how to choose a career – Career Ideas

November 22, 2008December 7, 2008

Choosing Your Career? Or Is the Wrong Career Choosing You?

How can a career be choosing you?

Most people do it most of the time. “Office manager wanted—3 years exp. min. BA, prefer bilingual in Spanish and English” and you ask yourself if your 2 years experience might be enough or your 7 years might make you overexperienced and if your rusty Spanish is good enough.

That’s trying to fit you into some preset category regardless of your values and passions. All you are looking at are resume categories for experience and education. In that case, the career is choosing you. You are trying to fit yourself into the right checkboxes. Do that throughout your career and all your job changes and you will increase your authority and expertise and income. But will you be happy in your work life? Will you really be choosing your career and setting up a career vision to pursue?

It’s not that you shouldn’t look at job postings or shouldn’t pay attention to your skills or ignore what organizations want and need. Not at all. Those are critical. It’s just a question of when.

If you want a career you’ll love, an authentic or true career, you need to first determine your career vision. Second, map out a basic plan to succeed with your vision. Then you have the background and knowledge to see what jobs to apply for now, whether as stopgap measures as you earn money for education (for instance) or as learning opportunities to enjoy now and move you toward your final career vision.

Steven Covey, author of 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, was once asked by a TV interviewer why we needed his book. After all, the interviewer pointed out, everything Covey was saying in his book could also be found in all the philosophies and religions of the world. Cover didn’t argue. He agreed, and added, “but I’ve put these ideas into the right order.” In the same way, you need to look at job postings, but make sure you do it in the right order—after you know your career vision and direction.

November 11, 2008November 25, 2008

The Happiness Factor in Choosing a Career

Choosing a career based on what other people enjoy is a very tricky business. Your career ideas may not match with what most people think. But statistically, you can get a sense of what seems to be bringing people more happiness at work. Looking at that might point you in some good directions and offer career help.

To find that out, you can turn to a career survey by the University of Chicago from 1988 to 2006, the most comprehensive survey ever to examine satisfaction and happiness at work. What did they find?

Less than half, or 47 percent of people said they were very satisfied with their jobs and even less reported they were very happy—only one-third.

“People looking for jobs that bring satisfaction and happiness should concentrate on professions that focus primarily on serving other people,” summarized the University of Chicago’s website

“The most satisfying jobs are mostly professions, especially those involving caring for, teaching, and protecting others and creative pursuits,” said Tom W. Smith, Director of the General Social Survey (GSS) at the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago.

Specifically, clergy were the highest percentage of very satisfied as well as the highest percentage of very happy people at work.

Professions with lower social prestige such as roofing (a mere 14% very happy and 25% very satisfied with their work) and some manual labor fared poorly in these measures generally. But physicians and lawyers were not in the top group, either, perhaps due to the stress in their lines of work.

So what does this tell you?

Not much in one sense—your career ideas and dreams are yours. Letting statistical norms define what you want to do in career choosing is very limiting and damaging. After all, even among the roofers, some were very happy. That happy roofer could be you if that’s what you love to do.

But there is something fundamental about the conclusions too. Service–doing something that has a positive impact on others. Creativity–having a chance to use your own skills in fresh, nonroutine ways. Social prestige–feeling appreciated. These are often important in people’s career choices. The key, I would suggest, is that you can see most jobs and careers as being of service without having to be in a “helping”profession like clergy or teacher. If what you are doing helps others, it can feel meaningful and be of service. If you have some chance to improve whatever you are doing–incluidng working in shipping or being a roofer–then you can use your creativity. And the ultimate sense of prestige and appreciation CAN come from within and from those you most love, rather than what society has decided.

In short, the study is interesting and helpful, if you don’t take it too literally. After all, we don’t all need to be clergy or avoid becoming roofers.

Need help determining how to choose a career? Contact me for more ideas and info about career coaching or check out Guide to Lifework or the other books available through this site.

November 4, 2008May 8, 2012

Career Ideas 101–Occupational Outlook Handboook 2012

If you’re looking for career ideas, and especially if you’re looking for some concrete info to help in choosing a career, here’s an incredible resource.

Inspiring? Not so much. But it’s an unbelievably complete resource for finding out the nitty-gritty facts (presented in a very readable format by the way, not as statisitcal lists) about pretty much every occupation you can imagine–and many you probably never thought about before.

I’m talking about the federal government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Occupational Outlook Handbook. Yes, it sounds like the ultimate cure for insomnia, but it’s actually a way to find out (according to the BLS website):

the training and education needed
earnings
expected job prospects
what workers do on the job
working conditions

For people curious about what some jobs entail and the education required, this is very useful. For students just looking to browse through careers to see what might interest them, it’s also helpful but more difficult to use online as there are so many listings that it would be hard to just randomly be clicking around.

In short, this is a wonderful resource. It is no substitute for the internal work you must do to succeed in finding your best or ideal or true career(s). That’s all about understanding yourself, your passions, your values and your skills. Other articles on this blog talk about those elements. This article I just wanted to make sure everyone reading this blog would have access to bottom line information you need to help make realistic career plans.