Are You A Baby Boomer or Baby Voomer? You decide!
Well, which is it, Baby Boomer or Baby Voomer? OK, you think I’m kidding. Maybe I’ve lost my mind? No, I’ve just realized who I truly am! Baby Voomer is a name I created by using the first letter of my name, “V”alli (which I by the way always thought was rather unusual) instead of the letter “B” in the word Boomer. Why would I do that?
I felt that the term Baby Boomer pinpointed the generation in which I was born but didn’t really capture the essence of what I’m all about. Nor did it describe many of the people I gravitated toward such as my friends, business associates, colleagues, clients, or even stories I’ve read about fascinating people who intrigued me. So, I decided to invent my own word. I prefer being referred to as a Voomer, how about you? Read on and see if you relate.
Anyone who knows me would use the words creative, innovative and passionate to describe what I am all about. I had an urge to create a unique word, so I chose “VOOMER” to describe myself and all of us who are vibrant, vivacious, vital, looking for our next adventure and, let’s face it, on the move — v-o-o-o-o-o-ming around!
Several years ago I experienced a career transformation due to the downturn in the economy. I parlayed my talents into a new venture as a BABY VOOMER (TM) Career Coach and Executive Leadership Coach. For me part of the fun exploring a new career or reinventing myself has been the process of collecting a lot of research about people my age and Boomer trends. Studies have pointed out that our generation (those of us born between 1946 and 1964), all of us admittedly who are celebrating our 39th birthday over and over again, are active, healthy, and many are still working, stretching ourselves and exploring new creative talents, traveling, volunteering and generally re-inventing ourselves.
In my new life as a coach, I’ve learned several sobering facts from research studies that confirm my belief that NOW is the time to start really living and enjoying every minute of every day and night. Sobering Fact #1: Up to 70% of all workers dread coming in to work on Monday mornings. Sobering Fact #2: Most suicides happen on Sunday night between 4 PM and 10 PM. Sobering Fact #3: Most heart attacks happen on Monday morning. If you are in your mid-40’s, 50’s or 60’s maybe it’s time to realize it’s never too late to take out your very own magic wand and give yourself the gift of discovering what you are truly passionate about, whether for career options or volunteer opportunities, so that you do not become a sobering statistic. The 1st step may be using some evaluative assessment tools; the 2nd step is to develop an action plan to figure out how you are going to get where you want to go, and the 3rd step is to follow through with a self-developed support team. I am so grateful to have found my passions leading to Career and Leadership coaching. That led me to spreading my entrepreneurial wings and becoming a Career Coach.
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Dress Your Brand for Success
Today everyone is talking about “Branding You” and indeed they should. It’s about using colorful words to describe your passions, your attributes, your personal personas and leadership qualities. Carefully chosen colorful phrases differentiate you from your peers and co-workers, so that supervisors, bosses and employers take notice. Why is that important in today’s marketplace and how does it tie into my previous career? I am a certified 360Reach Personal Brand Analyst and I can answer that question.
My name is Valli Swerdlow and over 20 years ago I wrote a booklet called “Dress Your House For Success”. The premise was based on several years of research that I conducted about what colors, textures, sounds and smells helped make a home stand out so that it would sell more quickly and at the best price. It was featured in major real estate, remodeling and home and garden magazines nationwide, newspapers like “The Christian Science Monitor” and “The Chicago Tribune”, and by syndicated real estate columnists. I reached further and sold thousands of my publication to homeowners directly by having it reviewed by their writers, columnist and editors. For example, the concept of “neutralizing” the color of wall and exterior paint to attract a wide range of buyers was years ahead of its time. Use of these concepts has blossomed into a new profession: today a Stager can be hired by homeowners to suggest well placed furniture, lighting, and accessories to increase the chances of selling a home quickly and at the best price, by emphasizing the qualities that home buyers are looking for and make it stand out from the competition.
3 Step FABulous Interview Strategy – Land Your Dream Job
Trust me. I’m not the job fairy but I would like to share a 3 Step FABulous Interview Strategy – Land Your Dream Job that I have successfully used for 14 years called a FAB. Here is a F-A-B-U-L-I-O-U-S secret that has been shared with thousands.
Your chances can increase ten-fold of being offered a job by prepping before an interview using a FAB, also known as Fabulous Facts About Yourself, to prepare yourself before the job interview.
My clients have told me time and time again that by using this exercise they were able to more clearly see strengths that they had overlooked and better articulate them during the interview process.
Here is why it works:
Research has shown that when hiring authorities interview a candidate, individually or by a team, the employer will not be able to recall specific facts about each individual after wards. This includes the whole gamut of interviews such as by telephone, SKYPE and or in-person.
To sum it up for a hiring authority all the qualities of each candidate becomes foggy recalling hundreds of facts such as to where each person went to college, their work history, etc. One thing that decision makers do more easily remember is what you bring to the table, what the benefits of hiring you will be at their company or “what is in it for them”.
Today the best way to move your career up or in any direction you choose is to put ‘You’ in the drivers seat. Your options are *boundaryless.
From the 1950’s to the 1980’s our fathers or grandparents may have worked for one company during their lifetime and relied on getting promoted from an entry level position to an executive or CEO of the company. Options at that time had boundaries, but if you followed the rules the sky was the limit.
My husband, Richard, worked for Bell Labs for 32 years, which became Lucent Technologies, before he took early retirement. He worked for them straight out of college after getting his Master Degree from MIT as an electrical engineer. He knew that if he did well, worked hard and was a dedicated employee he would get promoted up the corporate ladder, either on the technical or managerial side, and he did. We felt his career path was almost guaranteed and secure at that time.
Relying on one company to promote you during your entire career is long gone, due to downsizing, mergers and acquisitions. Farming out technical work to foreign countries, like India, have put departments and divisions out of business causing mass layoffs nationwide.
The Threshold Generation – A Magic Wand Question
Have you ever sat down with your financial planner and asked them, “Based on my current finances how many more years until I can retire?” A few years back I did, at West Financial, when I was working as an Executive Search Recruiter and was quite surprised by their answer.
All that changed several years ago when the economy went downhill, and if you can believe it, my recruiting specialty was in Commercial Real Estate – a double whammy! I would have been perfectly happy headhunting until I retired but chose to transition my skills and enroll in an Executive Leadership Development and Coaching program. That led me to spreading my entrepreneurial wings and becoming a Career Coach.
I came up with a “magic wand” Career Coaching question and now ask it to baby boomers 45 to 65 years old where I actually pull a colorful wand out of my purse and say, “If you knew you had 5, 10, 15 to 18 years until you could afford to retire could you see yourself working at the exact same job in the same position?”
