You Need to Understand More Fully Who You Are : Intro

Hello Everybody,

This post will be covering chapter 7 of What Color is Your Parachute :2016, You Need to Understand More Fully Who You Are. Now this chapter is a rather lengthy one with at a lot of important information so I have broken it into three different parts. This one will cover the introduction, click here for part 2 or click here for part 3.

Introduction

Why does an inventory of who you are, work so well in helping you find work after other methods have failed? Let Richard N. Bolles count the ways...

1. By doing this homework on yourself, you learn to describe yourself in a least size different ways, and therefore you can approach multiple job-markets.
2. By doing this homework on yourself, you can describe in detail exactly what you are looking for. 
3. By ending up with a picture of a job that would really excite you, you will inevitably pour much more energy and determination into your job-search. 
4. By doing this homework, you will no longer have to want to approach companies until they say they have a vacancy.
5. When you are facing, let us say, nineteen other competitors for the job you want - equally experienced, equality skilled- you will stand out because you can accurately describe to employers exactly what is unique about you and what you bring to the table that the others do not.
6. If you are contemplating a career-change, maybe - after you inventory yourself - you will see definitely what new career or direction you want for your life.
7. Unemployment is an interruption in most of our lives. And interruption are opportunities, to pause, to think, to assess where we really want to go with our lives.

So use this opportunity. Make this not only a hunt for a job, but a hunt for a life. The saddest pieces of advice in the world is, "be realistic".  The best parts of the world were not fashioned by those who were "realistic".

The Inventory

In order to begin to create this inventory you'll need to strip yourself of your past job-title. You are a person, not just a role. Change your way of defining yourself. You are complex, there are multiple sides that come together to make you whole. You are like a flower, with multiple petals, like so.

You are a person that is made up of seven sides (or in this case petals). These are seven different ways to think of yourself.

1. You can describe who you are in terms of what you know.
2. Or you can describe who you are in terms of the kinds of people you prefer to work with.
3. Or you can describe who you are in terms of what you can do, and what your favorite functional/transferable skills are.
4. Or you can describe who you are in terms of your favorite working conditions.
5. Or you can describe who you are in terms of your preferred salary and level of responsibility.
6. Or you can describe who you are in terms of your preferred geographical location or surroundings.
7. Or you can describe who you are in terms of your goals or sense of mission and purpose for your life.

You are all these things.

You can choose which or how many sides of yourself as your guide to defining what kind of work matches you. Your total flower is a picture of who you most fully are.

Click here to proceed to the next post in this series.
Click here to proceed to the third and final post in this series.

Until next time,

Caitlin Campbell