Planning, Living, Succeeding: Where are You Headed in Your Career?

When you know what you have done and have a way of describing your background, you have met a key essential.  Please, do not move to the next step until you have thoroughly addressed this!

Now, you can consider how you want to spend your time.  The four activities are: job, working for yourself, investing in education/training, and other. Other refers to those times when you live off your resources while recuperating, taking care of others, or otherwise using your savings to fund your lifestyle without an income. Think of job, entrepreneurship, and education/training as being very similar: you will be spending time and money in return for income.  Even with education, this is true: you are investing in your skills and credentials in order to improve your income earning potential!

1. Develop a list of features or criteria by which to measure your choices within these categories. Make a spreadsheet with one feature on each row, and a column for each job or school or business idea that you are considering and measure every option by EVERY criterion.
2. Include cells for computing the cost of each choice. Nothing is cost free. Include the dollar cost and the time cost.
3. Get out of the house: go talk to friends and strangers. Develop a style for talking to them about what they do and how they made their choices along the way.  Find out what they learned, and see if they can suggest others to call, materials to read, courses to take – any follow-on steps that would increase your awareness.  Even if your occupation does not take a similar direction, remember: the more you know about others, the better you will be able to serve customers, clients, and stakeholders. You never know what networking will uncover for you until you network, network, network!

If you can not get started, if you feel overwhelmed, or you think you can build your occupation/career without making the effort to build the foundational documents described here, call a career counselor or coach. Your Dept. of Labor Job Center is a great starting place for free access.  Or, you may desire one-on-one assistance with a private coach. No one can make the effort or do the work for you, but counselors and coaches can make the process more efficient and more productive. As coaches, we sometimes motivate, oftimes direct your efforts, and always give you a partner for accountability. Give us a call or message at [email protected]!