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 Could,Would and Should of University Education

For the last twenty-five years, give or  take, parents have been sold the idea that their children must attend university in order to guarantee their future employability,and, more importantly, income. Federal and State governments have reinforced the notion of the 'clever country', urging Australians to be better educated. This has been the dominant message, reinforced by Australian schools who stopped focusing on anything other  than which university course a young person should do; somewhere along the line careers advisors largely stopped talking about apprenticeships to students (not their fault entirely, as the apprenticeship system became much more complex and difficult to navigate), and since they have been able to offer more places and compete with each other, the universities have poured big money into attracting as many students as possible.

What we have in Australia right now is a tertiary system in chaos, which will increase exponentially if the current government's education policies are implemented (because what we heard on Tuesday night was less to do with budget and much more to do with ruling class snobbery).

Some good things have happened over the past twenty-five years. Some students who were previously shut out of universities have found a place; these include students from low socio-economic backgrounds, students with disabilities and refugees. We have seen a surge in 'first in family' students coming to uni. Perhaps this has worked too well, and underwrites the current Liberal government's reaction towards exclusiveness.

We have also seen the great grab for money in attracting overseas students to study in Australia. This was most effective over the 2000-2010 year period, after which this arrangement started to sour for the students and the families who paid the big bucks to send them here. Universities in China and India, for example, started improving the quality of their education, while ours remained stagnant. The promise of settling in Australia after graduation (which was part of the sell) became an idle hope for most; and after paying all that money for their kids education, parents found them back at home and unable to get a job.

Getting back to Australia, there are three glaring statistics related the Australian context. I am not going to put money on these figures being exact, but I am happy to stake my reputation on them being reasonably accurate. First - despite all the hype around university education, the percentage of Australians with degrees has not significantly altered in the last twenty-five years: still only around 25% of the population actually has a degree. Second, in around 80% of jobs that are advertised, a degree is not a mandatory requirement. And third, while raw statistics show that people with university degrees are less likely to be unemployed than those without degrees, many of these are not working in an area related to their degree, (or in any job that requires a degree) and are underemployed (working part-time or casually). Those from 'equity' groups including low socio-economic or indigenous backgrounds, people with disabilities, have much lower graduate employment outcomes than the traditional university graduates.

The statistics on employment outcomes for graduates are also influenced by the fact that many graduates, if they do not get a job, will go back to do further study - in many cases this actually lowers employability because of expectations of higher pay or better jobs on the part of the graduate, while employers may think they are overqualified but under-experienced.

As a career  practitioner, the message that I have the most difficulty in delivering is that employers want people who have already worked, that have an understanding of workplace expectations and the maturity to handle the rigours of holding down a job. So, in fact, employers want experience PLUS a degree, not a degree plus experience - but trying to get this across to the students and their families is almost impossible.

I digress a little. Back to the question of whether a degree is a could or should for young people and career changes. Obviously, for some jobs, a degree is essential - law, medicine, teaching, for example all require one that is specific to the field. For others, it can be an asset, such as accounting, public relations, and business. Sometimes, the things taught in an undergraduate course are less tangible, but important in careers that involve complex reasoning, research skills and the ability to look at problems or artefacts through different lenses, such those traditionally taught in the now much-maligned arts degree. The rush to university has also led to a multi-tiered system in which graduates are ranked by employers - some universities don't even rate in many cases, making the degree that is obtained relatively worthless. It has also led to a lowering of quality as the lower-tiered universities invite students to enrol, simply to fill seats, rather than assessing their ability to undertake the course.

For some job roles, a degree is unimportant or not required at all, but young people are still being told that this is the only post-secondary option they should be aspiring towards. This is one of the major contributing factors behind the lack of qualified tradespeople and the well-established pattern of students drifting from one university course to the next, trying to find one that suits, when the answer to their career dilemma lies elsewhere.

This does not mean that people who really want and need to go to uni should not be able to. What we need is for governments to stop their social engineering and trying to force us into particular kinds of education and return to the natural order of things. People undertake university courses for a range of reasons; this should be encouraged and those who have the ability and desire should have a much easier pathway, one based on equality and fairness.

I find it untenable that we are regressing to that place in time where university education was only for the elite. The right of all Australians to an education that befits their career aspirations, work interests and abilities should be unquestioned. We should all be working hard at young people into a range of work areas, especially those outside the standard professions, but if we are to remain a progressive society students  must not be the victims of their parents' economic status. Neither should any government, federal or state, allow education to become a pawn in their desire to 'balance the books' as this is a snake that will most definitely turn its head to poison the very society that created it.

What is fundamentally wrong with the direction the Abbott government is taking us is that it is preventing people from participating equally in society, reducing everything we do to an economic formula in which only the rich can win. Further to this, while Australia has always been known as the country of the 'fair go', this is becoming something our children will only read in history books (if they haven't banned them.).

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.