Client: Ross David Ray was manager of decision support at a large public healthcare organization in Ohio.
Industry: Healthcare, Hospitals
Function: Strategic Decision-Making, Financial Management
Challenge: A company reorganization resulted in Ross’s role being eliminated and he wanted help finding a new job.
Process: Overhauling his resume and LinkedIn profile and learning how to utilize LinkedIn was enormously helpful in driving attention and attractive opportunities to Ross.
Landing: Within about four weeks, Ross was offered a role as decision support finance manager for a major medical center on the East Coast with better overall compensation than he previously had.
Study: Ross David Ray had spent four years as manager of decision support at a large public healthcare center in Ohio when his organization undertook, in response to growing market pressures, a major financial restructuring. In the process, it forced many people into early retirement, eliminated a host of positions, and reduced the salaries of those who stayed.
Ross was luckier than some. Although his position was eliminated, he was offered a junior role as a senior financial analyst, albeit with a $20,000 reduction in salary. Ross took the job, glad to stave off sudden unemployment, but he knew it was temporary. He immediately set about looking for a new job.
For two months, Ross job hunted on his own. He was able to line up interviews for a few opportunities, but none of them yielded a job offer. Then he saw an advertisement for The Barrett Group (TBG).
“The program seemed expensive, but if working with The Barrett Group sped up the process of finding a job, I thought I should give it a try,” said Ross.
The first thing Ross did was to explore with his Clarity coach, Laura Leaton, what he wanted from his career.
“My Clarity coach, Laura, was very professional and very good. She asked a lot of probing questions to get me to think deeply about my career preferences,” said Ross. “The Clarity process is informative because it is a whole life snapshot where you look at the health, career, social, and financial aspects of your life altogether and then you decide what you want to prioritize. I also wrote a summary of what my ideal life looks like. That allowed me to identify what I did NOT want to do as much as what I wanted to do. I did not want to stay in that senior financial analyst role. It was lower compensation than I had been getting and it was not work-life balance friendly.”
Ross decided that he wanted to work for about three to six more years, which meant finding a role at a hospital that was financially stable enough that he would not face layoffs again before retirement. He was also partial to working in Florida because it would be closer to family.
After a few weeks, Ross was ready to begin Phase 1 of TBG’s career management program.
“I worked with Barbara Limmer next. She had me do exercises to build social capital in which I was to contact people not to ask for a job, but to ask them how I could help them and provide value to them. Out of those discussions I was able to make more connections and broaden my LinkedIn network,” said Ross. “I hadn’t really understood the importance of social capital before then. The first place people go to hire someone is their social capital, so the more people you are connected to – even at the second or third level – the better your chances for job opportunities.”
Ross had never done this kind of activity before – and he did find he had to work at it. But he enjoyed developing this new skill because he found that trying to find ways to help others kept conversations going and produced richer interactions with people.
Ross also appreciated the overhaul of his resume and LinkedIn profile by the writing team, too.
“The TBG writing team changed the focus of my resume and had me quantify my achievements as opposed to just stating what I had done. They also gave me good recommendations on how to revise my LinkedIn employment and skills sections.”
The biggest benefit to Ross in his job search was, he said, marrying efforts to build his social capital with using the new techniques he’d learned for utilizing LinkedIn.
“Barbara was great about teaching me all that LinkedIn can do. She provided a lot of good documentation on LinkedIn Analytics, and she taught me how to create effective job alerts and use filters to search my connections second and third-level deep. That is what helped me the most. My job search started to gain traction after that.”
Within a few short weeks, Ross had interviews lined up at two different organizations. Prior to engaging TBG, Ross had prepared for interviews using a guide that he had created for himself. Barbara offered valuable feedback on that guide and coached him on how to interview even better.
“Barbara advised me to dial back some of my statements in areas and we discussed effective interview strategies,” said Ross.
The two positions Ross was pursuing were in Maryland and Florida. He interviewed at both places and, to his surprise, found that he preferred the opportunity in Maryland over the one in Florida, despite his desire to be close to family.
“When I asked the CFO at the hospital in Florida what the greatest challenge to the company was, he said that they didn’t have enough resources to complete the work that need to get done. That was a red flag. I didn’t want to go into another unstable environment,” said Ross. “My research on the company in Maryland, however, showed it was in a stable financial position. I knew I ‘d have a better chance to work there for a full three to six years.”
When the organization in Maryland offered him a role as decision support finance manager soon afterwards, Ross canceled his remaining interviews at the company in Florida. He and Barbara reviewed the offer line by line. The compensation structure was different from his previous job, but the overall value turned out to be even better than his previous job, so accepting it was easy. The company even gave him money to relocate.
After taking a month to move, Ross happily kicked off his new career, delighted that it took only four weeks to land.
“The people here are really nice, and they have a good work-life balance,” said Ross. “The TBG program is expensive, but the money is well worth it! Getting a full understanding of how to combine LinkedIn Analytics and your social capital, alone, is so helpful. If, for some reason, this job doesn’t work out, I will definitely call Barbara again.”
