfortunately been fired despite endless hard work and “building the franchise” dedication.
And a minority will probably bite the bullet and leave Financial Services IT altogether – however, getting a remuneration haircut in the process. (I know how that feels.)
What can you constructively do in the meantime?
Take advantage of whatever training and courses are available via your employer and brush up your soft skills – as well as core technical skills, if you can.
And yes, do your job – to the best of your ability.
You might even freshen up your resume or hire a mid-career coach to review your options in a 100% private and confidential environment.
A Very Special Offer For Financial Services IT Professionals
I’ll be combining my career coaching skills and my recently launched resume writing service for a very special offer next week.
(Oct 2011 update: Both services are no longer available.)
As with previous offers, it’ll be limited to only a few people and available for just 48 hours. (That’s partly to prompt you into making a decision BUT also to help keep my schedule manageable. I can’t coach 50 people 1-to-1 in a month!)
Next Tuesday’s post (31 Mar) will have all the details.
(NOTE: It will be a password-protected post. Sign up for my email announcement list before Midnight Monday 30 March, New York time; and you’ll receive the password via email. The sign up box is on the right of this blog, below my photo.)
- Mark McClure
Coaching Feedback – Your Face Is Too Serious And Your Height Changes!
Yep! That’s the feedback I got tonight from an observer of my coaching style.
Along with about a dozen other coaches I was attending a meeting of the International Coaching Federation’s (ICF) Tokyo chapter. (That was a good turnout for a wet and cold Friday night.)
Get a bunch of coaches together and some are likely to start coaching each other – with consent, of course. I’d dread to see non-consensual coaching haha!
Anyway, we were doing some practice in one of the ICF’s 11 core coaching competencies. And tonight’s was all about “Setting The Foundation“.
In groups of three, we each had 1 minute(!) as a coach, a client and then as an observer. This was laser coaching at warp speed!
Unbeknown to our coaching groups at the time, there was another person who was observing the body language and facial expressions of each person while coaching.
She was taking notes too! And when our meeting organizer, Anthony, asked her to give helpful feedback on all of us… High drama ensued!
I’d no idea I would come across with a “majime-na kao” – or serious face 
But that’s what was seen and I’m grateful to know.
As far as “changing height” goes, it seems I was matching the height and posture of the practice client – yes, I know! In 60 seconds or less – must be all those NLP books haha!
As a freelancer I spend a lot of time on my own – with only a digital connection to writing and coaching clients. Yes, I can sometimes hear their voices. But it’s also very helpful (and a lot of fun!) to mix it up with a bunch of folks in person.
People who share a similar passion – and who really enjoy helping others improve.
Such is the beauty of coaching.
- Mark McClure
The Mid-Career Change Report Volume 1
There are now over 180 posts on this blog – many about mid-career change.
However I realize that few readers will have the time or patience to go rummaging through the archives looking for diamonds among others collecting digital dust.
Sooo…. what I’m going to do is put together “The Best Of MarkMcClureToday Volume 1” and release it as special report.
The report will (probably) be a digital product (Adobe Acrobat pdf) and include supporting exercises (hey! I’m a career coach!) and some audio mp3s – so you can listen on an iPod too.
Price point? About $15.
If you’d like a free, review copy when the product is ready, please leave a comment below describing your favorite post (and why) on this blog to date.
(And make sure your email address is correct!)
As an alternative, you can also let me know via my contact form.
- Mark McClure
PS – Like the digital candy sushi? The real thing’s yummy!
[March 2012 Update: There are now 280 posts and I guess it's time this project was started!]
The Samurai Writer Takes Up His Elance
If coaching has taught me anything, it’s that accountability is a formidable tool for personal change when wielded constructively. People often hire coaches to hold their proverbial feet to the fire – and that can be well worth the cost.
Another approach is to follow the ‘success crumbs’ of someone who’s already doing what interests you. That’s how I’m going about adding freelance writing to a mid-career change repertoire.
I signed up for Angela Booth’s “Sell Your Writing Online Now“, and for $37 per month I get a weekly lesson on a particular writing topic – along with some exercises. And usually a bonus file. (BTW – Studying Angela’s online marketing approach for this course is a great way to learn about outsourced passive income streams, ably run by her virtual assistant. But that’s a story for another blog!)