Two Heads Are Better Than One


What does the phrase “Two heads are better than one” mean? Sometimes it simply means sharing your thoughts and feelings with someone you trust who can give you an external perspective. From a career point of view in my experience, people appreciate a second opinion. They value the professional advice they receive from experts. In any case, personally or professionally there is much truth to this adage.

When you sign on as a client at the Barrett Group, however, we would rewrite this wisdom. We would say “Seven heads are better than One” because each client is supported by a team of at least six people. What do they all do? Let’s explore these people and their roles.

The process begins with the Targeting step that we call the Clarity Program©.

Suppose Scott Henderson is your Clarity Coach. Scott is one of about a dozen certified and highly experienced such coaches on our team. Scott will meet with you by phone or on Zoom. He will first walk you through your psychographic profile. This profile identifies behaviors that have helped you versus those that may have hindered you. Together you come to a consensus about new or enhanced self-awareness to help further your career.

Next Scott will help you delve into your current life experiences. This is the foundation of your professional life—be it your health, financial, social, or career circumstances. You will identify where you feel comfortable and where you feel the need of change. Lastly, he will help you channel this change into a long range plan that begins with a vision of where you want to be in, say, five years, and ends with a roadmap for how to get there.

Here’s what one satisfied client had to say after his Clarity Coaching experience:

“[The] Clarity coaching program was a good exercise. Makes you dig deep inside yourself and identify where you really are at this point in your life, likes, dislikes, areas of improvement and what is really important to you…”

May 2020

Next, Scott hands off to the Career Consultant who will help you pilot the next four stages:

  • Packaging
  • Market Access
  • Preparation and
  • On-boarding

Let’s assume that you work with Julie Mathern. Julie is one of about a dozen experienced professional career consultants on our team.

Career change requires homework. 

So Julie will ask you to fill out a number of documents including your Personal Survey to capture at a very granular level all the data we will need to help you progress your career. The first part of this process typically requires about eight weeks or so before you truly enter the market. Among other activities, we completely rework your resume during this stage, separating the wheat from the chaff.

This is when the Resume Writer comes in, another key member of the team. Jamie Chapman, for example, is one of our resume writers who has written thousands of resumes to minimize clients being excluded by algorithms when they apply to on-line jobs and to help them generally stand out from the crowd. The resume changes can be drastic or subtle but will help you highlight your achievements and demonstrate transferability or experience. Julie will also guide you in polishing your LinkedIn profile so that it is highly coherent with the outcome of your Clarity Program© and resume.

During the Market Access stage of your career change process, Julie will guide you in identifying ideal target audiences in either or all of the published market, the unpublished market, and the recruiter market, applying different techniques to connect with decision makers. Along the way, market research plays a key role, and here, for example, Christina Taylor, one of our Research Experts has proven invaluable in going above and beyond to identify these target audiences. For example, Christina had been pulling multiple lists for one client who had struggled up to that point. Now he has two interviews with targeted decision makers. To quote his most recent email:

“This is directly from Christina’s efforts, I have both these opportunities because of Barrett. Please tell Christina how much I appreciate it!”

By the way, clients are people, too, and that means they have ups and downs.

Sometimes they feel disheartened because they did not succeed in some small way. That is where our Client Concierge, Waffles Natusch, comes in. Waffles has been doing this work now for 285 years and has seen it all. He knows when to hold your hand or to give you a gentle shove—just the right medicine at the right time in your process.

As clients move into the Preparation stage, we help them to anticipate critical questions, to address gaps in their resumes, and especially to demonstrate the transferability of their experience and achievements to any new industry, company, or role. This involves careful preparation and mock interviews under the watchful eye of the career consultant. When the offers start to flow, Julie may bring in the Negotiation Coach, for example, Dan Resendes, who has been doing this work now for seventeen years and applies the Barrett Group’s list of more than 100 proven offer enhancement options to almost invariably increase the value of the offer during the negotiation.

Lastly, you will move into the On-boarding stage.

During this stage, you have accepted an offer and are preparing to hit the ground running. Julie, your career consultant, will guide you in research and reflection on your new employer’s organization, culture, the inter-dependency between functions, and other potential pitfalls that might slow or derail your entry into the company and your subsequent success. This is more than just going in with your eyes open. It can even lead to a detailed 100-day plan if that’s what is required to help clients succeed.

That’s only six heads, you say? Well, that’s true. The seventh head is yours, of course.

Together, we move mountains! That’s why we are able to point to 38 happily landed executive clients in the past ten weeks—in the middle of a pandemic and economic crisis.

What are you waiting for?

Peter Irish
CEO
The Barrett Group

 

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