Career Control III
Resiliency
If it’s true that, in the future we will hold ten to fifteen jobs and be involved in five to seven careers, then it’s understandable that many people, those who don’t understand the need for career resiliency, will be alarmed. They think frequent job and career change means their livelihood is without substance, their skills have no enduring value. If their work lives are programmed to self-destruct every few years, then won’t they be required to reinvent themselves constantly?
Actually the answer is no, if they understand their intrinsic strengths and how to use them they will have job resiliency. It won’t be a matter of embarking on entirely new careers (engineer to hair dresser) as much as it will be adapting existing talents to changing fields and job opportunities.
Those who know their core skills and underlying strengths, will be able to reconfigure their strengths and apply them to new situations as they arise. In a similar fashion to a child assembling, disassembling, and reassembling Lego pieces, a person’s intrinsic strengths are the building blocks they can use in newer ways and slightly different configurations, when they move through their career path, from job to job and field to field.
Identifying your key strengths and skills requires a rigorous self-assessment. Ask yourself what unique talents and special skills you bring to the table.
This process begins by viewing your work history as a process of development of your strengths. You can look at your jobs and your successes as a series of steps necessary to refine your “product” your self. You then employ your portfolio of successes as a means of defining yourself as the things you are capable of doing through the utilization of your strengths, not your job titles, awards, or degrees.
When you look at yourself as the owner of a self-managed group of strengths, manifesting skills and abilities that can be applied in a wide range of jobs, projects and fields, you have career control.
You are then able to say, "I see myself as a financial professional with strong technical experience in the ________ field, having strengths in the areas of team-building and leadership. I currently lease my knowledge to XYZ Company.” This gives you significantly more mobility and career control than if your whole work identity is tied to your professional “credentials.”
Next, you must…
Prepare for Areas Of Competence
Our global marketplace has many jobs that come and go quickly. Today's hottest jobs may not exist tomorrow as new products and services enter the market and displace or eliminate old professions and livelihoods.
Many people worry about their continued employability. They see current predictions of a job shortages in information technology with a glut of workers enrolling in information technology courses. Computer enthusiast flock to the field, only to find the jobs for programmers have been sent off-shore to India. Those who enter fields simply because they think that's where the hot jobs are or will be are often surprised when the jobs are not there at graduation. Worse yet is the possibility of spending big money to learn new skills, getting a job in the field and hating the work or finding out it is unsuitable for you physically, mentally, emotionally, or spiritually. It’s hard to know in advance if the work you are preparing for matches well with your own skills and abilities. But, if you are able to use your strengths in a new field, the probability of success is much greater.
So, start with an assessment of your own strengths and interests, then see where you may match up best in the job market.
Instead of preparing for specific jobs, identify the areas where you want to contribute, whether they are technical sectors such as software design or market analysis, or non-technical areas such as team building, leading knowledge workers, or relationship building. This is the essence of job resiliency.
Next, Are You Underemployed?
