Career Change Assets - Specialized Knowledge and Astute Marketing

By Jeri Hird Dutcher

Step 4* in growing your career is specialized knowledge, the kind that makes you a specialist in your chosen field. In 1937, when Napoleon Hill wrote "Think and Grow Rich, the best-selling business book of all time, he believed that specialists are the most sought-after employees, and that remains true today, especially in larger, corporate environments.

Think and Grow Your Career, Part 5 of 10

The thing that makes you a specialist is the knowledge of your field or your access to it in one or more of these areas:

• Personal experience and education.
• Experience and education of others.
• Formal educational institutions.
• Public libraries and books from other sources.
• Private training courses.

Hill tells of an entrepreneur who could be the earliest professional resume writer. The woman prepared a "Marketing Plan for Personal Services" for her son who had just finished college and had not yet found a job. The portfolio contained an outline of the candidate's:

• Native ability.
• Education.
• Experience.
• The plan he would use as an employee.
• Six suggestions for the use and benefit of the prospective employer.

Sound familiar? The first three items on the list are straight out of the specialized knowledge list. The fourth and fifth are the results of using the young man's specialized knowledge to analyze the needs of the prospective employer and reporting how he planned to fill them.

If you put the same type of information in a resume and cover letter today, you'd have an extraordinary career marketing package. The young man landed a job at his first interview and didn't have to start at the bottom, but as a junior executive, positioning him for opportunity and success. (His mother carried her marketing skills on to other clients.)

If you are considering a career change, analyze your specialized knowledge. Are there ways it could be of use that you haven't thought of before now? Are there employers you haven't considered before that may find your knowledge or specialty useful?

*Napoleon Hill's "Think and Grow Rich" is derived from the beliefs and actions of many of the richest and most successful people of the early 20th century. It offers eight steps to success:

1. Desire

2. Faith

3. Autosuggestion

4. Specialized knowledge

5. Imagination

6. Organized planning

7. Decision

8. Persistence

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