Blog Post: Pursuing Your Ideals Gets You What You Want -- Career Management SIG

The May Career Management Special Interest Group (SIG) meeting was an intimate one that included participants from what seemed to be diametrically opposed job histories.  One was truly a Jill-of-all-trades, having worked at most any job in most any industry in several countries around the world! The other was a steady Eddie, staying in the same company for many years, and the same industry for even longer.  Both wanted to figure out how to market themselves and begin the next leg of their career.

While the Career Management and Transition SIG generally boasts an unstructured format, allowing participants to share and get feedback on their most immediate concerns, facilitator Karen Moraski did approach the evening with a plan to discuss resume building. Her plan fortuitously provided the opportunity to help the SIG participants.

An initial step of building a resume is to identify the positive and negative aspects of previous jobs in order to identify one's ideal job.  Karen broached this subject, and encountered resistance.  From the Jill-of-all-trades came a struggle to complete something where she acknowledged that she enjoyed doing most everything.  From the steady-Eddie, the concern that in this economy, the "ideal" job is something that shouldn't necessarily be pursued.  However, this activity would be important for both participants in different ways. 

For the Jill-of-all-trades, we discussed what it was that she did NOT like in a job.  She shared that she detested sales: the cold-calling, the asking for money.  She really preferred helping others, serving in a support function.  We reviewed the myriad of other positive job characteristics that she had listed, and recognized a prime thread through all of them -- support.  We shared that perhaps she would find a perfect fit in an HRIS position, or, if she needed to compromise to get the job, even a Training Coordinator position that had some LMS management aspects to it. 

For steady-Eddie, we discussed the many hats that he had worn during his lengthy tenures at his previous jobs.  It turned out that although he stayed in one industry, there was a lot of different things he did, skills that could cross over into other industries when removed from the facade that appeared to lock him into place. We didn't identify his "ideal" job, but we did discuss the key components of the jobs that he liked, and how he would be able to market himself towards those job characteristics that existed in the positions he was applying for.

This introductory activity led into a discussion of the Elevator Speech -- that 30 second opportunity to share what's important for other people to know about yourself.  It's kind of misleading, see, this pursuit of the ideal job.  The activity shows us what we like, to be sure, but it also guides us in marketing ourselves to others.  We can illustrate the passions that we have, that we evinced during our successes in previous jobs, and we can parlay them into marketing ourselves for a future job. Once our future employer sees that our passions match theirs, how can they not hire us?

The Career Management and Transition Special Interest Group meets on the second Thursday of each month.  You can learn more about us at the ASTD-Orange County website.