Plotting your next move | 3 women get advice on making over their careers

When we put out a call for women who wanted a free career makeover from a volunteer professional career coach, the responses poured in. Clearly, lots of you aren't exactly leaping out of bed Mondays to get to work.

Our winners are at different points in their careers. One wants to move up, another seeks to switch careers and the third has reentered the workplace after a divorce.

Wherever you're at in your career, some of this advice should help you get ahead.

Kate Nadeau, 32, of Bothell. Microsoft business-analysis manager.

Nadeau has an MBA from Seattle University and an income of $85,000. She is a married mother of a 22-month-old.

CAREER GOAL: After nearly a decade doing more or less the same thing for various employers, Nadeau sought help learning how to move up within Microsoft.

HER COACH: Tom Washington, owner and founder of Career Management Resources in Bellevue, has been a career counselor for nearly 30 years.

THE ADVICE: Washington brainstormed strategies to make Nadeau more visible at Microsoft in her quest to move into higher management, perhaps on Microsoft's international-operations side. He suggested keeping track of projects she spearheads so they're handy at review time.

He also helped her overcome fears that if she appeared nakedly ambitious her boss might react negatively, perhaps viewing her aspirations as unrealistic.

"I was concerned that if I asked about moving up, she would say, 'I don't think your career here is going anywhere,'" says Nadeau.

HER REACTION: Nadeau had a stroke of luck — the week after winning her makeover this spring, her boss at Microsoft's MSN finance unit called her in for a "midyear career discussion." Washington's tips helped her turn the meeting into a constructive, forward-looking conversation instead of a backward-looking review.

She walked her boss calmly through her goals, and her boss responded positively, helping her map out a three-year proposed career track. The boss suggested she show leadership by mentoring younger women at Microsoft and by volunteering for and initiating more projects she could oversee within her current finance group, two ideas Nadeau embraced.

"Working with Tom made me realize I've been just sitting back and waiting for something to change instead of taking control of my career and driving it, partly because I just didn't know how," she says.

MORE GOOD TIMING: Not long after her review, another manager on Kate's team asked for relief from work overload. Their supervisor handed Kate more responsibility in the resulting shuffle. Though her title of finance manager hasn't changed, she now has two people reporting to her. "It's not a fancy promotion," she says, but the increased responsibilities come "with the hope of a promotion some time in the future."

April Carson, 51, of West Seattle. Clerical substitute for Seattle Public Schools.

For 20-plus years a stay-at-home mom of two girls, now 17 and 21. Divorce sent her into the workforce in 2004. No degree, but some college at Washington State University circa late 1970s. Income last year: about $18,000, or $23,000 with alimony.

CAREER GOAL: A fulfilling job paying enough to allow Carson to keep the family home — about $48,000 a year. Her career goals are a backup plan while she works on her top priority: Getting remarried.

HER COACH: Carol Vecchio, co-founder and executive director of the nonprofit Centerpoint Institute for Life and Career Renewal, and a career counselor since 1981.

THE ADVICE: Carson initially planned to seek a more secure job with benefits, working as a personal assistant, or as Carson jokes, "professional wife." But when Vecchio probed further, that job didn't inspire much excitement. So Vecchio directed her to a one-day class at Centerpoint on managing life transitions, followed by an eight-week series to help participants "uncover their passions and create a vision for life and work that is meaningful and enthusiastic."

HER REACTION: The counseling series, along with a class in starting her own business, opened her eyes to a range of enticing fields, from providing home maintenance to the elderly to the tourism industry. She's pressing on to figure out a specific job that will pay enough to keep her house, recognizing that most of her passions (gardening, raising children, birding) don't.

While she mulls long-term goals, she's picking up part-time work and looking to return to a 9-to-5 job working downtown.

The most important thing she learned? To keep exploring her options until she finds what feels right, even if that means taking a less-than-ideal job temporarily to stay afloat.

Katrina Carpenter, 31, of Tukwila. Former community-outreach administrator for Sound Transit.

Carpenter quit to complete online bachelor's degree in community outreach with a minor in business from DePaul University while working as an apartment-complex manager. She has an associate degree in liberal arts with a business focus from South Seattle Community College. Single mom of a 9-year-old boy. Income: $19,500.

CAREER GOAL: Feeling stuck in her recent series of administrative jobs, Carpenter's eager for a new career direction.

HER COACH: Career expert Curt Rosengren, founder of 6-year-old Passion Catalyst in Seattle.

THE ADVICE: Rosengren focused on helping Carpenter identify what excited her most in work and life. Then they dug into exactly why those activities appealed: "Usually, it's not an epiphany," he says, "It's more like excavating what's already there."

She'd been working a string of jobs where she was mostly on her own. Rosengren's work made her realize she really wants to work in a team and with clients or customers in a more hands-on way.

Rosengren recommended she volunteer at non-profits where she could observe people in some of the roles she's thinking she might like.

He endorsed her finishing her studies: "I don't want to perpetuate the myth that if you don't have a degree you're toast," he says. But for Carpenter "just having the degree on the resumé is good."

"Then there's what she's learning in getting the degree, which may help her. Possibly most important is that being a student opens up a lot of possibilities for connecting with people to pick their brains or have informational interviews, whether it's teachers or counselors or businesspeople who've guest-lectured."

HER REACTION: "Before, I thought I liked paper-oriented work. But that wasn't working out," she says. "I want to see happy faces and know they're getting something out of what I'm doing."

The fields she's investigating include human resources, teaching or training, coordinating corporate events or parties, and operations management. Ruled out: anything technical or computer-oriented.

Following up on Rosengren's suggestion, Carpenter began volunteering at Dress for Success, which helps disadvantaged women prepare for business careers, so she can observe the professional women who volunteer there as coaches. She's finding it rewarding — and hopes the coaches may bring her new contacts, as well. When in June she learned her apartment-manager position may be eliminated, she also signed up for a class in interviewing, since it's been a while since she beat the street for a job.

"I'm definitely looking for a position that incorporates my top, core passions — training, development, education and mobility," she says. "I don't want to just sit in an office."

Carol Tice is a freelance writer based on Bainbridge Island. She can be reached at cticemomof3@yahoo.com

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