You may know someone like Alan.

Dealing with the consequences of redundancy

After building a highly successful career in IT where he had worked at a senior level for some of the UK's largest companies, Alan had recently been made redundant. At the age of 34 he found himself out of work for the first time in his professional life.

Alan still had a huge amount of ambition left in him but was aware that to get the job that he really wanted he would need to think & act very differently. After all, competition among IT professionals is extremely intense. Furthermore, Alan had a second child on the way which meant a bigger house was going to be needed.  However, Alan really didn't understand exactly what he would need to change and how he would make these changes. 

"I've always been an ambitious person & have worked hard to build my career. However, after being made redundant, I realised that simply jumping back onto the corporate ladder just wasn't for me. I needed to take some time to understand more about what I really wanted from my career & the actions I must  take to be successful". Alan  - Senior IT Professional, South East England.

Searching for answers

While surfing the Internet one evening while he was looking for interesting jobs, Alan stumbled across an old news article which was entitled "The Brand Called You".

As he read through the article the answers which he'd been seeking started to fall into place. It became clear to Alan that in order to channel his ambition most effectively he would need to start thinking of himself as a brand. Just like McDonalds, Coca Cola or Starbucks, Alan could create a brand profile that would help him to stand out from all the other IT professionals in his marketplace. He also realised that if he could develop his personal brand intelligently it would help to push new & exciting opportunities towards him.

After some further searching on the Internet, Alan came across Matrix Business Coaching who specialise in using Personal Branding to help ambitious professionals re-position & re-energise their careers.

Is Personal Branding the answer?

After an initial discussion with the company founder Alex Reid, Alan was able to take a closer look at Matrix's Personal Branding system which lies at the core of their business. The system focuses on addressing the four key challenges which stop many professionals from developing happy and successful careers.

• Lack of clarity about their core values, goals, strengths & weaknesses. In a nut shell, the things that make them unique
• Difficulty communicating concisely what makes them different from everyone else
• Lack of clarity about who they should be marketing their skills to & where, when & how they should be doing this.
• Improving the consistency of their communications so that everyone around them including friends, family, employers, clients & associates understand exactly what makes them unique. 
  

Matrix helped Alan to answer the many questions which he had about our Personal Branding system & our process of coaching clients through the system. Being a natural sceptic, Alan had reservations about the value for money he would get from coaching. This is only natural & at Matrix we don't try to "hard sell" coaching. Instead we take time to educate the prospective client on how a coach works with a client to get tangible results.

In Alan's case it started to make more sense when Matrix used the analogy of a golf coach who helps an ambitious amateur golfer to take several shots of his handicap. As a keen golfer who liked nothing better than competing in the weekly Medal competition on a Saturday morning, Alan could understand how applying coaching to his career development would accelerate his performance.

At this point Alan got very enthusiastic about working with Matrix Business Coaching.

Working with Matrix Business Coaching

At Matrix we understand that while enthusiasm is a great quality, it doesn't always guarantee a harmonious coaching relationship. Consequently, we invest a significant amount of time at the outset in understanding the prospective client's motivations for approaching us. It's important that we clearly understand what the professional wants as an outcome from the coaching sessions. Only once we're 100% happy and the client is 100% will we sign a formal coaching agreement.

Once Alan had completed the required pre-coaching profile questionnaire supplied by Matrix, he then entered into a formal coaching agreement. In Alan's case he committed to Matrix's 12 session, "Personal Branding for Professionals" program. Each session lasted for 40 minutes and was delivered over the phone in order to fit in with his other commitments.

Results

At the end of Alan's 12 week coaching program with Matrix, Alan had made great strides in the following areas:

• Identifying his core values & how he was going to align these with his next career move.
• Understanding the skills and experience that really made him different from other senior IT professionals.
• Creating a personal marketing communications activity plan focusing specifically on using Internet Marketing strategies to build his personal brand.
• Starting to turn his extensive IT knowledge & experience into an e-book which he could use to promote himself to prospective employees. 
  

Alan also understood that the last 12 weeks were only the beginning of his journey of transformation. His positive experience of coaching as a means to fast tracking the achievement of his goals means that he will most likely come back to Matrix has and when the need arises.


"The coaching program with Matrix has opened my eyes to the possibilities that a strong personal brand can bring to your career. It goes much deeper than just looking at how you dress. I've discovered new levels of purpose and motivation that were definetly lacking in the months prior to being made redundant". Alan - Senior IT Professional, South East England