Case Studies

Case Studies

Below are a number of case studies conducted by EPR. Names have been changed for privacy where requested by the client.

Michael -Engineer gets MBA and becomes Business Development Consultant to non-profits...

Michael jumps off his career treadmill

Michael had been working as an engineer for nearly four years when he decided to make a career change.

“I moved into the role of a product manager, but I found I was still very much in an engineering environment,” says Michael.

“Engineering just wasn’t me. I found I was more interested in organisations and people than machines.”

“I wasn’t enjoying it — I wanted to make a change.”

He had an idea that he wanted to work in consulting. Michael says he was attracted to the idea of working with people and the fact consulting meant less bureaucracy.

“But I had no background in it — I didn’t know where to start,” he confesses. “I’d started doing an MBA, but I felt that I really needed some extra perspective.”

Recruiters no help

For a while Michael tried talking to recruiters.

“I found one in ten will actually take the time to talk to you on a personal level. Most of them — it’s a sales process.”

“A recruiter, if anything, is more likely to put you into a box than help you step out of a box.”

“I needed someone who could sit down and have a look at me, Michael, and help me go through a process where I could reflect on what I’m like, what sort of environment I want to work with, what sort of work I want to do, what my values are ...”

“I needed someone who wasn’t going to put me into a box.”

Getting out of the box

Michael says he simply saw EPR’s ad in the paper.

“I then had a few conversations with Russ Johnson. We talked about my situation and where I was going and the background. Fairly quickly Russell said that he thought EPR could help.”

“It was a big decision, because they do charge a lot, but I felt if I’m going to do it properly, I’ll take the punt.”

Michael says his work with EPR consultant, Andrew, began with a series of exercises “that help you reflect on who you are and the sort of work you like to do”.

“The outcome showed I wanted to make a move in a different direction. We then started to examine what sort of roles out there would be like that.”

Michael says it wasn’t simply going: ‘Well, these are the jobs you can do’ or even ‘You’ve come from engineering, therefore you’ll go somewhere else engineering related and by a series of steps slowly get yourself out [of the industry]’.

“It was more looking at who I am and the skills and qualifications I had and seeing how I could make that evolution.”

Opening up the hidden market

They then discussed how he could connect with the hidden market.

“And that really did blow my mind,” he admits. “I knew it was there and that it’s good to have those connections.

But Andrew really opened my eyes to how powerful it really was — the fact that at least three-quarters of jobs are placed that way, just through people privately referring someone who they know.”

“I realised I’d been doing it all wrong. I realised I’d been going to people who were only handling

a quarter of all the work and who are not really looking to make life hard for themselves.”

EPR helped him get started.

“They gave me maybe half a dozen contacts and then with every person you speak to you come out with another half dozen names.”

“Jobs that I never even knew existed ...”

“And that’s when I started to realise that there’s a whole world out there where people are getting jobs that I never even knew existed.”

“During that period I just happened to cross paths with someone who was going through the process of hiring someone or looking to within the next six months.”

“The conversation went from ‘Tell me about what you do and your organisation’ to ‘Hey, I wouldn’t mind working for you guys’.”

“But it didn’t come across as being a solicitation because it initially began as a series of general conversations.”

“And by that time, they’d already decided that if I was available they’d be happy to talk to me too.”

Michael describes it as ‘serendipitous’. EPR calls it ‘planned happenstance’.

“But the more you do it — and you have to be patient, do the work and make the effort to talk to these people — the more likely it is to occur.”

“I’ve gone from a product manager’s role within a manufacturing environment to being a consultant to non-profit organisations on business development and strategic matters.”

“So it’s quite a big step to make in one go.”

“Obviously, the MBA helped, but it was very valuable having EPR in there guiding that process.

“If I hadn’t gone through EPR, I would have done the usual treadmill approach. And maybe I would have found myself a slightly different role within engineering, but there’s no way known I would have made this step by myself.”

“They gave me practical advice and helped me put together a strategy and a process but at the same time they also gave me counsel about myself.”

“I couldn’t have achieved the change I made without them.”

Robert – Energy Consultant gets Masters in Finance and secures unadvertised senior finance position...

Robert had been working as an energy consultant for two years when he decided it was time to make a move.

He wanted to move into banking and finance in a role that would also make use of his knowledge of energy products. But he was determined to begin in a senior role rather than at the ground level.

He enrolled in a Masters degree in finance to help bolster his chances and began scouting for opportunities.

It was at this point he spotted EPR’s ad in the newspapers.

He says that he considered using their service for quite a long time. Eventually, the recommendation of a friend’s partner who had used them before made him decide to go for it.

“It offered a good return on investment, as it were,” he says with a laugh.

And although EPR helped him hone his CV and his interviewing skills, Robert found he gained the most benefit from their structured approach to networking.

“It was good to treat job hunting like a sales process, leapfrogging from contact to contact and leaving no dead ends,” he says.

In fact, the position he’s in now at a large financial services company arose in this fashion.

“It wasn’t an advertised role,” he says. In fact, he says that it probably would have never have been advertised because of the unique requirements for the position — an understanding of the energy industry and a financial focus.

He spent some six months going from contact to contact, meeting with people in different departments at the company. He thinks it was important that they got to know and understand what his skills were in an unstructured, informal environment that wasn’t a job interview.

When the role eventually came up, they came knocking at his door. And it’s given Robert precisely what he wanted — the opportunity to combine his previous experience in energy and consulting with a focus on finance.

Anthony – Demoralised CEO makes positive career path switch into Scientific Business Development...

Anthony left academia in late 2002 to take up the reins at a small but growing biotech firm with the mission to help it prosper and grow.

In some senses, he says, he was convinced to become the CEO against his better judgment.

He was pivotal in shifting the company’s operations to Sydney — a location that it was felt would provide better growth opportunities.

Unfortunately it also caused upheaval within the company, upheaval that eventually resulted in the directors bringing in a new CEO.

And although Anthony stayed on for another 18 months, it soon became clear that the company wanted him to move on.

He says this realisation caused him to become quite demoralised and he began looking at alternatives.

He initially discovered EPR through an advertisement in the paper.

He found that he identified with several of the case studies on their website, and felt they might be able to provide him a new perspective on how to approach things.

This was particularly the case since he felt his move from academia into the corporate world had been less than successful — and that left his confidence and self esteem at a low ebb.

Anthony says his consultant, Barbara, was crucial in helping him re-evaluate his work in a more positive and realistic light. It was like a personal SWOT process.

He says her focus on what he’d accomplished as CEO — such as money saved and products launched — enabled him to realise he was being overly negative.

The renewed confidence coupled with his improved ability to cogently articulate his achievements enabled him to accomplish two things.

Initially, it helped him at his old company, allowing him to negotiate improved salary and working conditions up until the time he left.

It also helped him network his way into a new role — a scientific business development role that he knew would be far more suited to his strengths and abilities.

Diedre – Pharmaceutical General Manager successfully transfers her skills to the financial sector...

When the Sydney pharmaceutical company Diedre helped set up and run was sold to its supplier, she had been told that she would continue to run the business.

But after the deal was done, the company brought in someone else, and Diedre was relegated to a general manager role.

Faced with the combination of a new boss who had no experience in the industry and the fact that the company was now essentially run by two bosses, she decided it was time to start exploring other options and hit the careers section of the papers.

She went to see EPR after spotting their ad in the Financial Review.

She says she actually landed a new role quite quickly, but soon decided it wasn’t living up to her expectations — culturally and directionally. Nevertheless, she gave it 18 months to see if it would work out.

It didn’t.

It was at this point many of the skills that her consultant Barbara had been helping Diedre develop came into their own.

She began looking at other industry sectors. Finance was one of the ones into which she put out feelers.

She’d never worked in financial services and was initially skeptical when some contacts approached her about a position.

But she went along, she says, for the interviewing practice. The subsequent six interviews that led to her current position gave her plenty of that.

The first couple were simple backgrounders about the position and the company with everyone feeling each other out.

By the fourth interview she was meeting the directors.

Diedre says one of the particular challenges was proving her skills could transfer across sectors. It’s something she believes isn’t a natural thing for most people.

“We’re not always good at giving examples,” she says.

But Barbara helped her polish her ability to talk about her skills, making Diedre provide example after example where she’d used them to solve day-to-day and strategic business problems.

She says this relentless practice was not only critical in drawing out and refining exactly what she could do, but also in giving her confidence to articulate it concisely.

It enabled her to take their questions with ease and prove how she’d dealt with fundamentally similar situations or problems — even though they might have been in a different field of endeavour.

She also had to give a presentation to the entire board about herself.

“Talking about yourself to a room of people is quite confronting,” she says. “Before going to EPR, I simply wouldn’t have been able to do that.”

She describes the EPR process as an investment in her career.

“Attitudinally, where I am now is quite, quite different,” she says. “There’s nothing that gets thrown at me at work that I can’t answer.”

Trudy – Big Four Banker makes late-career shift to CEO of life insurance and loans broking Company...

Trudy’s skills generate the job of her dreams

A short time into her new job as a banker at one of the big four financial institutions, Trudy realised she’d made a career mistake. Driven by a tight employment market and what she perceived as a problematic resume, she’d leapt at the first opportunity that came along.

Not the role promised

Moreover, the role — which sounded like an interesting opportunity to use her broad background in business — proved very different to what the interviews promised. However, at 50-something years of age, she felt she couldn’t just walk away without success to show for her time spent.

“I ground on, but it was really a mismatch of skills, talent and opportunity,” Trudy confides.

“After a year, I started looking around inside the bank and visiting recruiters and so on, but people really weren’t taking an interest.”

“It wasn’t just that there weren’t any openings, it was that I didn’t know how to pitch to them because I’d been out of the employment market for 20 years — I’d worked as a consultant and a contractor.”

“I’d seen EPR in their ads for years...”

“I’d seen EPR in their ads for years, but thought it was a con.

At this point, I think humility was getting to me, and I thought I’d better look at things in a new way.”

“Through a series of events I’d leapt at something out of fear. I’d let myself become a victim to the situation rather than generating the reality that I wanted.”

“EPR coached me on creating my own path.”

Initially, they asked her to review her skills and experience.

“In the time that I’d been in the workforce, the fashion was that you presented your skills. Now people are only interested in what difference you made.”

“I’d never presented my work experience that way — I’d never thought about it like that previously.”

Finding the ‘constructive spin’

Trudy had considerable skills and experience, having previously operated a small business. But it had been wound up, so she called that a failure. What’s more, her resume had a hole where she’d been seriously ill for a long period. And then there was the banking debacle.

“I was stuck for quite a long time, dancing around thinking about these things that I thought anyone would call a failure. [It seemed] there was no constructive spin to put on it.”

“EPR actually had me stay with the process until I was willing to find a constructive spin.”

Eventually, Trudy created a three-page document of accomplishments and measurable results — either degrees of change achieved, things that she’d caused to happen or amounts of money she’d caused to be saved.

A metamorphosis

“That was a metamorphosis for me, turning perceived failure into achievement — cutting and simplifying until I could succinctly say: ‘I did this in this way and this happened’.”

“And that was vital for how I talked about myself.”

Interview role play was also crucial.

“There was nothing I encountered in interviews that was as hard as what I was put through at EPR.”

“[It was] very cleansing stuff,” she says. Trudy says EPR helped her prepare her ‘elevator speech’ — being able to convey the most valuable thing about yourself in 30 seconds — as well as how to answer interview conundrums such as ‘tell me about yourself’.

“And thanks to the interview practice I did with them, the videos of them, and hours of mirror work at home, I do well in interviews. Because I knew what I had to say, I could just listen, think and then pull from my repertoire ... what was appropriate to the situation.”

Preparation pays off

All the preparation work clarifying what she had to offer the market and who wanted and needed her skillset made the actual job search quick and effective.

“As it turns out, I didn’t find this job through networking in the way that EPR talk about it, but the role that I have now does arise in some ways from a business relationship I had 15 years ago.”

The company — specialists in life insurance advice and loans broking — was going through a metamorphosis of its own.

The directors realised that they were very successful as advisers and at generating revenue through sales of their product and services, but that the business itself wasn’t working effectively Two of the three directors had had a go at being the manager, but it hadn’t worked out. So they advertised.

“I just happened to spot the ad once I knew I was looking for this kind of role — because if I hadn’t had this type of clarity it would have passed me by,” Trudy says.

“Now I’m effectively the CEO of this business.”

“And it’s been great!”

Trudy says that even her banking stint has paid off. Without that experience, she would not have been able to understand the work of one of the divisions in the company.

“This role — and my being in it — was [previously] inconceivable,” she says.

“It was what I wanted and knew I could do — but I had no access to it before I did the EPR process because of an inability to present all that stuff [in my work history that] I couldn’t face.”

“Now there’s nothing in my working life anyone could say to me, that I wouldn’t be prepared to address and talk about and use constructively.”

Greg – From low-key GM and COO roles to VP with responsibilities across entire Asia-pacific region...

Networking brings people to Greg’s door

When Greg’s company split into several parts, he knew it was time to seek greener pastures. The problem was, he hadn’t applied for a job in 20 years. Although he’d worked in several different roles over that period as either a general manager or chief operating officer, those had all arisen because he ‘knew someone who needed something’.

That’s when an HR director who had worked for him in the past said he might want to talk to EPR.

“I wasn’t just looking for a job. I was looking for help”

One of the most important things he discovered from EPR was the crucial importance of networking.

“Although I was using networking in a day-to-day basis, it wasn’t until I started to work with [my consultant] Barbara that I realised you can actually use this in a situation where you’re looking for a job.”

“And that I wasn’t just looking for a job, I was looking for help from those people,” Greg explains. “When I contacted someone, I would use words such as: You’ve been in the industry for a long time and I’ve been in the industry for a long time, but I know you have your finger on the pulse, and I’d like to perhaps use a few minutes of your time so you can provide me with a few guidelines as to what I should be doing.”

“That was a very good way of setting up meetings.”

“People don’t feel obligated to do anything but help you by providing that advice.”

“Of course, you then use that opportunity to describe yourself ... in the context of ‘let me explain what I’ve done and then based on that you may be able to point me in the right direction’.”

“That worked wonders.”

“Because you’re not looking for a job or asking for a job. You have the opportunity to explain yourself and learn about the company.”

“And that created many opportunities.”

Shortlisted

Within four months Greg was shortlisted for a senior position.

Shortly after, it was down to him and one other candidate.

“All the feedback was very, very positive. I sort of thought, at the time, that I had it in the bag,” he says.

He was so positive that he stopped looking for other opportunities.

“Because I thought ‘I’ve got it’ and we talked about the details — I even prepared a strategic plan for the role,” he explains. “It took almost a month before it became clear that the potential employer had decided not to employ anybody.”

“For me that was pretty devastating,” he says.

“Not only did I not do things while that process was going on — I did not network, I did not look for other opportunities — but when the result became obvious ... it affected my ability to ... look for other opportunities.”

Making up lost ground

“Barbara started to gently push me. And when I say push me, she wasn’t doing anything I wouldn’t have done myself.”

“’This is not the only opportunity,’ she was saying.”

“I see myself as a fairly pragmatic fellow and very experienced, but I could not see at that point that I should be continuing to look for other opportunities regardless of how close I was to the actual job offer.”

“Maybe after a month from that moment I again actually started to network and do all the things that Barbara was suggesting.”

Eventually, some people from Singapore approached him. They were searching for someone with significant experience in outsourcing. Greg had that, having previously set up and managed outsourcing for a large multinational.

“Again, I was one of the final candidates.”

“The process took about four months, but during that period I continued to network. I continued to work with Barbara and did not repeat the same mistake.”

He didn’t get the job. In fact it went to someone he’d worked for previously.

“I was happy for him, and I didn’t feel as bad this time, because I had other opportunities on the go.”

“Other people realised I was looking for a job …”

Greg’s breakthrough came when he received a call from the owner of an executive search company in October asking whether he’d be interested in having a cup of coffee.

“By that time, other people realised I was looking for a job as well.”

“This cup of coffee turned into a meeting of over an hour and a half,” he says.

Then, a couple of days after New Year, the company called asking if his application could be considered for a position. That position was vice president of a large company with responsibilities across the entire Asia-pacific region.

“So the process again took a long time to the point where I was finally offered the job in March.”

“And I wasn’t initially aware of this particular job at all.”

“Some of the things I’ve learnt with EPR will actually last me a lifetime. They will last me a lifetime because networking is applicable to anything you do. It doesn’t really matter if you have a hobby, or a passion of some sort, or if you’re looking for a job or if you’re selling some sort of services, you can still use networking because you can use it to get people to help you.”

“Very frankly, [networking] was a good way of setting up connections and understanding what’s going on.”

“I discovered some jobs I would have had absolutely no idea that were on the go.”

“And I can tell you, I recently employed 10 people and I did not advertise for a single job.”

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