What Color Is Your Parachute?

Okay, but suppose you are determined to go into a career that takes years to prepare for, and you can’t find anyone who took a shortcut? What then?

Every professional speciality has one or more shadow professions, which require much less training. For example, instead of becoming a doctor, you can go into paramedical work; instead of becoming a lawyer, you can go into paralegal work, instead of becoming a licensed career counselor, you can become a career coach.

HAVE A “PLAN B”

Sooner or later, as you interview one person after another, you’ll begin to get some definite ideas about a career that is of interest to you. It uses your favorite skills. It employs your favorite special knowledges or fields of interest. You’ve interviewed people actually doing that work, and it all sounds fine. This part of your Informational Interviewing is over.

As I said earlier, just make sure that you get the names of at least two careers, or jobs, that you think you could be happy doing. Never, ever, put all your eggs in one basket. I’ll say it again—the secret of surviving out there in the jungle is having alternatives.

Eventually, you will get the names of careers that attract you, and after that, you will find the names of particular organizations that employ “people who can do that.” Do you rush right over? No. You research those places, first.

Researching Places Before You Approach Them

Why should you research places, before you approach them for a hiring-interview? Well, first of all, you want to know something about the organization from the inside: what kind of work they do there. And what their needs or problems or challenges are. And what kind of goals they are trying to achieve, what obstacles they are running into, and how your skills and knowledges can possibly help them. (When you do at last go in for a hiring-interview, you want above all else to be able to show them that you have something they need.)

Second, you want to find out if you would enjoy working there. You want to take the measure of those organizations. Everybody takes the measure of an organization, but the problem with most job-hunters or career- changers is it’s after they are hired there.

In the U.S., for example, a survey of the federal/state employment service once found that 57 percent of those who found a job through that service were not working at that job just thirty days later, and this was because they used the first ten or twenty days on the job to screen out that job.

You, by doing this research ahead of time, are choosing a better path, by far. Essentially, you are screening out careers, jobs, places before you commit to them. How intelligent!

So, try to think of every way in the world that you can find out more about those organizations (plural, not singular) that interest you, before you go to see if you can get hired there. There are several ways you can do this research ahead of time.

• What’s on the Internet. Many job-hunters or career-changers think that every organization, company, or nonprofit, has its own website, these days. Not true. Maybe they do, and maybe they don’t. It often has to do with the size of the place, its access to a good Web designer, its desperation for customers, etc. Easy way to find out: if you have access to the Internet, type the name of the place into your favorite search engine (Google, Yahoo, or whatever) and see what it turns up. Try more than one search engine. Sometimes one knows things the others don’t.

• What’s in Print. The organization itself may have stuff in print, or on its website, about its business, purpose, etc. The CEO or head of the organization may have given talks. The organization may have copies of those talks. In addition, there may be brochures, annual reports, etc., that the organization has put out, about itself. How do you get ahold of these? The person who answers the phone there, when you call, will know, or know who to refer you to. Also, if it’s a decent-size organization that you are interested in, public libraries may have files on the organization—newspaper clippings, articles, etc. You never know; and it never hurts to ask your friendly neighborhood research librarian.

• Friends and Neighbors. Ask everyone you know, if they know anyone who works at the places that interest you. And, if they do, ask them if they could arrange for you and that person to get together, for lunch, coffee, or tea. At that time, tell them why the place interests you, and indicate you’d like to know more about it. (It helps if your mutual friend is sitting there with the two of you, so the purpose of this little chat won’t be misconstrued.) This is the vastly preferred way to find out about a place. However, obviously you need a couple of additional alternatives up your sleeve, in case you run into a dead end here.

• People at the Organizations in Question, or at Similar Organizations. You can also go directly to organizations and ask questions about the place, but here I must caution you about several dangers.

First, make sure you’re not asking them questions that are in print somewhere, which you could easily have read for yourself instead of bothering them. This irritates people.

Second, make sure that you approach the people at that organization whose business it is to give out information—receptionists, public relations people, “the personnel office,” “the human relations department,” etc.—before you ever approach people higher up in that organization.

Third, make sure that you approach subordinates rather than the top person in the place, if the subordinates would know the answer to your questions. Bothering the boss there with some simple questions that someone else could have answered is committing job-hunting suicide.

Fourth, make sure you’re not using this approach simply as a sneaky way to get in to see the boss, and make a pitch for them to hire you. You said this was just information gathering. Keep it at that.

• Temporary Agencies. Many job-hunters and career-changers have found that a useful way to explore organizations is to go and work at a temporary agency. To find these, put into Google the name of your town or city and (on the same search line) the words “Temp Agencies” or “Employment Agencies.” Employers turn to such agencies in order to find: a) job-hunters who can work part-time for a limited number of days; and b) job-hunters who can work full-time for a limited number of days. The advantage to you of temporary work is that if there is an agency that loans out people with your particular skills and expertise, you get a chance to be sent to a number of different employers over a period of several weeks, and see each one from the inside. Maybe the temp agency won’t send you to exactly the place you hoped for, but sometimes you can develop contacts in the place you love, even while you’re temporarily working somewhere else—if both organizations are in the same field.

Some of you may balk at the idea of enrolling with a temporary agency, because you remember the old days when such agencies were solely for clerical workers and secretarial help. But the field has seen an explosion of services in the last decade, and there are temporary agencies these days (at least in the larger cities) for many occupations. In your city you may find temporary agencies for: accountants, industrial workers, assemblers, drivers, mechanics, construction people, engineering people, software engineers, programmers, computer technicians, production workers, management/executives, nannies (for young and old), health care/dental/medical people, legal specialists, lawyers, insurance specialists, sales/marketing people, underwriting professionals, financial services, and the like, as well as for the old categories: data processing, secretarial, and office services. See your local phone book, under “Temporary Agencies.”