Work experiences you need

Developing and growing your career requires experience. It is through our successes and failures that we learn the most.

We tend to think about work experience as one-dimensional, in other words, that it is about experience in general. There are, however, different experience sets that we need to go through in order to develop our career. This depends first and foremost on our preferred career direction. The aim is to gather experiences that lead us toward our future direction.

Lets take an example. Ellen Goldman interviewed 36 CEO's to identify different types of work experiences that were important to develop the ability to think strategically. She identified 9 types, including for example:

• General work experience: a wide ranging variety of experiences that are significant in scope and are autonomous.
  
• Being mentored: particularly early on in one‘s career with have frequent contact and immediate feedback on performance.
  
• Being challenged one-on-one by a key colleague about one‘s thinking.
  
• Dealing with the threat of organisational survival by an external entity: for example a takeover threat or the loss of a key customer.

Think outside the box when it comes to what sets of experiences you may need.
Then, write down one action you will take to get one of these experiences in the next 14 days. Experiences won't happen unless you start somewhere!

Further reading: Goldman, Ellen F. (2008). The power of work experience: Characteristics critical to developing expertise in strategic thinking. Human Resource Development Quarterly, 19 (3): 217-239.

Amazing story of unique skill to business

This is an amazing short video clip of how a unique skill can be turned into a lucrative business. I'm sure this artist didn't setup to make millions...but watch the end of the video.

You'll enjoy the 2 minutes, click here.

The take away message: a niche market can be worth a fortune. If you have a talent, there may well be a way to make a career out of it.

(Thanks to Tom Poland for sharing this via www.The8020Blog.com)

You are not your job

It's the second BBQ question: "So, what do you do?" Nine out of ten people will respond with their job title after which the questioner immediately makes implicit conclusions about that person based on a stereotypical understanding of their job.

Those people who define themselves by their work find it difficult to change careers and are more affected when one of life's curve balls are thrown at them.

This is particular true during periods of unemployment. according to Canadian career expert, Norman Amundson. His research showed that the closer a person’s identity is linked to their work, the greater will be their difficulty in coping with the unemployment period.

You are not your work. Your career is certainly an important part of you, but it's only that: a part.

It is far more effective for your identity to be based on personal capacities and attitudes rather than on a traditional working relationship.

How God will help your Career Decisions

The last four years has seen a blossoming of research on the role of spirituality and religion on individual's careers. The research does not differentiate between belief systems but rather focusses on whether people have a spiritual or religious framework.

There is a difference between spirituality and religion, but that's another blog post (or two) for the future.

So how will God help you?

Ryan Duffy and David Blustein conducted a study on the relationship between religiousness, spirituality, and career decision self-efficacy. They found that spiritual/religious frameworks play a significant role in an individual's confidence about making career decisions. Here's an extract from their findings:

"While the exact link between these variables and confidence in making career decisions is not clear, we propose that the stability and support granted by a strong base in religion and spirituality helps an individual have confidence about a host of decisions, including those concerning one
s career."

The end of the redundancy stigma

Being retrenched no longer comes with a social stigma. It is far to common an experience with the average person experiencing 3 involuntary career changes in their working life.

It is so commonin fact that two retrenched workers in the US decided they needed to promote more actively that they were looking for work. So, they created a brightly coloured wristband saying "Looking for work - Need a job". 

The result?

They are no longer without work. Their full time job is packing and sending these wristbands to people from around the country.

There's no such thing as thinking too big

"I think I'm thinking too big" said David.

This was his response to writing down his Preferred Career Directions for the future. We were at a career management and strategy workshop for postgraduate students of The University of Queensland Business, Economics and Law faculty which I was facilitating.

"First there's no such thing" I replied. "Tell me about your possible directions".

"First, I want to be a successful economist". A worthwhile goal, I thought, to excel in his chosen profession.

"Second, I want to be an expert in developmental economics". A specilisation in developing economies, fair enough.

"Finally, I want to turnaround a nation".

Wow.

"David", I asked, "where are you from?"

"East Timor" he replied. "We're in a mess. But have a look at Singapore, Taiwan, Malaysia - they all turned around their nation in the space of one generation. I believe we can do the same".

There is no doubt in my mind that David will make a significant contribution to his country. He's the next Treasury Secretary, Presidential Advisor or whatever role he ends up in to turn around his country.

There's no such thing as thinking too big.

Two Executives, One Career

Following from the last post, I wanted to share another innovative job search story. 

Harvard Business Review published a story in 2005 called 'Two Executives, One Career'. Two senior executives shared a job at a bank for six years before being retrenched. This article is the story of their job search as they went about selling themselves as a team. They had one resume.

Some people to whom I've mentioned this story have been skeptical.  Understandably so - innovative ideas always engender a healthy dose of cyncism. Can such a job search approach work here in the real world?

Yes.

Recently a pair of senior communication and public relations professionals did exactly this. Inspired by their cohesion as a working team, they stayed together after the project they were working on finished. 

Working with their consultant on a Career Transition program, they developed a comprehensive job search campaign including a joint approach (one resume, both attending interviews) and seperate approach (independently following leads, networking).

They secured a senior management position in their chosen areas of communications and stakeholder management.  In this tighter labour market it is even more important to implement a well planned job search strategy.

There is always room for innovative approaches. Remember, companies will make room for great people. You just need to find those companies and convince them of your value.