What Color Is Your Parachute?

21. It helps to search for answers to these questions with two other people. Every one of us is blind to our own excellencies, initially.

22. Your uniqueness does not consist in one outstanding skill that you have, but in how you combine the skills you have (a necklace is worth more than a single pearl).

23. Your uniqueness does not consist in any one subject that you know, but in how you combine two or three different fields that you know.

24. Your uniqueness does not consist in what you do, but in the “invention” or “inventiveness” that you bring to what you do, that thereby makes you different from nineteen other people with the same background.

25. Down the road, if you continually strike out, in your job-hunt, you must rethink your job-hunt as a possible career-change; use your self-inventory as the tool for identifying what.

26. In job-hunting, don’t wait until a place has declared it has a vacancy; explore any company that interests you, whether it has a vacancy or not.

27. Approach smaller companies rather than larger ones, if you consider you have any so-called handicap or barrier to getting hired, such as your age, etc. (Try companies in the field that interests you which have 50 or fewer employees; then, if nothing turns up, 100 or fewer employees.)

28. Gather as much information about a job, a company, a field as you can, before you ever go in for an interview (this is called Informational Interviewing).

29. If going to talk with people terrifies you, prepare for Informational Interviewing by first just doing a “practice field survey”—identifying a curiosity or enthusiasm you have, totally unrelated to any job you are thinking about, and then going to talk with someone who shares that enthusiasm. Do this repeatedly until you get over your fears.

30. The key to talking with anyone, is to find a mutual enthusiasm or passion. Example: a movie fan has no trouble talking to a movie fan. Fear disappears in the face of enthusiasm.

31. Generally speaking, the major purpose of a written or digital resume, if you use one, is not to “sell yourself,” but simply to secure an invitation to come in for a talk.

32. Do not depend solely on your resume to get you into a place for an employment interview; use “bridge- people” (formerly called “contacts”)—those who know you and also know them; find bridge-people through such sites as LinkedIn.

33. Keep in mind that once an employer is considering you, Google is your new resume; you can no longer control what an employer can know about you (as in the old days of just “resumes”); but you can and should “clean up” your “Google resume” a little (or a lot). See the Internet for instructions on how to do this (the rules keep changing; stay up-to-date, especially with Facebook).

34. The major purpose of your first interview with an employer is to get yourself invited back for a second interview.

35. An employment interview is more like “a first date” than it is like “buying a used car.” Each of you, job- hunter and employer, must decide if you want to try “going steady.” It’s as much up to you as it is up to them. Your interview is still part of your research.

36. In the employment interview, talk 50 percent of the time, let the employer talk 50 percent of the time.

37. In the employment interview, never speak badly about a former employer; they may get the idea that that’s how you will talk about them.

38. In the employment interview, answer each of the employer’s questions no shorter than 20 seconds, no longer than 2 minutes, at a time.

39. At the end of an interview, if you have decided you really would like to work there, ask for the job. How? “Considering all that we’ve talked about, can you offer me this job?”

40. In the employment interview, do not discuss salary until the end of the interview, after the employer has definitely said, We want you. And remember, the first one to mention a figure generally loses in the negotiation. Here’s a way for you to respond to an employer who asks what salary you are expecting: “Well you created this job, so I’d be interested to know what salary range you had in mind.”

41. If they say the job is yours, you’ll start on Monday, do not give notice (if you are currently employed) until you have a firm written job offer in hand from the new place; a verbal “you’re hired” on Friday can turn into a “sorry, we discovered we just don’t have the budget for it” on Monday. This happens more often than you would think. Get the offer in writing.

42. When you start your new job, exceed their expectations: come in early, stay late, put their priorities before yours.

43. At your new place, keep a log of your accomplishments, done by yourself alone, or in a group or task force. Write in this log once a week (weekends are a good time). You can summarize its key points at the end of the year, when you want to ask for a raise.

44. If you just can’t find a job, look around for what your community needs. Observe keenly. It’s not what you see; it’s what you notice that determines everything.

45. If you’ve decided you don’t want to work for someone else, but want to start your own business, first interview others who have gone before you, in the same line of work, and learn what “land mines” they tripped over, and what skills were required, for them to succeed. Then review your own skills to see if there are any missing, that you will have to go out and hire.

46. If you want to make a radical career change (new job-title, new field) there is a way of doing this that enables you always to claim you have lots of experience: change in two steps in the next three years or so, first changing just the job-title, but staying in same field; then changing the field down the road —or vice versa (change just the field, but keep the same job-title as before, then change the job-title down the road). E.g. accountant in television to consultant in renewable energy.

47. Remember, every job is temporary. Including the one you just got or created. Start planning your next job-hunt the first day you are in this new job. Job-hunting is a repetitive activity in today’s world.

CONCLUSION

It is a great victory if you learn how to survive in today’s hard times; it’s an even greater victory if you help someone else survive and find meaningful work.

THE PINK PAGES

INTRODUCTION TO FINDING YOUR MISSION IN LIFE

There are those who think that belief in God is just some fairy tale that mankind (or humankind) invented, to comfort themselves against the darkness. Naturally, therefore, they think that anyone who says they believe in God is demonstrably feebleminded, or a pathetic child who has never grown up intellectually.

Given this view, they are horrified to find a section on faith or religion in a job-hunting book. They have written to me, and said so.

Well, here it is, anyway.

That’s because the percent of the world’s population that says they don’t believe in God is less than 3