you would die to do, I guarantee you that you will hunt for it
Well, there you have it: WHAT, WHERE, and HOW. You’re done with chapter 13. You’re done with this inventory of yourself. Now you have alternative ways of describing who you are, and what job(s) matches you. You have the survival skill so needed in today’s crazy world. Congratulations.
THE FIVE PARTS OF JOB-HUNTING AS A SURVIVAL SKILL:
V. EACH ONE TEACH ONE
A hundred years from now, it will not matter what kind of car I drove, what kind of house I lived in, how much money I had in the bank… but the world may be a better place because I made a difference in the life of a child.
Or an adult.
Chapter 14. Teaching Survival Job-Hunting to Others
A woman who had mastered the principles in this book had a husband who was a lawyer. It was increasingly apparent that he needed to find a new job, but he would not read this book. Being a compassionate and clever wife, she hit upon a strategy. Each night, at supper, she would read him one of the chapters here; or summarize the basic ideas, for him. This gave him enough knowledge that he was able to quit his job and find one that gave him true pleasure and enjoyment.
A man living here in the U.S. had a brother in Pakistan. The American had mastered the principles in this book, and he knew that his brother was in somewhat desperate straits, and needed this knowledge. But the book at that time was not to be found in Pakistan. So he called his brother there, once a week, and summarized for him another chapter in this book. This gave the brother enough knowledge that he was able to change jobs successfully, and find new joy in his life.
What has thus happened occasionally for many years, must be made a regular procedure now that job- hunting has become, increasingly, a survival skill.
As each one of us becomes knowledgeable about these principles, we must make it our discipline to teach this knowledge to others, if we are to avoid what has been increasingly called around the world “a lost generation”: those without jobs and with no hope of finding jobs, because their job-hunting skills are only elementary.
There simply aren’t enough formal trainers to teach this stuff in time. Each of us must become an instructor and trainer. If we know, we must share. Our motto has got to be:
Frank Laubach is the man who popularized this idea. Working in the Philippines in 1929, he was disturbed by the illiteracy he saw all around him. So he came up with the idea that each literate person had a responsibility to teach someone who was illiterate, how to read. He used life skills materials and Bible texts to teach literacy. And he became famous for the worldwide movement that built up around his principle:
Today, illiteracy is still a problem worldwide. But so is a person’s ability to survive, and find meaningful work. So his principle is just as urgent in this arena as it was in the matter of illiteracy.
If we accept this responsibility, what is it we should teach? Well, I think there are about 47 principal ideas that we should share with others:
1. The job-market is always churning.
2. Millions of people are unemployed even in the best of times; millions of people find work even in the worst of times.
3. The solution to unemployment cannot wait for government programs. You are in charge of your job-hunt; no one else will find a job for you.
4. Job-hunting is a repetitive experience in the world of today. You must master the job-hunt once and for all: you must aim for empowering yourself, not just look for “services” that rescue you just this one time.
5. Job-hunting has become a survival skill.
6. Every job is temporary. By their very nature, jobs are mortal; they get born, grow, prosper, decline, die. Jobs and job-titles are endlessly being born, and then dying.
7. All job-hunting methods are mortal, at least in their outward form: you must be continually changing how you hunt for work. What got you here, won’t get you there; job-hunting has completely changed in the twenty-first century.
8. All of us basically job-hunt the way we live our life: depending on step-by-step well-thought-out plans, or on just intuition, or on just blind luck. If your job-hunt is not working, and you’re depending on just luck, move up to intuition; if intuition isn’t working for you, move up to step-by-step planning.
9. Even when you feel utterly powerless, you must work on what is within your control, even if it’s only 2 percent.
10. You must be prepared for your job-hunt to take a long time.
11. You must be energy-conserving in your job-hunt, which means familiarizing yourself with the latest information about what job-hunting methods will repay you for the time invested, and what methods won’t.
12. The business world is like a foreign country: if you visit it, you must learn its language, and how employers think.
13. You must learn that employers hunt for employees in exactly the opposite way that job-hunters search for employers.
14. You must rethink who you are; this involves doing some homework and research—on yourself, not on the job-market (initially) or “hot jobs.”
15. You are not your job-title; you are “a person who….” You are a person who has
16. It’s hard to plan for finding meaningful
17. In the realities of today’s market, you will probably have to settle initially for part of your dream; so make sure that dream is large to begin with. You can keep working closer and closer to it in future months and years.
18. Your self-inventory must be a search for what you did right, not for what you did wrong.
19. Your self-inventory must be a search for what you enjoy doing, not for what is most marketable. If you like doing something a lot, it’s probably because you’re good at it. The reverse does not follow. We are all good at many things that we have no appetite for doing, anymore, if ever.
20. There are three key elements to a self-inventory: your answers to three questions, WHAT, WHERE, and HOW. WHAT skills do you most enjoy using; WHERE do you most want to use those skills; and HOW do you find the person who has the power to hire you for such a job.
