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New Post 7/7/2013 12:23 PM
User is offline jonathane3
1 posts
No Ranking


Career Transition Help Please 

 Hello to the community! 
 
This is my first post, and I am hoping for your guidance.
 
For the past few years I have been working as an account manager in the staffing industry, and when meeting with some of our new consultants I would get a similar question- "Are you really happy doing what you're doing?"
 
This made me start to think- and with advice from some seasoned BAs and PMs, I have found I have a lot of the soft skills to try my hand in the BA world, but I need two things to make the career jump- industry specific knowledge and either  Junior analyst role or a transitional role to get me to where I would like to be.
 
I believe I have found a great education/cert online, but I would love to be able to leverage a junior or transitional role while pursuing this education, but I don't know how to land these positions with only a handful of transferable skills. I feel like I would be beat out for entry level roles by recent college grads.
 
Does anyone have any advice for me on how to make a successful career transition? Or maybe perhaps someone knows of anyone who has made such a leap? I've seen some posts on doing volunteer work, but I wouldn't even know where to start looking. 
 
Any help would be appreciated, thanks so much for your time!

 
New Post 7/9/2013 11:37 AM
User is offline NitWitNick
259 posts
5th Level Poster


Re: Career Transition Help Please 

While working in the Staffing Industry, don’t you do a lot of interviewing with potential employees and clients to find out what they are looking for … going to client sites and having Face-to-Face meetings with CEO’s, managers, directors … people you have never met before, taking notes, follow-up questions, etc. and trying to convince them that your company is the best ... and decide on a price.

 

That is your Requirements gathering, Communications, Negotiation and Persuasion Skills.

 

I would write a resume emphasizing those skills and how your decisions were valuable in getting contracts and adding to the company’s bottom line (Yours and Theirs) … after all, the person you placed is making money for you and the company they are working at.

 

Also, 

 

You don’t have to be a technical person to be a BA and gather requirements … but many of the BA jobs you see advertised will want some kind of technical skills (SQL, coding, Java, etc) … however, if you read the job description, the technical skills they want may not be mapped to any of the job responsibilities they list … so you might try those.

 

Look at the job description and write a good cover letter explaining how your current Client-Facing, Interviewing skills can get the job done.

 

Finally,

 

Just apply to jobs you see, the company might see something in your cover letter or resume they need … and if they don’t, they won’t come to your house and smack you around … they will just trash the resume and move on.

 

There is no harm in trying.

 

 
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