We — you and CMP working together to get you what you want. We work together to discover your potential, identify your direction, set your goals, and enhance your skills. In short, it's all about you!

5 Strengths — rock-solid skills that you can demonstrate to employers, creating compelling reasons for them to want to meet you and ultimately hire you. We define your potential by building upon your skills, abilities, and previous contributions. Your potential is the key to expressing what you can do for employers. We do this by identifying and communicating your 5 Strengths — the things you do remarkably well and the things you want to do in the future.

By communicating strong, compelling messages woven around your strengths, you leave nothing to chance — nothing to misinterpretation. Everyone you meet knows exactly what you can do for them and why they should hire you. It helps the future employer know your value, and ultimately your worth, to them.

The bottom line: If you want to be valued (read: respected more and paid more) by employers, they have to know your worth.

Decision-Makers — those in a position of authority empowered to make decisions about who is hired into a company, including determining how a role is structured, who it reports to, and how it is compensated.

Exactly the people you want to meet!

Discover Your Career Direction — a process of career discovery starting with the Personal Profile System designed to create a complete profile of your traits, behaviors, and perceptions as they relate to the workplace. From there you learn how to identify traits in others so you can evaluate which are most effective in a work environment. We examine the work relationships closest to you and in peripheral roles, as well as corporate culture.

No environment is perfect; it's how you manage your relationships that will determine your success. Together we explore the possibilities and create contingency plans covering the "what if" scenarios to ensure your success.

Another facet of Discover Your Direction is to examine which roles within a professional environment are most appealing to you. We break down your interests and abilities to create compelling messages of what you can do for employers — creating a vivid image, with words, of you being successful in the employer's environment.

This message becomes so powerful that it is the basis for your resume, your cover letter, and your interview and negotiation strategy. And it works!

Dream Job — YOUR ideal work in YOUR ideal environment. It doesn't matter if it's as a full-time employee, a consultant, a volunteer, or starting your own business — whatever it is, we will establish your ideal work scenario. Knowing what you want is the first step to getting what you want.

Throw away the old beliefs that keep you from getting what you want. It doesn't matter what anyone else thinks. So long as you want it, you believe in it, and you work toward it, the plan will come true. We won't give up until it happens.

Homework — work you do independently, such as defining your work values, your career assets, your 5 Strengths, or doing the research of your chosen industries. Homework is specific to you and your goals, focusing on identifying what you want — and then on how to achieve it.

One example of homework is the HUGE List — a list of all of the things you know how to do. The intent isn't to squeeze all of your skills into your resume, but instead to identify everything you know how to do to expand your thinking and open up the possibilities. It's also a very effective way to identify the themes of your career and your interests.

Identify Industries — how to find all of the companies within an industry and within the specific geography you are focusing on using free, online resources. We teach you how to effectively use your time in researching industries to pursue.

It is commonly thought that getting to hiring managers is either impossible or a huge time-waster. Not with our technique. We will show you how to find the industries, the companies, and the decision-makers, and how to interact with them to get what you want.

Messaging — creating an image with words of what you can do for employers. Leaders tend to be highly visual, and by effectively "painting a picture with words" you can create the image of you working successfully in their environment. This is the most compelling type of communication and plants the image of success in the hiring manager's mind.

Messaging is based upon your 5 Strengths and is central to the themes of your resume, cover letter, interview, and negotiation strategy. Every message you deliver is powerful, consistent, and true, creating the desired image and outcome. Your messaging is the product of Discover Your Direction.

Negotiation Process — occurs in any relationship whether you participate or not. From the moment your potential employer perceives you, the negotiations have begun. We work to establish an ongoing dialogue with your potential employers to assist in crafting the role you will fulfill within their environment vs. accepting the pre-defined role (which may not be the best fit for you or for the company). This process involves you as a consultant to your future employer, working to achieve everyone's goals. It also sets up your ongoing relationship with your employer, leveraging your ability to affect the team and the organization as a whole.

And of course we negotiate the total compensation package, but not until the role is discussed and defined so everyone knows the expectations.

Path to Success — the plan identifying what you want, what you offer, which industries you've targeted, and the steps you are taking to achieve your goals. This plan is developed incrementally; as you discover more about your direction, it is put into writing so there's never any doubt about which step comes next.

With this plan you will avoid wandering, time-wasting, and re-starts because you have a strong plan that highlights all of your strengths, beliefs, and goals.

Ready, Aim, Fire, Success — the process of creating the total picture of you being successful in the work environment, developing your marketing materials to communicate that picture, negotiating the total relationship, and successfully starting on your new career. What could be more powerful than that?

Strengths — the core skills, abilities, and attributes that make you uniquely valuable in the work environment. We identify your strengths, then create a strategy to weave them into all of your messaging.

The result: nothing is left to chance. Because your messaging is crystal-clear, everyone knows who you are and what you can do for them. (See more under "5 Strengths".)

Total Relationship — all aspects of your relationship with your potential or current employer. This includes your manager, your peers, and all of your co-workers. It's how you establish how you want them to perceive you, create your value, and ultimately how you want them to treat you.

Weaknesses — commonly perceived as areas where we do not excel. At CMP we believe that a weakness is often a strength gone wild. So often a strength can be so strong — especially under pressure — that it can be too much of a good thing. For example, one strength is excellent organizational skills. Under pressure, the same skill can become a burden — instead of organizing to the needs of the organization, the person may get carried away and organize to the exclusion of other priorities.

Crafting a "weaknesses" message for those employers who ask for this information is an important message. We recommend that regardless of what the stated weakness may be, adding "…and I'm working on it" shows willingness to improve in all areas.