Career Peace

A recent study showed that nearly 80% of Americans hate their jobs. I’ve heard a lot of possible reasons for the number being so high. Maybe it’s parents pushed them into a career they weren’t suited for. Or perhaps they picked a career field only because the money was good. But whatever the reason, I suspect you can trace nearly everyone’s job dissatisfaction back to this one single factor…
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If you’re considering a career change, you’ve probably seen ads for free career tests. These are standardized, multiple choice tests that ask you a series of questions about specific things you like and/or dislike. There are no right or wrong answers. When you’re finished, they’ll give you your career assessment results.

The results run the gamut of helpfulness. Some say “you’re an ISFE” or a “Driver-Analytical.” I’ve even seen one that says “you’re a green.” Ooookay.

What Career Tests Really Measure

What’s really going on here has to do with the way people who have gone before you answered those same questions.

The testing service essentially compares your answer choices with large groups of people who answered those questions more or less the same way you did. The idea here is if your answers match those who have a meticulous eye for detail, then they’ll label you “analytical.”

On the other hand, if your answer choices indicate that you’re more aligned with quiet, pleasant personalities, they might label you as an “amiable.” You get the idea.

Then they compare job descriptions (all of which are catalogued) with people who have held those jobs in the past. If most “analyticals” have done well as computer programmers (and they have, by the way), then you should be happy working as a computer programmer. Or that’s the theory, anyway.

Theory Doesn’t Always Hold Water

Does this theory work? Sometimes. But other times not. It all depends on the individual.

Career Tests serve as a starting point. And not a bad one, either. Especially if you’re just coming out of school or are in the middle of your working life and haven’t really discovered anything you like doing yet (don’t feel badly if you’re in the second category - you’ve got a lot of company there).

But you regardless of your career test results, keep this in mind. The questionnaire recommends career directions based on other people who answered those questions the same way. If I can coin a term from Survivor, this only tells you what “tribe” you belong to.

What no career test can measure is YOU. It’s okay to say that you’re like a certain group of people is a number of respects. But not in others. Chances are the career advice those test scores give might have some job choices on them that you wouldn’t like at all.

I’m a Real Life Example…

I know that certainly was the case for me. In 1992, I tested out to be an “analytical.” Based on that, I should have been perfectly happy with a career in accounting. I wasn’t. I hated it. But as a computer programmer - totally different story. I’ve been writing computer code since 1995, and have been there pretty much ever since.

What was the difference? I have a lot of creative juices that I like using in my job. Accounting doesn’t allow for that. On the contrary, creative accountants go to jail!

Programmers, on the other hand, have to find creative solutions to problems to technical problems - some of which other programmers have never found before. That was exciting to me. But somebody who loves accounting might not be able to deal with that level of uncertainty. YetAgain, you just never know.

My point is, you can’t blindly go by what a career test tells you. It’s a good starting point, but it can never measure the one thing that will make you happy as you change careers: You.

A few days ago, I talked about the notion of finding a job in someplace other than your hometown. It’s not easy developing a network of contacts in a place you’ve never lived, and possibly only visited a few times. Yet, it can be done. If you do enough of the right things, you can develop a network of personal contacts in another city that can help you with your job search there.

Those right things involve researching the companies that can make the best use of your skills. Then identifying people that work in those jobs, making contact with them, and offering to take them to lunch in exchange for an “informational interview.”

Do enough of these and you’ll soon develop a core group of people willing to help you find jobs in their companies - jobs that you’ll have the inside track to get before anybody else even knows about them.

Personal Networking Pays Off, But It Takes Some Work

How hard will you have to work in order for this technique to pay off for you? I wish I could answer that one. I can’t. The answer is different for everybody. But I can tell you that it pays off in spades. Take Henry, for example.

Henry lived in Atlanta, and wanted to move to Phoenix, AZ. Phoenix is significantly smaller than Atlanta, but Henry desperately wanted to move there, so he started developing a long distance network of new acquaintances that could help him.

Through his research, Henry uncovered 108 places that sounded interesting enough to work for. Henry made a total of 127 phone calls to people who worked in Phoenix at those 108 companies. After all those calls, he narrowed down his list from 108 possible employers to 46.

Get This Many Job Offers, And All You Have To Do Is Cherry-Pick

He travelled to Phoenix to meet with some of the people he had called. When he returned home, he had narrowed the list down to 27 possible opportunities. Out of those 27, he got 12 job offers. 12 offers!

From there it was easy. Henry just picked the one that sounded most interesting with the people who seemed the most pleasant to work with. As far as I know he’s still there, and probably as happy as he’s ever been.

Now, will you have to do as much work to find a job in a new city as Henry did? Maybe. Maybe not. But I’ll tell you what - when you’re facing the daunting task of moving to entirely new surroundings, it sure is nice to have a huge network of contacts who know you, and know how to get ahold of you if they want to hire you.

Conducting a job search in a far-away town is hard. But not impossible. What Henry did isn’t that hard. But he didn’t do it with 5 resumes and 2 phone calls. It will take some work. But if you’re willing to put in the effort, a job relocation like this can work for you, too.