Are you actually happy with your work?

Are you in the right position, comfortable with your colleagues, your employer’s management and strategic direction? Are you confident about your future?

Personal Alternatives Lab (PAL) offers affordable, personalized market intelligence to managers and executives considering next steps in their careers.

Ask your PAL!

PAL is not an executive recruiter or a career management firm. We come before all that. Use PAL to determine whether you are in a role, career, or location which really fits you and offers long term opportunity.

PAL’s affordable market intelligence lets you look before you leap!

Book a PAL session and open your eyes! Before you begin looking for a new job, take a moment to evaluate your options.

Will your industry even exist in five years?
Will AI eliminate your role?
How is your current or target company performing versus its peers?
Do you have skills that might be more valuable elsewhere?

PAL can help you answer these questions based on data and real-time insights because PAL provides accesses the largest business database in existence, including more than one billion people. PAL’s data includes:

◼︎Title ◼︎ Function or Role ◼︎ Industry

◼︎ Location ◼︎ Skills ◼︎ Executives

And PAL even lets you add in keyword searches for otherwise undefined terms.

Shortcuts to Career Insights

◼︎ Deliverables

◼︎ Example videos

◼︎ About PAL

◼︎ Checkout

◼︎ FAQ

What are PAL’s key deliverables?

Deliverables

In the first PAL session we ask clients to come prepared with two scenarios. The first one is typically their current industry, company, role, geography, etc. This allows us to take a candid look at the dynamics in that particular market and focus on the candidate's current situation.

The second scenario usually revolves around an alternative company or role that the client wishes to explore. Our data can paint a detailed portrait of how that alternative's market dynamics are trending.

For example, suppose you are a sales professional and you feel that your skills could be better remunerated in a different industry. Although we cannot specifically address remuneration, our data can reveal whether there is more growth and opportunity in the one industry than the other. This is just one example of the customizable market intelligence PAL can offer.After the session, clients receive a video recording including all screen-shares, AI-generated notes, and a data dump for each of the main scenarios in the form of a set of spreadsheets.

After the first session, clients often want to explore further nuances of opportunities they uncovered during the first session. This could include looking further into alternative employers, roles, locations, and/or skills that may be particularly advantageous.

The second session can also enable further comparisons between locations or roles in alternative industries. Again, we ask clients to come prepared with two main scenarios per session because there is so much data it is easy to disappear down a rabbit hole and never reach a specific conclusion--unless we impose a little structure.

The deliverables include a video recording of the session including all screen-shares, a set of AI-generated notes, and a data dump for the two main scenarios in the form of worksheets.

Example videos

Example videos illustrate how PAL works

INDUSTRY - If you happen to be interested in Financial Services, for example, PAL can help you understand the number of executives and managers working in this field, how that population is changing, the prospects for further growth, what titles are growing the fastest, which specializations or skills are particularly in demand, the locations that are growing or shrinking, the companies that are hiring this talent, and even the donor companies from which they are recruiting. We can also take a detailed look at those hiring companies as well as specific individual executives active in that field that you may want to connect with. See the video for specifics.

SPECIALIZATION - Or, let’s say that you believe your skills could be applicable to various industries and the question is which have the best future indicators. In the Business Development example video we open this subject up, focusing on which industries and companies are hiring talent with this skill, not to mention where they are located. PAL allows us to dive into individual hiring companies and better understand what specific skills they are looking for and from which companies they are recruiting.

LOCATION - Of course, some people want to stay in or move to a specific location, and PAL can facilitate this, too, by allowing us to drill down in a specific market and see which industries are hiring for which specializations. We then dive into the specific companies driving that demand, and can even identify more specifics about how and from where these companies are hiring.

About PAL

Hello. My name is Peter Irish.

I developed the PAL concept because I feel that market intelligence is critical to managers’ and executives’ consideration of alternative professional paths but it is typically far too expensive and, therefore, rarely used.

We would like to change that by making market intelligence about industries, companies, roles, and locations less expensive and more accessible.

It’s a simple concept summed up in the phrase:

“Look before you leap!”

And I should know, because I have leapt (judiciously) from one industry and role to another over the decades.

Like many of you, I have performed the duties of a manager, a director, a vice president, a CEO, a Chairman, and many other roles besides.

Unlike many, I moved between industries— from advertising to amusement parks, food manufacturing and marketing, hygienic products, POS and packaging, business coaching and consulting, and career management. You can read about my career in my LinkedIn profile. In fact, in my last role, I had the pleasure of leading an organization to be recognized by Forbes as one of the best in the industry for five years running.

But enough about me. What about you? Are you ready to seriously consider alternatives? That’s why we call it a “lab,” because you can perform experiments while exploring alternative future options based on live market data.

Let us know when you’re ready by booking a session.

Checkout

You will be invited to schedule your appointment(s) after checking out.

Because PAL sessions represent a very modest financial commitment on our clients’ part, we ask clients to pay up front. As part of the receipt for payment we will provide a calendar invitation allowing clients to choose a mutually convenient time and date. The invitation includes a link to a zoom meeting with a senior PAL analyst during which clients are welcome to use video or not (as they choose). The session offers both screen sharing, video recording, and AI note-taking.

Frequently asked questions

PAL is a customized, market intelligence service for managers and executives who have questions about which opportunities offer them the optimal career path forward. Can personalized, one-on-one sessions clients learn about the prospects for their current role versus other prospective roles and can obtain insights into hiring companies, alternative roles, other locations, and even the identity of executives currently in a targeted role with whom they may wish to connect.
PAL provides affordable market intelligence for individuals, so that clients can ask, for example, is there more opportunity in career path A versus career path B. PAL can provide a data-driven answer based on the largest business data base in existence with more than 1 billon participants. Few career counselors could do this at all and in any case, it would be significantly more expensive.
PAL is highly personalizable, so that virtually any manager or executive can gain a better understanding of his or her prospects in the current role, industry, and location. The client can then test one or more alternative scenarios to see which offers the most opportunity.
Clients can define the specific roles they wish to better understand, essentially from the manager level on up to the board room. Titles can be more general, such as Vice President, or very specific, such as Vice President of EMEA.
PAL’s database is worldwide though the coverage is certainly best in the largest executive markets (US, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East). PAL is highly flexible and can look at a continent, a country, a region, a selection of major cities, or one specific location.
PAL pulls data using a specialized interface to the largest business data base in the world that is not available to individual users. The system can quantify and explain how any specific market has grown, and then, in most cases, suggest whether the hiring demand is strong or weak, providing an indication of future demand. Beyond this, PAL incorporates AI queries as needed to augment clients’ perspectives on future developments.
No one really knows what will happen tomorrow, however, PAL can provide an educated basis for understanding which industries and roles are more or less at risk. Beyond this, PAL utilizes AI queries to augment clients’ understanding of potential future developments.
By quantifying which skills are in demand in a specific industry, location, or company, PAL helps clients reflect on whether they have or should obtain those skills, and/or, whether they should move into sectors where their current skills are more in demand.
Each PAL session is a personal, one-on-one discussion with your PAL analyst. PAL does not so much make recommendations as let clients evaluate whether the path they are currently on is optimal versus others they may wish to consider.
The main database PAL uses is updated continually by more than one billion users so that it is more like a movie than a snapshot.