They’re taking a new approach to job readiness!
A new “Career Day For The Soul” is helping Black professionals prepare for jobs from the inside out. Career coach Larnell Vickers has been helping people land their dream job for the last five years. His tailored coaching approach has focused on providing the tools for leaders and professionals to find their passion and purpose - landing dream jobs from the inside out.
He started out using his expertise as a job recruiter, learning how organizations look at talent, and more specifically, how talented people keep organizations thriving. Through that lens, he narrowed in on the type of workplace obstacles that may impede people from showing up as their best selves at work and coach them to overcome what hinders them.
“As a recruiter, I developed an intimate understanding of talent acquisition and the hiring process. In short: I saw firsthand the difference between candidates that got passed over and ones that got called back,” Vickers said in a statement on his website.
Despite his unique ability and discovering his own calling, he often still suffered from burnout himself, leading to an intense struggle to continue doing the work he loved so much.
“I often found myself just waiting for the weekend. Part of it was dealing with burnout and being overworked. I knew the work was important, yet, I didn’t understand why it was so hard to drag myself out of bed on Monday morning,” Vickers told Because Of Them We Can.
That’s when he realized it wasn’t enough to just land the dream job; he also had to address the mindset, motivations, and fears that would allow people to show up for work as their best selves. That led to him developing a possibility-focused career coach methodology to take workers from surviving to thriving. Now, he’s bottling his formula up in a new “Career Day for The Soul,” a virtual event designed to help BIPOC professionals transition into new opportunities.
The career day will feature Vickers and a host of industry professionals addressing unemployment, burnout, anxiety, stress, and time management. They'll also discuss, navigating being a woman or BIPOC professional, feeling stuck in the workplace and building networks of professional inspiration, and more.
Featured speakers from the 2021 event included Blackrock vice president and executive director Aaron Campbell, Beats By Dre senior producer Marisa Johnson, leadership consultant Kishshana Palmer, coach and meditation facilitator Brittany Pollard, and executive director of The Hidden Genius Project Brandon Nicholson. As well as, holistic life coach Lenise Harris, Stripe Global talent brand manager Charles Kuykendoll, brand business coach Markeith Braden, Momentum Education executive director Robinson Lynn, and business and performance coach Chris Herndon.
Take a look at the next round of guest speakers below.
Vickers said he created the Career Day for people who needed help and were experiencing exhaustion, being overworked and underpaid, particularly due to the pandemic. According to a study by LinkedIn, feelings of burnout in the workplace rose by 33% in 2020 as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.
“I started Career Day for the Soul because of the amount of people who were experiencing burnout in their daily work. I wanted to create a space that enabled us to come together in a way that would foster rejuvenation, as we continued to take those next steps in our careers together,” Vickers said.
The career coach is hoping to help reinvent how others in his profession engage clients and address the employment crisis happening across the country. He is digging into the feelings of those who no longer wish to continue work as usual. His hope is that the career day will be the spark for addressing those particular anxieties shared by millions of people who are frustrated with their professional careers.
“We are driving towards three main outcomes for every single participant that attends this event: connection, developing a sense of focus tailored to one’s career, and taking away 3 key career strategies that can be implemented right away. Our hope is that individuals gain a clear sense of their strengths, talents and abilities and how to best leverage them to advance their career forward,” Vickers explained.
The next virtual Career Day For The Soul will be held on Thursday, June 2.
Photo Courtesy of Larnell Vickers/Instagram