Career Tips

Many people choosing or changing a career encounter these top 3 barriers:

1. Cultural transitions: military to civilian, government to private sector, immigrant working in a new country;
2. Career indecision: being overwhelmed, fear of the unknown, and/or you’re just an indecisive person.
3. Practical obstacles to employment: affordable childcare, disability, or finding reliable transportation to work, a lack of job skills or education

Not knowing how to work through and overcome these barriers is the biggest problem of all. Add the stress of tight finances, insecurity about your own abilities, and family pressures, it’s amazing anyone makes a breakthrough. But you can, using the suggestions below and the other resources on The Career Key, Career Key Canada and Self-Employment Key websites.

Whether you find this comforting or not, ultimately you are in the driver’s seat for your career path. I have 3 suggestions that will help you deal with whatever barriers apply to you:

Holland’s Theory of Career Choice.
Don’t try to “reverse engineer” your career choice – like, I can do X, therefore I must be X. It should be forward looking: I am most interested in and my personality fits ________, and how do I make that happen?

Learn about how Holland’s Theory helps you choose a satisfying career. Choose your career first, worry about how to get the job skills and education later while exploring careers and making a high quality decision.

Long-term planning.
If you plan towards a specific career goal, you’ll be more likely to reach it. It will also give you hope and motivation. Whether you’re a gas station attendant, foreign trained doctor, or a laid off executive, it’s possible you have to work in a lower paid job than you’re used to while you go to school, network for your dream job, or start your own business. If possible, choose an interim career that matches your personality.

And if you’re an indecisive person to begin with, try finding your specific career goal by using these proven 4 steps to making a good career decision. We offer you a free downloadable “Decision Balance Sheet.” If that doesn’t help, try these other activities including personal career counseling.

Networking.
Both online and offline, networking offers your best chances at learning about the careers that interest you, affordable childcare options, the best nonprofit and government resources, and getting moral support from other people. If you’re an Internet junkie, get outside and meet people in person. If you’re not familiar with online networking, figure it out – and talk to people who are doing it.

In future posts I’m going to focus on each of these top 3 barriers to career decision-making. Right now, I’m working on post about making a military to civilian transition. If you have something standing in your career path to share, I’d love to hear about it.

Career Key Canada, our new resource for helping Canadians choose or change careers, is off to a great start! Last week I spent 4 days in Toronto at Cannexus 2009, the national career development conference for Canada. Our new site links your Holland personality to Canadian careers and Canadian career information - the only scientifically valid career test based on Holland’s Theory to do so.

Here I am holding down the fort. Fortunately I didn’t have to worry about my laptop going missing since my neighbors were the Canadian Forces. Don’t we all have a renewed appreciation for our Navy folks in light of all the piracy news? Talk about a much needed ego boost for us here in the States, we needed to take out some bad guys…

I gave a presentation in addition to manning the exhibitor table and I have to say this has been one of the best conferences I have been to. The career counsellors I met were very friendly and interested in sharing their goals and challenges. There was a lot of interest and I am working on getting back to the many people I met.

If there are any career counsellors or career development practitioners out there, in Canada or the U.S. who want to try out and evaluate any of our Career Key tests or products, please email me: julietjones at careerkey.biz. I would be glad to help you.

So I’m back to posting to the blog after a little hiatus. I’m not one of those Twitterers or Bloggers who hires someone to blog under my name - so I have to write it myself. Lucky for you!

If you are choosing a career, have you ever considered how all your career options are organized? I bet you haven’t – but why not? Being “well organized” isn’t just for Martha Stewart wanna-bes or accountants, is it?

Being well-organized is cool. The Container Store has made it acceptable to pay $50 for a plastic storage container made in China that you could have purchased at Target for $10.99. The Container Store version is just more beautiful. Also think IKEA. Love those brightly colored containers.

And you know how financial gurus say treat your physical money with the respect it deserves? (not stuffed loose in your pocket for example).

Being organized means you have your life put together – something to be admired and an efficient way to access your stuff. Smart organization can also help you make a big life decision like choosing or changing a career.

You might want to consider how your buffet of career choices is organized. How else can you be sure that when you choose your career, you’re looking at your options in an efficient, comprehensive way?

The Unhelpful Alphabetical Career Laundry List
How many of you have received an alphabetical laundry list of “matching” careers from a valid or invalid career test? “You should be an: actor, architect, art therapist, author…..” Everybody has.

The Smart, Organized Alternative for Matching Careers
If you want to see a science-based way to organize career choices, visit Career Key’s article “Match Your Personality with Careers.” For each Holland personality type, you can see a list of occupations organized into work groups – related careers with similar worker traits, skills, and abilities. If you’re from Canada, go to the Career Key Canada’s article. Dr. Lawrence K. Jones, The Career Key’s author and a vocational expert, organized this system – not a marketing copy writer.

Go to any other website offering a career test to the public, free or otherwise, and you will not find career options so well organized in a practical and useful way.

You have to be a special person/geek to love classification systems for careers – also referred to as “taxonomies.” Recently I’ve met a few like minded professionals who care about them as much as I do. I appreciate them also because my family is largely made up of geeks, linear thinkers, and engineers.

So I dedicate this post to my fellow taxonomy enthusiasts and career development practitioners who see the value in a well-organized and high quality approach to choosing a career. I think users appreciate it too.

I want to say thank you to Ben Eubanks, a writer at the popular Jobacle.com site, for giving us such a positive review for our newly updated eBook, “2009 What Job is Best for Me?” He did a great job and really focused on what’s important about choosing a career.

Recently it’s been hard to find time to blog. I’m preparing for my Career Key Canada presentation and exhibitor table at Cannexus 2009, Canada’s national career development conference, which starts on Monday.

I’ve been addicted to TED and Slideshare watching better presenters than I am to improve my presentation skills. Even though I practiced law and did courtroom litigation for a number of years, I still have to refresh my presentation skills. And just because you’re a lawyer doesn’t make you a good public speaker. I was also reminded that practicing, out loud any oral presentation is absolutely crucial.

And as you can see from the photo of the wonderful Julia Child and her monkfish at left, practicing over a few days gave me the clarity that this was not the right picture of her for my presentation. Associating monkfish, no matter how great it tastes, with my company is perhaps unwise. Don’t get the Julia Child, Career Key Canada analogy? Sorry, have to attend my Cannexus presentation to find out!

If you’re interviewing for a job, conducting an informational interview, or any other oral presentation, I highly recommend practicing what you’ll say in front of the mirror or someone else. It takes me a few “takes” before I realize I can talk less and more effectively say the same thing. And you gain confidence each time you present it, which makes success a self-fufilling prophecy.

My mother told me practice makes perfect - when I was learning the piano. And like any good daughter, don’t I hate she was right! About a great many things…

Job dissatisfaction? Having trouble paying your rent? School graduation? Some events triggering a career decision may be in your control – like school graduation. But others, like layoffs or disability, are not. Either way, you can make progress towards choosing a career that meets your needs by looking at what motivates you.

First, make sure you do the suggested exercises in our article, “Learn More About Yourself.”

Second, think about how your career needs fit into respected psychologist Abraham Maslow’s “Hierarchy of Needs”. This diagram of the hierarchy, courtesy of Wikipedia, may help you prioritize and put your career criteria in perspective.

To give you some ideas, I applied career choice to Maslow’s hierarchy, from the bottom up:

Physiological: physical and mental ability to do the job, income helps you meet your physical needs (food, water, shelter)
Safety: positive job outlook and security, doing what is morally comfortable
Belonging: being part of a team, professional network, community
Esteem: pride in your work, your career, and confidence in your abilities
Self-Actualization: reaching your potential and maximizing your life experience

See how your matching career options fit with Maslow’s 5 categories of needs. While no career is perfect, your final career choice should meet your needs in all these areas.

My guest post this week is from CEO Boris Epstein and AskBINC contributor Tawny Labrum at BINC, a Professional Search Firm specializing in software engineer jobs and the software engineering industry. They know the Investigative personality type and what software engineers want in their careers. (Disclaimer: I’m married to a software engineer, techies check out his C++/D blog and Linux debugger Zero Bugs; I can’t agree more with BINC’s observations)

I asked BINC to talk about their experience with Holland’s Theory and how it relates to job and career satisfaction for their software engineer clients and employers.

BINC:

The saying, ‘birds of a feather flock together’ is used when people with similar characteristics or similar interests choose to spend time together in business and in social scenes. This also seems to be true in the employment industry.

Take for example the Software Marketplace, in which BINC specifically works. We have the opportunity to deal with some of the most intelligent people in the scientific community. They compete with one another to have the honor to work together as a team. And as Dr. John Holland has shown, people who are most successful and satisfied with their careers tend to work with other like minded people.

If you look at the six different personality types of Holland’s Theory described on Career Key’s website, the Investigative personality type screams to those who are employed as Software Engineers:

“- Likes to study and solve math or science problems; generally avoids leading, selling, or persuading people;
- Is good at understanding and solving science and math problems;
- Values science; and
- Sees self as precise, scientific, and intellectual.”

If you ask any of the recruiters at BINC to describe a true software engineer and their ideal opportunity this is the type of result you would get:

• A position that will promote intellectual growth and high level thinking. Software Engineers are extremely analytical individuals who would rather deal with problems that require thought and have a proven answer. This ability to study and solve problems makes software engineers invaluable to their employer because the word of technology is changing rapidly and engineers need to continue to seek new answers or better methods.

• A position where they are inspired and the work they are doing somehow is contributing to the greater good of society. Software engineers often have tasks that are mind-numbing to anyone who doesn’t love what they do. Staring at code, creating and solving mathematical problems, repeating processes without the passion to do so can be wearing, but great software engineers thrive in such an environment.

• Engineers are passionate about what they do and they possess a true love for programming, they strive to be around like minded people. Very rarely is there a job where we place a software engineer in by him or herself. Very often they work in teams and the dynamic has to work or the employer is robbed of the creative energy and passion to get the job done. A successful software engineer seems to thrive in environments where they fit in culturally and their investigative personality type is put to use.

• Engineers look for a supportive working environment with a vision, where ideas can be heard and their paycheck serves as a bonus, not a primary motivator. Part of our job at BINC is to find that right fit for engineers and employers to enable their strengths and provide an atmosphere they will love working in.

As you can see the Holland Theory matches closely what we’ve seen in our day-to- day experience. Software engineers, in general, love solving problems, they love math and science, and they’re passionate about their work. These are the type of people we’ve found thriving in their workplace and loving their careers.

Discovering your passion may seem like a daunting task, but the long-term benefits of investigating your personality, your abilities and your talents will go a long way to helping you find the perfect position. If you’re interested in more of our tips and tricks please visit our blog - AskBinc.com or visit us at bincsearch.com.

NOTE: Career Key thanks BINC CEO Boris Epstein and AskBINC contributor Tawny Labrum at BINC for this great post. To see more careers of the Investigative Personality type and the other 5 personaltiy types, read our article “Match Your Personality with Careers.“

Whether to choose a career in education is a difficult but common decision. Many people are interested in education careers. After you match your personality with careers, narrowing your choices based on high-quality career information is critical to making a good career choice. But it takes work to find high-quality information on the Internet; so I’ve started it for you.

Having worked as an adjunct professor myself and raised by a college professor and a public school librarian, I know a little about education careers. With few exceptions, they are political, not well-paid, enjoy iffy job security, and often suffer from a lack of resources. All that said, with the right job fit, education is one of the most rewarding careers in the world. I feel fortunate to have grown up and worked in this environment.

Education is undergoing enormous change from technology, fluid government involvement, college “business models,” and demographics. A few examples of trends:

• the growth in distance learning and Internet based education,
• charter schools and changing public school system funding & structure,
• accountability required by No Child Left Behind and state laws,
• changes in the college professor tenure system, and
• the growing diversity of the American student population.

So whether you are a high school career planner or an adult planning a career change, you need to more about what an education career is like before you leap. The resources I recommend are just a few to get you started, to show the variety of quality career information out there.

Before I recommend these career info links, don’t forget to:

1. Talk with people working in the jobs that interest you – their information will be much more accurate, especially about your geographic region or specialty than any Internet source. Yes, it’s more work but it’s worth it. Learn more about career specific networking.
2. Use your public or school/college library for free subscriptions or links to websites the general public has to pay for. See more tips for taking advantage of the library.
3. Be skeptical of website sources of career information selling something – what is their bias? Where does their information come from? That includes The Career Key. You can learn more at our site about our mission and philosophy (we don’t accept reciprocal linking agreements or advertising).

To start, look at job descriptions, certification requirements, salary, job outlook, and related occupations and websites in the Department of Labor’s Occupational Outlook Handbook:

Preschool and K-12 Teachers
Post-Secondary (College) Teachers
Education Administrators
Counselors
Librarians

Higher-Ed (college, post-secondary)

• Chronicle.com (The Chronicle of Higher Education)
• Chronicle also offers a great academic blog list focused on academic life and careers.
• For a “real world” perspective on 2009 trends in technology and higher ed from a college IT VP, read this post from “Bytes from Lev”

Secondary School (K-12)

• About Teaching and the First Year (Editor’s Picks from Ed.Gov)
• Teacher Training and Certification Information (Editor’s Picks from Ed.Gov)
• Ed.gov’s State by State Education Department listing (for licensing info)
• Is teaching overrated? Marty Nemko’s USNWR (U.S. News and World Report) article will give you even more reasons to do your informational interviews.
• Life as a Teacher. This UK government site offers more video and interactive media than any U.S. site I’ve seen in offering teachers’ stories about their career paths and daily work.
• What is Teach for America Really Like? (article in USNWR)
• TeacherLingo.com (teacher blogs)
• The School Counselor’s Role (at the American School Counselor Association website)
• Vocational Information Center (VIC) This non-profit, popular website is a source of career information for educators and can help you explore what it might be like to teach subjects that interest you.
• Top 10 Librarian Blogs to Read in ‘09 from Librarian and Information Science News. The great thing about librarians is you know they love media - so you’re guaranteed to find some interesting career info about librarians on the Internet. This blog list is just a sample…

Early Childhood Education & Preschool

• National Association for the Education of Young Children
• Links on Early Childcare and Education Careers from VIC (see above)
• TeacherLingo.com (search for preschool teacher blogs)
• Lead from the Start Blog: views on preschool, policy and the teaching profession

Any suggestions and feedback on this post or any others is appreciated. This is my second post in a series about challenging but rewarding career choices, and finding the best Internet resources for career information. Click here for my first post about women interested in science careers.

With such gloomy job loss numbers, what should be the next move for someone choosing or changing a career? Is any career path safe or secure? Are the “job outlook” numbers published by the government even accurate anymore? See my previous post on tips for evaluating job outlook.

Mulling these questions over for weeks, I’ve come to the conclusion that in the current crisis, you cannot rely much on the advice of economists and labor statisticians to help you make a good career decision.

One thing we know for sure: matching your career with your personality is still the scientifically proven road to job satisfaction. The economic crisis is completely unrelated to the need to identify your values, interests and strengths.

But when you need to narrow down your matching career options, job outlook matters a great deal. Planning exactly where you want to go is more critical than ever. You don’t want spend time and money preparing for a career only to find there are few jobs in it.

To avoid a dead end career choice, here are 5 questions to ask about the top 2 or 3 careers you are considering:

1. Are job opportunities in this industry disappearing for good? According to the New York Times, some jobs are not returning – at least in the near future. Examples: jobs in Financial Services, Housing (Realtors, mortgage brokers, construction and architectural services, etc.), Hospitality (hotel managers, travel agents, etc.), Manufacturing, and Retail. If technology advances, government regulation, drops in consumer spending, and outsourcing are hammering the industry that interests you - find out why. Only then can you predict how permanent the losses might be.
2. If the answer to #1 is yes and you want to still pursue it, what will be your strategy for getting one of the jobs that remain? Is there an industry sector surviving this downturn? How can you organize your education, training, and networking to be successful in that sector?
3. If this industry is not in turmoil, to what extent is this recession impacting it? Where are the opportunities? What is your plan for making yourself stand out from other applicants? List out new skills, volunteer or work experience you can get, connections you can make – and how to achieve them.
4. If government funds this industry (teachers, police officers, social work, etc.), are you prepared for the ups and downs for job security? Politicians are notoriously short-term planners; just because “stimulus” is a hot concept now doesn’t mean money will rain from government trees for long (if ever). Do you have a private-sector and self-employment fallback position? If inflation eats away at your government paycheck, will you need to supplement it and how?
5. Double-check your sources of information. Are you only considering information that supports your desired conclusions? Have you talked to people actually working in the career you want to choose? Make sure you consider all the negatives of your career options - all options have them.

Answering these questions is a great way to narrow down your matching career options. And the information you gather will do more good than any you get from “experts” making job forecasts. Planning and a smart process for making a decision will help you make a good career choice, one you won’t regret.

Keeping your priorities straight, even in a recession, is an important part of being a Career Free Agent. Your long term happiness and job satisfaction are at stake. Tips for being loyal to yourself and your family are part 5 of my 6 part series on The Free Agent Outlook on Work.

Loyalty is such an unused and forgotten words these days. It seems counter intuitive and impractical to think about putting yourself and your family before your job in a recession. But if you truly consider your daily routine and your long-term sanity, you’ll see how this makes sense. Whether your “family” is just you and close friends or two kids, a spouse and a dog – the loyalty principle holds true.

• Know what is important to you and what you value – and protect and nurture them. If you need to write your own eulogy to figure this out – do it. Hint: relationships are probably first. Not sure if your current career conflicts with your values or your personality? Learn more about yourself and how that impacts career choice.
• Don’t wait until there is a crisis – a job loss, a divorce, a health problem; maintain your relationships (professional, personal) in good times.
• Follow the ACIP model of decision-making when you need to make a tough call that you won’t regret. Do you need to find another job to avoid an unethical boss – but you’re worried about the financial consequences? Do you need to quit your job ASAP because it’s so stressful that you have physical symptoms – yet your job options elsewhere are slim?
• Have a life outside of work. Develop personal relationships and satisfy your interests in activities unrelated to your job. Heard of “diversification”? It’s not just for investments. That way, if one part of your life suffers a blow you have another part to rely on.

Still to come, the 6th and final Free Agent Principle: Think “Right” Thoughts. And no, it will not involve stimulants (except a fancy caffeinated beverage, maybe).

For the previous posts for this 6 part series see:
The 6 Principles of the Free Agent Worker
Principle #1: Know and Strengthen Your Marketable Skills
Principle #2: Stay Mobile
Principle #3: Watch Your Company and Industry
Principle #4: Do Your Job Well