Podcast Episode #1 Welcome and an Introduction to the podcast with your host Leah Lambart

Welcome to the Relaunch your career. I am your host, Leah Lambart, Career and Interview Coach, and founder of Melbourne-based career coaching business, Relaunch Me. I will be sharing no-nonsense job search tips and advice, as well as interviews with everyday Australians about their career and how they found meaningful work aligned to their personality, strengths, interests and values.

Welcome to the first episode of the Relaunch Your Career podcast. I am your host, Leah Lambart, career and interview coach and founder of Relaunch Me. To give you a little bit of background before we get into the first episode, I haven’t always been a career coach, and in fact, I am a little bit of a serial career change of myself. I actually started my career as a tax accountant with a Big Four firm in Melbourne in the late nineties, and after four years of working in taxation, I decided that perhaps it just wasn’t for me. So that was when I made my first career change into agency recruitment, where I recruited accountants for over six years. I then started studying human resources part time before moving into an in-house recruitment role with a national law firm. I later moved into HR consulting where I was helped organisations and institutions select and implement e-recruitment technology. I then had several years out of the workforce to be a full-time mum to my three mostly lovely children Audrey, Austin & Estelle.

So going back to 2012, I found myself with three children under four years and no real desire to return to the corporate lifestyle. My husband had a pretty full on job, as he still does, with very little flexibility and a lot of travel, both on weekends and mid week. So it was at this point that I started to reflect on the roles that I’d done previously to think about what parts I had really enjoyed and which parts I hadn’t. I thought about which tasks had come more naturally and where I had utilised my natural strengths versus the ones that didn’t really come naturally at all, such as reading and interpreting tax legislation and writing letters of advice. I then started getting out and talking to people. I had lots of coffee catch ups with people all around Melbourne. I spoke with people from many different fields, as well as doing some online research, and it soon became very clear that career coaching was what I had to do. I was really interested in the content and I felt confident that it would come naturally to me, given my recruitment background. I then commenced further study in career development and found my first contract role in the careers field coaching mostly mature-age clients who were looking to make a career transition. About the same time I set up my business, Relaunch Me, with the view of helping other mums relaunch their career after a break and to help people find meaningful work that better used their strengths.

Fast forward six years, I now coach individuals from age 16 right up to clients into their 60’s who are looking to spend the last years of their career doing more meaningful work. I am also now very lucky to have a wonderful team around me. I have two fabulous coaches, Claire Pickard and Emily Manley, as well as two extremely talented resume writers, Victoria Gordon and Jeanette Walton, and I am hoping that they will join me on some future episodes to share their knowledge, expertise and personal career stories with you.

So who is this podcast for? This podcast is for you if you have ever wondered if you are in the right career, maybe something is missing, or you feel that your work is not personally meaningful or fulfilling. Maybe you feel that you’re living someone else’s version of a great life, but not your own. These are the types of people that we work with every day at Relaunch Me. This podcast is also for you if you are a senior high school student or a university student, and are just interested in finding out about different careers and what actually happens behind the scenes.

We have some great interviews lined up with people doing work that didn’t even exist a decade ago, and we know that you will learn as much as we have from listening to their stories. At Relaunch Me we truly believe that you can find meaningful and fulfilling work, but it’s not necessarily going to fall into your lap. Sometimes you need to take the time to understand yourself, to understand what makes you tick, what you are good at and what you believe in. And then you need to take action to get clarity. That means getting out of the house, away from the computer, and having conversations with the real people doing jobs that interest you. However, we also understand that most people are very busy and have commitments at work as well as commitments at home, which means that organising informational interviews with people and meeting with strangers just isn’t going to work due to your limited time. That’s why we are bringing these people to you.

We are going to have some interviews with everyday Australians about the work that they do so that you can really get a sense of what goes on behind the scenes, warts and all. I’ve got some great interviews lined up with those who have already made a successful career change, and they are going to share with you why they made the jump, how they went about it, and what they learned about themselves along the way. And I am hoping that their stories will inspire you to take the action that you need to find your best fit career.

At Relaunch Me we call a ‘best fit career’ a career that suits your personality type, uses your strengths and is aligned to both your interests and your values, and I’m going to talk about each of these areas in subsequent episodes. I’m also going to share with you some no-nonsense practical career and job search advice, stuff that you can take action on immediately to help you find work that you love.

So if this sounds like it would be useful to you, then please subscribe to the podcast and stay tuned for our weekly episodes. If you have a question that I can answer for you, I would love to hear from you, so please contact me via the Relaunch Me website www.relaunchme.com.au/contact

Thanks for listening.