You are Jason Bourne, you wake up in a hotel room in a Middle Eastern country. It’s too hot in your room. You sweat and you just woke up from a nightmare. You are not sure if this nightmare is a memory because you cannot remember who you are. 

How will it be possible for you to connect with anyone? How will you trust others if you do not even know who you are? What if you have changed your identity so often that you cannot even clearly pronounce your name?

This is a challenge and you are probably shaking your head. “This is a movie, it’s not real.”. 
Yes, but there is a truth in this movie that is relevant to your job search in a new country. It might even be true if you are looking for a new job in your own country.

In professional life, we want to hire people we can trust. We want to hire a competent professional who can show us that they managed a similar challenge before. We want to work with people who will be self-starters and won’t need a year to be up to speed in the role.

You need a professional identity before you can enter the circle of trust. Trust starts with you trusting yourself, your knowledge, attitudes, skills, and experiences, and how you acquire and store them in your brain. You need to be aware of how you relax, how focus, and center yourself when you are in a critical and stressful complex matrix environment. 

I often notice when you come to see me, that you are not aware of most of your competencies. You take them for granted and assume that a recruiter, computer, or line manager will already know everything about you when they scan your resume because they are mind-readers and miracle workers.

For them, it is as obvious as all the three-letter acronyms you have been using on your résumé because English is their native language and they are working in a similar field, profession, and industry. 

What your personal brand should say about you

When we speak about the personal brand it is something unique to you, something that makes people remember your name, that sticks with people and that keeps you top-of-mind when they are looking for someone with your profile. This brand is not just a marketing factor. Putting three labels (professional designations) on your résumé will help a reader to categorize you and put you in the right mental box.

Ideally, you keep reminding this reader of you so that the box is not closed but open, and so that the avatar in the box shines like a Swarovski crystal. Oh, look, here’s Jason Bourne again. Matt Damon is associated with this movie role. He will never be able to play any other role without us thinking: “Oh, that’s Jason Bourne!”.

When I saw “Hidden Figures” and when Sheldon Cooper from Big Bang Theory appeared, I had to laugh. Then, I always waited for him to act like the Sheldon that he is BUT he was playing another role and did that really well. It was hard for me to accept though, because for me Jim Parsons is not an identity. For me this guy IS Sheldon.

Imagine you are trying to re-brand yourself. It’s very difficult. Your former career image sticks to your face and to your online trail. I can tell a few CEOs who won’t find a job anymore because they are burnt.

What is your personal brand?

Your personal brand is not only your name, headshot, Insta handle, trademark, signature product, or the funny pink hat. It’s also how you make others feel. It’s what you express with your seven work principles. People should identify you with how you work and how you relate to others.

They should be happy to refer you to others by saying:

“She is really competent and helped me on several occasions when I was stuck. She has been my greatest cheerleader.”

“He is true to his values and always seems to follow the correct move. He has never let me down.”

How to connect your personal brand with your seven work principles?

We recommend that you develop your seven work principles in alignment with your personal values. An example would be: “I prioritize my clients over my prospects.”. If your personal brand is aligned with your work principles, then your clients would say about you that you always take their concerns seriously and that you get back to them in an appropriate timeframe.

If you want this behavior to show, you could ask previous clients to endorse you for this behavior in their personal references and on LinkedIn. You could also try to write a special reference or recommendation about a person in your professional network, without expecting them to endorse you back.

Please tell me how you will review your work principles this week and how you will align them to your personal brand. Then take a break and watch a movie. It’s inspiring.

This time I really wanted to get it right and stop buying “plastic stuff made in China” (because to be honest, these modern brushes always have a catch and then I throw them out in a rage). I also don’t like the vacuum cleaner. It smells. It’s loud. It takes away space. Speaking of space. What would a Jedi do to keep their spaceship or humble house clean? Probably deal with it through energy. Not sure. I’ve never seen Yoda clean or even go to the bathroom. 

So, I bought a broom and a brush of wood. Very old-school. I only needed one rubber ring, but you never just order one rubber ring online and my weekend seemed too precious to roam the hardware stores of Zurich for hours. I ordered a bit more. As you do while you are at it.  A solid wooden broom is just what I need right now in times of energy savings. 

I hope that now I can finally close my home project of unclogging the sink drain. It gives me a sense of accomplishment that I managed to do this alone without any mansplaining in the background. The mansplainer was absent for too long. It needed to be fixed but then in the middle of sifting through smelly rubble the rubber ring broke and this is not something I stock. 

I tried the unclogger. I thought that’s why we have that thing. But that did not work.

I also order the cleaner (hope that one is a bit more environmentally friendly). 

And then I started to take the thing apart. Which not only took me weeks to get started on. It also was a bit hard to open but I managed. I’m a strong woman after all. I used up all my energy to do this on a Saturday or even a weekday. And the smell was horrid. 

Let me also explain to you that in Germany (my home country) I would know what product to buy and I would probably buy something less sustainable just to get on with it. However, here I am. 13 years in Switzerland, and still don’t know the equivalent product. And you probably think now: “But you speak the darn language:” Still, I did not grow up with “INTENSIF Ablaufreiniger flüssig extra stark” …so I did not exactly know what to look for online. Also, back in Germany I always had a cleaning person and would really let them deal with it.

Here’s what I learned.

1 – Never order anything made in China again, ever.

2 – Start to work on home improvement projects right away. Don’t accept a clogged sink for weeks hoping that “they” will get to it.

3 – Make sure you have an idea of how to repair a clogged sink, how to defrost the fridge, or air the heaters (I still don’t know that).

4 – When you start a home project make sure that you understand all the parts that you need for completion so you can finish the project. Because right now I have a slightly dripping sink and my bathroom looks really messy. You probably already hear me talking about process porcelain and how I spend my days mending what is broken as if I was Kylo Ren. 

5 – When you live in a high labor-cost country like Switzerland accept that you have to do more yourself. 

6 – If you get mad or sad about “Aschenputteling” like I used to, there is probably a deeper psychological reason behind it. I often felt sad that I could not just call my dad and ask him to help me with this stuff. I often felt that it was unfair that I had to take care of every.single.thing in my life. Sometimes we just have to get started, even if we have to sift through the dirty, smelly hair that is clogged there in our subconscious. 

So, if you are ready: Work with me in 2023. Let’s start to unclog and move forward. Reply to this email with “Unclogging 2023”.

With love

Angie

PS: Do you know how to “air the heaters” and would you do me a favor and help me out here?

PPS: I’m also intrigued that Finance seems to be catching up on the Human Touch idea and that we might go beyond “Spreadsheet Capitalism” in 2023. 

https://globalpeopletransitions.com/our-ten-commandments-for-the-global-mobility-manager/

“Just reinvent yourself!” 

This phrase is advice Expat Spouses (partners of expats) often hear when they cannot find a job in Switzerland. You are a typical Gen X professional in New York, London, Frankfurt, or Mumbai. You have a career image stamped on yourself. Telling you to reinvent yourself is like saying “Why don’t you just run a marathon after you just recovered from COVID-19.”

At parties, you say “I’m a Senior Consultant / Director / Lawyer / Doctor / Scientist” and with that, you talk about the pleasure of long-distance travel in times of terrorism or you mention that your partner is away too often and that the kids know the nanny better than their parents, or you explain that you never get to the city because you feel that childcare is too expensive and you rather stay at home than trusting your kids to another person.

Your professional reputation has fueled your ego and you did everything to improve it. You attended courses, webinars, conferences, networking events and you read everything you could about the topic on your commute to work. Not to mention that you had a routine of ensuring that your social media profiles reflected your success only and you ensured your name was published at least once a year.

Then out of the blue (or even because you were following a long-term idea), your spouse gets a job offer in Basel, Switzerland or your job is outsourced to Pune, India. After the initial excitement or shock, you start to consider what a career change means for you right now. You might even consult blogs and books on the matter. From one day to the next, you worry about your branding as a professional. And you might even notice that you don’t really know what you want.

It is not so easy to find out what you want so I recommend you work with a career coach to develop a vision of your next role and probably a long-term career vision too. What I personally found even harder though is to let go of my old career image. I had acquired a status in HR and in my new roles, I felt like a beginner again.

In our cultural context here in Switzerland we say “Schuster bleib bei Deinen Leisten!”. We are discouraged from changing our chosen career path.

Break in Your new Career Image

We know well that a shoe we have worn for a while is comfortable. A new shoe often feels too tight or too big for us to fill. If you imagine now you have to get out of your patent leather shoe and into a hiking boot that is comparable to the change you are going through.

You need to break your career boot in. You might know already consciously that the hiking boot is more practical, fits better to your personality, and has more value on icy mountain grounds but you still feel the burden of a heavier shoe.

Seven Steps to Let Go (of Anything)

You need to throw your old patent leather shoe into the mental “Altkleidercontainer” (the recycling bank for old clothes and shoes). 

These are seven ideas on how can let go of your old career image and start with a new business idea or career.

If you are looking for further insights you can book a consultation with our team or join one of our programs.