Year 2013: Summing It All Up

Next to the charming X-mas cards, warm and cozy family and friends dinners and lovely wishes for the coming 2014 this nice and sweet December time is all about, one cannot but come across all kinds of reflections on the old year, top-something lists of the best and most memorable moments, varying from sports, the news, television, radio hits to the year’s overview in pictures and events for each of your Facebook friends. And sometimes it does go too far if you ask me, but given the fact that turn of the year has some certain kind of magic to it (at least to me it still does), this summing a year up seems like a reasonable and useful thing to do. As it also just feels good to do so, let me follow my fellow bloggers and all other people who deem this end-of-the-year ritual important and reflect on my 2013 in this very final end-of-the-year post.

This year started out in big uncertainty for me as I quitted my old job in the last days of 2012 and was feeling both sad and excited about it at the same time. As I’m a kind of person who seeks security, it was not quite encouraging to think I’d stay without steady incomes for a while (aside from some unemployment benefits I could count on for some time). On the other hand, all endings mean beginnings of something new, which is why I was elated to a certain extent. And as long as after 3 months of job-hunting I was still unemployed, it made me reconsider how much I disliked my former job and, under slightly adjusted employment conditions and modified responsibilities we got back together with my old employer, which was a great decision after all as far as I can evaluate it now. I’m still working there part-time as a market researcher. This might not be the work of my life and my career has been standing somewhat still this whole year, but I feel productive and get a chance to carry out some really cool things at work from time to time, while still having enough free time to enjoy other nice things in life (and thanks God my boyfriend has his job by the way, otherwise this half-freedom wouldn’t be that very affordable financially). And as to my professional self, which is why I’m writing this blog in the first place, I’m still searching and still enjoying the process…

Another great thing that happened this year was the revival of my blog, the one I started a couple of years back as a means to reflect on my ‘being a late starter on the job market (in a country I emigrated to)’ and then suspended successfully after just one post… Well, this year I had so many career-related subjects I got truly interested in, found out a lot about and couldn’t but share with the rest of the world that I just decided to dust off my good old blogger account and start writing again. Judging by the reactions I received and most of all by the therapeutic effect this revival has had on me, the blogging has got to go on in 2014 as well. One post per month seems also like a frequency easy to keep up with.

In 2013 I also travelled a lot and quite far, like never before, spending most of my savings on trips :). Ah well, you only live once, right? I’ve been to my birth country twice, went skiing in Austria for the first time in my life, flew to Prague all alone, visited two of the Dutch Wadden Islands, Terschelling and Texel, which I never did – shame on me – in almost 8 years I’ve lived in the Netherland, but most exciting of these all was my Grand American Journey along the West Coast of the USA. These trips alone have made my 2013 a year never to forget, full of exciting memories and moments to cherish.

 

My next big discovery of the year – can it still go any further? – was yoga. It’s not like I only encountered yoga this year, but it’s the depth of it I began to discover. Starting with an inspiring yoga weekend in July, I found out there was more to yoga than just an ordinary practice once a week in the neighborhood’s gym. I started looking for an in-depth training or a course and found one. In October I got enrolled in a yoga teacher training that I am still enormously excited about it and have managed to build up my own independent yoga practice so far. I’m not sure yet whether there’s anything I’m going to do with it career- or money-making-wise, but I already gave my first yoga class to a friend of mine and she said to have liked it. To be honest, I found it a pretty exciting experience myself, so who knows what the future in a role of a yoga teacher will bring me…

Though I’ve been job-hunting for quite a while without much success as I pointed out earlier, I have found a new job eventually. I’m starting as a tutor of English for the secondary and high school students on the very last day of this year. And even though it is a small part-time job I wouldn’t be able to pay my bills from, it’s also trying out something new, something I used to be good at in the past and something I hope to again enjoy doing. Boy, I’m thrilled about my first lessons – I’ll keep you posted on how it’s going.

As this whole blog is about searching for vitality and most possible happiness one could derive from an occupation, preferably the one that could also make you a proper living, I cannot quite say I’m there yet. But nonetheless, reflecting on 2013 I can say that I’ve done a lot of exhilarating new things, met some great and inspiring people and managed to expand my comfort zone more than in years before. I hope this could be a good example to some: only trying things out you can figure out what’s best for you and not being afraid to let go of the things that are not. Probably the most important thing I came to realize this year is that happiness comes from within and you and only you are the one responsible for making yourself happy. Looking for stuff in life that makes you feel good, being grateful for the nice little things that are already there and concentrating on what’s positive and good rather than on what’s missing makes a huge difference. Absolutely grateful for this wonderful year full of great insights, revelations and experiences that have helped me grow. 

Have you also experienced some great things this year that have made you grow too? I’d be excited to find out! Thanks for being with me in 2013 and I wish you all a great and prosperous, healthy and successful 2014!

Introvert vs. Extravert: Which One Has More Chances to Succeed?

Ever thought of whether there’s an expectation or prediction to be formed of how successful one could become in their professional and personal life based on the fact whether they are an introvert or an extravert? I’ve been wondering about it a lot and more inclined to think that a correlation between being an extrovert and being successful is pretty obvious. This comes by and large from a – at least in the Western society – traditional idea of success associated with being extraverted rather than introverted. However, as some research I did on this topic reveals, this issues is much more nuanced and subtle than it might appear at first. My belated November blog post is therefore devoted to the topic of introversion vs. extraversion as related to the professional success as well as personal well being in general.

Just a little introduction of the concepts and their history to start with. Through popular psychology and colloquial use the terms introversion and extraversion are nowadays known and more or less clear to the general public. As major dimensions of human personality theories, the terms had been popularized by Carl Jung, though both popular understanding and psychological use of the concepts differ somewhat from the original definitions. Simply put, extraversion tends to be manifested in outgoing, talkative, energetic behaviors, whereas introversion – in more reserved and solitary ones. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), a psychometric questionnaire designed by Myers and Briggs based on Carl Jung’s description of psychological types, is a generally used tool to ‘diagnose’ a person’s degree of introversion – extraversion.

If you rely on most of self-improvement books on how to become a successful and effective individual, it seems that most of them are promoting an extravert type of behavior to some extent. Feel free to disagree with me, but behaviors like being proactive, taking initiative in contacting people and undertaking equivalent actions can hardly be described as solitary or reserved. Basically, what it comes down to in order to succeed professionally one has to be good at selling things, whether it’s selling yourself to a potential employer or your product or service to a potential customer. Wouldn’t you therefore expect a perfect salesperson to be an extravert? To my astonishment, I read this article, claiming that this in my opinion very logical expectation is not exactly true. Best salesmen are evidently to be found in the middle of the introversion – extraversion scale! Just read the article if you also are intrigued…

Scoring somewhat in the direction of introversion myself, I’ve always been interested in this: knowing yourself, is it smarter to adjust your life, both privately and professionally, to fit the kind of person you are or is it possible / desirable to try and change by practicing some more ‘marketable’ (read: extravert) behaviors?

Well, obviously no extremes are good. You can always ‘train’ yourself in certain things, also in being more outgoing and therefore slightly more of an extravert. Also, if for instance you are not comfortable calling people on the phone for professional or business purposes, practicing by just doing it helps. No wonder: like in most matters practice makes perfect. If you are extremely introverted, you’d probably be better off in an occupation having more to do with technique, substances, data or even animals than with people, while the contrary would be true for the opposite side of the scale. The in-betweeners would presumably fit in a wider range of professions, with some accents on their particular role depending on which end of the scale they tend to more.

You could also choose to move to a country, which is more introvert or extravert friendly. I came across this lively discussion on a forum: Western countries, like USA, Canada and the most of Western Europe are said to be more extravert-oriented, including Scandinavia, with only Germany agreed to be an exception. Asian countries, like China, Korea and Vietnam, contrary to what might be expected, are reported to be rather extravert-focused: leaving other people alone for too long is considered not done there and therefore is the social aspect in these countries pretty strong. Thinking of Ukraine where I was born and grew up, I’d say that introversion is not necessarily a crime there, given that people do not talk to or smile at total strangers, but again, there’s more to a culture than just establishing contact with people you don’t know and so I prefer not to generalize it this way.

While success and happiness are quite subjective notions after all which I’m certainly planning to discuss a lot more in the upcoming posts, it stands to reason to conclude that arranging your life and work appropriately around being either an introvert or an extravert would be most efficient given that the most important difference between the two is in the ways they recharge their energies. 

What’s your idea of the influence of this interesting personality trait on our life? Any thoughts or experiences with how introvert or extravert friendly different countries are? I’m very interested to find out!

Keywords of October: Inspiration, Change of Direction and Hybrid Employment

In order to keep up with my internal planning and publish at least one post per month, I need to hurry to still fit it in October. I’ve been long speculating on a topic for this one, and finally things are starting to crystallize. This time I’d like to talk about inspiration, change of direction and a very promising emerging form of employment that has caught my attention lately and was on my mind, before I even knew there was a term for it – hybrid employment. To my mind, these three things have to do with each other, follow me and I’ll explain why I think that.  

Inspiration

As the darker days come and wintertime becomes effective, we are inclined to seek more tranquility and slow down. At least this should be happening according to the logic of nature’s cycles. No wonder, most of us have difficulty getting up in the morning, might have less energy during the day and might even feel melancholy from time to time. To keep up with what you are doing in daily life with the same output you need things to inspire you to get your energies high again.

I get inspired by people who are living their jobs. I’ve come across a couple of great inspirational examples of such people. One of them is Michael Stevens, the founder and creator of the YouTube channel called VSauce. An ordinary, now 27-year-old American guy, who was probably bored with a mediocre office job and at the same time genuinely curious about how things in this universe work, created a YouTube channel a couple of years back and became incredibly popular with it on the Internet. He makes videos relating to various scientific topics, as well as gaming, technology and other topics of general interest characterized by a very authentic and engaging storytelling style. He asks and answers questions – some of them kind of silly, while others getting you really involved – with genuine spontaneity and directness of a child. Just try watching some of the movies if you don’t know VSauce yet – a lot of laughing guaranteed!

Another example of a person living her job, or rather work of her life, is Irina Verwer, a practicing teacher of different yoga styles and a vegan cook, writing blogs and books about yoga and nutrition. I discovered her website by chance some time ago and found her really cool and inspiring, just to find myself sitting next to her – you don’t believe in coincidences either, do you? – during the first weekend of Anusara Yoga Immersion. It is the first part of my two-year’s yoga teacher training that I started following about a month ago. Irina told me how she found it such a gift to do what she really loved and I decided I’d be looking as long as it takes to find this feeling for myself. Thanks for inspiring me, Irina!

Change of Direction

So as I mentioned earlier, I decided to do something less mind-centered than my current occupation and thought yoga was that something I was looking for: it seems to suits me because of the harmony and discipline, the former of which I seek and the latter of which I think to posses. As I also wanted to deepen my understanding of it, a suitable way for this seemed to follow a teacher training as I believe that one can best learn something in case he/she needs to teach it to others.

A kind of future I’m picturing for myself is thus a combination of a nice part-time office job and giving some lovely soothing yoga classes a couple of times a week. Seems like a perfect work-work balance, doesn’t it? More about similar job combinations in the following section.

Hybrid Employment

It turns out it’s not weird I’m thinking of some kind of combined career for myself. While job-hunting, I’ve seen quite some professional profiles of people on LinkedIn and was amazed to find out how many people have two and more things filled in on their company’s line. I thought of it as an emerging trend and I was right. Recently I’ve talked to someone who pointed out an NRC Next article to me where the term ‘hybrid employment’ was used to refer to people having two or more jobs at a time or having a little business of their own next to a regular job.

As individuals tend to get more critical about the place work takes in their lives and want it to have way more meaning than just earning a living, they long for more variation in what they do and want to possibly utilize most of their skills, abilities and ambitions. And sometimes those just don’t fit in one particular job! That is why some of them are creative enough to make up a professional reality that meets those needs.

Google, for example, encourages their employees to work on a project of their own some certain percentage of their time on the job. Another combination of professions that has become pretty common in the last couple of years is the one of part-time teaching next a job in a related industry. It actually seems like a very attractive one, for both teachers as well as their students. As NRC Next article about hybrid teachers claims, one stays more focused if different roles have to be fulfilled interchangeably, while at the same students, for instance, can benefit from the first-hand field-related examples in class.

One could think of quite some great ‘hybrid’ advantages, like enhanced vitality of professionals and lowered risks of burnout as a result of variation in activities. Also building up expertise in different disciplines makes one more flexible on the job market and thus better employable during his/her entire career.

One could also think of less positive consequences of the above mentioned flexibility though. As you spread your focus between two or more different professional roles, you might slow down your progress in each of them. You might have less chance to get promoted for example or miss out on things that happen in your absence. But maybe if hybrid employment becomes more and more the norm in the future, fulltime versus part-time employment will become less a criterion to judge one’s performance and deliverables.

What’s your idea of hybrid employment: a myth as you cannot succeed in a certain aspect of life unless you give it your fullest attention and effort or an enriching and productive way to combine more things that you like doing and are capable of? Let’s discuss!

And by the way: Happy Halloween to all of you!

Life Long Learning: Open Courseware Rules!

Inspired by the month September and the beginning of an academic year, I decided to write about learning, a subject that has always been important to me and kept me interested. Don’t know how others experience it, but about a year after I graduated from college, I noticed I was missing something. As I’d come to realize some time later, learning was that something I was missing. Learning in a broader sense of the word, like acquiring new knowledge and integrating it with the knowledge you already possess.

The following seems like a plausible explanation of the reason I missed it. If I’d describe myself in terms of developmental psychology I studied at school, from the moment my leading activity changed from play to learning (at about age 6 or 7), I’ve been learning stuff all the time and most of the time quite intensively. From foreign languages to different college subjects – I seemed good at learning things. What I also came to realize later on is that acquiring new knowledge was something I found truly joyful. As the story goes, I didn’t have to miss learning for too long, as I enrolled in yet another college study and enjoyed it to the fullest – for another 4 years, to be exact. 4 years filled with courses, exams, papers and doing research. I couldn’t have been happier!

In a later stadium, when you leave school and start working, you generally continue acquiring new knowledge in a lot of ways, though of a more practical and specialistic nature. But most of all, these are skills you acquire. You learn putting things that you learned at school into practice – to a bigger or lesser extent of coincidence with what your vocational training prepared you for – and that is exactly what getting the so-called experience is all about. At a certain point of your professional development you are then reaching a stabilization stadium, when the acquired skills become more or less automatic. There are then two scenarios possible: either you are enjoying this relatively stable and quiet period and then gradually heading to seniority, or you are eventually feeling the lack of growth and development and become unhappy and ‘bored out’. I’d like to avoid generalizing too much, as this is very individual to everyone, but just sketching a picture to get the idea.

 

This feeling of lack of development and professional growth is exactly the opposite of what you feel when learning new things. At least this definitely applies to me. And learning new things in our digital era has never been easier and more accessible. Given you are a self-motivated, so-called autotelic individual and are capable of motivating yourself to learn something new even if it’s not particularly necessary, you will be rewarded if you have a look at the limitless source of information and knowledge that Internet has become.

Anyway, if you are as knowledge-savvy as me, you’ll be elated to find out how many wonderful sources there are on the web to learn new stuff. You should also be critical of the quality, of course, but if we are talking about the content made accessible to the general public under open licenses by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford or Berkeley, then we are talking high-end educational materials here. Welcome to the age of MOOCs, massive open online courses, aimed at large-scale interactive participation and open access via the web, as they are hotter than hot!

When I learned about open courseware like a year ago, I was ecstatic. Don’t I have to pay to enroll in one of those (under)graduate courses by MIT that I can just follow online? I mean I even wasn’t allowed to follow a minor in Microeconomics during my communication studies bachelor, as I had to be a member of the economics faculty for that. What a shame, which especially felt stupid, as I had already purchased an expensive textbook before I found out! But now I’m following the Microeconomics classes by the most celebrated professors of a leading university in the States that I would otherwise hardly have access to just a couple of years back! And what’s more – lucky me – they happen to recommend that same textbook to the course J. I’m at topic 3 of unit 1 after just 2 weeks and counting… Gee, it’s a lot of homework reading sometimes, but I’m determined to finish by the end of November.

As far as the open courseware is concerned, it seems to be a topic of hot discussions in the world of education. And as education is something near and dear to me because of my degree in ELT, I did a little research into the open courseware market. The open educational resources come in all possible forms, varying in subjects offered, the degree of interaction and feedback (e.g. peer-review or group collaboration), fixed/free starting course dates, grading and possibilities of certification. They all are forms of e-learning, or education using new technologies, primarily complex software platforms, including access to videos of the lectures, handouts, (interactive) group assignment, exams etc. Udacity (a for-profit MOOC with the roots at Stanford university), Coursera (offering a range of university course with fixed starting dates), MITOpenCourseWare (with over 2080 courses available online), edX (a non-profit cooperation of MIT and Harvard with a goal to conduct research into learning), iTunesU (perfectly compatible with the Apple’s ITunes Store and other Apple’s products) are just a few most popular to name here. There are also MOOCs in other language than English and the number of countries and educational establishments joining in is constantly growing.

As of 2012, there is talk of a hype around the growing popularity of MOOCs. Time magazine even stated that free MOOCs open the door to the 'Ivy League for the Masses’, which cannot but make universities worry. Moreover, the university’s are also worried about tuitions. What if this great initiative is going to work against them with the student numbers decreasing? At the moment the tendency is to charge for the actual certification, but the discussion is still going on as to the financial part of the matter, with most of the free educational resources currently financed with donations.

So no matter what your motivation is: becoming more effective in the work you do (and maybe even getting paid more eventually), compensating for a lack of degree or simply because learning new things is fun, with a little perseverance, discipline combined with some smart time management – especially if done next to a (fulltime) job – knowledge of greatest quality is out there, easily accessible, interactive and free, just reach out and you’ll get it. Also hop on now and be on time before the providers of this great knowledge come up with some smart idea to still charge you for the resources provided.

Do you have experience with learning after graduation or leaning next to a job? Do tell us about it! And have a lot of fun learning!

How to Stay Focused in Summer

Now that temperatures are rising far above what is considered to be a typical Dutch summer and 80% of your colleagues are on vacation, you might find yourself having difficulty to concentrate on whatever it is you are doing. Also wondering what you can put on to work so that it is more or less decent, but that you still don’t die of sweatiness and heat, you probably have few other things on your mind than the sun, the beach and the good life. At least that is what applies to me, I should confess.

This quiet summertime when people are mostly busy with a good deal of other things rather than their direct responsibilities is referred to in Dutch with a weird enough term “cucumber time”. The other day I heard on the radio where this seemingly strange name is coming from: evidently, in the past, the only thing papers would write about, around July – early August, when there’s no other news to tell, would be the cucumber price fluctuations. Very important to know, don’t you think? So, there’s hardly any news, not much is happening, but also less busy highways and virtually no traffic jams – that’s what’s the summertime is about for a working person like me who has enjoyed a vacation at the beginning of summer, which already feels like ages back.

The Pismo Beach

Does it have any sense to, career-wise, do anything at this very still time of the year? If you are job-hunting, you might just think that waiting till it’s September again to go on looking for that one dream job of yours could be a good idea, but bear this in mind if you want to stand out of the crowd: according to some recruiters, applying for jobs can actually be strategic in summer. If a company misses workforce as long as most employees are on vacation, they might be in very bad trouble. Just make sure to be there with your application to help them out – chances are, they’ll make a decision to hire you faster, than, say, in September. Seems to make sense: a couple of people I know who have been looking for a job for quite a while, have finally been hired as of late.

And if you do have a job, but feel discouraged by the half-empty office or by great sunny days, here are a couple of tips for you to stay focused I came across on intermediair.nl and find helpful:

·       Do everything with a goal: no one gets much motivation of meaningless activities. Or help yourself getting a better focus, once you let it slip aside for a while: ask yourself something like “why was I doing it again”?

 ·       Feel responsible for your own results: if you are responsible, you are in control, which is a powerfully motivating feeling

·       Don’t try to do things perfectly, just do it, starting with something really small

·       Surround yourself with motivated people – enthusiasm is known to be contagious

·       Eat healthy, sleep enough and watch your energy levels

And from time to time just allow yourself to enjoy, without feeling guilty or thinking that you should be doing something useful – after all, such a summer has not happened to the Dutch for the last 6 or 7 years, chances are it won’t happen soon again that for more that 2 weeks in a row the word combination ‘tropical temperatures’ has occurred so frequently in weather forecasts.

Do you have any own secret ways to stay focused? Let me know! And in the meantime - happy summer!

Networking Works – But How Do You Do It?

Did you also hear about the simple truth that finding a job goes best via via and that your so-called network is the best source to discover new opportunities, especially some vacancies that never even go public and are instead filled internally? Well, I did. Networking seems hot. And I can tell you that when I read that in these recession times it is the way one should look for a job, my first reaction was: I’m not like this, I have no network and it’s a shame to annoy people you know asking for help. As it turns out, networking is not as black-and-white as I thought it was. Now that I’m busy with career planning and research, I have come across the idea of networking as a perfect source of information and orientation on a number of occasions and somehow started to accept it. I also noticed that at birthday parties for example I try to talk to people about what they do for living in a different, more involved kind of way. And the moment I start asking detailed questions the way one does by a network interview, I get so genuinely interested in the subject matter that people themselves cannot but get enthusiastic to talk about themselves.

That’s how networking works, evidently. If you want to find out in how far certain branches or occupations would suit you, the best way to get information is to ask the people who do the kind of work you are interested in. You can say for sure that if the information you would like to receive about a certain sector, kind of company or position exists, it is to be gathered from the abovementioned people. The only question is whether they are willing to share it with you and it’s up to you to make them want to share.

If you are as terrified of having a so-called ‘network interview‘ as I was when I got this task from my career coach, here are some practical tips that might be helpful: 

-->

• The labour market is not easiest at the moment, so one should be creative to find employment: therefore do start networking as it is a nice an informal way to not only gather information you need about branches and professions, but also a way to draw employers’ attention to yourself as a potential candidate, though applying for a job is not directly your objective at this point.
• Networking can be ‘warm’, ‘lukewarm’ and ‘cold’, which stands for talking to someone you know directly, someone referred to by someone you know or talking to an unknown person respectively. Obviously, the difficulty level of making contact with the person you are interested in increases with the ‘drop of temperature’. Very comparable with marketing and sales, don’t you think?
• As ‘cold’ networking can be hard, start with a good preparation and make sure you can present yourself in a positive and powerful, but concise way – a famous ‘elevator pitch’ (preferably thoroughly practiced beforehand) would do – so that you can come through the gatekeeper (the receptionist) and be put through to the right person. Emphasize that you are not applying for a job, but merely doing research. If you are positive and enthusiastic, then you are most likely also nice to talk to, so it can be a great experience for the interviewee as well, only he/she doesn’t know about it yet. Turns out, people like talking about themselves, and if there’s someone who wants to hear it and also asks smart questions, chances are they’d be happy to tell you a lot.
• Also by warmer networking types it is essential to prepare well. Make a checklist of the items you would like to discuss and ask initially to take not more that 15 minutes of someone’s time. If they start enjoying the conversation too (people like talking about themselves, remember?) and if everything goes smoothly, they’d probably keep on talking, otherwise you’d be happy you could take your leave after 15 minutes. Try to keep a balance between asking questions and telling about yourself, this should be a two-way communication, not a question-answer session.
• Such an interview can be held on the phone, but a face-to-face contact would provide you with more information, including the subtle and intuitive things like, say, seeing the office, observing the non-verbal behavior of your interlocutor or feeling the ambiance.
• Bare in mind that you are not there to put the person to work for you or let him/her think about your future, you are interested in his/her experiences with the position or the sector.
• Take care formulating questions: if you want to know about the workload or pressure, whether there are jobs in the sector or if people are being laid off, use descriptive language or more general terms, for instance ”How would you describe the corporate culture?” or “I’m someone who needs a lot of variation in work, do you think I could find it in this kind of work?”.
• If you feel like you are running out of questions, you can always ask the person whether he/she knows of any other things that might be relevant.
• Make sure you have a business card with you, either with or without your current position (depending on whether you are employed at the moment), so that you can leave your own contact details behind. It’s even a better option to have cards with just your academic title (if applicable), name and contact information. If asked, you can also send your resume later.
• Ask at the end of the conversation for another name – a person who could possibly help you further – this way it’s always easier to come in contact with someone. Put down names or departments that could be of interest to you.
• Work out a plan of your activities and try to keep up with the schedule. Make a short summary after each contact and spend enough time on reflection. Research is the primary objective of networking, so try to analyze what appeals to you and how it would feel If you were in the position or did the work of the person you talked to.

 

Hope you find the tips here useful if you are to look for labour market information by means of network interviews. Of loads of information on this topic that I found on the Internet or elsewhere the abovementioned did help me a lot.

The World of Professions

Here I am getting back to my blog after quite some time off ready to discuss the following topic with you – the world of occupations. It’s been a nice and joyful period of time, full of inspiration, a lot of sunny weather, blooming nature, being outside and other things that can be enjoyed about spring. As I did get back to my old job after all – which was a good thing to do and I’m happy I did it – I’ve also been pretty busy lately. But the thing that finally inspired me to write was a task my career coach gave me at the beginning of April. I received a 600+ pages thick occupations reference book from her and four whole weeks to study the book thoroughly. On reading it I had a number of tasks to do, but more about those later.

The book – in my case it was a Dutch edition from Malmberg publishers (for those who are interested – a lot of comparable materials can be found and ordered here, mostly in digital form though) – was a true revelation to me. It had a very handy index to it, so that one could look for professions in either alphabetical sequence or grouped by the types like “something with languages” or “working with hands”, which was very practical – obviously, you are not reading a book like this in one go. Also the necessary skills and matching personality types were described per occupation as well as responsibilities and possible activities on a day-to-day basis. I can’t really say it was a thrilling read – after the “50 shades of grey” trilogy my reading speed with this book seemed to have dropped drastically – but, boy, I wish I’d seen the book in my teens, or rather, at the time of my first study choice. Pity enough this didn’t happen back then, but I’m happy I got hold of the book anyway.

For a nitwit like me as far as the world of professions is concerned, it’s been a wealth of information to read this book. I didn’t know some of the professions I even existed, did you? Like, say, a tree surgeon or animal physiotherapist? But one of my favorites is by all means animal behaviorist, which made me think of behaviorism principles in psychology and psychotherapy, but then for animals instead of people. So, animal behaviorist = psychotherapist for pets? A kind of dog or horse whisperer, but then with some psychological background? As I figured out from the description, it’s a kind of animal trainer, but it did keep me wondering for a while. And think I even know someone who knows someone who does it for a living – according to my mother-in-law, someone who professionally trains animals did or say something to her usually pretty impatient and agitated dog, after which the poor thing listens to her, waits patiently before going outside and doesn’t bark at visitors. The guy is evidently good at what he’s doing, but it surely doesn’t seem to be my cup of tea.

Anyhow, I was supposed to make a selection of 20 professions I found appealing in some way, no matter how unrealistic or inapplicable to me. As a result I’d imagined myself to be anything from a diplomatic representative and seismologist to a radio/tv presenter, interior designer and an actress. This list had to be downsized to 5 and the ones remaining were: tour guide/(leisure) travel advisor, psychologist, communications professional, scientist and a (!) rock singer. The first four surprised neither my career coach nor me a lot – those are somewhat down to earth and not too unexpected given my background and interests. But the last one… Did I miss something in my childhood or adolescence that I actually didn’t expect this one to pop up in my shortlist of 5 most wanted professions? I mean, I don’t even take singing lessons or play any musical instrument, or should I say, I didn’t until now?

The idea behind the vocational counseling tasks is to take such things about oneself seriously, but … not necessarily literally. Of course, it’s important to think of what you would like to do if money didn’t matter (you probably also know this fantastic video by Alan Watts which I came across on a couple of occasions), but it’s better to start out small and closer to who you are now and from there on develop to who you want to be. Which means dreaming big, but having a clear focus and doing small steps at a time. In my case, learning more about the world of professions and trying on most appealing of them was just another little step on my long and exciting way.

Have you ever heard of a strange profession or job or pictured yourself having an occupation completely different from what you are doing now? Do share!

How Good is Your Employability?

Looking for a job and giving a thought to your so-called career planning you can’t but come across tons of information. Tips and tricks, dos and don’ts, best practices, top-something lists and how-to from those who have made it to the top are things you’ll probably find yourself reading if your ambition is not to miss the boat here. At least that’s what I’ve been doing a lot for the last 3 months and even decided to share my knowledge with those who might be interested by means of this blog. 

As far as I understand it, all it comes to, all the effort you make in relation to your career can be perfectly summarized by the comprehensive term ‘employability’ (unless, of course, you consider a business of your own and couldn’t care less). Let’s have a look at this concept. According to my favorite source of knowledge Wikipedia (which, unfortunately, was not good enough to refer to in my college papers, but is just great for giving a general idea and is therefore worth donating to) employability refers to a person's capability for gaining and maintaining employment that depends on the knowledge, skills and abilities individuals possess, the way they present those assets to employers, and the context (e. g. personal circumstances and labour market environment) within which they seek work. 

 

So if something of a career belongs to your life’s objectives – and it does certainly belong to mine – you’ve got to stay employable, no matter what. And if we can believe the career gurus, in the periods one doesn’t have a permanent (paid) job or other kind of activity that might qualify as a CV builder (like a business of your own or freelancing), one should at least make sure he/she does one of the following:

-       Travelling the world so that you can later tell your potential employer you’ve explored some places and yourself within the different settings and cultures and that it made you better, broader oriented and more flexible

-       Volunteer for something you stand for, so you can prove – and in due course demonstrate it to your future employer – that you can be a highly effective individual who doesn’t need money for something he/she does with a lot of pleasure

-       Enroll in a course to enhance your skills of project management, a foreign language, a computer program or the like, so that you can provide evidence (preferably in the form of some kind of recognized certificate) that you’ve done your best to use your unemployed time wisely in order to excel and be prepared to go even harder the moment you get hold of the job of your dreams

The list can be continued. This actually means that the contrary is also true: if you don’t do any of these, if you take some time off to, say, raise your little children or try to find out more about yourself and your aspirations, if you give yourself the space to explore what it is you like and what makes your heart beat faster (without having a paid job next to it), you can say with certainty that you’ll have to explain yourself to your future boss. Your employability will then presumably go down with a considerable number of imaginary employability ‘units’ per month or year of being unemployed. A gap in a resume is therefore a notoriously disliked and for some even scary subject to discuss in a job interview, which is – employability-wise – quite understandable.

On the other hand, you can always give a twist to your in between jobs’ activities which would seem to contribute to your employability this way or another. You can ‘frame’ your story so that your potential employer sees the value of your time off without you having to lie – even if you didn’t do much to improve your CV. Moreover, your future employer would also appreciate your honesty. A sabbatical – an expensive word you could use – is after all supposed to serve a function of changing the way your are, helping your on the way to your better self, which your potential employer might also benefit from.

As to my sabbatical, it’s going to end pretty soon as I’m getting back to my old job, while intending to stay looking for a new one in the meantime. Do I do it for the sake of my employability? Not primarily, it just feels like the right thing to do at the moment, but that this might also do good to my employability is just a positive side-effect.

Have you ever thought of how good your employability is and stays and whether it’s important to think about it at all rather than going with the flow? Please do share!