[MUSIC] Welcome to the second milestone in the Job Interviewing and Resume Writing Capstone Project. I trust that you had fun with the first milestone, that you made good use of the time spent in the workshop of your mind. You'll know you're making progress if you feel excited about your future vision, if you feel enthusiastic about the opportunities ahead of you. Because the stronger the desire awoken by that vision, the more effective your job search will be. Your learning goal for this week is to create a plan of action based on that future job vision. Action is where the real measure of intelligence is found. And this week, you'll create a marketing plan that will serve as a road map for getting from where you are now to where you want to be. The plan will identify the types of jobs you're going to target. It will describe the competencies you want to exercise, that is the skills and capabilities that you enjoy using. It will identify the key attributes you're looking for in an organization, as well as the industries you could work in. It will include a list of possible organizations and the strategies you are going to use to make contact and get interviews with them. You'll find a sample marketing plan attached to the readings in this lesson. You can use that plan as the template for developing your own. That sample specifies 5 different industries and 75 different companies. That's the kind of reach you want to include in your planning. Just as you did with your future work vision, it's important to put your marketing plan into writing. Not only will that give you an opportunity to get feedback from your peers, but it's also a concrete forward step, one step closer to realizing the vision of ideal work you developed in the first milestone. To figure out which organizations interest you, use the resources from the second course. I've collected together the URLs from online resources and posted them as a reading attached to this lesson. You'll find resources where you can research jobs. Let your ideal work description from the first milestone guide you. Here are the resources you can use to research organizations. If you're attracted to work in a private company, these resources can help you. Finally, these resources are useful for learning about a specific industry or doing research into working in various countries around the world. Also attached to this lesson are resources from The Muse, an online career resource that offers a behind the scenes look at job opportunities with hundreds of organizations. You can follow this link in the readings to 17 companies that are as great as Google and are actively hiring. Or this link to 15 organizations that have a good reputation for honoring the work-life balance of their employees. Or this link to 15 organizations whose mission may inspire you. Or this link to 18 companies whose employees are genuinely happy to work there. Or this link to 11 companies that have developed innovative office concepts. Or this link to 15 companies that are redefining the work place. The people at The Muse are always coming up with new information on exciting companies, so take advantage of the resources there, along with the other resources attached to this lesson. Perhaps reviewing the information from these resources will let you add sharper contours to your ideal work vision. In any case, I trust that you get a sense of the many opportunities available to you. There are so many opportunities in this life that your ability to decide among them may be the most important skill you can develop. Don't get trapped into thinking that jobs are scarce or opportunities are limited. Opportunities are abundant if you use your time and mental energies wisely. You'll also find attached to this lesson, a chapter from The Five O'Clock Club's Job Search Workbook. It deals with conducting a campaign to get interviews. Read through this chapter and select those campaign strategies that make the most sense to you, Wherever you are in the world and wherever you are in your life. Include those strategies on the second page of your marketing plan. To reiterate your assignments for this milestone, first use the resources attached to this lesson to review the range of industries and companies available to you. Then identify those target competencies you can offer and the industries and companies you want to target. Write these up in a marketing plan using the attached example as a template. Next, read the chapter on conducting a campaign to get interviews. Consider which strategies make the most sense for you in your situation. Write up those strategies and include them in your personal marketing plan. This marketing plan will let you turn the knowledge you've developed in this specialization into the power to line up meetings, get interviews, and ultimately land a job where you can do the work you believe in. [MUSIC]