Need some career inspiration? Follow your own advice

HR pros have had a rough go of it this year.

Whether they’ve been impacted by layoffs or burnout, Mary Olson-Menzel, founder and CEO of executive coaching firm MVP, offers advice for finding career inspiration in her book, What Lights You Up? Illuminate Your Path and Take the Next Big Step in Your Career.

While many people pros offer great guidance to their employees, she told HR Brew that her book serves as a handbook for how they can help themselves, too.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What do you want HR pros to learn from your book?

If a recruiter picked up a book, there would be all kinds of tips and tricks for them to advise their candidates on. If an in-house HR person picked up the book, there would be all kinds of different things that they could get help with in successful onboarding, and behavioral interview questions, and also activities and exercises for them to help their leadership thrive. And, then if an outplacement person picked up the book, they basically have a user manual to give to their clients.

How can people pros use the book to guide their own career paths?

This book is based on so many years of experience, internal corporate experience, but also experience as a consultant to HR professionals…It’s a guidebook for HR people to tap into the advice that they’re giving to others on a regular basis, but to actually get to enjoy it and to apply it to themselves.

How does the cooling labor market and news of layoffs affect the relevance of this book?

The layoffs that are happening, they’ve slowed down a little bit this fall, but they were pretty fast and furious this summer, and I think what’s interesting for HR people is, as an in-house, or even as an HR consultant, we’re really good at giving other people advice, but this sometimes becomes like the shoemaker’s children, where we’ve got to actually take some of our own advice and digest it. And this book gives them an easy-to-digest manual with not only exercises that they can do themselves, but with inspirational stories that will give people, especially people who have been laid off, hope.

Are there any stories from the book that you can highlight?

We’ve all pivoted a couple times in our lives. And it takes you on a journey of some of my most important pivots in my career, but also it takes you on some really brilliant success stories about people who’ve applied the teachings in the book, and how they’ve been able to tap into a job that has more meaning for them and a job that they’re passionate about. There’s something in the book that is called the “3 Ps Exercise”...essentially turning your job search inside out and really getting intentional about creating a target list that falls into the three Ps, which are your usual prospects, your pivots, and your passions.