What Color Is Your Parachute?

3. Advanced job-creation techniques.

Yes, suppose we can’t find any job vacancies in our area, in our specialty, then what? Well, if we can’t find any vacancies, then we must learn how to create jobs; learning not only how to found our own business, but also how to speed up the job-creation process as done by employers around the country. And we must learn how to make a career-change, when we are puzzled about where to go from here with our life, and we hate our old job, or are simply bored, and want to do something new and different with our lives, or we want to find some deeper sense of mission or purpose for our life. It is worth noting that when we create new work for ourselves, we often help create new jobs for others.[7]

Sometimes the problem is we do not realize all the richness of what we have to offer to the World. So, the fourth essential part of Survival Job-Hunting is:

4. Inventory. We must go back and inventory what we have to offer the world: what transferable skills, what knowledges, what experience, what values. 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 all this, you will decide you can put together a new career with what you already know. Or maybe you’ll want to go train for a whole new career. Maybe. But first, you should inventory what you already have. It’s broader, deeper, richer, than you think.

These new tools should be taught to everyone, but we don’t have enough teachers or trainers to do that. Therefore, an essential part of Survival Job-Hunting is that once we have learned these life-saving skills for ourselves, we turn outward from ourselves and share what we have with the rest of the world; each one of us must commit to go teach at least one other person. So, the fifth (and final) essential part of Survival Job-Hunting is:

5. Each one teach one. It would be nice if we had enough trainers to teach this to the whole world, in time. But we don’t. The famous literacy pioneer, Frank Laubach, said that when you don’t have enough trainers to train everyone who needs it, the fastest way to spread a survival skill is to mandate that each person, once trained, makes a commitment to go teach at least one other person. We cannot let millions suffer because they do not know what to do in this new economy. If we gain the knowledge, it is our responsibility to turn around and share it.

CONCLUSION

Our pathway from here, is clear: we will proceed, step by step, through these five essential parts of Survival Job-Hunting, in the following order:

I. Attitudes

II. Job-finding

III. Job-creation and career change

IV. Inventory of what we each have to offer to the world

V. Teaching others through “each one teach one”

Discussion

Job-hunter: It doesn’t feel to me like we’re in a survival mode in this country. Plenty of people have jobs. I think this country is still very prosperous.

Career-counselor: Well, you’re right. To be exact, 139 million people have jobs in this country. But any of us can be thrown out of work any time, without warning. And we aren’t spending time thinking about that possibility ahead of time, are we?

Job-hunter: No, we aren’t. I mean, I can’t speak for others, but it never occurred to me that I might be unemployed. And unemployed for this long.

Career-counselor: Well, that’s why we call this a survival mode, in this country; and in other countries around the world. Let me give you an analogy. You see a swimmer in danger of drowning. Can’t swim very well. Has no life jacket. Is about to go under the water for the third time. His arms are flailing the water desperately. Get the picture?

Job-hunter: Sure. He’s in trouble.

Career-counselor: Yes, but he’s in trouble because he didn’t put on a life jacket before he ever went out into the water. If he knew he might have trouble surviving out there, he would have put on that life jacket.

Job-hunter: So, you’re saying …

Career-counselor: I’m saying, you prepare now, if you want to survive later.

THE FIVE PARTS OF JOB-HUNTING AS A SURVIVAL SKILL: I. ATTITUDES NECESSARY FOR SURVIVAL

Ask not for tasks equal to your powers;

Rather, ask for powers equal to your tasks.

PHILLIPS BROOKS (1835–1893)

Chapter 3. The Three Attitudes Necessary for Survival

Show me two job-hunters. Both are essentially the same age. Both have the same background. Both have the same intelligence and history. Both have been out of work for the same amount of time. It’s been many months, now. Both are struggling, financially. They get by on what little they’ve saved, what occasionally they can sell, plus help from family and friends, the occasional brief odd job, that sort of thing.

But there the similarities end.

The one is quietly smoldering with anger, barely suppressed. He is mad at the universe, and in no particular order, his former employer, his former co-workers, the government, his profession, his college, friends, and God. He is very quiet, doesn’t talk much, and when he does talk, it is to complain about how his life has turned out. He is sullen, gloomy about his future, feels he has been declared disposable, and that his life as he knew it is essentially over.

The other is just as depressed about how his life has turned out, but he wakes up each morning glad to see the sun, puts on beautiful music, walks a great deal, counts his blessings, is in a job-support group, focuses on other people’s troubles, not just his own, is a great listener, spends each new day trying to be a better person than he was the day before, remains active in his job-hunt, tries to learn or study something new each day, essentially sees life as an adventure, and is willing to wait patiently for the next chapter to unfold.

Yes, show me two job-hunters, and I will show you how important attitude is. Which one of those two do you think is more likely to find a job, first?

In whatever circumstances we may find ourselves in life, attitude is everything.

When we are out of work, and desperately trying to survive, we don’t just need to master more advanced job-hunting techniques, but we must also pay strict attention to our attitudes. Job-hunting most always involves competing with others for the job, sad to say, and it is often our attitude that gives us the advantage. Here are three attitudes to adopt.