What is important to you? Your values change as you grow and change, so they need to be reassessed continually. At various stages in your career, you may value money, or leisure time, or independence on the job, or working for something you believe in. See what is important to you now. Then you won't be upset if a job provides you with the freedom you wanted, but not the kind of money your friends are making.
Look at the list of values below. Think of each in terms of your overall career objectives. Rate the degree of importance that you would assign to each for yourself, using this scale:
- Not important at all
- Not very but somewhat important
- Reasonably important
- Very important in my choice of job
Study: Laura
Using Her Special Interests
For many people, interests should stay as interests things they do on the side. For others, their interests may be a clue to the kinds of jobs they should do next or in the long run. Laura had food as her special interest. She had spent her life as a marketing manager in cosmetics, but she assured me that food was very important to her.
We redid her resume to downplay the cosmetics background. Next, Laura visited a well known specialty food store. She spoke to the store manager, a junior person, asked about the way the company was organized, and found that there were three partners, one of whom was the president, Laura said to the store manager, "Please give my resume" to the president, and I will call him in a few days." We prepared for her meeting with the president, in which she would find out the company's long term plans, and so on. At the meeting, he said he wanted to increase revenues from $4 million to $40 million. Laura and I met again to decide how she could help the business grow through her marketing efforts, and to decide what kind of compensation she would want, including equity in the company. She met with the president again, and got the job!
It was the Interests exercise that prompted her to get into that field. Remember, all you need to do is make a list of your interests. Laura simply wrote "food." Other people list twenty things. Here is the exercise:
Interests Exercise
List all the things you really like to do. List anything that makes you feel good and gives you satisfaction. List those areas where you have developed a relatively in depth knowledge or expertise. For ideas, think back over your day, your week, the seasons of the year, places, people, work, courses, roles, leisure time, family, etc. These areas need not be work related. Think of how you spend your discretionary time.
If you cannot think of what your interests may be, think about the books you read, the magazines you subscribe to, the section of the newspaper you turn to first. Think about the knowledge you've built up simply because you're interested in a particular subject. Think about the volunteer work you do what are the recurring assignments you tend to get and enjoy? Think about your hobbies are there one or two you have become so involved in that you have built up a lot of expertise information in those areas? What are the things you find yourself doing and enjoying all the time, things you don't have to do.
Your interests may be a clue to what you would like in a job was a partner in a law firm, but loved everything about wine. He left the law firm to become general counsel in a wine company. Most people's interests should stay as interests, but you never know until you think about it.
Satisfiers And Dissatisfiers Exercise
Simply list every job you have ever had. List what was satisfying and dissatisfying about each job. Some people are surprised to find that they were sometimes most satisfied by the vacation, pay, title, and other perks, but were not satisfied with the job itself.
Bosses Exercise
Simply examine those bosses you have had a good relationship with and those you have not, and determine what you need in your future relationship with bosses. If you have had a lot of problems with bosses, discuss this with your counselor.
Looking Into Your Future
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. SHAKESPEARE Hamlet
Your motivated skills tell you the elements you need to make you happy, your Values exercise tells you the values that are important to you right now, and the Interests exercise may give you a clue to other fields or industries to explore. But none of them give you a feel for the scope of what may lie ahead.
Dreams and goals can be great driving forces in our lives. We feel satisfied when we are working toward them even if we never reach them. People who have dreams or goals do better than people who don't.
A study was made of alumni ten years out of Harvard to find out how many were achieving their goals. An astounding 83 percent had no goals at all. Fourteen percent had specific goals, but they were not written down. Their average earnings were three times what those in the 83 percent group were earning. However, the 3 percent who had written goals were earning ten times that of the 83 percent group.
Setting goals will make a difference in your life, and this makes sense. Every day we make dozens of choices. People with dreams make choices that advance them in the right direction. People without dreams also make choices but their choices are strictly present oriented, with little thought of the future. When you are aware of your current situation, and you also know where you want to go, a natural tension leads you forward faster.
When you find a believable dream that excites you, don't forget it. In the heat of our day to day living, our dreams slip out of our minds. In some respects this is good, because it means we're absorbed by the daily events of our lives. If we focused only on the future, we'd all be very upset and worried people. We each should be appropriately challenged and involved in what we're doing in the present, with a reminder every once in a while of where we want to go. Happy people keep an eye on the future as well as the present.
Self Assessment Summary
Summarize the results of all the exercises. This information will help define the kind of environment that suits you best, and will also help you brainstorm some possible job targets. Finally, it can be used as a checklist for job possibilities. When you are about to receive a job offer, use this list to help you objectively analyze it.
