It can happen to anyone–a mid-career rut. Perhaps you’ve been stuck in the same position at work for years and can’t seem to advance, or maybe you want a new career altogether. Landit is a new platform to guide you in your professional life.
Founded by Lisa Skeete Tatum, a former General Partner at venture capital firm Cardinal Partners, and Sheila Marcelo, the Founder of Care.com (you may recognize Sheila’s friendly face from the commercials), the career site is targeted to women. But, in an interview, Tatum said the platform can be of value to anyone looking for career coaching.
Signing Up
Landit is free to use. You can also opt to sign in with your LinkedIn account. This is the better choice for active LinkedIn users, because it pulls your professional information into your Landit profile.
Landit walks you through creating a personalized “playbook.†This is your profile page built with a number of online quizzes and utilities that help you assess yourself professionally.
For example, as soon as I logged in, the service asked me to select my career goal. Was I looking for a new opportunity? Was I trying to re-enter the workforce after not working for some time?
The service also prompts you to add any work and volunteer experience. Then, it creates a list of your skills based on those experiences. I added “information technology†as my work experience. The service listed, among my skills, that I was an active learner and critical thinker.
I didn’t find this specific tool to be of much use; just because you have certain work experience, it doesn’t necessarily mean you have the particular skill, as Landit assumes.
The Better Components
However, there are much more useful tools within the site. One helps users build a unique elevator pitch. Another offers great advice on building your personal brand.
While free to use, the services of real value, such as a resume refresh or complete rewrite, are not (but neither is working with your own personal career coach). Furthermore, these services are not cheap. Although a resume review is free, a resume rewrite is $645 and a refresh is $245.
A single coaching session is $250; three sessions are $700. Based on the bios of the coaches–all highly educated, averaging 20 years of experience in career advice and mentoring– the coaching and resume services may be a worthy investment.
The Bottom Line
While there is some fluff to Landit–such as the automated skill builder based on your work experiences and some Oprah-ish questions to answer when building your playbook profile like, “Are you a person who always feels guilty?‖there is a lot of value to the service for career guidance.