Changing Careers? “Proof of Concept” is Key

Whether you’re a recent college graduate approaching the market for the first time, or a mid-career adult thinking about branching out in a more satisfying new direction, there’s an important rule to keep in mind as you begin your exploration efforts.  As you research potential options, try not to lose sight of the fact that while there are an enormous number of distinct job and employment niches out there — over 100,000 by some counts — the range of options is not actually infinite or unlimited.

We mention this point only because we’ve encountered a healthy contingent of job seekers over the years who seem to think that the range of career possibilities is endless — and who appear to be holding out hope that if they look for long enough, they’ll find that one transcendent job path that meets every single last one of their expectations.  In other words, that they’ll find that one dream job that will allow them to only work three days a week, will fully leverage their lifelong passion for art history, and will compensate them at not a penny less than the $80,000 they’re making in their current career path..

Is such a career achievable?  Absolutely.  We’d be the first to admit that anything’s possible when it comes to the job market and that there’s some downright crazy stuff out there.  But such “dream” scenarios should be viewed as the exception, not the rule, and it doesn’t make a lot of sense for a serious job seeker to rely solely on finding the proverbial needle in a haystack.  Instead, we’d encourage potential career changers to do some thorough homework and then make the best possible choice from the range of more conventional career options that this research proves actually exist in today’s market — in significant enough numbers to represent a realistic possibility.

What’s the best way to test out the “proof of concept” with regard to a possible career path?  It’s simpler than you might think.  Simply log on to one or more of the huge vertical job boards (e.g. Indeed.com) and search nationwide for the job title or titles that interest you.  Even if you don’t find many current leads in your local market, any bona fide career avenue will produce multiple listings for your target job in other parts of the country, providing critical evidence that the “value proposition” you’re considering is one that employers currently recognize and for which they are willing to pay money for.  For example, despite the fact that no “art curator” job listings appear posted in Seattle at the time of this writing, searching on a nationwide basis reveals over 25 such leads available in parts of the country — suggesting that this career path truly exists, is recognized by employers, and represents a viable career option to pursue.

Going after a different kind of opportunity?  Try applying the same test to make sure that you have a realistic shot at success and aren’t chasing the proverbial wild goose, instead…

Earn a Six-Figure Salary Working from Home!

If you actually took the above headline seriously, here’s the first lesson — any job claim that sounds too good to be true, probably is.  In today’s marketplace, it’s hard to get away from the neverending string of advertisements looking for “motivated, entrepreneurial” professionals who are desperate enough to jump on board 100% commission opportunities or the latest get-rich-quick scheme.

At the same time, we get asked quite often whether there are legitimate, living-wage jobs available to people who wish to work part-time or from the comfort of their own homes.  These situations are particularly attractive, of course, to people who are semi-retired, starting a family, or who may be looking for a greater degree of work/life balance than a traditional full-time opportunity would provide.

In terms of finding these types of non-traditional opportunities, the most productive channel is (and has always been) to reach out and attempt to create opportunities within your own professional network — or to consider opening your own full- or part-time business or consulting practice based around your existing skill sets and expertise.  The proper approach to doing this, however, will obviously depend heavily on the size of your current network and your unique career circumstances, so we’d need to meet with you personally to provide any meaningful strategies in this particular area.

At the same time, there’s one effective brainstorming strategy you can try immediately on your own, which is to conduct some targeted keyword searches on leading employment websites such as www.indeed.com, www.simplyhired.com, and www.hotjobs.com.  While you’ll have to sort the “wheat from the chaff” in terms of the hits you receive, an increasing number of organizations are looking for employees who can work flexible hours, and we’ve seen a definite increase in the amount of quality part-time job advertisements being posted over the last few months.

For maximum effectiveness, we’d recommend that you search the above sites using relevant keywords and phases such as: part-time, flex-time, flexible hours, work from home, telecommute, family-friendly, and work/life balance.  Make sure to put all of these phrases in quotes, however, or your results will be almost completely random and unproductive!

While you may not find a current listing for exactly the type of assignment you’re seeking, you will at the very least gain exposure to a lot of hiring organizations that support these types of emerging, more flexible work arrangements.  So look for target company ideas, instead of simply job leads, and don’t be afraid to contact these organizations directly to sell yourself and try to dig up unpublished opportunities!

The LinkedIn Answers Tab: Case Study

While many people are slowly gaining familiarity with the LinkedIn system, perhaps largely in part due to my never-ending preaching about it, the LinkedIn “Answers” tab is one that most people still haven’t fully discovered or put to good use in their job search campaigns.  This innocuous little feature of the system, however, can have tremendous power in helping people obtain deep, knowledgeable answers about any virtually any career, business, or employment-related subject under the sun!

Want a case in point?  One of my current clients, Kari Chwirka, allowed me to publish her name and use her recent foray onto LinkedIn Answers as a case study.  As a high school teacher and librarian with many years of experience, Kari recently decided the time had come to start exploring some new career options outside of the educational system.  What she quickly found, however, was that making this type of transition wasn’t necessarily going to be easy — and that achieving a significant career change (especially from the educational world to the private sector) would require a lot of courage, a clear game plan, and some extensive research into where her skills would best translate outside of a school setting.

In guiding her through this process, one of the recommendations I made was to post an appropriate question to the LinkedIn “Answers” section to see if any of the millions of other LinkedIn users might have made a similar transition, themselves, and have valuable advice and feedback to offer.  To her credit, she took me up on this suggestion, ran a suitable question up the flagpole, and within several days had received three very detailed, high-quality answers to her inquiry.

While certainly no replacement for the many other kinds of research one can conduct in the career change process, you can certainly see the value of using the LinkedIn tool in this type of supplemental capacity, and there are dozens of additional stories I could pass along where people tapped into the Answers feature to gain valuable insights from their peers.  If you didn’t notice, too, the system lists the job title and current place of employment for each person who replies to a question, so you can easily gauge a person’s credibility and determine whether it’s likely they know what they’re talking about!

So if you’ve got a “burning question” related to your job search or a potential career issue, don’t be afraid to give the LinkedIn community a chance to chime in. And in the off-chance anybody out there has some additional great suggestions or advice with regard to Kari’s situation, feel free to pass them along by e-mailing her here!  I’m sure she’d love to hear from you…

Top 20 Recession-Proof Jobs (according to Jobfox.com)

Thinking about a career change?  Advising your kids on what college major to pursue?  Or just curious about the types of jobs that the experts say will continue to be in steady demand, no matter what the economy might throw at us in coming years?  No matter what the reason, most people might enjoy taking a quick peek at the new “recession-proof” jobs list that has recently been compiled by Jobfox.com.  You can access the list by clicking here – at which point you’ll discover that the top five most bulletproof job categories are, in order: 1) Sales Representatives; 2) Software Design Professionals; 3) Nursing Professionals; 4) Accounting & Finance Executives; and 5) Accounting Staff.

Agree or disagree with these results, the study’s methodology is clearly outlined on the site, and these kinds of rankings can always be interesting to contemplate since they suggest certain areas of the economy that may be on the rise — or at least less volatile than other sectors.  And from our own standpoint, while we certainly know some sales and accounting professionals who are between assignments, the results still ring true since almost EVERY company in existence needs somebody both to drive top-line sales, as well as calculate bottom-line profitability.

Goal-Orientation is Key, Even When Your Goals are Unclear

Here’s a riddle for you.  Picture yourself out in the middle of an ocean (Atlantic or Pacific, Indian or Arctic, take your pick) drifting around in a rowboat.  You’re lost, you’re scared, and you know that if you don’t get back to shore pretty soon you’re going to be in a world of hurt, since your supplies are starting to run out!  In this situation, what would be the one guaranteed thing you could do to find dry land?

While my reasoning may not survive scrutiny by a panel of nautical experts, it strikes me that the one guaranteed way to find your way back to shore in the above situation would be to start rowing in a straight line — without deviating course.  Eventually, whether you hit Guatemala, Greenland, or the Greater Sandwich Islands, you’d run into SOME land mass from which you could replenish your supplies and get your bearings.  If instead, however, you started second-guessing yourself and making a series of course corrections along the way, because things “didn’t feel right” or you didn’t see yourself making much immediate progress, you could easily end up rowing around in circles — and ending up right back where you started from!

Yes, yes, I know, the metaphor is a bit simplistic.  But I share it nonetheless, because it strikes me that many job hunters are currently “drifting” a bit in their focus and changing course FAR too much during the course of their employment search to get quality results.  For example, I’ve come across many a person who seems all fired up to pursue an account management position in the new media industry one week, and then after sending a few resumes out and not getting called in for an interview (aka “not finding land), they suddenly panic and decide to start heading in the a new direction, instead, such as a sales job in the biotech field.  Before too long, they’re zig-zagging all over the place, sowing confusion among all of their networking allies and eliminating the one sure thing — which is that if they just stayed true to their initial goal, they’d eventually reach some form of ending point in the form of a viable job offer or conclusive feedback from the market as to their employability in the field in question.  Changing course too soon, however, will often prevent the person from making much forward progress or receiving any firm results or constructive feedback from the job hunting process, whatsoever.

For these reasons, if you’re a professional who isn’t 100% sure of your ideal next step in the job market, my suggestion is that you establish the most likely “working objective” and then doggedly start to pursue it, despite the sea of doubts, distractions, interruptions, and obstacles that get in the way.   In most cases, this determined pursuit of even a temporary goal will always get you farther, faster than most alternative courses of action — even if the temporary direction or career goal you’re pursuing eventually turns out to be the wrong one!  That’s where things get counterintuitive.  When I see people who are so utterly afraid to head in a potentially wrong direction that they don’t up heading in any direction at all, that’s when I start to worry.  These are the people who often end up swirling around in the “middle of the ocean” for months without making any meaningful career progress.

So rather than waiting for a massive employment-related epiphany to suddenly strike you, and tell you the exact course you need to follow, just start rowing!  If you allow your goal-oriented instincts to take over, and keep chasing at least one objective vigorously until you reach it, not only are you much more likely to get help along the way from people impressed by your determination — but once you “strike land” and start landing interviews, you may find yourself pleasantly surprised by the opportunities that turn up or will know for a certainty, at the very least, that the path in question isn’t a fit — and where you need to head next, from there!

Unclear About Your Career Goals? Own Up To It!

Want to know one of the biggest pet peeves of recruiters, employers, and pretty much anybody out there you might decide to network with on a professional basis?  It’s not the job seekers and professionals who lack clarity around their career goals — but those folks who pretend they are focused, even when they aren’t, or who desperately try to be “all things to all people” in lieu of admitting their confusion.

If you are one of the many folks out there still struggling to figure out what you want to be when you grow up, therefore, you’ll get much farther with people if you admit this to be the case right up front, instead of trying to pull the wool over people’s eyes with an ambiguous “elevator pitch” of some kind or another.  In general, most of the people you’ll meet will show a tremendous amount of patience and respect for individuals who are a little bit confused about their career path, but willing to admit it and who seem to be taking active steps to resolve the issue.  They will have little sympathy, however, for those apparent “lost souls” who simply seem to be whining, venting, floundering around, or hoping that somebody else will bail them out, give them the answer, and tell them what to do with their life.

So if you’re in the process of reevaluating your career direction, try using a message like this, instead, when you network with people and they ask you to describe your goals:

“Well, that’s a great question, and to be perfectly honest I’m currently doing some serious soul-searching about my ideal next step and where I want to take my career from this point forward.  As you know, I’ve traditionally worked in the legal field, and while I could certainly continue in that direction in a corporate counsel role or something similar, I’m also feeling drawn to making a change — and am evaluating a number of different options at the moment that might also be interesting and would take advantage of my legal background in some new and exciting ways.  For example, I’ve been spending most of this week conducting some research on the pros and cons of buying a staffing agency that specializes in placing legal personnel.  The idea of running my own business has always appealed to me, and the chance to apply my legal knowledge on the staffing side of the fence sounds really intriguing to me and might turn out to be a great new adventure.  We’ll see how it plays out.  Which reminds me — do you by any chance happen to know any folks who have left the corporate world to pursue an entrepreneurial venture of some kind?  I’d love to get some additional feedback around the idea…”

Obviously, you’ll need to tailor the above message to fit your own particular situation, but the keys to getting this message right — and motivating people to help you — are to 1) acknowledge that you’re at a career crossroads; 2) to tell them you’re actively taking steps to figure out your options; 3) to give them at least SOME indication of the different directions you’re considering; and 4) to show that you have a clear game plan, are doing your homework, and that you recognize the need to complete your “research project” before you seriously decide to go after your next job.  And as you likely noticed in the last sentence of the example above, if there’s anything your network contact can do to enhance or add value to your exploration efforts, by all means, ask them for help!

Your Tax Dollars = Occupational Profiles

Wonder where your tax dollars end up going outside of building highways, funding military conflicts, and paying down the national debt?  Well, at least some fraction of them goes into the collection and distribution of occupational data to help Americans make informed career decisions.  The funny thing is, most people don’t even know these resources exist, and unfortunately, the leading website that has organized this data for years (America’s Job Bank) was recently shut down to the expiration of its funding mandate.  This being said, however, most of the valuable data that was collected on the AJB site was passed back to local and state-funded websites for distribution — and a sizeable amount of it can also still be accessed at a new “CareerOneStop” website that you can access by clicking here.

One particularly useful aspect of this site is that you can sort the statistical career data by location.  For example, here are a few links you can click on that profile the growth/decline of certain occupations at the “Bachelors Degree & Higher” throughout Washington State:

– Fastest-Growing Occupations in Washington State
– Occupations with the Most Openings in Washington State
– Occupations with the Largest Employment in Washington State
– Occupations with Declining Employment in Washington State
– Highest-Paying Occupations in Washington State

Interestingly, upon surveying this data, we noted that the fastest-growing career niche in Washington is a field called “mathematical technicians” that we hadn’t heard of previously, and that the two highest-paying professions, anesthesiologists and chief executives, tend to make exactly the same salary, on average.  Guess there’s a lot of money to be made either by being great at putting people to sleep — or by being equally effective at getting them fired up!