This week marks the 5th anniversary of the Career Opportunities podcast. The print version of Career Opportunities is now entering its 12th year. I want to offer my thanks to everyone who has read or listened to the show over the years. While I have my own reasons and rewards for creating Career Opportunities, the main reason will always be you. I will continue as long as what I write has some value for you and anyone else hoping to “Build the Career You Deserve.”
This major milestone seems a perfect time to address the concept of longevity in your projects and in your career. While there is some honor in doing something important over a long period of time, longevity is never a goal in and of itself. There needs to be a reason and a series of goals behind the longevity. Otherwise, you may end up focusing on habits instead of something which is truly worthwhile.
Over the years, I have revisited the purpose and usefullness of Career Opportunities. I did some hard thinking about whether it was adding value to the conversation and whether it carried significant rewards for myself and my own career. The most important part of this review is forcing yourself to step back and consider your work as an outsider. Despite your intimate involvement with your work, you have to consider it with a critical eye. Why? It has to do with the concept of “sunk costs.”- See more at: http://welchwrite.com/career/2009/09/28/longevity-and-our-5th-anniversary/#sthash.Ih09OcMt.dpuf
Douglas E. Welch (http://douglasewelch.com) presents to the class Career Development – Theories and Techniques at Pepperdine Graduate School of Education & Psychology taught by fellow CareerCamp Co-Chair, Danielle Gruen
The two biggest challenges are deciding what you want to do as a career and then building the career you deserve once you decide.
I discuss the Career Compass method of discovering your career wants, needs and desires and then using various social media tools to show people “What you do and how well you do it”
Transcript:
One of the big problems is that you have too many options these days. We get that analysis paralysis that starts to set it. You go to — you go to the store and there’s 15 types of ketchup! Which one do I buy? They’ve actually done tests — they’ve done market studies that siad, if you offer 15 to 20 types of ketchups, people will not buy. If you offer 4 types of ketchup, they will buy, because they just get stuck in that paralysis of trying to figure out what’s the best choice. The term you hear today — fear of missing out — how many people have heard — right? That’s the big term today FOMO. People don’t do things — they actually don’t do things because they can’t decide what to do because they’re afraid of missing out on something else. So I, again, bring it back to the person, I say “What are you interesting in?”
Douglas E. Welch (http://douglasewelch.com) presents to the class Career Development – Theories and Techniques at Pepperdine Graduate School of Education & Psychology taught by fellow CareerCamp Co-Chair, Danielle Gruen
The two biggest challenges are deciding what you want to do as a career and then building the career you deserve once you decide.
I discuss the Career Compass method of discovering your career wants, needs and desires and then using various social media tools to show people “What you do and how well you do it”
Transcript:
One of the big problems is that you have too many options these days. We get that analysis paralysis that starts to set it. You go to — you go to the store and there’s 15 types of ketchup! Which one do I buy? They’ve actually done tests — they’ve done market studies that siad, if you offer 15 to 20 types of ketchups, people will not buy. If you offer 4 types of ketchup, they will buy, because they just get stuck in that paralysis of trying to figure out what’s the best choice. The term you hear today — fear of missing out — how many people have heard — right? That’s the big term today FOMO. People don’t do things — they actually don’t do things because they can’t decide what to do because they’re afraid of missing out on something else. So I, again, bring it back to the person, I say “What are you interesting in?”
You have to really think hard for yourself and say “Is there where I want to go? Is this truly a good path for me to follow?” And if you do that, though, you’ll be much happier with the decisions you make. You may be a little stressed out. I totally understand that, because thinking hard about stuff like this can make you a little bit fearful — a little bit stressed, — a little bit afraid — but at the end of the process, as you go through the process, you’ll find that you’re very much more confident in the decisions you have made, simply because you have thought them through more carefully. You haven’t just let them be — as the French say, fait accompli. “Here, here it is. Do that!” You’ve, at least, thought about the process involved in doing that transition.
You have to really think hard for yourself and say “Is there where I want to go? Is this truly a good path for me to follow?” And if you do that, though, you’ll be much happier with the decisions you make. You may be a little stressed out. I totally understand that, because thinking hard about stuff like this can make you a little bit fearful — a little bit stressed, — a little bit afraid — but at the end of the process, as you go through the process, you’ll find that you’re very much more confident in the decisions you have made, simply because you have thought them through more carefully. You haven’t just let them be — as the French say, fait accompli. “Here, here it is. Do that!” You’ve, at least, thought about the process involved in doing that transition.
The nature of work has changed dramatically over the centuries. As a people, we moved from hunting and gathering, to subsistence farming, to larger agricultural communities, through industrialization to manufacturing and into the “information economy. Sweeping dramatic changes all, but each stage has demanded more physical work than thought. Even the information economy still encompasses much “grunt work” to keep it operating. In many cases in your career, companies are still only buying your “hands”. Sure, they might also be buying a certain amount of your “head” — your best thoughts and ideas — but the next wave in business, which many people do not understand, is asking people to sell their hearts, as well. This will not, and should not, come cheap.
It is probably obvious what I mean by selling your “hands” to your employer. In the past, this might have meant working in a farm field or on an assembly line, but today it could also apply to webmasters and server administrators whose job it is to keep information resources running. In my work as a computer consultant, most of my time is spent troubleshooting, repairing and recovering. Even though I find training and preventive maintenance to be much more involving and rewarding, in many ways I am the high-tech equivalent of a plumber. My job is to fix ‘what’s broke’ as quickly as possible.
Douglas E. Welch (http://douglasewelch.com) presents to the class Career Development – Theories and Techniques at Pepperdine Graduate School of Education & Psychology taught by fellow CareerCamp Co-Chair, Danielle Gruen
The two biggest challenges are deciding what you want to do as a career and then building the career you deserve once you decide.
I discuss the Career Compass method of discovering your career wants, needs and desires and then using various social media tools to show people “What you do and how well you do it”
Transcript:
At one point in my career out here in Los Angeles, I ended up at a mutual fund company — doing IT at a mutual fund company. What I knew about mutual funds and the banking system and Wall Street could have not even filled the bottom of a thimble. Even worse, my interest in such things was even smaller than my knowledge, but it was a job. It was a job I needed. I went there — the company I was working for was a small company that was closing — and I worked there for a year and a half, but I very quickly realized — dear, dear, dear — if there’s not something else there within your company, if that company isn’t doing something that you’re at least moderately interested in, you’re going to have a really hard time working there, because it will, truly, become the 9 to 5, get up up go to work, come home, eat dinner, watch TV, go to bed. Which is something that our parents lived with. It doesn’t work that way any more, though. Most of us want more out of our lives and careers and so we have to develop ways of building those type of careers.
Douglas E. Welch (http://douglasewelch.com) presents to the class Career Development – Theories and Techniques at Pepperdine Graduate School of Education & Psychology taught by fellow CareerCamp Co-Chair, Danielle Gruen
The two biggest challenges are deciding what you want to do as a career and then building the career you deserve once you decide.
I discuss the Career Compass method of discovering your career wants, needs and desires and then using various social media tools to show people “What you do and how well you do it”
Transcript:
At one point in my career out here in Los Angeles, I ended up at a mutual fund company — doing IT at a mutual fund company. What I knew about mutual funds and the banking system and Wall Street could have not even filled the bottom of a thimble. Even worse, my interest in such things was even smaller than my knowledge, but it was a job. It was a job I needed. I went there — the company I was working for was a small company that was closing — and I worked there for a year and a half, but I very quickly realized — dear, dear, dear — if there’s not something else there within your company, if that company isn’t doing something that you’re at least moderately interested in, you’re going to have a really hard time working there, because it will, truly, become the 9 to 5, get up up go to work, come home, eat dinner, watch TV, go to bed. Which is something that our parents lived with. It doesn’t work that way any more, though. Most of us want more out of our lives and careers and so we have to develop ways of building those type of careers.
Engage in your transitions and choose your transitions. You don’t just willy-nilly from job to job — from career to career — from interest to interest. You make carefully considered decisions. There is a point where people begin to think ” I HAVE to do this. I HAVE to do that, but I want to do this” and I often tell them, “If you want to do this, there are a million reasons NOT to do that. You need to find the one reason to do it.” Because that’s your reason. That’s your personal reason to do something and you’ve got to go out and search for that. Sometime you find it. Sometimes you don’t, but you have to take control over those decisions and those thoughts. Don’t let other people simply say, “Oh, here’s a job. Take it. Here’s a life. Take it. Ok, you’re moving to Wisconsin. Take it!”
Engage in your transitions and choose your transitions. You don’t just willy-nilly from job to job — from career to career — from interest to interest. You make carefully considered decisions. There is a point where people begin to think ” I HAVE to do this. I HAVE to do that, but I want to do this” and I often tell them, “If you want to do this, there are a million reasons NOT to do that. You need to find the one reason to do it.” Because that’s your reason. That’s your personal reason to do something and you’ve got to go out and search for that. Sometime you find it. Sometimes you don’t, but you have to take control over those decisions and those thoughts. Don’t let other people simply say, “Oh, here’s a job. Take it. Here’s a life. Take it. Ok, you’re moving to Wisconsin. Take it!”
