What Color Is Your Parachute?

can’t go visit them all. So, you’ve got to cut down the territory, further. Suppose that on your Geography petal you said that you really want to live and work in the San Jose area of California. That’s helpful: that cuts down the territory further. Now your goal is:

• I want to work in a place that hires welders, within the San Jose area.

But, the territory is still too large. There could be 100, 200, 300 organizations that fit that description. So you look at your Flower Diagram for further help, and you notice that under working conditions you said you wanted to work for an organization with fifty or fewer employees. Good, now your goal is:

• I want to work in a place that hires welders, within the San Jose area, that has fifty or fewer employees.

This territory may still be too large. So you look again at your Flower Diagram for further guidance, and you see that you said you wanted to work for an organization that works with, or produces, wheels. So now your statement of what you’re looking for, becomes:

• I want to work in a place that hires welders, within the San Jose area, has fifty or fewer employees, and makes wheels.

Using your Flower Diagram, you can thus keep cutting down the territory, until the “targets” of your job-hunt are no more than ten places. That’s a manageable number of places for you to start with. You can always expand the list later, if none of these ten turns out to be promising or interesting.

Expanding the Territory

Sometimes your problem will be just the opposite. We come here to the second possibility: if your Informational Interviewing doesn’t turn up enough names of places where you could get hired in your new career, then you’re going to have to expand your list. You’re going to have to consult some directories.

Your salvation is going to be, first of all, the Yellow Pages of your local phone book. Look under every heading that is of any interest to you. Also, see if the local chamber of commerce publishes a business directory; often it will list not only small companies but also local divisions of larger companies, with names of department heads; sometimes they will even include the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) codes, should you care. If you are diligent here, you won’t lack for names, believe me—unless it’s a very small town you live in, in which case you’ll need to cast your net a little wider, to include other towns, villages, or cities that are within commuting distance.

Informational Interviewing, Step 4: TALKING TO WORKERS, “TRYING ON” JOBS

During Informational Interviewing, you want to talk to people who are actually doing the work you think you’d love to do. Why? In effect, you are mentally trying on jobs to see if they fit you.

It is exactly analogous to your going to a clothing store and trying on different suits (or dresses) that you see in their window or on their racks. Why try them on? Well, the suits or dresses that look terrific in the window don’t always look so hot when you see them on you. The clothes don’t hang quite right, etc.

Likewise, careers that sound terrific in books or in your imagination don’t always look so great when you see them up close and personal.

What you’re ultimately trying to find is a career that looks terrific inside and out—in the window, and also on you. Here are some questions that will help with workers who are actually doing the career you think you might like to do:

• How did you get into this work?

• What do you like the most about it?

• What do you like the least about it?

• And, where else could I find people who do this kind of work? (You should always ask them for more than one name, here, so that if you run into a dead end at any point, you can easily go visit the other names they suggested.)

If it becomes apparent to you, during the course of any of these Informational Interviews, that this career, occupation, or job you were exploring definitely doesn’t fit you, then the last question (above) gets turned into a different kind of inquiry:

• Do you have any ideas as to who else I could talk to, about my skills and special knowledges or interests—so I can find out how they all might fit together, in one job or career?

Then go visit the people they suggest.

If they can’t think of anyone, ask them if they know who might know.

“THEY SAY I HAVE TO GO BACK TO SCHOOL, BUT I HAVEN’T THE TIME OR THE MONEY”

Next step: having found the names of jobs or careers that interest you, having mentally tried them on to see if they fit, you next want to find out how much training, etc., it takes, to get into that field or career. You ask the same people you have been talking to, previously.

More times than not, you will hear bad news. They will tell you something like: “In order to be hired for this job, you have to have a master’s degree and ten years’ experience at it.”

If you have the time, and the money, fine! But what if you don’t? Then you search for exceptions:

“Yes, but do you know of anyone in this field who got into it without that master’s degree, and ten years’ experience?

And where might I find him or her?

And if you don’t know of any such person, who might know?”

Throughout Informational Interviewing, don’t assume anything (“But I just assumed that …”). Question all assumptions, no matter how many people tell you that “this is just the way things are.”

Keep in mind that there are people out there who will tell you something that absolutely isn’t so, with every conviction in their being—because they think it’s true. Sincerity they have, 100 percent. Accuracy is something else again. You will need to check and cross-check any information that people tell you or that you read in books (even this one).

No matter how many people tell you that such-and-so are the rules about getting into a particular occupation, and there are no exceptions—believe me there are exceptions, to almost every rule, except where a profession has rigid entrance examinations, as in, say, medicine or law.

Rules are rules. But what you are counting on is that somewhere in this country, somewhere in this vast world, somebody found a way to get into this career you dream of, without going through all the hoops that everyone else is telling you are absolutely essential.

You want to find out who these people are, and go talk to them, to find out how they did it.