Get Involved in Change

In an increasingly competitive world, organizations both big and small are obsessed with ‘change management’ – revamping systems, processes, and ways of working to meet the needs of increasingly demanding customers.

Devoting some time to getting involved in a change project has two main benefits for you:

• It will show future employers that you can make a big contribution – i.e. that you’re a great candidate for the job.
• It will broaden your perspective of working life, equipping you with all sorts of new skills that you’d otherwise never get. And new skills are always a good thing because you never know how they might help you.

Find a change project to work on

When you’re back at work, try to find out about the change projects that are going on around you. They’re quite often called other things, including:

• cost reduction programs;
• process improvement projects;
• merger integration teams;
• introducing quality drives.

Then, if a change project sounds interesting, find out who the leader of the project is and ask how you can make a contribution to it.

Don’t despair if you don’t know of any change projects going on that you can get involved with. I can guarantee that someone, somewhere will be trying to make change happen and would welcome an extra pair of hands on the team. The solution may be to network (see Chapter 8) more widely within your organization to track that change project down.

Put your change experience on your CV – it will really make your application stand out from the crowd.