What Color Is Your Parachute? Part 11

But now let us suppose you could instead find another kind of work that matches all seven sides of you. All seven petals. What would you call that job? You would call it your dream job.

So, your total flower is a picture of who You most fully are. But at the same time it's a picture of a job that would give voice to all that you are. Your dream job. Where you would s.h.i.+ne, because it uses the best of Who You Are.

So please fill in your Flower. And try to keep it a joy rather than a duty.

For the following exercises you will need several blank sheets of notebook paper (8 11 inches) as your worksheets.

I Am a Person Who ...

Knows These Particular Things

And loves using that knowledge. Or knowledges. Or "know-hows." (Call it what you will.) First Petal MY FAVORITE KNOWLEDGES OR FIELDS OF INTEREST.

My Favorite Knowledges Petal

Goal in Filling Out This Petal: To summarize all that you stored in your brain. Required: From your past, subjects you already know a lot about, and enjoy talking about. Optional: For your future, what you would like to learn.

What You Are Looking For: Some guidance as to what field you would most enjoy working in.

Form of the Entries on Your Petal: Basically, they will all turn out to be nouns, but see below.

Example of a Good Petal: "Graphic design, data a.n.a.lysis, mathematics, how to repair a car, videogames, cooking, music, principles of mechanical engineering, how to run an organization, Chinese, CATIA (Computer Aided Three-dimensional Interactive Application)," etc.

Example of a Bad Petal: "Prompt, thorough, a.n.a.lyzing, persistent, communicating."

Why Bad: Knowledges are always nouns. The words in the bad example above are not. In case you're curious, they are, in order: a trait (adjective), a trait (adjective), a transferable skill (verb), a trait (adjective), and a transferable skill (verb). All in all, that is one mixed bag! All are important, but you want only knowledges on this particular petal.

There are three things traditionally called skills: knowledges, as here; functions, also known as transferable skills; and traits. As a general rule throughout this inventory, knowledges are nouns, transferable skills are verbs, and traits are adjectives or adverbs. If it helps knowing that, great; if not, forget it. Our overarching principle throughout this book is that if a generalization, or metaphor, or example, helps you, use it. But if it just confuses you, then ignore it!!! Please!

On this Knowledges "petal" (actually the central part of the Flower) you will eventually write your final results-your Favorite Knowledges/Fields of Interest, prioritized in the order of importance to you.

Prior to that, you need here, as you will with each petal, a worksheet. Or two. Get blank pieces of notebook or paper to do this on.

To download a printable PDF of this image, please visit http://rhlink.com/para14008 A worksheet is like a fisherman's net, where you want to cast it into the sea in order to capture the largest haul possible, and then sort out the best of your catch, later.

This worksheet can look sloppy, unorganized, and messy. That's okay. Who cares? Only the final petal is supposed to look organized.

A worksheet is a gathering place, for the results of the exercises you do, but also for every bright idea, every hunch, every remembered dream, every intuition that occurs to you as you are working on that petal. Jot down everything.

This is an important petal-very important-so to unearth your favorite knowledges or fields of interest, four exercises are usually needed. We begin with: 1. WHAT YOU KNOW FROM YOUR PREVIOUS JOBS.

If you've been out there in the world of work for any time already, you've probably learned a lot of things that you now just take for granted. "Of course I know that!" But such knowledges may be important, down the line. So, list them!

Things like: bookkeeping, handling applications, credit collection of overdue accounts, hiring, international business, management, marketing, sales, merchandizing, packaging, policy development, problem solving, troubleshooting, public speaking, recruiting, conference planning, systems a.n.a.lysis, the culture of other countries, other languages, government contract procedures, and so on.

To be thorough here, jot down on another piece of paper a list of all the jobs you have ever held, and then for each job jot down anything you learned there. For example: "Worked in a warehouse: learned how to use a forklift and crane, inventory control, logistics automation software, warehouse management systems, JIT (just in time) techniques, teamwork principles, and how to supervise employees."

Or, again, "Worked at McDonald's: learned how to prepare and serve food, how to wait on customers, how to make change, how to deal with complaints, how to train new employees, etc."

Do this with all the jobs you have ever held: where you worked, what you learned there. Then look over everything you've written in this exercise, and decide which are your favorite knowledges or interests, that you're glad you picked up. Jot them down on your worksheet, in the s.p.a.ce provided for this exercise.

2. WHAT YOU KNOW ABOUT, OUTSIDE OF WORK.

Jot down knowledges you've picked up outside of work, such as: antiques, gardening, cooking, budgeting, decorating, photography, crafts, spirituality, sports, camping, travel, repairing things, flea markets, sc.r.a.pbooking, sewing, art appreciation at museums, how to run or work in a volunteer organization, and so on.

a. Also think of anything you learned in high school (or college) that you prize knowing today: keyboarding? Chinese? accounting? geography? What? Jot it all down.

b. Think of anything you learned at training seminars, workshops, conferences, and so on, possibly in connection with a job you had at the time. Jot it all down.

c. Think of anything you studied at home, via online courses, mobile apps, tape programs (likely played in your car while commuting), PBS television programs, etc. Jot it all down.

d. Think of anything you learned out there in the world, such as how to a.s.semble a flash mob, how to organize a protest, how to fund-raise for a particular cause, how to run a marathon, how to repair a toilet, etc. Jot it all down, in the s.p.a.ce provided for this exercise on your worksheet.

3. WHAT FIELDS, CAREERS, OR INDUSTRIES SOUND INTERESTING TO YOU.

If you want to pick some career or field from a list of them all, it helps if you start broadly, and then drill down.

Broadly speaking, then, the job-market consists of the following four arenas: agriculture, manufacturing, information, and services. Any ideas about which of these four is most attractive to you? If so, jot it down, in the s.p.a.ce provided for this exercise on your worksheet.

In order to drill down further than that, your best bet is the government's O*Net Online, a.s.suming you have a computer (www.onetonline.org). Note that is .org, not .com.

To begin with, this site has various lists of career cl.u.s.ters or industries or job families. Below is a mashup of these. Please read this list over, and check off any of these that you want to explore further (multiple choice preferred, here, in order to have alternatives and therefore hope): Accommodation and Food Services Administrative and Support Services Agriculture, Food, and Natural Resources Architecture, Engineering, and Construction Arts, Audio/Video Technology, and Communications Business, Operations, Management, and Administration Community and Social Service Computer and Mathematical Design, Entertainment, Sports, and Media Distribution and Logistics Education, Training, and Library Entertainment and Recreation Farming, Forestry, Fis.h.i.+ng, and Hunting Finance and Insurance Food Preparation and Serving Government and Public Administration Green Industries or Jobs Health Care, Health Science, and Social a.s.sistance Hospitality and Tourism Human Services Information and Information Technology Law, Public Safety, Corrections, and Security Life, Physical, and Social Sciences Management of Companies and Enterprises Manufacturing Marketing, Sales, and Service Military Related Mining, Quarrying, and Oil and Gas Extraction Personal Care and Service Production Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services Protective Services Real Estate, Rental, and Leasing Religion, Faith, and Related Retail Trade, Sales, and Related Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Self-Employment Transportation, Warehousing, and Material Moving Utilities Now, the nice thing about O*Net Online is that once you have chosen anything on the list above, the site has drop-down menus which allow you to go deeper into each career cl.u.s.ter, industry, or job family that you have checked off. It drills down to career pathways, and then drills down further to individual occupations, and then drills down still further to tasks, tools, technologies, knowledges, skills, abilities, work activities, education, interests, work styles, work values, related occupations, and salary.

The only limitation here, as you will see in chapter 10, "Five Ways to Change Careers," is that O*Net only does this for about 800 occupations. Its predecessor, the D.O.T., had 12,741 occupations.4 So, this does not offer a complete map of the job-market by any means.

And even for those occupations that are listed in O*Net, remember: jobs, industries, and careers are mortal; they are born, they grow, they flourish, they mature, then decline and ultimately die. Sometimes it takes centuries, sometimes merely decades, sometimes even sooner than that. But, eventually, most jobs, industries, and careers are mortal. So, always have a plan B.

Okay, now you're done with the worksheet for this petal. What next? Well, sort them. Copy the diagram below onto a piece of notebook paper, and then sort everything-everything-you have on that worksheet into one of these four bins (well, you can forget bin #4, if you'd rather): To download a printable PDF of this image, please visit http://rhlink.com/para14009 Copy the top four or five results from bin #1 and maybe, maybe, an item from bin #2, on to your Favorite Knowledges or Fields of Interest petal.

Now you're ready to move on, to consider another side of Who You Are.

I Am a Person Who ...

Has These Favorite Kinds of People

Second Petal MY PREFERRED KINDS OF PEOPLE TO WORK WITH.

Why do the people you prefer matter at all in the larger scheme of things? Because, the people we work with are either energy drainers or energy creators. They either drag us down, and keep us from being our most effective, or they lift us up and help us to be at our best, and perform at our greatest effectiveness. We'll get into that, in a minute.

Keep in mind, "people-environments" are another way of describing jobs or careers. So, we'll cover that here, too. Now, let us begin.

You'll probably need to copy the My Favorite People chart to a larger piece of paper-8 11 inches-before you start filling it in. And, by the way, you can fill it out alone, or in company with up to five other job-hunters (recommended, because it's a lot more fun to see how other people are bugged by the same kinds of people that you are).

My Favorite People Petal

Goal in Filling Out This Petal: To avoid past bad experiences with people at work, since who (er, whom) you work with can either make the job delightful, or ruin your day, your week, your year.

What You Are Looking For: (1) A better picture in your mind of what kind of people surrounding you at work will enable you to operate at your highest and most effective level. (2) A better picture in your mind of what kind of people you would most like to serve or help: defined by age, problems, geography, and so forth.

Form of the Entries on Your Petal: They can be adjectives describing different kinds of people ("kind," "patient") or it can be types of people, as in the "Holland Code" or "Myers-Briggs" typologies.

Example of a Good Petal: (1) Kind, generous, understanding, fun, smart. (2) The unemployed, people struggling with their faith, worldwide, all ages. Holland code: IAS.

Example of a Bad Petal: People in trouble, young, smart, in urban settings. RCI.

Why Bad: It doesn't distinguish between (1) people surrounding me at work and (2) people I want to help or serve. It lumps both together. Not much help. Too vague.

To download a printable PDF of this image, please visit http://rhlink.com/para14010 Start, of course, by filling in the first column in the chart, and then the second. This will bring you to the third column, and here you're gonna need some help. How do you look back at that stuff in the second column, and prioritize it? Well, you use: The Prioritizing Grid I give you my Prioritizing Grid. It asks you to decide between just two items at a time. There are two forms of it: one prioritizing twenty-four items, the other prioritizing just ten or fewer. I will explain the latter in some detail here. You will then see the twenty-four item grid is done in the same manner.

INSTRUCTIONS FOR USING THE PRIORITIZING GRID.

Section A. Write down, in any order, the factors you listed in the second column of the chart. This grid will accommodate up to ten factors. If you originally listed more than ten, take a guess at which ten factors you disliked the most, and list those ten.

Section B. Compare just two items at a time. Begin with that little tiny box to the left of factor #1 and factor #2, in which you will see the tiny numbers 1 and 2. The numbers are clearly shorthand for those factors written out in Section A. The question you would frame for yourself, here, would be as follows: Which of these two factors do I dislike the most? Then, in that little tiny box you circle either the tiny number 1 or 2, depending on which factor you dislike the most.

In similar manner you work your way down the little boxes nearest Section A, which as you can see lie in a diagonal running from northwest to southeast. The next little tiny box has the tiny numbers 2 and 3 in it. Same question, except now it's between factor #2 versus factor #3. Circle the appropriate number in that tiny box. Why diagonal, rather than just straight across horizontally or straight down, vertically? Because you can get into a knee-jerk reaction if you do it that way ("Well, I checked factor #5 each time so far, so I guess I should check factor #5 this next time, too.") Diagonal defeats knee-jerk reactions.

So, work your way on down that diagonal direction. When you've reached the little box at the bottom of that first diagonal (containing the little numbers 9 and 10), go back up to the top and work down the next diagonal (beginning with the little box containing 1 and 3; then the little box containing 2 and 4; then the one containing 3 and 5, etc.

To download a printable PDF of this image, please visit http://rhlink.com/para14011 When you've reached the box at the bottom of that diagonal direction, go back up to the top, and work down the next diagonal (the little box containing 1 and 4, then the box containing 2 and 5, and so on, down to box containing 7 and 10).

Back up to the top to the next diagonal, the box containing 1 and 5, then the box containing 2 and 6, and so on. Keep this up until you've made a decision about every little box (the final one being 1 versus 10).

Section C. The bottom of the grid has three rows to it, as you can see. The first row is already filled in for you: it's the numbers of the factors in Section A. The second row, just below that, asks how many times each number got circled in all of the little tiny boxes. Let's say item 1 got circled 7 times. In the row right beneath #1 in the first row of Section C, you enter the number 7. Next, count how many times item 2 got circled; let's say it was 1 time; put the number 1 right below #2. Continue up through item 10.

Look now at the numbers in that second row. If no number is repeated in that second row of Section C, great! Most likely you'll find a tie. That means two items got circled the same number of times-let's say 2 and 10. How do you resolve the tie? Well, you look back at Section B, to find the little tiny box that had 2 and 10 in it, and see which of those two you circled there; let's say it was 2. Well then, in that second row, give #2 an extra half point. Now its "count" is 1. Leave #10 as it is (count just 1). Do this with each two-way tie.

What do you do if you have a three-way tie-three items each got circled the same number of times? This always means that you contradicted yourself somewhere along the way: one time you said this was more important, another time you said, no it wasn't. The only way to resolve the three-way tie is to just guess what is the proper order (for you) as to which of the three you dislike the most, which next, which next. Let's say the tie was that 3, 4, and 7 all got circled the same number of times. You dislike #7 the most, #4 next, and #3 next. Okay, so give an extra point (that's three-quarters of a point) to #7, an extra point to #4, and no extra points to factor #3. Now, no two factors or items have the same count in the second line of Section C.

Go down now to the bottom row there in Section C, and now rank the items, according to their circle count in the second row. The factor that got circled the most, let's say it was item #6, must be given a final rank of 1. Therefore, write 1 in the third row, down below item #6. Let's say item #8 got the next most circles; write a 2 down below item #8. Let's say item #1 got the next most circles; write a 3 down below it, on the bottom rank line in Section C. And so on. And so forth.

Section D. Recopy the list that you randomly put down in Section A, but now here in Section D put the list in its exact order of one you disliked the most, next most, etc.-according to the ranking in the bottom row of Section C. In terms of our examples above, you would copy item #6 as it was called in Section A, and put it on the very top line in Section D, because it got circled the most. You would copy item #8 as it was called in Section A onto the second line in Section D, because it got circled the next most times. And so on, until you've copied all ten factors in exactly the order of "dis-like-ness" (new word) this grid revealed.

Now, what do you end up with, there in Section D? A list of your preferences, regarding people environments: "I would most prefer not to have to work with ... and I next most prefer not to have to work with ..." etc.

I knew you'd like an example of a finished Prioritizing Grid, which is what you have below. Note that there is a mistake on line 3 in Section D. No matter if you make a mistake. Just cross it out and put the correct information. It's okay not to be perfect.

To download a printable PDF of this image, please visit http://rhlink.com/para14012 Now, back to the chart. Copy the first five factors in Section D of the grid, into the third column of the chart. What you've got there, now, is a negative list of what you're trying to avoid. What you want is a positive list of what you're trying to find.

So, look at the five negative items you just put up there, in the third column of the chart, and write the opposite, or something near the opposite, directly opposite each item, in the fourth column of the chart. By "opposite" I don't necessarily mean "the exact opposite." If one of your complaints in the third column was: "I was micromanaged, supervised every hour of my day," the opposite, in the fourth column, wouldn't necessarily be "No supervision." It might be "Limited supervision" or something like that. Your call.

Note that by first putting your negative list in exact order of what you most want to avoid (third column in the chart), your related positive list (fourth column) will have its factors in the exact order of what you most want to find in a future job.

You might want, both here and elsewhere in this chapter, a Prioritizing Grid that allows you to work with more than ten items. So, this chart has a twenty-four item grid, done in the same way as the ten-item. It just takes longer.

Whichever grid you decide to use, when you're done, copy the top five on your positive list, onto the petal, My Preferred Kinds of People to Work With.

Then we move on, to do the rest of the petal.

To download a printable PDF of this image, please visit http://rhlink.com/para14013 The Party Game Exercise This people exercise isn't just a matter of figuring out who irritates you and who doesn't. Though that is important. But, as mentioned earlier, people are also a way of identifying careers.

That's because every career has a characteristic people-environment. Tell us what career interests you, and we can tell you, in general terms, what people-environment it will offer-described in terms of six factors.

Or tell us what people-environment you want-in terms of those same six factors-and we can tell you what careers will give you that. As I always like to give credit where credit is due, you should know that it was the late Dr. John L. Holland who came up with the system for doing this.5 Surveying the whole job-market, he said there are basically six people-environments. Let's tick them off: 1. Realistic People-Environment: filled with people who prefer activities involving "the explicit, ordered, or systematic manipulation of objects, tools, machines, and animals." "Realistic," incidentally, refers to Plato's conception of "the real" as that which one can apprehend through the senses. ("Knock on wood!")