Emily and I met up at the Starbucks in the St. Laurent Centre. Emily is a military spouse with London, Halifax, Winnipeg and now Ottawa as places she calls home. Military spouses face a unique challenge of constant movement with often little time (2-3 years) spent in any one location. That makes it difficult to build up work experience and a network in any one location. Yet, that’s just what Emily has done to date.  She has used her time and travels strategically, earning a Child and Youth Care Diploma while successfully gaining work experience and her own network during numerous workplace transitions. She’s landed in Ottawa (actually Russell) with a passion for helping older youth learn life skills, a young family and the drive to make it work here.

Emily faces big challenges in that she must once again map out a new employment market, reach out to key groups involved with youth and introduce herself. We all know that drill. Interestingly for Emily, she offered up an observation that she’s never “not been hired” once she had an interview. So, we know where she needs to focus. For Emily, there’s homework in ensuring she’s well connected to the organizations for whom she’s worked, has letters of recommendation/Linkedin recommendations and of course, builds up a good Linkedin profile as her starting point. There's more hard work in first finding and then connecting with the groups that focus on youth. Her past connections may be help (it's a small world) but it will be mostly up to Emily and basic research, emails and phone calls. Specialized job boards like CharityVillage are good for both jobs as well as the organizations. One thought is that recruiters might also be a great starting point to work in parallel with her own efforts. For Emily, it’s all about getting noticed. 

Oh yes. Given what Emily's accomplished to date, the Batman t-shirt was very appropriate.

Mimi asked to meet up at Holland Cake and Shake. Despite the many temptations I was able to stick with just coffee. Now, Mimi is someone who has her act together. She’s in a contract role that’s been extended once and might be again. However, recognizing that all good things come to an end, Mimi has started her search well ahead of time. Two thumbs up for planning ahead. As a contractor, you’ve always got to be looking, sometimes starting right after you land a new gig.  Mimi is interesting, describing herself as not a really social person, she is an excellent facilitator in assisting groups and organizations achieve their goals. She is driven, likes to get things done and brings this focus to an organization or group with whom she is working. She summed herself up as the "nudge", that makes things happen. I loved that description and suggested she use that as her Linkedin headline and future resume summaries. It’s a great opening line, especially with a supporting story and accomplishments to go with it.

To date, Mimi has been successful in finding roles through word of mouth and on the strength of her resume. Once she’s known, Mimi does well. Her objective is how to become known by more people and in particular, future employers. What Mimi must do, like so many others, she must continue to grow her visibility but with an additional challenge of being uncomfortable with face to face networking. Online social networking does provide an alternative if done well. As always, Linkedin provides a reference point to showcase her skills and experience. Twitter, used in a business and professional setting is a great vehicle to interact and share online to further strengthen and grow your visibility. It will take work but everything’s in place for Mimi.

I forgot to take pics during our meeting (my bad) but did find a nice shot of Holland's menu board, taken by Ethan Adeland (food blogger) and thought it was a great fit.

​ Marisa and I met up for a coffee chat in mid June at Simply Biscotti here in Westboro Village. She’s a recent transplant to Ottawa from the US and interestingly, she has a rich television production and event manager background, with some significant time spent at the Antique Road Show. (Yes, that one and no, I couldn’t extract any juicy stories out of her.) Marisa has the challenge of transitioning from one industry to another, specifically, marketing and project/event management but is somewhat unique in where’s she’s coming from. How do you advertise and apply your skills to a new industry which does not understand your background?

In Marisa’s case, it will be based on taking advantage of her outgoing, engaging and interactive personality. She has the perfect personality and networking skills (not shy) to build up a network here in Ottawa and become better known. Meetup and Eventbrite are two easy and logical next steps. What needs to complement those efforts is ensuring that her online profiles - LinkedIn and other tools match the person with whom I spoke. Like many people, these what's there now does not represent the strong, engaging and energetic person I met. And that’s the person any company would hire immediately.