The Five Ways to Choose/Change Careers

Hello Everybody,

This post is going to be covering chapter 10 from What Color is Your Parachute, The Five Ways to Choose/Change Careers.

The First Way to Choose/Change Careers : The Internet

Richard N. Bolles suggests the used of O*Net Online, a digital, online treasure house of information and it's up to date. Suggested careers are grouped by industries in great demand, green economies, largest number of openings anticipated, STEM discipline, amount of preparation or training required and more. When you find an occupation they have a specially developed content model to help you learn more.

The Second Way to Choose/Change Careers : Tests

They're not really tests, but more so instruments or assessments. Before  you proceed with the "tests" method there are 6 things you should know

1. You are absolutely unique. There is no person in the world like you. It follows from this that no test can measure you; it can only describe the family to which  you belong.Tests divide the population into groups, tests are about families, not individuals. You may be exactly like your group or you could be completely different.
2. Don't try to figure out ahead of time how you want the test to come out. Stay loose and open to new ideas. If you;re going to take tests, you need to be open to new ideas.
3. In taking a test, you should just be looking for clues, hunches, or suggestions, rather than for a definitive answer that says, "this is what you must choose to do with your life."
4. Take several tests and not just one. One can easily send you down the wrong path. Tests are notoriously flawed, unscientific, and inaccurate.
5. In good career planning, you're trying, in the first instance, to broaden your horizons, and only later narrow your options down. You are not trying to narrow them down from the outset.
6. Testing will always have "mixed reviews" some people it helped, others it has ruined.

The Third Way to Choose/Change Careers : Using the Flower Exercise

This refers to an exercise we completed in a couple posts back. Click here for the intro, part 2 and part 3. Basically look at your past, break down those experiences down into its most basic "atoms," then build a new career for the future from your favorite "atoms," retracing your steps from the bottom up, in the exact opposite direction.

The Fourth Way to Choose/Change Careers : Changing a Career in Two Steps

This is not a way to identify a new career, as more a way to move into that career, once chosen. Changing careers in two steps, not one. A job is a job-title in a field. A job has therefore, 2 parts : title and field. Title is really a symbol for what you do. Field is where you do it, or what you do it with. a Difficult path is changing both at once (one step). But in 2 steps, you can claim experience.

The Fifth Way to Choose/Change Careers : Finding Out What the Job-Market Will Need

Not based on your wishes, but rather the job-market. Not what you want, but what the market wants. Technically called "projections" or also, "hot jobs". "Projections" is really just a nice word for guesses.

Conclusion : Eight Cautions about Choosing/Changing Careers 

1. Go for any career that seems fascinating or even interesting to you. But first talk to people who are already doing that work. Every man and woman may see their vocation in a different light. Don't assume that the way the person you are interviewing defines it, is the way you must also. Beneath any job-title, there is often lost of room for you to maneuver and define that job in a way that unique suits you, your gifts and your creativity.
2. Make sure that you preserve constancy in your life as well as change. Don't change everything. You need a firm place to stand when moving your life around you.
3. You'll do better to start with yourself and what you want, rather than with the job-market, and what's hot. The difference is being "enthusiasm" and "passion".
4. The best work, the best career, for you, the one that makes you happiest an the most fulfilled, is going to be one that uses: your favorite transferable skills, in your favorite subjects, fields, or special acknowledges, in a job that offers you your preferred people-environments, working conditions, salary, and goals and value.
5. The more time and thought you can give to the choosing of  anew career, the better your choice is going to be.
6. It's okay to make a mistake, in your choice. Most of use will  have 3 careers, and 8 or more jobs in our lifetime.
7. Choosing and then finding employment in a new career that you really fancy, should feel like a fun task as much as possible.
8. College degrees do no guarantee you a job. Do something that you feel passion for, rather than just getting a degree to get a degree.

Until next time,

Caitlin Campbell