Sorting Out What's Next Takes Patience and a Career Plan

by: Bradford Agry

Jobs Vacancy, Employment, Employment Jobs

Many of us when faced with career transition jump immediately to the tactical aspects of job hunting. The knee jerk reaction is to immediately start faxing resumes, contacting executive recruiters and researching Internet sites. People often incorrectly assume the best career path is that of least resistance which is “to continue doing what you have always done well.”

But this period of unemployment may actually give you a chance to really to take a hard look at your career—both in the short and long terms. For many, a career interruption may be the first time they can stop the career “train” long enough to know if it is still on the right “track”.

For many the challenge has the important spiritual dimension of “waiting and listening for God”. Discerning what is next demands re-training our action-oriented selves to also spend some time in quiet reflection. If we are immersing ourselves 24/7 in doing and acting we may not hear the subtle hints God is giving us as to where our vocations could be headed.

One way of focusing our intentions is to consider three important elements to consider when tackling the question of “What do I really want to do?”

Skills

This means taking an in depth look at what you see as your natural talents or “gifts” Take an inventory of several enjoyable past work experiences and analyze them to see which skills you were using. You may see a pattern that never occurred before. A director of marketing, for example, may really like the numerical analysis they do but not the prospecting and presenting. Perhaps this quantitative piece of the position could be leveraged elsewhere.

Interests

Here you need to determine where you want at apply these skills. Just because you for instance have done accounting well for years, been rewarded for it and promoted as an accounting manager, doesn’t necessarily mean you may want to continue doing it. Take the time to see if there are other fields you might want to pursue. By talking to people in these fields you can determine if there is any gap between needed skills and those you currently have. This will then allow you to determine ways of getting this new training and what the cost/benefit proposition of doing this is.

Values

Recall which environments you have worked in previously where you were most content and productive. Identify what your ideal environment by looking at what kinds of people you work best with. Understand which corporate “cultures” are a best ‘fit’ for your personality. Describe in detail what the place looks like—what are the people wearing, how their workspaces are arranged and what kind of schedules they keep. Paying attention to these details will assure that you pursue interviews at places where you will be successful.

There certainly is no formula that will instantly produce the ideal job. But having a good understanding of your natural talents, potential interests and ideal environment will help focus your career search.