The Real Meaning of Career Success - Part 1

I've been blogging a lot lately about careers, passions and dreams. Why am I doing this?

The answer is simple - because they are so important.

For some lucky people, there is the dream, and then all the 'doing' simply follows the dream, without deviation. The dream doesn't change, or if it does, it just becomes bigger and stronger. I'm sure you know at least one person who has a career that fits like a glove, that is just so perfect for them that you wonder how they got it so right!

Unfortunately, for most of us, the path to career success is rarely simple or straightforward. For a start, many people don't have a dream (or at least they don't think they do). This usually manifests as 'I don't know what I want to do when I grow up.'. In career parlance, this means the person has not yet 'discovered' or 'tapped into' what they want to do.

At this point I would just like to reiterate what I said in my last blog post (This was not a gratuitous remark to end the post nicely). We are all in fact already engaged in our careers, but we might not realise it yet.

I know this sounds complicated - but it needn't be, there are always clues.We just have to learn how to identify the clues.

For some people, the clues lie in their childhood dreams. Often our childhood dreams are dismissed as silly, or as 'a phase we are going through'. So, a girl might have spoken about her wish to become a doctor, but was told she was not smart enough, or that she lacked discipline. Even worse, she might have been told, either directly or indirectly, that only males could become doctors. Fast forward and bring this child back to her forty-something reality, and she might realise that she has missed her vocation; that she really should have been a doctor, and now it is too late.

Let's stay with this case study for a while. Do you think this woman - let's call her Marta - has led a false life? Do you wonder that she might have been unhappy? She probably has, at least to a point. Does she feel unfulfilled? Most definitely. She has lived a life, and a lot of it has been good. But, there was something missing.

Something she has searched for from time to time, and the need to work out what was wrong was evident when Marta (not her real name) came to see me a while back. She was not getting along with her boss. She was being bullied, felt trapped, and she wanted to make a big change. She had started out as a nurse (did you see that coming?), and after thirteen years or so had done the rounds of the nursing jobs, including a number of settings, and found her way into policy administration. She was working on cases in which patients were suing hospitals, doctors and nurses for malpractice. She was good at her job, and everyone liked her, but she hated going to work with a passion. On the day she came to see me, she talked about how she could not get out of her car for about 20 minutes the previous day, she just sat in the basement, numb, unable to face the day ahead.

This was, I told Marta, a wake-up call. Her body was telling her she must not do this any more, that she was becoming ill. She felt 'weak and a failure'. I said she was strong and successful. She didn't believe me - not that day, anyway.

Over time, Marta and I explored a whole pile of things: why she wanted to become a doctor all those years ago, what her good work days had been like, and what happened during the bad times.  Where and when she felt happiest, and what would make her sad. We explored her 'success' signs, which were when she stood tall and felt in control. We explored her hobbies (she was a very good artist, but had also let this joyful activity slide over the years).

Eventually, we got down to Marta's core 'career success factors' - the ability to be technically excellent and to 'see bodies restored' (her words) though medical intervention. This had made her a competent but unhappy ward nurse, but a great administrator. There was something about this job that wasn't right, though, she said she felt too time-pressured, to process information in time for deadlines meant she could not be thorough. Her her current job was also lacking in 'challenge' - her key career motivator.

Whether she knew it or not, Marta had been building towards her next, big career step for many years. She had developed an incredible knowledge of the latest tools and technologies, just from reading medical journals. Now all she needed was to undertake specialist training and get her new job working alongside doctors in an oncology unit. This job involved high level technical expertise and had not existed until recently, so how could she have dreamed it up all those years ago? Unfortunately, being bullied had made her feel unfit for any role - she had stopped dreaming, and even looking out for other roles.

Had Marta become a doctor, she may have been just as frustrated in her early career. (This often happens, especially in the medical field where high achievers get stuck doing boring, repetitive tasks while waiting for their chance to get into what they really need to do.)She may have become disillusioned with all the chores of a junior doctor, the role wasn't actually anything like she imagined, she now realised, but her 'doctor dream' provided us with the platform from which to develop a solid career plan.

Sometimes, what we call career success doesn't come early in life. The only crime is if we give up too early, and stop being engaged.

What was holding Marta back? Right now, it was, simply, that she needed to give herself permission to move past this stage, to take control and move forward. And the other thing? This was the first time anyone had actually encouraged her to talk about her dreams, rather than pouring water on them. Is it really that simple?

On jobs and careers, passions, needs and happiness

How can you tell if you have a job or a career? Can you have both?

Well, yes you can. A job is something you do. A job is a transaction – you provide something (your labour) and in exchange you receive payment (money and perhaps other benefits).

Many people who have jobs say they have careers – perhaps they climb the corporate ladder, or become highly skilled at what they do. But unless they would do this without any external reward, they don’t really have a career.

A job is what you do. It is always negotiable. A career is who you are. It is not negotiable.

You are welcome to dispute this. I am sure many of you will. You might say, but I need money to survive, to pay the mortgage, to pay for the kids’ school, etc. But, how much money do you need to do these things? How much do you really, really need? Chances are, you are sacrificing a career for nothing - careers provide an income as well, even if it is not in conventional ways.

Many people who say they have careers are not really happy. This is a real shame. Now I am not saying that if you have a career, every day will be like heaven on a stick. It won’t, and that is life. But if you really have a career, the days that aren’t so good – the days that challenge your determination, that question your ability, that push you on to greater success (on your terms) – these are the days that are most important of all.

A career is not something you drop after you leave the office (I don’t mean taking work home that you haven’t finished, because you are really doing two people’s work). A career is something that you carry with you – it is aligned with your purpose, your soul, and you find yourself doing things that continually reinforce who you are, even when you are ‘off the job’.

Everybody has a career, because everyone has a purpose, a raison-d’etre. When this is aligned with your job, it is an amazing thing. You might not be consciously aware of it, but if you are developing and exhibiting your career on a daily basis, you are most likely content with life most of the time. You are probably less competitive too, and more willing to share your knowledge with others, because careers are not selfish.

Another thing about career is that it is driven internally. People give you a job. You develop your career. Can you see the difference?

Can everyone have a career? Yes they can. In a developed country, we all have a choice. 

I have had jobs I have loved, and jobs I have hated, and some that were just OK. In my younger years I looked for jobs that matched my interests and suited my needs at the time. I enjoyed working in the inner city area before I had my kids, and commuting an hour each way was no problem. When we got into family mode, I looked for a job closer to home. I moved up the ladder and was happy enough.

I didn’t have a notion of career until I was in my forties. It was a culmination of a lot of things. Losing a job I loved and enjoyed going to, the collapse of my industry, finding a new talent, and a lot of soul searching and trying out of jobs that just didn't cut it.

I’m glad I found out what my career was. It changed my outlook on life completely. I no longer worried about whether I was ‘good enough’ in other people’s eyes, I set my own benchmarks. I have allowed myself to take risks, to succeed and to fail, and to label all of these as ‘experience’.

I’m glad I have a career, because at this stage of human evolution, jobs come and go quickly, and provide the least stability experienced since the Great Depression since the 1930s (except this time the instability is not going away). In this climate, losing a job is extra hard – there are financial consequences, of course, but the greatest barrier is related to the loss of identity that having a job brings.

We live in a time of constant and dramatic change. Life, and work, is unpredictable. Other than saving for a rainy day (something that is becoming more and more imperative), we have to face the fact that the future holds no guarantees. It is best if we all take the view that no job is safe; there is no course, no profession, no organisation that will provide us with a livelihood for the rest of our working lives.

 So, to the main point of this post: 

Having a career is excellent insulation against the vagaries of the labour market. It is the new 'essential' quality. It also helps you look at things more objectively, to be less beaten back when things go wrong. It is a reason to keep going, to find new ways of doing what you love, to be joyful about your life.

Let me explain.  Or rather, let someone else.

I’ve been given permission to quote a young man who has, in my humble opinion, a fine career – Daniel Reeves, a musician. Maybe you have heard of him? Maybe not. It doesn’t matter, his happiness does not hinge on acceptance by others (but do go and see him if he happens to be playing in your town, you won't regret it). Daniel expresses the true sense of career in these words:

I’ve spent half my adult life working on roads and the other half has been spent driving them. Although I have nights where I’d just love to crawl into my own bed and have the pleasure of a peaceful and uninterrupted 8 hours sleep, to reach in the fridge to grab my food instead of an esky in the back of the car, or when I stop at a road side shop and hope that the food hasn’t been in the warmer for hours and that I remain healthy for my show later that night. It really doesn’t matter if my change room is a bunch of trees on the side of the road before I get into town after spending all day driving, or when I visit my life’s possessions at a storage shed to grab what I accidently packed into the wrong box instead of getting it from my room. The journey and the experience of entertaining people by playing music is always so rewarding, whether I play a song that makes people dance or whether I play a deep and meaningful song that at some point or another has kept someone strong enough to move forward and keep going. The journey is always rewarding and full of rich life experiences. 

As a musician you soon realise there’s nights where there’s big crowds and nights where there’s not so big crowds. Nights with much applause, and nights with only the dishwasher humming along behind the pub bar after you strike the last chord of your song. But the journey and the experience are always calling. No matter how uplifted and on top of the world you are, no matter how tired and exhausted you are, there’s this life force of its own, this world of noise and beauty which just keeps driving you along.

Sometimes my wallet is over flowing with cash and other times it’s praying for rain. Like any role in life, there’s the good and then there’s the other side that goes along with it. But I could never swap how rich and rewarding this life experience is. 

My wish for everyone reading this post is that hasn't already done so - find your career – it really is a blast!

The latest job search strategy - environment scanning

We've heard about networking, information interviewing, tapping into the hidden job market. Chances are you have used all these strategies, or at least heard of them.

Last week I talked about the trend towards insecurity in employment, so this week I want to tell you about a less well-known, but important career development technique called environment scanning, which can assist with the career decision making and subsequent planning processes. This actually started as an organisational development tool, offering businesses and other employing entities new ways to look forward and plan for a future that is characterised by many unknowns. In career development today, this term makes sense, as these days we are all trying to 'best fit' ourselves for futures that cannot be guaranteed. We have all heard the news that most of the jobs we will be doing ten years from now have not been invented yet, and those that will continue to exist will be carried out quite differently, thanks largely to technology and the increasingly global nature of work.

The kind of environment scanning I want to talk about bears some similarities to what career practitioners have traditionally called 'opportunity awareness', 'understanding the world of work', or just 'labour market awareness', but these are not quite the same. Let me explain.

'Opportunity awareness' is part of Career Development 101, it is the other side of the coin to 'self-awareness'. Broken down, this means that in order to have a meaningful, self-directed career, you need to understand yourself in a work-sense (your skills, talents, interests, motivations, core values and drivers, your social context, also your perceived and real limitations), as well as what opportunities exist for you. Sounds fair enough, doesn't it? Unfortunately, though, what this implies is that there is a job out there with your name on it; that there will be something just right for you and all you have to do is prepare yourself and it will come.

The thousands of law, medicine, education, engineering and accounting graduates working in non-related and often low-skilled jobs should be evidence enough that simply doing a course and graduating does not guarantee a job in that field. More than ever before, the labour market is far from being an =SUM equation.

The fact is, there may be a large number of jobs you can apply for, or, there may be just a few, or in fact zero opportunities. There may be a hundred jobs you would be more than happy to undertake, and which you feel at least somewhat qualified for, but for one reason or another, you are never going to get thanks to the increasing knowledge of creeping credentialism and the multiskilling hangover (to be the subject of another blog post). Understanding the world of work generally may be useful in developing your theoretical knowledge, but it is not going to get you a job and could, quite possibly, be a source of disillusionment. In any case, even if you find the contemporary labour market a fascinating field of inquiry (as I do), this is a field of constant change, and I doubt that many people, even career practitioners, have the time or energy to keep up to date.

This is the basis for the mistakes parents and other adults with good intentions make when they advise young people to become a this or a that.  Their knowledge is, quite simply, limited and flawed. This is why people believe, truly, that because there are well-paid jobs as a doctor, accountant, lawyer, therefore studying to become one of these will mean you will in fact become a well-paid doctor, accountant or lawyer. In most cases, this is really bad advice, on a number of levels, but most of all, because unless you are truly gifted and passionate, you will only ever be an average doctor, accountant or lawyer and the really good jobs will always elude you.

So, what is environment scanning and where does it fit in? It is a number of things.

1. Firstly, it is an active process, or should I say a pro-active process. You are not passively reading the Job Guide or listening to an industry group paint their field with a coat of gloss. You are actively engaged in finding out the information you need to make the right decision for you.

2. Secondly, environment scanning is unique, because you are unique and your career needs and goals are unique. So, every single person will develop a unique and different view of their environment.

3. Thirdly, environment scanning puts you in the driver's seat. You are actually making decisions about the environment, whether it is friendly or hostile, open or closed. This helps you adopt an analytical approach.You determine the parameters for your scan: how far will you search geographically, how in-depth, and over what period of time. In fact, if you are properly engaged, environment scanning is something you are doing, to a greater or lesser extent, all the time.

4. Placing this in fourth position does not mean it is less important. Environment scanning is a holistic process: it engages the spirit, the imagination, your creative core. You need to, firstly, imagine one or more possible futures for yourself - you want new information, not old data. You are adopting a stance of curiosity, which enables to you discover new possibilities inside organisations, or perhaps in a business idea for yourself. Does that sound exciting? This process is akin to 'job crafting', in which you work towards creating your own 'best fit' job, perhaps by showing the leaders of an organisation how you can assist them to achieve their goals, or maybe in starting a business yourself to fill a gap in the market.

5.Lastly, if the last four elements are taken seriously and implemented, environment scanning is profound, creating a lifelong interest and the motivation to achieve. You have, in essence, found your life's work.

Does this all sound a bit new-agey and creepy? That's OK, you don't have to engage in any of these activities. In fact, I predict that less than 5% of people will ever be brave enough to really embrace this technique, which makes it all the more likely that the 5% minority will succeed.

If you are part of the 5 % and want to know more about how to undertake a successful environmental scan, along with other contemporary job search techniques, you'll be able to do so very soon, by reading my books, 'Who's Who in the Zoo? and 'What's New in the Zoo?'; both will be out later this year.

The latest job trend - insecurity!

Is your job on the line? It probably is, whether you are working on a permanent, casual, or contract basis. I wasn't around during the Great Depression, and it sounds like it was pretty bad for a lot of Australians, but I think the outlook for workers today is equally grim, but in a very different, twenty-first century way.

I've seen a lot of change in the Australian labour market since I was a fresh, bright-eyed nineteen year-old clerk in the Federal Department of Employment (then it was tied to Immigration, interestingly). This was my entry point into my own world of work and my initiation as a budding career development practitioner. While I thought I was just having fun working with larrikins in the Commonwealth Employment Service I learned the ropes of social security benefits, government funded employment programs, jobless statistics and industry reports, and, even more importantly, I learned a lot about people and what they want and need from jobs.

I have often made predictions about what was going to happen in the labour market, with some accuracy, but mainly to myself and family members, or to colleagues and friends during philosophical discussions. I have never thought to put out a prediction publicly. I have never seen the value in it, especially when the outlook does not look good. However, I am going public with this prediction, actually, in the hope that it does not eventuate.

I predict that, for the average Australian worker, real wages will fall significantly over the next five years. Tony Abbott wants Australians to earn less, and, like it or not, what Tony wants, Tony seems to get. One way or another, he is definitely not the Australian worker's friend. The 457 visa floodgate has opened and willing workers are pouring in from overseas. Didn't you notice all those people flying in while the Liberals have been so busy announcing their successes in stopping what  was always a paltry number of boat arrivers? Anyway, these 457 visa holders are very happy to work in crummy conditions for far less than the minimum wage, as recent 'alleged' news stories about Koreans working for a certain mining company illustrate . Unions have shown little grunt or ability to change or end this situation and will not, at least as long as we have Liberals in power.

I'm obviously not happy with our neo-conservative political situation but I am going big picture here, way above the blame game. So, back to the prediction. Wages will be cut for Australians who want to compete with the incoming workers, but so will jobs for Australians. Like manufacturing, white collar jobs are heading overseas. Health care and insurance claims are processed in India and Japan, while your call centre is in the Philippines.

Alongside this, I predicted a while back that as the 21st century advanced, more and more Australians would be working casually or under contract; that there would be less jobs in large organisations and more need for outsourced labour. This is already becoming obviously the trend. Cutbacks and retrenchments (or is that right-sizing) are everywhere.

We want all of our young people to get good vocational training, but where will they find jobs? Australia is a living conundrum. On one hand, we already have far too many graduates than there are available jobs.On the other hand, we need more teachers, nurses, doctors, paramedics, but we have education systems that fail to supply these in the right proportion, and career opportunities at the end do not match our actual need.

For the seventy-five percent of us who don't have a degree, plus those who do not work in the area in which we qualified, one of the chief barriers to success in job search is that 'demonstrated skills' drives the whole recruitment process. This means, people are competing with hundreds, possibly thousands of others, for jobs that have an extremely 'tight' set of required skills (which is heavily enforced by the Applicant Tracking System) - unfortunately the notion of transferable skills has not penetrated the minds of most recruiters and hirers. For example, a client came to see me recently, she had worked as a bookkeeper for many years using a range of software, but not MYOB. She had absolutely awesome bookkeeping skills. After more than 200 applications she was still not hired because, rather than asking questions that would identify her ability to use MYOB, the questions stopped after 'Have you used MYOB?' and her truthful answer was, 'No'. I sighed, gave her a free copy of MYOB I had lying around and told her to go home and set herself up a home accounting system. She did. We wrote on her resume that she had used MYOB. She applied for a job. At the next interview, able to answer 'Yes, I have used MYOB', she got the job. Interestingly, they did not ask one more MYOB-related question.

One of our big problems is the mismatch of qualifications and available jobs. We have a large pool of workers trained for jobs that don't exist.We have jobs going that people could actually do well, but the selection process begins with a particular qualification (even for lowly clerical roles, older workers with years of experience are shut out because they don't have a Certificate in Business Administration).

Does the answer lie in retraining? Retraining for what?  Besides the fact that spending 6-12 months studying something you already know is ludicrous, how do we know that next year the benchmark for entrants will not be a Diploma, that the Certificate in Business Administration is all but useless? How can we be sure jobs will be available in any other current line of work?

Retraining is simply not an option for many people, especially if it means sacrificing opportunities to job hunt. Studying is far less palatable when you are fighting to keep a roof over your head, and with funding cuts to training programs anyway, it's not hard to see why most people aren't warming to the prospect of undergoing lengthy self-funded training programs with dubious employment possibilities at the end.

Not long ago, employers used to train people on the job, nowadays they will be more likely to purchase a product and leave it up to the person operating it to work it out, or if they are lucky, they may get a few hours of vendor training thrown into the purchase price. When they hire someone new, it becomes a requirement to already know the product - the employer is not interested in wasting time training a new person, they want them pre-manufactured.

So, in summary I further predict that within the next five years we will have a large pool of workers with outdated or unusable skills that do not match employers' requirements. This is a safe prediction, because it is already happening. But this situation will get much, much worse as no one, not even me, can guarantee what course a person should do to ensure any level of job security.

A also predicted a while back that as the 21st century advanced, more and more Australians would be working casually or under contract, that there would be less jobs in large organisations and more need for outsourced labour. This is already becoming obviously the trend. While for some of us, the jobs we had are still needed, we are just doing it another way, more Australians are becoming, effectively, itinerant workers, at the mercy of the on-hire process. Those of us who want to take some control are opting to go into business for themselves. These new-age entrepreneurs are often reluctant business people, and are ill-equipped to handle the rigours of financial and business management, not to mention marketing, administration and tax accounting.

We currently have a labour market in chaos. It is disconnected, unpredictable and constantly shifting. My prediction is that it will get a whole lot worse, and that there will be many casualties. For individuals who find themselves in the middle of this maelstrom, unsure which way to go, I offer this advice: Stop and breathe, accept that many things are out of your control, then accept that you must take control of your own life. This is your anchor. This means not rushing into anything, especially not because someone on the TV or radio tells you that you too can have a career in aged care or personal training (some of us will, but most won't). Take stock of your successes, and eliminate from your thoughts the bits of the 'old you' that are hampering you in the present. Times are changing; you are reshaping yourself. Look around with fresh eyes at what is happening in your local area, or in a new area you might want to move to, and try to identify some areas of interest for you. This is called 'environment scanning' which is the topic of my next blog.

Adios for now
Julie

Thoughts on passion and whether a job is just a job after all

 In my professional circle, there has been a lot of discussion lately around the topic of career satisfaction; this mainly comes down to an argument between the people who think we should each find our passion and let that drive our careers, and the people who say 'work is work' and it is not meant to be enjoyed.

The careers people on the 'passion' side argue that we spend more of our lives at work than in any other area, so we might as well love what we do. These are the people who usually believe we are put on the earth for a purpose, and it is our duty to work out what this is. If we don't do this duty to ourselves, we are more likely to become stressed and ill - physically and mentally. There have been many books devoted to this subject, some from career practitioners but many from the life coaching, motivational speakers/writers, and the self-help industry as well. 

Some people (myself included) have found this argument persuasive; although I didn't actually read it in a book, it was more a matter of listening to that small voice inside me that gradually grew bigger and more all-pervasive. There is an element of liberation in following one's passion, of 'treading one's own path' (thanks Barefoot Investor!), but it can also be hard work (mainly in trying to keep a roof over your head and food on the table while carving new territory), so it is no surprise that many people have preferred to view work as something that must be endured..

The most pervasive argument for work as something to be endured is a transactional one. There are only so many jobs in the world - what would happen to society if everyone just did what they wanted? Who would collect the garbage, hold the 'Stop' and 'Slow' road signs up in all weathers while work is being done? Who would clean the public toilets? (oh, wait - we have technology for all those things now).

Whether or not the transactional argument is true, most of the reasons relate back to our society, how we want to live and what we are prioritising. As a society, we value wealth, material possessions and competition over family, community and equality. This is a harsh truth that cannot be disputed. We like money and the type of freedom it brings. Thanks to the scaremongering going on in political circles and the superannuation industry, we now believe that we are going to live a long time and we are going to need lots of money to do it - we'd better store it away now or we will be living on the streets, old and incontinent, with no one to look after us. Short of winning the lottery or becoming a game show champion, we can only do this one way - by working hard and getting lots of money so we can store it away till later. Yes it is true - the Protestant Work Ethic is alive and well!

I propose a rethink on both these extremes. It is about balance. It involves following our hearts/intuition/gut feel to an extent while paying attention to opportunities. Getting locked into one, unsupported but possibly romantic, fixed idea is fraught with dangers. 

To avoid the tragedy that comes from a life devoid of any sense of purpose, the first thing to do is to get in touch with who you are and what you want RIGHT NOW! It's really not hard - you just need some space and time so you can think clearly. Write down some key points; draw a picture, talk to a non-judgemental friend over coffee.

The job market is constantly shifting, so it is really hard to make long-term plans. Also, over  the course of our lives, as we grow and change (along with our priorities) we need to adopt a 'fluid' approach to our careers rather than the fixed one that many of us still buy into. I am amazed when I hear well-meaning adults still saying things to young people like 'Do this or that course and you will be set up for life', or  'Go to uni and get a law/medicine degree first, then when you are earning good money you can do a bit of art on the side.' You can pretty well guarantee that the young person in question will have killed off any artistic talent well before the end of his/her course, and do you know how many hours young lawyers and doctors work? These are definitely not just jobs 'to do', they involve a great deal of attention and many sacrifices - they are important jobs for those who have the heart to do them well.

If you are a young person reading this, remember, you have all the time in the world to make your career something fantastic! Don't jump into the first thing you think of, and especially do not do a course just because you got  the marks to do it! That is the first bad mistake that is easily avoided. Give passion a little bit of a chance to have its say as well as all those other, boring messages you keep hearing from those who want to lock you up in a job title for the rest of your life. As financial advisor Scott Pape so wisely says, 'Tread your own path' (But I did say it first, many years ago now).

If you are an older person who is in a new career stage, remember - your career has been building all your life, whether you have been in work or not. It is a continuum, and your past has relevance - even though it might feel like it. You have a wealth of experience, skills, successes and failures who have made you who you are. Use this as an opportunity rather than a threat and you will be energised rather than encumbered by change.

My next blog will be about how to be over 50 and attractive to employers. Yes it is possible!

While I have been away, and thoughts for 2013

I've had a busy couple of years, and blogging has been way down my list of things to do. So I was pleasantly surprised to find several lovely comments from readers awaiting moderation. Thank you to anyone who has read and responded, either in words or action, to suggestions, ideas and strategies I have reported.

I feel like I am coming out of the haze after working hard for two years in an organisation. It was fun, and provided immense challenges that have provided me with great opportunities to learn and grow personally and professionally.

That is what life is all about isn't it? Learning and growing?

I don't actually have anything burning to report on right now so I thought I should restart this blog with a post that explains a bit about the way I work and get things done. People say I do a lot of things, that I seem to achieve a lot. From my perspective, the list of things still to do expands yearly, there is no end in sight. While many of my friends and colleagues are talking of retirement, at 57 years of age I am still thinking about and making plans for the next fifteen years. These plans include travelling (I am trying to catch up to my youngest daughter who has visited 28 countries), finishing all the books I have started writing, as well as about 20 more on the wait list, saving for a writers' retreat where I will host other writers who need a space and a mentor, and having my own publishing business. I can speak French (fairly well) and want to learn Italian and Russian.

There is probably more but I am all out of ideas for the minute :)

Whether you have one idea or a million that you would like to see come to fruition in the forseeable future, I thought I would share with you my process for making some of my wishes come true. I hope you find it works for you too, and would be interested in receiving your feedback. (I will aim to be less tardy in acknowledging your responses in the future).

Each January, I have a date with myself - a weekend is fine, or a couple of days during the week is even better! Either way, I make sure I find a day or two where I can sit down with myself and some large sheets of paper and coloured pens. First, I gather my favourite snack food (usually fruit and nuts to nibble), put on a favourite CD and light the burner with some focusing essential oils. I then brainstorm with myself all the things that I might do, not holding back at all, just listing everything that comes to mind. This is great fun if you really let yourself go - the imagination is endless!

Once I have run out of energy for this, I take a walk to clear my head and usually have a coffee at a favourite cafe.

Returning home, I look at the lovely colourful mess I have made on the pages. Taking a birds-eye view, I search for 'themes', or ideas that really stand out. I think to myself, what will make this year a success for me? At this point, I have to make myself think of only three outcomes! For example, the year I started writing for newspapers, my goal was to simply to be published. The next year, my goal was to be paid! I achieved both of these easily - it is best to aim for results that are realistic but challenging.

Finally, I think of the practicalities. For example, will I need to carve out some time for appropriate activities?  How will I track my progress? What might stop me and how will I minimise issues?

Usually after this time I pack away my pages, pencils and notes and don't look at them again. I have a discreet list of three things that I remind myself of a few times each week, often by telling other people, which makes me more likely to succeed.

(This is a great career success strategy as well).

How does this work? I don't know, but it almost always does. I guess I have faith in the universe to provide what I need. I would love to hear about your experiences, past or future. In the meantime, Merry Christmas and will touch base again in '13.

May the coming weeks be restful and renewing

Cheers
Julie

Julie Farthing Enters the Career Planning Debate

Having spent over a year treading a new, more elevated career path, as I revitalise this blog, I think it is timely that I enter the great debate that has raged over the past twelve months or so about career planning.

Planning now appears to be the dirty word in career development. I am not sure whether Jim Bright started the debate, however he has certainly been creating a strong argument in support of the idea career planning is a worthless activity. The cynic in me says this has more than a little to do with putting a bigger stamp on his own work and his recently co-authored book on chaos career theory. I do have a lot of respect for Jim, mind you, and he raises some good points, but I think maybe the time has come for a more balanced view on the topic.

Planning is not everything; making inflexible plans is downright stupid. So much of what happens in the world is unpredictable, and we need to be able to change our minds as often as is sensible to do so, as new information comes in.

However, strategic planning has its place, especially in significant and long-term career management, as do a whole raft of other strategies. In this post I would like to raise some pertinent points about career planning that seem to have got lost in the great debate. My own career story is a case in point. For many years I worked at the pointy end of careers, assisting people who were long-term unemployed, or who had significant barriers that prevented them from pursuing the career of their choice, or, often, any career at all. I was highly successful at this: doctors from the Middle East became well-paid factory workers, young people with missing limbs found work in retail and office environments, older workers were provided basic business training - I could go on forever, the outcomes were as varied as the people themselves. Usually, my clients were grateful and happy to be working and thanked me for my help; if they didn't particularly like the first job they got, they came back and I helped them to plan steps that would move them closer to their dream job.I was a natural, I had no formal training but found I was very good at what I did and was rewarded by it on a daily basis.

Around the turn of the century all this changed - the government no longer cared whether people were happy in their work, or how we helped them; it was all about the numbers. At the same time I started to wonder if there wasn't more to this career business. What could we could do to assist our clients to have more meaningful lives? After all, there are so many opportunities, why shouldn't people have the opportunity to pursue their ideal career? External change creates exciting opportunities, but internal change - that gets us ready to respond to new opportunities - requires planning! After all, we can't become a doctor without doing the required training, we can't work overseas without the right permits, and we can't become rich without saving. Some things just don't happen on their own, and often we drown in all the necessary steps, not to mention other's negativity ('You can't do that!' 'There are no jobs in x!'), so we give up before we have really begun.Career planning is an important step in confirming a career direction, or indeed, in determining that a career direction is not realistic or likely to be achieved.

Around a decade ago I set about finding out how I could do more meaningful work with clients in a range of ways (all planned), by doing some post graduate courses (5 to date), by joining professional associations and having conversations with other career people who were thinking similarly, and by learning about a range of career tools, including getting accredited to use the MBTI (R), Strong II (R), and DiSC instruments. These days I use these sparingly but strategically, as part of my work with clients, but these are never 'all' I do.

Along the way, I began developing my own 'theory' about careers - it is not new (nothing is!), but it is about story, and how this can be used to assist people to see a shape to their lives and to reshape, further shape them. More about this is available at www.storypractitioner.blogspot.com and will be further expanded in a book that I PLAN will be completed this year (if I didn't plan it definitely won't happen!). In short, developing a sense of their life's narrative can empower people to see that things have happened for a reason, and that, whether this is conscious or not, often a result of some planning (especially the good bits).

Narrative works in many ways: linear, thematically, in uncovering patterns - we can use story to help us plan more appropriately, by highlighting ways we have sabotaged our own efforts in the past. Understanding our own career narrative helps us understand the past, identify with the present, and make plans for the future.

One of the mistakes Jim and the other proponents of 'no planning' make is spreading the idea that plans are concrete and that they are relatively static. Plans are a way of laying a foundation, of taking a look at life, of weighing up options. A good plan will create a more heightened awareness of opportunities (or Happenstance, as John Krumboltz calls it)and enables us to take advantage of them. For instance, around mid-2010 I noticed a sense of dissatisfaction with my own career, and started to explore this. I realised I needed a project of some kind, something with a bit of meat that I could get my teeth into.This was something new to me, an exciting new venture to contemplate. In August-September 2010 I started planning. I established the ingredients: something fresh, that would last at least 6 months, preferably a year, that I could put my mark on and see some real outcomes. It would be a career-related project, one that involved a team, not just myself. I waited patiently, talked to people, received encouragement from some and some weird looks from others.

Guess what! In November 2010, when the opportunity arose, I grabbed it with both hands. It was, literally, the job of a lifetime, everything I could have wanted, and more. Never before in my life have I been so specific about what I wanted - I was planning in full flight for something that had not even appeared by then, but planning enabled me to see it clearly in my heart and in my mind.

It is really hard to beat the experience I had in 2011, but I have every confidence I can do the same again. If I didn't believe this, I wouldn't be able to help others do the same.Assisting people individually to plan effectively, especially for long term, significant career change, is a hallmark of our profession, as is using the tools strategically and wisely. Along with this goes the ability to tap into their passions, to empower them with an attitude for success, and the confidence to take the appropriate steps, such as a course of study, new connections, taking new risks and trying things that take them out of their comfort zones. These are the core elements that work in combination to create career success.

More to come.

The Trouble With Careers

Careers are curious beasts, they can spin off in weird directions without much warning. For example, you might come into work one morning to find someone has cleared out your desk for you, which probably means you have been made redundant (unless you have been found out for doing something illegal, in which case I have no sympathy). Or you might find out, as a colleage of mine did a few years back, that your body has said 'enough is enough', and announced through a stroke or heart attack that it is no longer willing to do what you have been asking it to do.

Sometimes, the change is positive, but the ramifications can be just as derailing. Take me, for example. You may have noticed that it has been around six months since I posted my last blog. This is because last November I had a career change - a big, unplanned, unexpected and unprepared-for career change that sent me spinning off in a new direction.

This new opportunity is something I have been calling 'the job of my dreams' since I first saw it posted. I simply had to have it. I went all out for it, even though I was not technically even allowed to apply for it - fortunately I was the only applicant! Maybe I scared everyone else off, or maybe this was a true moment of happenstance in my life.

The job itself - well if I told you the actual responsibilities you might wonder what all the fuss is about. And to tell the truth I would not probably be wanting to do this job for the next ten years - but it is what it represents that is so mindblowing. It is a culmination of everything I have been working through in my life, drawing on all my skills and interests, and challenging enough to maintain my interest. It is a brand new role, fresh and alive for me to put my mark on it, to show how I can create something and make it work.

Suffice to say that I have loved every minute of the past six months, I have not had one single day of not wanting to go to work, which is in itself a first. The best thing about my job is my team of 8 staff; the next is the management team that I form a part of, which is highly supportive and innovtive as well as providing me the time I need get on with my own job. The third thing is that there is a large a variety of components, and fourthly I guess that I am never bored - a big plus for me, as boredom is my enemy.

I do truly feel blessed to have had the opportunity at least once in my life to absolutely love everything about my job, and to get paid for it s well! Needless to say, with a more-than-fulltime job my work with private clients, along with my writing plans, have been temporarily shelved. I say temporarily because I know that one day I will go back to these, they are part of me now, even when I am not doing them.

So you might be wondering why have I called this post 'The Trouble with Careers'? I suppose I have been thinking about why careers are problematic for so many of us. When we have a great job, we worry about losing it. When we are unhappy with our job, we might fail to see and make the most of opportunities. We might even worry that we don't deserve a great career, or what we think is going to be a great career turns out all wrong.

Sorry if this all sounds a bit weird and complex, but what I really mean is that true careers are transformational - they change us, help us grow and become better people, and we make them happen by our attitude. This has reinforced what I call my life's work, which is summarised in another blog storypractitioner.blogspot.com - check it out if you want to see what I mean.

If I can backtrack a little to September last year - despite all the successes I had experienced in my career and life to that point, I was not a happy chicken. I was bored, restless, wondering if there was anything left in the world to excite me. I knew I needed a new challenge, some kind of project, but I had no idea what this looked like. I talked to everyone who would listen about this and got a lot of advice, all of which I ignored, and some job offers, which I rejected - I knew that I had to wait for the right thing to come along. And it did.

Was getting this job an act of desperation, and I am making more of it than I really should? (after all at the moment I am only on a contract for another three months). Was it just a lucky break, or true happenstance? Does it have something to do with being incredibly focussed? Or can we base this success on some strategic planning, networking and clarifying my career direction?

I don't know the answers to these questions, but I am loving my job, loving life, and loving me for probably the first time in my life. Am I fooling myself? Let me know, honestly, what you think?

If any of what I have said is meaningful to you, I want to know. For example if you have ever had (or currently have) your dream job - even if it was not a forever job, you know like that short term relationship that was a mindblowing experience while it lasted. Or is this something you likewise crave, so much that you are no longer counting down the days till your next holiday? And have you felt transformed in any way by your career? I'd love to hear from you.

Resume or CV - What's the difference and who cares?

Do you want to be successful, or is failure your preferred option? If you prefer the former, whether you call yours a resume (which means 'summary') or CV (which roughly translates to 'my life story'), this personal marketing tool is an essential  item in your jobsearch toolkit - but preparing it is fraught with a range of potential disasters.

 Don't worry, there is plenty of helpful information at hand. A google search today revealed that 'writing a resume' provides over 21 million results, and 'writing a CV' over 17 million. Simply google 'resume' and you can choose from almost 1 BILLION results.Yet, despite the plethora of data and advice available, it is amazing to find so many poorly written resumes/cv's around the place. It can only be assumed from this that information does not necessarily lead to knowledge or ability.

I can't tell you how many articles and books I have written myself that provide truly outstanding information which, if followed, would lead to the production of amazing resumes. Sadly, none of this seems to have lifted the quality of resumes that are sent out in the hope of getting a job interview. (For those of you who do not know about my sense of humour, please take this last paragraph with a grain of salt.)

I guess it is like anything really. If your car develops a strange sound whenever you turn a corner, you have a number of options. One, you can ignore it and hope it will go away. Two, you can take a look, perhaps undo a few nuts and bolts and see if your untrained eye can detect the source. Three, you can ask a non-mechanic-but-more-mechanically-minded-than-you friend to take a look. Four, you can read the manual or google the problem and hope to get some kind of relevant answer. Five, you can book it into the mechanic and get them to fix it, for a price.

Resumes are a bit the same. Just like a car needs to take you from one place to another, your resume needs to take you to your next job. If it doesn't get you interviews, you can simply stop applying, or just keep sending it out in the vain hope that someone will eventually like it. You might decide to do some self-analysis, and check it over and see if there is anything your untrained eye can see that is glaringly wrong with it. You might show a friend or family member, but their love for you may blind them to glaringly obvious omissions or mistakes. You might turn to one of billion websites in the hope that you will find a diagnosis there for why your resume is not working. Or, you could get a professional to take a look at it, for a fee. I know which one I recommend, but maybe as I am a professional resume writer I am a bit biased.

But let's look at it a different way: your resume is a tool, it's only purpose is to get you noticed. If you are not being noticed, or are being noticed in the wrong way, you are closing doors to many (possibly great) careers. If your resume needs work, do you procrastinate for days, weeks, months or even years? Or, do you spend hours browsing the web, or spend inordinate amounts of time drafting and redrafting your resume? Or, do you see it simply as a task to be done and forgotten.

If you want to get a great resume, think about this - what is more valuable to you - your precious time, or a few dollars?

Sorry if this sounds like a thinly disguised ad for my services. Yes of course I would love to take a look at your resume and tell you what is wrong with it, and help make it really great if you are willing to trust me to do so (thousands have, so you are not taking too great a risk here).

Whether or not you use my services, or those of another professional writer, my main message is twofold:
1) We are all good at different things, and
2) No one can be good at everything.

People often ask me if getting help from a professional will guarantee that they will get an interview. Of course it can't, but which risk are you more willing to take? To me, it's a no-brainer.

(That reminds me, I must take my car in for a service, that knock in the engine is a bit of a worry...)

I hope your resume or cv is doing its job and opening the door to your next career. Which brings us back to the beginning ... if you really want to know what the difference is between a resume and CV, I'll answer that one in my next post.

Being part of the In-Crowd - whoever that is for you

Who we hang out with says a lot about ourselves and what we value. Of course, sometimes we don't have too much of a say in this; the circumstances we find ourselves in are not always chosen by us, for one reason or another.

To relate this to working life, people who are unhappy at work are often not so much focused on the kind of work they are doing, but where they are doing it and who they are doing it with. Conversely, sometimes a job we would love to do is made less attractive by the kind of people who are already there.

Confused? I'll use myself as an example.

My work provides opportunities to engage with widely varying communities. Talking to a group of professional writing students last week about career planning really energised me, while talking to a group of sales managers a while back made me feel like slashing my wrists. This had nothing to do with the content of what I was presenting, but everything to do with the community I was delivering to. The students loved me, I loved them - I definitely felt like part of the in-crowd. The managers? Well I might have been from Venus, as any connection I felt was slim indeed.

Further on the matter of in-crowds, I have often fantasised about the idea of being a real estate agent. I have had a passion for this industry since I was about 9 years old when I visited my first display home. I was so excited that I immediately starting saving my pocket money (five shillings a week) with the hope of buying that house (cape cod, three gables, green-shuttered french doors, double lock-up garage) myself one day. The saving didn't last, unfortunately, as I soon developed a passion for vinyl (both records and clothes - it was the sixties!) which provided more instant gratification.

What stops me being a real estate agent? Obviously, I don't fit in with the real estate community. I could do the work, if I could do it my way, and if I could change the culture of the industry, given that I share none of its values (such as making a profit at all costs) and it shares none of mine (everyone deserves a nice house to live in). House buying and selling being a highly commercial enterprise rather than one in which social justice ever has a chance, and knowing that it would take a lot more than me with a placard to turn the tide on this industry, I run a mile from it instead. I simply don't have any sense of connectedness with the real estate community.

What has kept me in the career industry for over thirty years, even when I am feeling overwhelmed and defeated, is the people that form my community. Here, I definitely feel part of the in-crowd. While there are some members who would make great real estate agents (if you get my drift), in general career people are more like me - and I call them my friends, my allies, my mentors and confidants.

It makes sense that, when planning a career change, or even when thinking about it for the first time, we should all give conscious attention to the kind of community we want to be part of. Who is our 'in-crowd'? Where is our ideal setting for work? Which communities do we want to serve, or service?

Obviously within industries there are a range of communities. For instance, a banker might want to deal with large accounts, perhaps in a global organisation, or they may prefer to be locally based, such as in a community bank or credit union. Adapting this to other settings, it is easy to see how the communities of each occupation and profession would vary widely.

Of course, our community does not only consist of those we work with, but the clients we work for and the kinds of needs they have. Compare the in-crowds of a doctor working in a large metropolitan hospital, one operating in a small country town and another in a third world country - each of their 'patient' communities, along with their wider 'in-crowds' will differ.

Investigating the communities one is part of, and would like to be part of, are important elements in career planning. Sometimes, the biggest and most troublesome component of career change is in penetrating a new community - in fact, most unsuccessful career changes relate to a lack of visibility and acceptance, rather than a lack of work skills, knowledge and expertise.

Like John Holland said way back in the sixties, perhaps we should start any career decision-making activities by focusing on who we like to be with rather than what we like to do. Conversely, if we really like the idea of doing a particular job, we should spend some time considering how to become known, accepted and respected by that community.

So if you are considering a career change, or are finding work less than enjoyable, who is your in-crowd and why? I'd love to know.

Stop Working So Hard - Before it is TOO LATE!

Synchronicity plays a large role in my life. I was thinking about this blog post when I woke up this morning and decided  that it was going to be about the myth that we have all bought into about the need to be 'on the job' 24/7 and how we will all come to regret this in our later years.

Then, before I get a chance to start, my inbox pops up with the latest news from BNET with two articles on exactly this topic. Synchronicity at work? I like to think so.

The first article talks about how, like machines, the human brain needs time off work to rejuvinate. If we spend more than 35 hours a week working we will just start making mistakes that we then have to spend more time fixing. It also demonishes us for multitasking - no, it says, you cannot do five things at the one time, at least not to any reasonable level. We should go for a walk instead, which promotes our cognitive abilities. Ever hear or the term 'work smarter, not harder'? Well now there is evidence.

The next article I read encourages us to send us a message from our 100 year-old selves on our deathbeds, admonishing us at whatever age we are now for our lack of gratitude. I use this tool in career coaching, but with limited success - I say limited, because people find it revelatory at the time of doing it, but rarely change their patterns of behaviour.

Maybe we are meant to be miserable workaholics who are so wracked with guilt that we cannot begin to imagine just sitting back and enjoying the fruits of our labours. I despair when I work with a corporate slave who wants to change her life but then looks me in the eye and tells me point blank that there is NO WAY she can leave the office at 7pm - she would feel so bad leaving others behind to keep working while she went off to have a nice meal and a bath, maybe even watch a bit of telly, and then there would be the cold shoulder treatment for the next two days from her boss that would make life positively unbearable.

Those that know me will say this is definitely a case of pot and kettle. I have been known to send emails at midnight and/or at 5am. I have been called the multitasking queen, able to focus on three projects simultaneously. Perhaps this is all a ruse, and I am fooling myself and everyone. Perhaps I am really superwoman (... really, I am kidding). But perhaps I suffer less from overload, burnout, ill health and apathy because I am doing what I love just about all the time. Perhaps I am happy to work long hours because I feel I am doing some good for the world, or am at least trying to. Perhaps I am 'in the flow', living each day with meaning, passion and purpose. Perhaps there is some sense that what I am doing is a little bit important and that I can make a difference.

So the message for this month, my lovelies, is do a lot of what you love doing and try to avoid the things you really hate most of the time. It really is as simple as that. The trick is in recognising the difference, which takes self-examination, reflection, planning and persistence, which in turn might mean downing tools for a while to give yourself the time and space to do that. There you have it -  the real secret to career success!

Asking a Monkey for Career Help - Why Not?

A much-needed five week European vacation provided the distance from my work that I needed to regain perspective. It reminded me just how important taking time out is for body, mind and soul.

Unfortunately, taking a few weeks off from the daily grind is something most people believe is impossible these days. We have been conned into feeling that if we are away from our workplaces for more than a week, our jobs, livelihoods and lifestyles are jeopardised. In fact, the opposite is true - without taking time out to recharge we become stale, less competent and likely to make mistakes. Worse still, we become anxious and fretful, but don't see any of this until we gain some distance. Without gaining new perspective, ironically, many of us find our careers pulled from under us (if you don't know what I mean, ask Kevin Rudd - or you may already be saying, 'Kevin who?').

So if you are thinking you can't afford to take time off to get away from your normal surroundings and routine, I challenge you to rethink this now. How much money and time are you spending just propping up your current existence: eating out because you are too tired to shop or cook, gym fees that are hardly ever used, retail therapy or doctor's visits and pills?

Besides taking time off for some R and R, another way to revitalise is to review your career at regular intervals - once or twice a year, if you are not making significant changes. Obviously, if you are contemplating or going through a career change, then there are other things you will need to do as well.

One thing you can do is attend a careers expo. During the last weekend in Melbourne (that's Melbourne, Australia for international readers), I coordinated a stand at the Reinvent Your Career Expo, which is now in its third year. A group of career development practitioners volunteered their time to provide career check-ups and resume reviews, as well as conducting seminars and workshops on a range of issues. We know we were appreciated by those we helped, but we couldn't help everyone, and it was quite obvious to us that a lot of people are lost and confused about their career paths,and about how to get the right kind of assistance.

Our own little poll of people in a workshop we held in the final hour of the expo indicated that expecting to get actual career help from most standholders is, apparently, a waste of time. You might as well go to the zoo and ask the resident babboon. These people had come to the expo because they wanted or needed to do something different with their lives; they wanted something to excite them, to transform their careers - but had found little that was helpful.

They told us there were a lot of course providers wanting to engender interest in the programs they had on offer, others were selling resume or coaching services, some government departments were advertising themselves.

Tragically, no one (besides us) seemed interested in helping these people to actually reinvent their careers. All the other stallholders, apparantly, were self-interested and not concerned at all about the individuals who approached them. This is probably why our stand was always the busiest. Those of us who volunteered our time felt the real pain of those we talked with, and it was good to send quite a few people away with some concrete ideas and follow-up actions.

During and immediately following the expo, I have been wondering why people come to careers expos believing that they will get the answers to their career dilemmas. Most often, they don't and can't. Is it something to do with the way these events are advertised? Perhaps. Here are two reasons why I think careers expos fail to deliver on expectations.

1. Careers expos, like all expos, are essentially large marketing exercises. Instead of a 2 by 2 column in a newspaper, a billboard, or a radio or TV spot, expo organisers sell space for a limited period so that organisations and their potential clients can come together to achieve a common purpose. The reason this fails is because visitors expect something more, a community service perhaps - people to hold their hands and walk them into their new careers. Thus, they do no preparation, and wander from stand to stand hoping that someone will appear, god-like, with a job that is tailor made for them. Reinventing one's career is something that must start and end with the individual. Most of the work that needs to be done happens before and after the expo.

2. The second reason careers expos fail to meet expectations is that people who are wanting to change, improve, or just manage their careers, tend to seek help from all the wrong places. Unfortunately the career development industry - my industry, that requires post-graduate qualifications and experience - is still not understood at all well. This is compounded by the fact that many other industries use the word 'career' in their own titles and advertising, which misleads people into believing that they are career professionals.

For example, recruiters are not terribly interested in a candidate's career, other than whether it is a match for the positions they have to fill; nor do they usually know how to help them with a career change. (I say 'on the whole' because I have friends who are both recruiters and career counsellors/coaches, but these are exceptions to the rule). But people still complain about the recruiter who did not show much interest in them or empathy about their situation. Recruiters are not in the empathy business, they are in the business or getting candidates to pass on to their employer clients.

A course provider is not interested in a person's career development either, they really only want to fill their courses, so a person visiting their stand is a 'potential student',and if that person is uncertain or presents a difficult career dilemma, they will soon be relegated to the 'too hard' basket. This makes good sense; getting people into classes ensures their institution remains viable and they get to keep their jobs.

Do go to careers expos, they can be really good if you go prepared and if you know how to use them well. Go with the idea of 1) getting ideas that you can follow up on, 2) finding specific information on a career or job that you find interesting or 3) asking some direct questions that are targetted to the professionals you will be talking to. Don't go to an expo thinking you will be handed a job - you will most probably be disappointed. When it comes to managing your career or landing that job, hard work on your part is required.

There are no shortcuts, but getting the right kind of help can really provide a boost. Qualified and experienced career development practitioners are available - they may be a bit hard to find, but if you contact us at Career Dimensions we will do our best to make that part a whole lot easier.

Career tests - do they work?

The Career Development Association of Australia's national conference was held in Adelaide a few weeks ago; one of the sessions I attended was a research paper delivered by a colleague who I admire greatly, Dr James Athanasou. The paper was, in many ways, a culmination of a lifetime of work, and the conclusion was that career assessments are incredibly unreliable - so unreliable, in fact, that Jim actually proposes that these should not be used until we ensure we have industry-wide agreement on terminology, criteria and metrics. The other message I got was that we should not be inflicting these inventories on the general public until testing of such instruments is much further advanced.

If anyone is qualified to make such bold statements about how the industry operates, Jim would have to be a top-ranker. Recently retired from his post at UTS; Jim was a pioneer in the career industry in Australia, and has had the opportunity to witness the development of career and vocational assessment instruments over the years. He himself developed one of these, the Vocational Interest Survey, over twenty years ago.

Jim's clear message at the conference - that career assessments do not work - was supported with several slides containing data to show how the various instruments currently and previously in use bear little resemblance to each other; also it was made evident that there is no identifiable correlation of career success, happiness,fulfilment, or even satisfaction (the hallmarks of our trade) with the completion of any one of these instruments. As a graphic image to reinforce his point, Jim revealed a picture of a young person walking along a road, being covered by a cloud of dust from a passing bus. The cloud of dust represented the career confusion created for the young person by the administration of an interest assessment. Add to this another paper by Dr Mary McMahon, another giant in the industry, who at the same conference argued that career instruments were created by middle aged, middle class white males (and which therefore have little relevance for a significant percentage of the population), and it seems like we are in dire straits.

Nonetheless Jim's talk included some hope that, one day, a career assessment tool may be developed that will be relevant and useful, however much needs to be done. Personally, I fear that this is a long shot, for many reasons, the main one being that careers, and life generally, are messy and unpredictable. Second, I doubt that any career instrument can actually cut throught the layers of a person's skin to get to the heart of the career interest gene, if in fact one truly exists. One further reason for my scepticism is that people on the whole still don't believe they can expect to have a job that is interesting, fulfilling or even just nice. Too often, this notion is consciously or unconsciously perpetuated by parents, teachers and other well-meaning adults who instill the importance of getting a 'real job' (whatever that means), rather than a job one really likes.

On the whole, by the way, parents tend to be appalling careers educators. As well as being to close to the game, for various reasons they have usually failed to manage their own careers effectively - a large percentage of Baby Boomers, having failed to have, or realise their own career dreams, don't know how to help their kids have them, while Gen X parents, whose start in working life was characterised by the boom and bust of the 80s and 90s, still live in fear of what might happen if one is not prepared financially, and in the process have made their children fearful of stepping off the corporate treadmill, even when this is shaky.It appears to be much easier for people of all ages to buy into a preconceived idea of how we should live and work, rather than to dare to be too radical and different.

Whatever the reasons behind most people's career choices, therefore, it seems that the least of these is to do with genuine interest in, or passion for, that work, therefor career interest assessments are never likely to have a great impact on people's futures, no matter how much time and effort is into building sophisticated tools.

So at this stage, it seems that all we can do is acknowledge the prevailing situation and continue to use these less than adequate tools in the absence of something really worthwhile, knowing that they are unlikely to enhance our clients' career decisions even if they take notice of the results.

Or, we can, on the other hand, encourage our clients to throw caution to the wind, to take risks with their careers and to become extraordinary, in one way or the other, with no safety net to provide a soft landing. As a professional, I have to ask myself which of these is the more ethical stance. Where does my responsibility lie? Others in my industry may disagree, but I am of the persuasion that people should feel empowered to follow their hearts, but what right do we have to tell them this? For example, what if following one's heart leads to financial risk, or a truckload of other risks for that matter? What if it causes arguments within one's household, or worse - disinheritance, expulsion, alienation? Are the costs of this method also too great, and if so, where does this leave the career development profession? I would be very interested to hear what other career development practitioners and our potential clients have to say on this very important issue, as the implications for our industry are huge.

Impossible workloads - a career management issue

This year, an increasing number of my existing and new clients have been asking me to help them address workload issues. They often introduce the subject as a need to manage their time better. The reasons for this vary. Typically, a staff member has resigned and not been replaced - so those who remain must share that person's workload. Another situation might be that a company diversifies, absorbs another company or adds new products or services. Unfortunately, the more competent negotiators or work avoiders (you know, those people who never seem to be around when volunteers are called for) are able to minimise the impact of this, forcing those with a greater conscience and/or work ethic to take a larger share.

Either way this invariably leads to:
1) A readjustment of an individual's role - this is usually done organically rather than by design and in cooperation with management, the person is simply expected to add new tasks or duties - it is rarely acknowledged as extra work though, and is usually shrugged off as 'we all have to pull our weight during this difficult period'. It remains hidden from the world until the position description needs to be rewritten, often because the person has resigned or become too incapacitated to do the job any longer. At which point management usually decides it is actually two (or three) people's work and the poor person who has left, miserable and disempowered, finds themselves replaced by an army or two.

2) The need to develop new skills and knowledge - from what people are telling me, this rarely involves being sent off for professional development, rather the person might be instructed to locate information internally, either by trying to establish methods from static data or out of date manuals. If they are lucky, there will be someone around who knows a little bit about the work who can be a sounding board (provided that the other person isn't also going through the same thing)

3) The requirement to work longer and longer hours. I am astounded at the hours being put in by blue and white collar workers - typical days for fleet controllers and fork lift drivers right through to accountants and recruiters are sometimes up to 16 or 17 hours! The saddest thing about this is that most of these people do not even like their jobs - the reason they chose them in the first place was so they could have a good life once the work day was over - now all they are doing is falling into bed between shifts.

As a career coach, this information is critical. For many years, I have been expounding the view of 'doing what you love' - I have said so on Channel 7 News and on Red Symons morning show. Now I have real ammunition with which to propel these words.

Those who know me well may be tempted to call me a hypocrite. After all, don't I typically work a 16 or 17 hour day? the answer is 'Yes, often I do.' But how many of those hours do I love my job? I think you know the answer to that one. Sure, at times I am grumpy, feel overloaded, and wonder how I am going to do everything. But I get them all done anyway (well the important things). Do I have good time management skills? I suppose I must, but I don't don't do the textbook time management stuff - I work with my strengths at the time, or else I manage myself in a way that gets me to the finish line on an essential task or project, and then reward myself with a task I enjoy.

The point of this post is not to discuss time management skills and how to develop them, it is to recognise that being overworked is systemic to the noughties, and that to cope with this we need to develop some survival strategies. So, here are the Top 10 survival strategies for working in demanding environments:

1. Do everything you can to work towards the goal of doing work you love – you will resent the work you are doing much less if it is a good fit with your passions, interests and challenge needs.

2. Learn to say 'No' or 'Not yet' when asked to do something outside your usual duties while you analyse how much work is involved, rather than saying ‘Yes’ and feeling it is your responsibility to make it work. At the very least, negotiate by requesting for some duties to be temporarily or permanently reallocated.

3. Ensure that 90% of the work you are doing is useful and essential to the core business – this is especially useful to remember when handling telephone and email communication, as so much time is wasted in these activities.

4. Set some milestones and announce your achievements regularly to show others you are doing important work that is vital to the organisation's success

5. Avoid any meetings that don't serve a strategic need for your work or your own career development

6. At the end of your (normal) shift, practice standing up and announcing that you are leaving, and do just that!

7. Keep important people in the loop as to what you have achieved, what is still outstanding and when this might be done if there are no significant interruptions. Once each week is good.

8. Do everything you can to cut down time spent on tasks by minimising mistakes and unnecessary duplications – taking a few minutes each day organising your workload may save you hours of work.

9. Spend at least ten minutes three times per working shift contemplating your job, what you are doing there and why, and how this is making your life more meaningful.

10. If none of the above steps works, actively seek out a new role with an employer who appreciates your unique attributes and who will see employing you as a great investment, on your terms.

Some thoughts on Career Punctuation and Life Planning

Those who know a bit about me know I am also a professional writer. This has no doubt informed the title of this blog. I think it also provides a good analogy for my message this month.

Lately I have been pondering the credo of 'life is what happens while we are busy making other plans' and what this actually means. It seems that those of us who do plan (and I am definitely a planner and goal setter), tend to do this in a rather grandiose way. Well, why bother making plans if they are going to be about everyday things. We want some magic, something a bit edgy, don't we?

For instance,have you ever heard someone say, 'Oh yes, I have a plan - I want to have a really boring life with nothing much that happens, I hope to get married to someone I can only just tolerate, have one or two kids of average intelligence and looks, oh and I don't want to get promoted or have any kind of career satisfaction. Oh yes and I hope I don't get lots of money and free time to travel and do all the things I am interested in.' The sad thing is, all of these elements do characterise many of our lives. So much for planning!

Of course we should plan to have the superlative things in life, to have some great achievements, fantastic adventures, or to be seen as the best something-or-other or to win a great title such as President of the such-and-such club, or, in the spirit of that great pageant, to achieve something spectacular like 'world peace'.

But we also all know that, for the most part, our lives will in fact turn out to be quite ordinary. We will fail to achieve many or most of our grand plans, hopes and dreams. Most of us can easily identify with the words of Shirley Valentine: 'I have led such a little life. Why are we given all this life if we only ever use a little bit of it?'

Because we can always dream much larger than is realistically achievable, this does not mean we should not dream at all, it is just that we tend give them too much power.

I like dreaming, but I think this needs to be seen as an important activity that is intrinsically entwined with our humanity. When we realise that dreams can only inform our plans, we can start to make some headway towards living a great life.

Dreams don't care that we only exist for around 80 years or less, or that we only have human power not super powers. So, in acknowledgement that much of life is reasonably uneventful, how do we make it unique, satisfying and fulfilling? The answer may lie in the notion of 'career punctuation'.

Career punctuation is both an activity and a list of surprising results - these both relate to living an insightful and more satisfying life. No one person's life can be spectacular every day - even Ghandi and Lawrence of Arabia had lots of ordinary days in which little happened (just watch the movies if you don't know what I am talking about).

Regarding the activity part, what I am proposing is that each of us should factor in some 'exclamation days', some 'question mark days', some 'full stop days', even some 'quote days'. I won't go into what all these days mean here, as these form the chapter of a book I am writing, however what it means in effect is that we should actively program some days into our schedule that are extraordinary. For example, someone who dreams of climbing Mt Everest might plan on doing some mountain climbing activities for one weekend a month, or one month each year. The person who dreams of becoming a best-selling author might dedicate their time to writing a chapter of a novel each month. These smaller 'punctuation' events can be celebrated in their own right. Eventually, some of us will achieve the bigger dreams, but even if we don't, there is usually enough joy along the way to more than compensate.

Regarding the surprising results part - well, we all have achievements and interesting things happen when we least expect them. We need to acknowledge these points in our lives - for example, someone thanks us for a small favour, or we become the recipient of an unsolicited award. Perhaps we win a competition we never thought achievable - this happened to me in my twenties, when I won a work table tennis competition against all odds - this was such a surprise to everyone that the whole staff discounted it as a complete fluke - I still remember it with pride thirty years later. Giving ourselves credit for these results makes our lives that much less ordinary.

Perhaps thinking about career punctuation will make us all a bit more satisfied with ourselves, our lot in life, and our achievements, and make us realise we are just that little bit more remarkable than we might have led ourselves to believe. And, along with that, we have a new measure for career success - so that can't be too bad!