Careers are not linear, predictable ladders any longer; they are fluid trajectories. No matter our age, life stage, bank account balance, or seniority, we are all being asked to navigate career changes much more frequently than in years past. The average employee tenure in America is just four to five years, and even those roles change dramatically within that time. Our economy now demands that we create businesses and careers based on creativity, growth, and impact. In this dynamic world of work, the only move that matters is your next one.

Drawing from her own experiences coaching managers at Google and other hig-profile companies, Jenny Blake has created a four-stage process that teaches anyone how to seamlessly and continually:

• Double down on existing strengths, interests, and experiences
• Find new opportunities and identify skills to develop without falling prey to analysis paralysis and compare and despair
• Run small experiments to determine next steps
• Take smart risks to launch with confidence in a new direction

This presentation is for anyone searching for an answer to the question "what's next?" Whether you have hit a plateau in your perfect-on-paper job, are considering taking on a new role in your current job, are thinking about starting your own business, or want to move into a new industry altogether, one thing remains clear: Your career success depends on your ability to determine your next best move. If change is the only constant, let's get better at it.

Career changers have distinct advantages and perceived disadvantages compared with their competition.
This presentation will give you tools to clarify the advantages and mitigate the perceived disadvantages through the power of the story.
In this presentation, Business Storyteller Ron Ploof shows you how to use his StoryHow™ method to help you find, develop and tell your story so that interviewers remember you over your competition. You will learn:

• Audience: Putting yourself in the interviewer's shoes
• Purpose and Ending: What are you trying to achieve and how will it end?
• Protagonist and Initial Impulse: Explaining what this job means to you and why it is so important
• Meaning and the Big Idea: Simple, three word sentence that describes what you are and why the interviewer needs to hire you.
• Emotion and Risk: Even perfect candidates are risky to hire. Understanding and addressing those perceived risks helps interviewers recommend you.
• Holding Interest: How to keep your stories out of "the boring zone."
• Putting it all together: Assembling your story to be told during the interview.

You want to make a change in your professional life, whether it’s shifting jobs, functional roles, orindustries. But just because reinvention is common, that doesn't mean it's easy. You have learned newskills and made new contacts in your MBA program, but that’s only one piece of the puzzle. Now it’s timeto seize control of your professional narrative, strategically reintroduce yourself to past colleagues, anddemonstrate unquestionable expertise in the new area you’re moving into so you can win that joborpromotion. In this presentation drawing on her bookReinventing You(Harvard Business Review Press),Dorie Clark provides a step-by-step framework to help you assess your unique strengths and sharpen yourmessage and personal brand. Thepresentationwill help you think big about your professional goals, takecontrol of your narrative, and build a reputation that opens doors for you.You’ll learn concrete strategies to become a stronger leader through professional reinvention, including:

• Discovering howyou’re currently perceived
• Identifying the essence of your brand and communicating that to others (in a way that’s notoverly self-promotional)
• Leveraging your unique strengths
• Powerfully demonstrating the contribution only you can make

To launch your career change strategy, you need to assess your current branding and take action to re-brand regularly so you can achieveyour goals and increase your happiness at work. You must learn how to develop brand aspirations and commit to action that evolves your brand from where it is to where you need it to be. With a special emphasis on digital branding, this presentation will guide you to create arebranding plan that’s aligned with who you are and how you want to deliver value to those around you.

You will learn how to:

• Assess your current branding and identify brand aspirations
• Evaluate and select the right branding tools thatwill reach your target audience and accelerateyour re-branding initiative
• Use social media and especially LinkedIn as a tool for authentic and rapid re-branding
• Use the “Being Lazy” branding technique that will save you time while enhancing your visibilityand credibility with decision-makers

Making a career shift is one of the toughest/tricky moves to make. Resume expert Ross Macpherson shares the different strategies in this video on how to be successful in your career change by building a strong resume. He starts by providing the different things to AVOID so as to prevent being ignored by employers and recruiters. Then he provides the DO’s and other great tips in creating a solid resume.

What happens when you complete the MBA and then find out you’re still missing some key ingredients for the next career move? Changes are always tough, but definitely feasible, even in tricky economic situations. From a base of solid self-assessment, this presentation describes non-traditional “bridges” to fill in experience gaps and add significant real-world skills. Or, in other words, what happens when you find out that the expensive, time-consuming MBA is not quite enough to get you moving in a new direction? How to fill the gap?
You will learn:

• Think outside the box-- non-traditional
• Identify project work, consulting, pro bono, independent study, internships, MBA research or capstone
• Negotiate terms of the “bridge” project