[Don't] Blame it on the rain
First, let me apologize for the delay on this blog entry. I had my notes ready to go since my flight home from New Orleans last week, but I went into freak out mode regarding my upcoming Finance midterm (which was yesterday). You may be feeling the same way about your job search as I did about my blog, i.e. you know you need to work on it, but other things seem to be more pressing (studying for finals, planning your trip overseas after graduation, or savoring every last moment with your friends on campus before you go your separate ways.
Perhaps you feel held back on starting your job search because you just don’t know where to begin. Several of my classmates and two friends approached me this week requesting career direction and guidance. Whether you’re about to graduate or embarking on a “quarter life crisis” like some of my friends and classmates, it’s time to stop procrastinating (i.e. blaming your lack of progress on the rain, or whatever is holding you back at the moment) and focusing on planting some seeds to sprout into opportunities.
It is a common practice for me to absorb all I can from every experience, thus I took advantage of my sister-in-law’s creativity en route to the New Orleans airport last week after my career coaching training. I asked Julie, “How can I make the comparison between the four steps in the career coaching process (that I learned at my training) and the advent of spring. “Gardening!” she replied with gusto. To which I replied, “Wow, I know even less about gardening than I do about sports, [an analogy I used in a previous blog entry in spite of my non-existent skill and limited knowledge], so I will need your help”. Fortunately Julie and Eric’s suggestions made for a productive ride to the airport!
Assessment – Know the landscape and your tools
If we were in my marketing class, my energetic professor would ask “what are your key resources and capabilities?” Perhaps conducting a SWOT analysis on yourself is a little extreme, but assessing (or taking inventory – to confirm that I retained something from Accounting) what you have in your own professional toolkit (i.e. your motivated skills, values, and general career interests) will provide you with a level of self (or horticultural) awareness to determine where to go next.
Exploration – What kind of garden?
Before you start digging up your yard or community garden, randomly applying for jobs, and blasting your resume to everyone you know and all over the Internet, you should think about your options you have for your garden (i.e. veggies, fruits, and/or flowers) and what to plant. Conducting industry and employer research on-line and through informational interviewing is an easy way to understand what kind of organization/garden and what kind of positions (seedlings), are best suited to your personality, strengths, and passions. From a gardening context for me, this would mean thinking about what plant can I keep alive? Trust me, there aren’t many! With the exception of our childhood pets (hermit crabs and beta fish excluded), I have killed every living organism I came in contact with.
Focus on a Goal – Answer the “What and Why?”
Once you have assessed yourself and come up with a few realistic career directions, it’s time to focus on the best and attainable option for you. To take things back to the gardening analogy…if you live in Alabama and have to plant in red clay, you may be limited as to what you can grow in your garden. Side note: I only know about the red clay because we used to track it all over the carpeting in the cheap hotel rooms my father used to book in Huntsville, AL halfway through the semi-annual road trips to visit our grandparents in south Florida. Be realistic about your ultimate career goal as it relates to what you learned in the assessment and exploration phases.
Strategy and Implementation
After identifying a realistic career goal, it’s time to develop a strategy and start planting! This is the final stage where you map out a detailed action plan with specific deadlines. You may want to think about these steps as “stretch goals” that will help you achieve your main objective. First think about how you will get to the main goal and what steps you need to take along the way. When should each of those steps occur? If you are anything like me, without setting deadlines for yourself, you won’t achieve your objectives. This is also the time to think about who can help you obtain more information in order to arrive at each stretch goal. To revert back to gardening…this is the point at which I would call my mother-in-law, whose yard looks like it was transported from an exotic tropical botanical garden far from Texas, to offer me advice on how to make my community garden fit my needs. If you are an activator (one of my top five strengths), you have a tendency to just jump into things without doing your homework (i.e. skipping the previous three steps). Working through the first three before taking action is absolutely critical as it relates to your own employability and vocational happiness.
“Dr. Unemployed” Career Blunder – Our instructor shared the story about one of his career coaching clients who was a receptionist (without a college degree) with a lifelong dream of becoming an art history professor. In most cases, we were instructed to let our clients arrive at their own answers based on asking a series of targeted questions, however when encountering in a scenario like the aforementioned, we were advised that sometimes it is okay to step in to offer a good dose of reality. After a series of questions related to the timing of obtaining each degree and the availability of post-doctoral openings, Dr. Unemployed started to evaluate some other options. Moral of the Story: Having dreams is important, but do consider seeking advice (professional, if possible) before pursuing them.