What Color Is Your Parachute?

best for you. Just as you would when buying a suit, test it, try it on first, then make up your own mind. Puh-leeze.

How? It’s our old familiar tenets of Informational Interviewing (this page and this page):

Talk to at least three people who are actually doing this career that looks appealing, and ask them these questions:

¦ How did you get into this field?

¦ What do you like best about it?

¦ What do you like least about it?

¦ How do I get into this career, and how much of a demand is there for people who can do this work?

¦ Is it easy to find a job in this career, or is it hard?

¦ Who else would you recommend or suggest I go talk to, to learn more about this career?

Don’t Get a Job by Degrees

One final word of caution, here: if you’re just graduating from high school, don’t go get a college degree in some career field just because you think that will guarantee you a job! It will not.

I wish you could see my mail, filled with bitter letters from people who believed this myth, went and got a degree in a field that looked just great, thought it would be a snap to find a job, but are still unemployed two years later. Even in good times. They are bitter (often), angry (always), and disappointed in a society that they feel lied to them. Now that they have that costly worthless degree, and still can’t find a job, they find a certain irony in the phrase, “Our country believes in getting a job by degrees.”

If you already made this costly mistake, you know what I mean. It is sad.

Choose a career, explore it to death, find out if you love it, and then go get your degree. Not because it guarantees a job, but because it inspires in you passion, enthusiasm, and energy.

THE FIVE PARTS OF JOB-HUNTING AS A SURVIVAL SKILL: IV. INVENTORY OF WHAT YOU HAVE TO OFFER THE WORLD

Frequently the real health care problem arises from failure to discover one’s life mission… Attention must be given to helping individuals discover their own life mission as an integral aspect of health care…

PROFESSOR BRIAN COSTELLO (b. 1943)

Chapter 13. Self-Inventory (The Flower Exercise)

Why are we doing this inventory? I can best answer by referring to something I said about Survival Job- Hunting, in chapter 2:

Sometimes our problem is we do not realize all the richness of what we each have to offer to the world. So, a fourth essential part of Survival Job-Hunting is: You must do a fresh inventory of what you have to offer the world: what transferable skills, what knowledges, and what preferences. The purpose of this research is to discover alternative ways of describing who you are. You can no longer restrict your definition of yourself to just your old job-title. No longer: “I am a construction worker (or whatever),” but “I am a person who …” Maybe, after you inventory yourself, you will decide to go train for a whole new career or direction for your life. Maybe. But first, you should inventory what you already have. It’s broader, deeper, richer, than you think. Maybe you can put together a new career just using what you already know.

Why do you need to do a self-inventory, besides the reasons above? Well, a life well lived is a journey. A journey with some Emerald City beckoning in the far distance, as in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

So, it’s useful to recall what travel experts teach about taking a journey: before you go, they say, lay out on your bed two piles. In one pile, put all the clothes (plus toiletries, and stuff) that you think you’ll need to take. In the other pile, put all the money you think you’ll need to take.

Then, they say, pack only half the clothes, but twice the money.

A parallel ratio occurs in the journey you are taking, called Life.

That is: for this journey, you will need only half the information you initially thought you would need about the job-market, but twice the amount of information you initially thought you would need about yourself.

And some Emerald City beckons, which in our culture we describe alternately as what we want to do with our life, or our purpose in life, or our mission in life, or our dream job.

“Dream job” is the phrase on our lips most often. So, let’s define what we mean by that. You can describe yourself under seven headings—vis-a-vis the world of work, at least.

You can describe yourself in terms of what you can do—your favorite functional/transferable skills.

Or you can describe yourself in terms of what you know—your favorite knowledges or fields of interest.

Or you can describe yourself in terms of the kinds of people you like to be surrounded by, or the kinds of people you like to help.

Or you can describe yourself in terms of where you are most effective—the surroundings or working conditions that enable you to do your best work.

And so on.

Now suppose when all this inventorying is done, you find some kind of work out there that matches you in only one particular: let us say it lets you use your favorite knowledges. But 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 you would call it boring.

But now let us suppose you find another kind of work out there that matches you in all seven particulars. What would you call that kind of job? You would call it your dream job.

Precisely! A dream job by definition is one that matches you. Do an inventory of yourself, and of course you end up with a description of you—free of job-title, as yet. But equally you end up with a description of what would be a dream job for you. It’s dreamy because it would be a perfect match in all seven arenas.

So we may paraphrase (massacre?) Alexander Pope, here: