In 2006, I was selected to participate in Siemens Learning Campus @ Healthcare. Learning Campus was a selective 18 month training internal program for dynamic and motivated employees early in their careers who have potential for future leadership positions. It was during this program that I was exposed to various career development workshops. I found that I truly loved learning more about myself and then taking that information and figuring out what I really wanted to do with my career going forward.
As a result, I started incorporating what I had learned into my daily life. I had also co-founded an employee resource group at the time for young professionals at Siemens. A significant focus of our group was to help other employees with their careers. I took some of the concepts I had learned and created a career-focused boot camp program. The program paired employees with a coach. It was very successful, with over 100 employees coached through this program. I coached many employees over several years and trained new coaches as the program expanded.
Eventually, this program was handed over to a new leader, and I moved on; however, I continued to use what I learned, coaching whenever I had an opportunity. This approach was helpful as I entered management and shared the career development techniques with my team members. In 2012, a colleague and I later founded a career-focused startup named Career Boot Camp Coaches LLC. We both had a passion for coaching others in their career and decided to see if we could take this passion and turn it into our full-time jobs.
The first product of Career Boot Camp Coaches was a two-day career workshop designed to equip individuals with the knowledge to create a realistic written career plan. Workshop topics were organized around self-discovery and self-direction, relying on activities such as MBTI, Career Anchors, Mind mapping, SWOT, and career roadmap creation.
After a couple of years, the startup shifted focus and pivoted to creating a digital career coach integrated with Indeed.com and LinkedIn. The digital coach took concepts from the boot camp and created digital versions. The interview assistant is embedded in the current version of CareerInformatics.com today, which is still supported by me for fun.
On another occasion at Siemens, I was invited to join a training class on coaching. We were taught how to coach for performance, coach for career development, and coach to solve complex corporate problems. We were introduced to the GROW model and spent several days learning from our teacher and practicing with each other. I thoroughly enjoyed the training and immediately started trying it out with my team and peers. However, one of the challenges I experienced was remembering powerful questions I could utilize as I practiced this new art. So sometime around 2013, I created a Tumblr blog and a Twitter account and started collecting powerful questions from anywhere I could find them. You can visit the revised (for 2022) site at powerful-questions.com.
In January of 2023, I joined Mento.co as a leadership and engineering career coach. Mento is a fantastic learning and development company that combines mentorship and coaching from expert operators. You can sign up as an individual and Mento also works directly with businesses. If you want to know more, check out the site or reach out to me and I will be happy to share additional information!
