What Color Is Your Parachute? Part 10

And you can't put things off, Thinking you'll get to them someday.

If you really want to do them, You better do them....

So I'm very much a believer in knowing What it is that you love doing So that you can do a great deal of it.

-Nora Ephron (19412012).

Chapter 7.

You Need to Understand More Fully Who You Are I know you're probably going to protest that you've lived with yourself all your life, so far, and you don't need to do this inventory. Well, maybe.

But my experience over the past forty years, with literally millions of job-hunters, is that none of us understands fully who we are, and what we have to offer the world.

Oh, we understand part of it, all right. But not the fullness of it. Not the richness of it. Not the uniqueness of who we are.

So you need this, a fresh inventory of what you have to offer the world, before you go back out there. And I mean you need to understand all that you have to offer, not just part of it. As I said, you already know part of it. The problem is that it is only part. You need to know it all.

This Is a Job-Hunting Method, and The Most Effective One, at That.

Before we get to the inventory, let's get one thing out of the way. This isn't just self-exploration. Though that would be nice, in and of itself. Very popular on the West Coast and places west.

But this is a job-hunting method, as I said in the previous chapter. Or the heart and soul of a job-hunting method, the one that has the best track record of any that are out there.

Of course, the question arises, Why does this self-inventory work so well in helping you find work, after other methods have failed? That's important to answer, because the answer may keep you motivated to finish this inventory, when otherwise you might say, Too much work! And give up.

So, let's look at this question. There are seven reasons that I have observed: 1. By doing this homework on yourself, you learn to describe yourself in at least six different ways, and therefore you can approach multiple job-markets. Retraining, as it is commonly practiced in Western culture, prepares you for only one market. Thus construction workers are retrained, let us say, to be computer repair people. One market. No jobs to be found in that market, once they are trained? Retraining wasted.

But with this homework, you are embarking on a whole different concept of starting over. You are essentially training or retraining yourself for several markets. This, because you stop identifying yourself by only one job-t.i.tle. In a tough economy, job-t.i.tles like, say, "accountant," just aren't detailed enough. New thinking is called for: you are no longer just "an accountant" or "a construction worker" or whatever. You are a person who has these skills and these experiences. If teaching and writing and growing things are your favorite skills, then you can approach the job-market of teaching, or that of writing, or that of gardening. Multiple job-markets are open to you; not just one.

2. By doing this homework on yourself, you can describe in detail exactly what you are looking for. This greatly enables your friends, LinkedIn contacts, and family to better help you. You approach them not with, "Uh, I'm out of work; let me know if you hear of anything," but you can describe to them more exactly what kind of "thing," and in what work setting. This greatly increases their helpfulness to you, and therefore your ability to find jobs you would otherwise never find.

3. By ending up with a picture of a job that would really excite you, you will inevitably pour much more energy and determination into your job-search. Previously, your job-hunt may have felt more like a duty than anything else. Now, with this vision, you will be dying to find this. So, you will redouble your efforts, your dedication, and your determination when otherwise you might tire and give up. Persistence becomes your middle name, once you've identified a prize worth fighting for.

4. By doing this homework, you will no longer have to wait to approach companies until they say they have a vacancy. Once done with this homework, you choose places that match who you are, and then it doesn't matter if they have a known vacancy or not. Because they match your vision, you approach them (through a "bridge person" who knows both you and them) knowing confidently that you will be an a.s.set there.

5. When you are facing, let us say, nineteen other compet.i.tors for the job you want-equally experienced, equally skilled-you will stand out because you can accurately describe to employers exactly what is unique about you, and what you bring to the table that the others don't. These will usually turn out to involve adjectives or adverbs, what we normally call traits. More on that, later.

6. If you are contemplating a career-change, maybe-after you inventory yourself-you will see definitely what new career or direction you want for your life. Maybe. But first, please, please, inventory what you already have. Often you can put together a new career just using what you already know and what you already can do-with much less training or retraining than you thought you would have to do. I'm not talking about a dramatic change, like going from salesperson to doctor: for that, you will need to start over. But most career changes are not that dramatic, as I will show you, in chapter 10.

It may turn out that the knowledge you need to pick up can be found in a vocational/technical school, or in a (one- or) two-year college. And sometimes, sometimes it can be found simply by doing enough informational interviewing (more about this in the next chapter).

Example here: a job-hunter named Bill had worked for a number of years in retail; now he was debating a career-change-working in the oil industry. But he knew virtually nothing about that industry. However, he went from person to person who worked at companies in that industry, just seeking information about the industry. The more of these "informational interviews" he conducted, the more he knew. In fact, coming down the home stretch, just before he got hired in the place of his dreams, he found he now knew more than the people he was visiting, about their compet.i.tors and some aspects of the industry.

In other words, with certain kinds of career-change, there is more than one way to pick up the knowledge you need.

7. Unemployment is an interruption, in most of our lives. And interruptions are opportunities, to pause to think, to a.s.sess where we really want to go with our lives. Martin Luther King Jr. had something to say about this: The major problem of life is learning how to handle the costly interruptions. The door that slams shut, the plan that got sidetracked, the marriage that failed. Or that lovely poem that didn't get written because someone knocked on the door.

The Creative Approach, with its demand that you do homework on yourself before you set out on your search for (meaningful) work, helps you take advantage of the opportunity that this interruption-being out of work-offers.

So there you have it: the seven reasons why this self-inventory, this Creative Approach, performs so much better as a tool for your job-hunt. It is the shovel you were looking for.

Use this opportunity. Make this not only a hunt for a job, but a hunt for a life. A deeper life, a victorious life, a life you're prouder of.

The world currently is filled with workers whose weeklong cry is, "When is the weekend going to be here?" And, then, "Thank G.o.d it's Friday!" Their work puts bread on the table but ... they are bored out of their minds. They've never taken the time to think out what they uniquely can do, and what they uniquely have to offer to the world. The world doesn't need any more bored workers. It needs people willing to work hard. It needs pa.s.sionate people. It needs people excited by their work. It needs people with a sense of high purpose and a sense of mission. So, do this self-inventory. Dream a little. Dream a lot.

One of the saddest pieces of advice in the world is, "Oh come now-be realistic." The best parts of this world were not fashioned by those who were realistic. They were fashioned by those who dared to look hard at their wishes and then gave them horses to ride.

The Inventory: The Flower Exercise

Okay, let's begin. Begin by mentally stripping yourself of your job-t.i.tle. You have to stop answering, "Who are you?" with, "Oh, I'm a construction worker, or salesperson, or designer, or writer, or whatever." That locks you into your past. You launch yourself into the future by answering instead: "I am a person who ..."

"I am a person who ... has had these experiences."

"I am a person who ... is skilled at doing this or that."

"I am a person who ... knows a lot about this or that."

"I am a person who ... is unusual in this way or that."

Before you answer this question with others, you have to first answer it in your own head. You are a person, not a role. Throughout this self-inventory, you need to keep identifying what kind of person you are, under several headings.

I Am a Person Who ...

Is Like a Flower

Researchers1 tell us that if you are trying to make a decision about yourself and your future, there are Three Rules about where you jot stuff down: 1. GATHER. Put everything you know about yourself on one piece of paper.

2. ORGANIZE. Put some kind of graphic on that piece of paper, in order to organize the information about yourself. A graphic-any graphic-keeps that One Piece of Paper interesting, and not just a flood of words and s.p.a.ces. It also activates the right side of your brain, the intuitive side, that looks at a whole bunch of unrelated data and says, "Aha! I see what it all means."

3. PRIORITIZE. Prioritize all this information, when you have finished organizing it. Don't just leave the data lying there; put it in its order of importance to you. Always. And every time.

So here you have it, on the next page: an outline-a practice outline- of the graphic you are going to fill in when you're done with all the exercises and get to the larger version.

We call the graphic The Flower Diagram, or The Flower Exercise.

A Preliminary Outline of The Flower (A Note Page for Jotting Down Your Idle Thoughts and Hunches3) To download a printable PDF of this image, please visit http://rhlink.com/para14007

I Am a Person Who ...

Has Seven Sides to Me

This flower representation of You has seven petals (including the center) because there are seven sides to You, or seven ways of thinking about yourself.

7 Ways of Describing Who You Are 1. You can describe who you are in terms of what you know-and what your favorite knowledges or fields of interest are, that you have stored in your head (or heart).

2. Or you can describe who you are in terms of the kinds of people you most prefer to work with, and/or the kinds of people-age span, problems, handicaps, geographical location, etc.-you would most like to help or serve.

3. Or you can describe who you are in terms of what you can do, and what your favorite functional/transferable skills are.

4. Or you can describe who you are in terms of your favorite working conditions-indoors/outdoors, small company/large company, tight ship/loose ship,2 windows/no windows, etc.-because they enable you to work at your top form, and greatest effectiveness.

5. Or you can describe who you are in terms of your preferred salary and level of responsibility-working by yourself, or as a member of a team, or supervising others, or running the show-that you feel most fitted for, by experience, temperament, and appet.i.te.

6. Or you can describe who you are in terms of your preferred geographical location-here or abroad, warm/cold, north/south, east/west, mountains/coast, urban/suburban/rural/rustic-where you'd be happiest, do your best work, and would most love to live.

7. Or you can describe who you are in terms of your goals or sense of mission and purpose for your life. Alternatively, or in addition, you can get more particular and describe the goals or mission you want the organization to have, where you decide to work.

I Am a Person Who ...

Is All These Things

You could choose just one, two, or three of these sides of yourself-let us say, "what you know," "what you can do," and "preferred salary"-as your guide to defining what kind of work would match You.

But what the Flower Diagram does is describe who you are in all seven ways, joined together on one page, in one graphic. After all, you are not just one of these things; you are all of these things. The Flower Diagram is a complete, not partial, picture of You.

Believe me, you want the complete picture. I'll tell you why. Let's say there is some job out there that matches only one petal, one side to yourself, one way of defining who you are: for example, let's say this job lets you use your favorite knowledges. Period.

It doesn't let you use your favorite skills, nor does it have you working with the kinds of people you most enjoy, nor does it give you the surroundings where you can do your best work.

What would you call such a job? I think boring. You would barely be able to wait for Friday to come around. Thank G.o.d it's Friday! Some of you have already sung that song. A lot.