1  Why Trust This Guide?

Bill had been going through the motions at work, he knew. His heart simply wasn’t in it. Bill was finding it harder and harder to even go to work. For a while, he was able to put on a good face. But lately, even that was too hard to do. And now, his boss and the company’s owner seemed to know that Bill didn’t really want to be there. Their attitude toward him had changed. They used to be friends, but now it was all business. Bill didn’t know how much longer he could keep it up. Yet he also had no clue about what else to do.

Change

A lot of folks change jobs and careers–multiple times. I’ve done it myself, having had four distinct careers. Career change can be healthy. What a great life to have done several different things, some of them even well and competently! Changes in jobs and careers can also seem like moving toward one’s destiny, the thing at which one might actually be good. And see? Already we’re assuming that changes in jobs and careers have purposes, that one job or career might prepare you for the next job, and that job or career may prepare you for the next one, until you are finally doing the highest-value thing you could do. See the goals that we’re assuming are implicit in the work world? They include competence, good, value, heights, and ideals. These attributes constitute the world in which we live, love, and work, to act out our being. Work can seem like a theater in which we are each on stage, struggling both alone and together to catch the playwright’s sense of each scene and of the whole play, as we move from one role to another. Get a full and dramatic sense of your job and career. A lot is at play in what you do, including your destiny.

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2  What Is a Career?

Carla hadn’t really thought of herself as having a career. She had always worked, except for the brief time of delivering her children. Yet even then, with the help of her husband, parents, and others, she had returned quickly to work, in part to help pay the household bills, but in part because she just felt better about everything when she was working. Carla didn’t even know what work did for her that made her feel better about herself, her life, and others. But as she eased into the middle of her life, and maybe the end of the middle, Carla realized that she had a new urge to take more control of her work. She could see that her work would come to an end, and she had the sense that she needed to be more responsible to what work she should really be doing before that end came.

Sacrifice

Work has the odd feature to it that it demands, at least to some degree and at times a large degree, that you sacrifice. Jobs and careers involve sacrifice. You give up something when you commit to pursuing a career. What you gain may be greater. You hope and presume that it is. You probably assume that your career is providing greater value to you, your family, and your community, especially those whom you serve in your career, than you might have provided if you had not had a career. You may also believe that your career is making for a more interesting, engaged, healthy, and purposeful life. But then one day, you remember the sacrifice. You see what you could have done instead of working, maybe where you could have traveled, whom you could have met, and what you could have experienced and learned but for your career. Your career takes time, discipline, effort, and energy. It can also cost you health and peace of mind, even relationships. Careers require sacrifice.

Gain

Yet don’t rue the sacrifice you’ve made to pursue a career. The world exists through sacrifice. Every act that prepares for the future, whether your future or the future of another, involves sacrifice. And nothing good would exist without that preparation, without giving up something from today for something better in the future. Think of all those who came before you, giving up their present for your present, far in their future. Think of all you’ve given up for your today and all you are willing to give up for not only your tomorrow but the today and tomorrow of your family members and others. And that is the nature of a career, not just something to keep you busy, from which to draw your identity, and from which to draw your pride, reputation, standing, and sustenance, but a grand thing through which you participate in the sacrifice that continually creates the world. And that participation is what makes you want to give your all and give your best to your career. Your career may provide all manner of gains for you, but the greatest thing it does by far is to give you that vehicle through which to take your part in the continual creation of the world.  

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3  What Is a Job?

Denny had taken the job on a lark, needing the money while he looked for a very different job in an entirely different field that he’d always wanted for a career. He kept up his job search, continuing to get email alerts from two job-search sites whenever a new position meeting his parameters popped up. Denny would peruse the new job postings, quickly passing over most of them and applying for one or two only rarely. None of them really seemed right, so much so that Denny began to think that he wasn’t really interested in that other field after all. He was instead liking the work he was doing more and more. Maybe, he finally realized, he was already in his career field. The thought gave him a new appreciation for his “transitional” job.

Difference

Careers differ from jobs. You may not have thought much about the difference, but most of us have at least a vague sense of it. A career is a long-term commitment to work within a specific field. A job is a short-term commitment to do what an employer asks in return for the compensation the role provides. At times, we even distinguish between our employment with a certain entity and the job we have within that employment. Someone will name their employer in conversation, and another person will ask, What’s your job there? And their answer might be, I do payroll and personnel. A job thus implies a specific task or set of tasks carried out within a general employment role. A career implies a commitment to the field, not the employer or task, while a job implies a commitment to both employer and task, not so much to the field. The above employee doing payroll and personnel might thus describe their career as human resources and financial administration. 

Commitment

Distinguishing your career from your job or work can help both your job or work and your career. We can exhibit different commitments to jobs and careers, not necessarily more commitment to a career than a job but just different commitments. Recognizing those different kinds of commitments you have to your job and career can help you in both your job and career. The commitment to your career takes the longer view, minimizing concern over immediate returns if you can see the potential for greater long-term returns. We sacrifice more for our career than for our job, such as in pursuing additional education or training, or in accepting volunteer and leadership roles, good for you and those whom your career serves. So don’t hesitate to invest more heavily in your career. By contrast, in our jobs, we focus on short-term returns, again good for you and those whom your job serves, but in a different way, spurring greater effort to address immediate concerns. Yet don’t waste your time investing in a job when it offers only short-term returns and holds no prospect as a career. 

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4  Who Am I?

Michelle was confused. She’d spent several more years in school completing a graduate program with the vague idea that she was preparing for a career. Yet after finishing her graduate degree, Michelle felt no closer to a career than when she’d begun her graduate degree. Oh, she had opportunities for which she could apply, not that she stood much chance of getting any of them. But Michelle didn’t even know if she should try. And then one day not long after graduation, when she was still casting about for a career direction, the realization hit her: she didn’t know her career because she didn’t know who she was. Michelle committed herself to do some deep personal reflection to get a grip on her career direction.

Being

Who you are has a lot to do with what you should do. For a career. As a job, too. Now, don’t misunderstand. Your career doesn’t emerge from some inner well of personal identity that you concoct for yourself out of your dreams and fantasies, which are probably only culturally imposed narratives and distortions in any case. That’s a sort of New Age narcissism that you and the world don’t need. You are a part of the world, created by the world’s maker much more than imagined out of your own speculations. Yet you have and are a being, in the world, with your own ability to shape your being-in-the-world, even though the world and its careers and narratives may be shaping you more than you shaping them. And that realization that your being involves, or even evolves out of, your place in the world is the primary guide for discerning your career. A career is a sort of being in the world. Your career is choosing you, as much as you are choosing it. Your key may be to let only the right career, one that elevates you and the world, choose you.

Agency

The idea that a career may choose you, rather than just you choose a career, illustrates a critical insight for navigating with efficacy in the world. We tend to believe that we are the primary actors in the world, that only we have agency, will, and volition. Yet culture, narratives, entities, and agents are constantly at work on us and in us. Advertising is the obvious example. Yet the things that move us are much deeper and more powerful than mere words, sounds, and images that the media conveys to get us to buy their advertisers’ goods and services. The things that move, draw, entice, and direct us aggregate and act out of a myriad of individual experiences, interests, passions, and purposes. You can call them narratives, culture, principalities, powers, spirits, or whatever you wish. But you’re not simply choosing jobs and careers. The spirits of the age are pushing you toward jobs and careers, too. It’s a two-way proposition. Recognize those outside forces, and align with the right spirits or narratives, or you may end up in a job and career that’s awful for you and those for whom you care most but feeds those forces.

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5  For Whom Am I Caring?

Richard was absolutely sure about only one thing having to do with his career, which was that it must provide sufficiently for himself and his family. If his career could do more than that, like enable him to be generous with others and even leave his children and grandchildren a legacy, then all the better. Richard even knew the source of his conviction on that score. His parents, while always providing enough for him and his siblings as they grew up, even leading them on various family adventures, had in their later years fallen on such hard times as to come to depend on their children, despite being able bodied. Richard was determined not to let any such thing happen to his family.

Relationships

You should have noticed, from the prior chapter’s discussion of the high purpose in your career, that your discernment over your best choice of careers has a lot to do with relationships. The primary relationship affecting your career choice and conduct is with the architect of that highest purpose and ideal. You also relate to yourself through your career, either meeting or failing to meet your own needs and expectations, and enjoying or suffering the consequences. If you are married, your career can certainly affect your time, reputation, and relationship with your husband or wife. If you have children, your career feeds and clothes them, impresses or embarrasses them, and turns you toward them or distracts you from them. Your career can impact your parents, friends, and neighbors, too. You should and will consider all these impacts on your relationships when choosing, pursuing, and changing careers. Sometimes, you must do what you should, no matter what others tell you. But relationships can still tell you whether you are in the right career or not.

Yourself

You’ve already read in a prior chapter about how your career depends on who you are. Without belaboring the point again here, just appreciate that your career not only shapes you but also deeply influences how you regard, judge, evaluate, and think about yourself. Our careers embarrass some of us. Perhaps you’ve hesitated to disclose to new acquaintances what you do for a living or career, or seen others squirm when disclosing to you what they do. You may even have an indirect or euphemistic way of sharing in polite conversation what you do, to throw others off the track. Or maybe you’ve heard someone else answer I help people in trouble when you later learn they’re a criminal defense lawyer to drug dealers, or I’m in hospitality when you later learn they clean rooms at the local motel. Those careers may be perfectly honorable and fitted to those pursuing them, but the disguised answers nonetheless highlight how those roles made their bearer feel. When other lawyers would ask me what I did before law school, I’d always hesitate to tell them that I was a horse trainer. If you have a similar hesitation, work out why. It may be telling you something important about how you relate to your career and how it makes you relate to yourself. Whether pride or embarrassment, or embrace or regret, it all matters.

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6  What Do I Know?

Liam had no taste for networking or any other kind of self-promotion of the sort that he assumed was necessary to find a new job within his career field. He was, he knew, too much of a bookworm, an introvert, to sell himself on the job market in the way that it looked like he needed to do. Liam rued starting his job search, even though the days were ticking down to the end of his current job, with his company downsizing and layoffs announced long ago. Yet suddenly, Liam realized that it wasn’t his glad handing and politicking, of which he was so incapable, that was going to get him his next job. It was instead his bookworm-borne knowledge. Liam was sure that if he could just demonstrate to prospective employers what he knew, they’d hire him.

Knowledge

Knowledge has vast stores of value for the accomplishment of many jobs and pursuit of many careers. Some professions seem peculiarly knowledge based. Law and medicine are two obvious ones. Lawyers learn and deploy tons of law knowledge, buried in whole libraries of statutes, administrative codes, case decisions, and their interpretations. Physicians likewise learn and deploy whole libraries of anatomy, physiology, epidemiology, pathology, psychiatry, pharmacology, and other voluminous subjects within their medical field. Yet so many other fields require large knowledge bases, accumulated through education, practice, and experience, too many to even begin naming. And every field has at least a significant knowledge base because, after all, we define field expertise largely by the mastery of a specialized body of knowledge. Your success in your career depends in good part on your willingness and ability to build, retain, deploy, and update your specialized knowledge base.

Aptitude

You are indeed fit for your current job and career, or better suited for a different career, based on your capacity, aptitude, and willingness to know. Your capacity and commitment to know have both quantitative and qualitative dimensions. Some of us are ready, willing, and able to constantly uptake and integrate new information across fields. Call us generalists. Neither capacity nor commitment are limitations. Time and access are instead the only limitations. Others have the capacity or commitment only to acquire knowledge of a certain type, perhaps numbers and formulas more than text or vice versa, images and forms more than data or vice versa, or procedures and processes more than facts or vice versa. Our aptitude for certain forms of knowledge may be organic to our brain, dependent on our nurture, acquired through exposure, trained through education, or all of the above. But we all have varying capacities or commitments for acquiring different forms of knowledge. Take the seemingly least knowledgeable person you know, prick them on just the right subject, and they’ll pour out a fount of knowledge, whether on how to rig a fishing pole, identify a bird or tree, or plant and tend a garden. To choose or pursue a career, know not only what you know but also your capacity and commitment to knowing.

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7  What Can I Do?

Shirley’s partner in their little business had the peculiar knack of being very good at what she did without seeming to know much about it. Shirley had joined her partner right out of school, when her partner had already been in the business for about ten years. Shirley had expected to learn a lot of information from her partner, who had all the skills of a master in their thriving small business. But Shirley quickly discovered that Shirley knew much more than her partner did. Indeed, whatever her partner had learned in school, her partner seemed to have forgotten. Her partner often relied on Shirley for the terminology and wording, when they needed it for contracts or communications. But otherwise, Shirley’s partner definitely ran the show. Everything Shirley’s partner did was sound, insightful, and unerring, even if her partner couldn’t describe it. Her partner’s gift was in skill, not knowledge.

Skills

As much as career fields depend on acquiring a body of specialized knowledge, especially but not exclusively in the professions, knowledge isn’t everything one needs for a career. One needs skills, too, referring to the ability to do something well. Knowledge without the ability to deploy it is useless. Indeed, knowledge consistently deployed in the wrong way that the circumstances require is worse than useless. It’s actively harmful. We’ve all known a fool who could tell you everything you didn’t know but nothing you needed to know. Sometimes, the most knowledgeable one along for the ride is the one least likely to know the direction but most likely to supply it, in the wrong direction. Take your pick: which would you rather have for your career, knowledge or skills? Me, too. I’d pick skills every day of the week and again on Sunday. Let me learn from someone who is good, even great, at what they do, rather than one who can only tell me how to do it.

Mastery

Mastery implies a level of skill high enough to accomplish with alacrity anything common to the field. Employers generally want to employ masters in the field, although they may instead have to hire individuals having too little experience to possess anything more than relevant skills. Employers often expect to develop skilled hires into masterful workers. Mastery doesn’t typically arrive with education alone. Mastery generally takes education, training, skill, and experience. Customers, clients, patients, and others who depend on skilled services are also looking for masters, although they’ll accept skilled service from someone lacking the experience to have mastered everything in the field, as long as the worker sticks to what they know and has sufficient supervision. You don’t have to be a master to get started in a field. But you’d better arrive at mastery fairly soon, or your employer may be letting you go in favor of another worker who can pick things up quicker. 

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8  Where Am I Creative?

Eunice knew one thing about her work: it gave her an outlet for the creative juices that overflowed from within her. She didn’t particularly fit in well at work, not with the other workers who mostly ignored her. But Eunice knew that her employer deeply valued her. Other employees came and left, sometimes by their own choosing and other times by firing or layoff. Yet Eunice persisted, she knew not because of her personality or charm but because of her creativity. She could look around the workplace and see the imprint of her creativity on nearly everything, from the style of its branding and marketing to the designs of its products and processes. And that imprint immensely satisfied Eunice, who knew she was in the right place as long as her employer accepted and valued her creativity, and as long as she jumped out of bed every morning to run to work to express more of it.

Creativity

Creativity has a role in careers. Creativity is the ability to envision and do something of beauty, proportion, symmetry, and value in an original way that others haven’t done in precisely the same way before. Creativity feeds employers and fuels employees. You are at your best when you are creative, and you know it. Doing only what someone else has shown and trained you to do may get you a job. Taking what someone else showed you how to do but then doing it better through innovation will not only keep you employed but give you a career. As an innovator and creator, you’ll become a leader. People don’t follow followers. They follow innovators. Employers and their customers and clients appreciate workers who follow protocols. Many things don’t deserve innovation. Many things need to be routine. But even in the routines, people appreciate the sense that they’re interacting with a living, breathing, thinking human being, someone who could and would alter the routine if they perceived the obvious or subtle need for it. Respect and value your creativity.

Thinking

That’s creativity, to respond to the whispers to think and act originally in the moment. And employers rightly value and expect thinking. When a worker proceeds mindlessly on with routines in the face of a screaming demand to change them, supervisors will ask exasperatedly, What were you thinking? The answer, of course, is that the worker wasn’t thinking, when we should be thinking if we’re to be more than automatons, another robot in the employer’s factory. Living the full human experience is to elevate one’s existence beyond autonomic and subcortical responses, those physiologic responses and habituated or instinctual behaviors that allow us to function unthinkingly in work and other environments. Opening the eyes of your mind to purposeful thought and action, surveying and exploring a wider range of the infinite possibilities that lay before you, is our maker’s creative invitation to his partner-image humans. Think. Use your head. Our divinity lies within our creativity, not our automaticity. 

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9  Where Am I Productive?

Albert didn’t consider himself unique in any special respect. Just the opposite: he knew his job insights and skills were ordinary. Others at work were the innovators, not him. Albert didn’t mind being pretty much like everyone else in his workplace, except in one respect. He knew that he was fiercely protective of his productivity. Albert wanted nothing less than to show up for work, accomplish as much as he could possibly accomplish in a day, and go home tired knowing he could have done no more. The only thing that truly frustrated him was when things interrupted his productivity at work. Why, after all, was he even at work, if not to be productive?

Productivity

Productivity is an employer’s concern, at first blush. To be productive means to complete at least as much of the work one’s employer has for one to do in an allotted time. Employers appreciate, value, and reward employees who are productive. As to employees who are not productive? Let’s just say employers generally regret having hired them. Employers may move non-productive employees into other roles where they can be more productive. Employers may alternatively move non-productive employees into informal or formal corrective action programs anticipating termination if they do not increase their productivity. Employers may also just let non-productive employees languish in their roles, satisfied for the time being that other workers are picking up the slack, even if those other workers don’t particularly appreciate having to do so. Whatever the options and outcomes, productivity is a peculiarly important parameter in many if not all workplaces. Consider carefully the job and career in which you are able and willing to be productive.

Commitment

Productivity, though, isn’t just important to the employer. Productivity is also important to the employee. Indeed, in many if not most workplaces where the employer expects some employees to be productive and others not so, an individual employee’s own productivity is more important to the individual employee than to the employer. To put it another way, you should care more about your productivity than your employer. To some degree, employees are fungible to employers. Employers just need someone to do the job. You, though, need to do the job for yourself as well as for your employer. Working where you know you’re not productive may earn you a paycheck but isn’t the full meaning and purpose of work. The productivity you miss hurts not just your employer but also you. Few things wither the soul as much as going through the motions without purpose, desire, and intention. Doing so may be necessary for a time. But doing so for an extended period wastes life, when we have precious few hours to live. Choose a job and career where you can be productive.

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10  What Do Others Need?

Dan’s practice, to which he had devoted his entire adult life, had dried up. He could no longer deny it. For a time, he had pretended that its demise was due to the economy or other temporary conditions. But before too long, he could tell that it was over and not coming back. Dan could have seen the handwriting on the wall years earlier if he had wanted to look with discernment, he now knew. But second guessing didn’t matter. Dan needed a new career doing something that people wanted and needed him to do. The question was only where and how to start looking.

Strategic

You’ve now spent some good time understanding who you are, what you know and can do, and where you are most productive and creative. You’ve now completed the first major phase of a strategic approach to your best career, which is to know your side of the career equation. But careers have two sides, not one side. The other side of the equation involves discerning the needs that you may be able to meet in a job and career. If twiddling thumbs was your talent, and a career was all about talents, then you could just go ahead with your thumb twiddling. But thankfully, careers have not just a supply side but also a demand or need side of the equation. Your career isn’t all about you. Your career is equally about others whose needs your career is meeting.

Salvational

Never regret the needs side of the career equation. Instead, deeply appreciate that to find and pursue a fruitful career you must aim your talents toward meeting a need for them. The need side of the career equation keeps the question of your best career from becoming a study in navel gazing, the excessive contemplation of oneself that turns one inward to one’s own destruction. Careers are, in that sense, salvational. They insist that you develop and match your talents to the satisfaction of a need for them. Careers draw us outward from ourselves and into the structure and story of the world. 

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11  Do I Offer What Others Need?

Rhonda had never felt more ready to help folks, once she had completed her program. She was rarin’ to go and had expected to be busy immediately. After all, look at how much she had invested in preparing herself to help. Rhonda got her license, printed up business cards, told all her friends, and ... waited, and then waited some more. She joined and spoke at the local business group, got her name and service listed in the local business directory, sponsored a local event, and ... waited some more. No matter what Rhonda did, she couldn’t seem to find any clients to serve. At first, she thought it was something about her. But then it hit her: was she even offering what anyone wanted or needed?

Fitting

Somewhere between your interests, abilities, hard-won knowledge, and hard-earned skill on the one hand, and the population of customers, clients, patients, students, or others whom you hope to serve on the other hand, is a point at which the two sides meet. That point is the gyroscope of your career. Your effective interactions with those whom your career skills serve is the hinge point, the fulcrum lever, or the pendulum on which your career swings. Whether and how well your career services fit with the needs and desires of those whom you serve is the engine that drives your career. You may have prepared spectacularly well for your career, but all the preparation in the world won’t help you if those whom you hope to serve aren’t interested in what you’re offering. You must not only know the demographic you wish to serve and the goods, services, and skills you want to offer them. You must also fit those offerings to meet their perceived needs.

Employers

If you can get a job in your career field, employed and paid by another, then fitting your skills and offers to the needs of the people whom you intend to serve is more immediately your employer’s problem than your problem. To an extent, you’re only along for that ride. Your employer is the one who must ensure that enough customers and clients are out there wanting the precise things that your employer offers. You get a paycheck whether those customers and clients show up or not. But only for a time. You’ll quickly learn two things in virtually any job: (1) the job ends when no one wants or needs it done; and (2) you’d better be doing the job just as its customers need it done, or your employer will quickly find another employee to replace you. Relatively few employees are immune from that process of continually fitting their service to the needs and desires of their customers. The first big adjustment new entrants in a field or profession must often make is to realize that the customer’s preference drives ninety percent of what they do. Adjust quickly, and keep adjusting throughout your career, or you’ll be finding a new career soon.

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12  Do I Need a Credential? 

Michael knew what he wanted to do and, moreover, knew he’d be good at doing it. He had the knowledge, and he had the skill. Michael even had the people who wanted to hire him to do it. He just didn’t have the license. And he didn’t have anyone with the license under whom he could work, or for whom he would want to work, to satisfy the licensing requirement. Michael knew of a couple of individuals who did the work anyway, without the necessary credential, but he didn’t like how they had to operate to escape detection, and he didn’t want to live that kind of life with the risk of unauthorized-practice penalties constantly hanging over him. Michael needed to get the credentials in place, and he knew it. The only question was if he would be able to qualify and how long it was going to take.

Credentials

States and locales license everything. Of course, that’s an exaggeration but unfortunately only a slight exaggeration. Have you tried to hunt or fish, fly a drone, fill in the damp ground at the back of your lot, redo the siding on your house, sell your extra tomatoes from a curbside stand, or own a dog or chickens? In many jurisdictions, to do those or a thousand other things, you’d need a license. Licensing, certification, or permitting of trades, professions, and vocations is among the most-common and most-onerous of things that our state and local governments do, although ostensibly for our own good and the good of consumers and the public. Credentials can be a huge obstacle to entering a career field. Consider carefully the credentialing requirements for your field before committing time and resources toward entering it.

Fields

Most everyone knows that physicians, dentists, lawyers, and a few other prominent and traditional professions have strict licensing regimes, requiring at least formal approved education and examination, perhaps also with a clinical experience requirement. Physician assistants, nurses, nurse aides, dental assistants, therapists, psychologists, counselors, pharmacists, and social workers, all in the medical or social-service fields, and engineers, architects, accountants, financial advisors, real-estate agents, teachers, and insurance agents in other professional fields, also require licensure. But so do barbers, cosmetologists, masseuses, builders, electricians, plumbers, and others in common trades and vocations. Again, before diving into preparing for your career field, ensure that you can meet its licensing requirements.

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13  Where Is My Place?

Looking back over her first ten years in her career field, Darlene felt as if she had approached it all wrong. She had entered her field in one role, quickly realized it was the wrong role, but took years to move into another role. And when Darlene did finally change roles within her same career field, she hadn’t made the right change. Within a year or two, she had discerned that she had made another error and needed to change again. But unfortunately she stuck it out once again, years longer than she should have, before finally moving into the role that she now knew she should have pursued from the start. Darlene only hoped that others didn’t have to go through all that she went through to find her home within her career field.

Structure

Career fields have their different structures. They’re not all the same, and within each field, roles can vary widely to fill the field’s full needs. Fields can vary in the employment or solo practice opportunities they require or offer, the part-time roles they permit or full-time commitment they demand, the flexible schedules they offer or inflexible schedules they impose, the sides they require or permit workers to take, the forums in which those workers perform, the size of entity for which employees work, their management and supervision requirements, their rainmaking requirements or opportunities, and their compensation terms and other rewards. If you want to choose the right career and better roles within that career, you might want to give some clear thought to these differences so that you can choose careers and roles to best suit your needs, personality, and preferences.

Employment

A first question you might consider asking about your favorite potential career field is whether it offers employment. That question doesn’t mean whether a market exists for the field’s services. Rather, it means whether the field fulfills that market through corporate entities or family businesses that hire workers as employees. You might think that of course your field offers employment because how else would the field supply its goods and services to those who need or desire them? Yet some fields just don’t offer much in the way of employment. The field’s participants serve as their own proprietors. Some of the most fun and fascinating fields, like hunting and fishing guiding, playwright or book author, and fine artist, can have that character where if you want to do it, you may have to set up shop on your own. If instead, you’re looking for a job that someone else provides, you might need to choose another field. 

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14  What Is My Field?

At the time, it was devastating, although years later, Sierra could have a good laugh over it. Her senior seminar had required her to complete an online career-interests tool that had her answer what seemed like a bunch of random questions. When she was done, the tool made five recommendations of jobs in which she might be interested and that she should consider exploring. And the number one recommendation? Chimney sweep. Yes, chimney sweep, as in hiding yourself inside a chimney covered in soot. Years later, after earning a law degree, practicing as a courtroom lawyer, and then becoming an educator and academic administrator working with remedial students and their concerned parents, Sierra could laugh at how ridiculously wrong and off-putting the tool had been. Chimney sweep. She had a good idea what they could do with their recommendation tool.

Advice

When some online app or grumpy old uncle tells you to go dig ditches for a career, you know what to do with the app, uncle, and their recommendation. Go earn your second graduate degree, start your own business, set the world on fire with your products and services, do fabulously well for your family, and then have a good laugh over the bad advice you wisely ignored. Sure, listen to lots of folks about what you should do for a career or a second or third or fourth career. Especially listen to those who care about you most, those nearest and dearest to you. Then go do the thing that calls you. Ultimately, only you can tell. It’s your job, career, and life. Don’t live out someone else’s dream, vision, or expectation. I could see some things for my graduate students that they could not see for themselves and would suggest those things when they asked. But I didn’t know them nearly as well as they knew themselves, and virtually all of them went on to do things that I hadn’t largely imagined. Good for them. You should do so, too.

Choices

America offers so many jobs and careers that you really can’t accurately distinguish and count, or fairly summarize, them. That said, those who focus on these things identify six major fields, sixteen total clusters beneath those fields, and seventy-nine total pathways beneath those clusters. Again, too many to explore fairly here. Just accept the following outline of the fields and clusters, followed by some ideas for how to think about them. Your challenge in finding your first or next career isn’t as hard as picking one pathway out of seventy-nine choices. You and your circumstances have probably already narrowed the potential fields, clusters, and pathways down to an obvious one, two, or few. But even then, surveying where your fields fit in the overall careers picture may help you confirm or adjust your view.

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15  How Do I Connect?

Dave knew he had the knowledge, skills, and experience. After all, he’d been successful for years. When his employer folded up shop and left town, Dave knew that it would only be a matter of time before he was re-employed in the same field. Indeed, he had expected that another employer would snap him up. Yet that hadn’t happened. Dave just couldn’t seem to find the leads and connections, despite the obvious value of his skills, his great reputation, and his plain worth to whoever hired him. Dave hadn’t thought he’d need a resume. But after waiting longer than expected to find a new position, he decided he’d better sharpen his job-hunting skills.

Nexus

The above vignette reminds us that gaining a first or next job in a field depends on making connections with employers or others who can offer you the opportunity you want or need. You may have all the skills an employer needs, but if the employer isn’t aware of you as a candidate for the position the employer needs to fill, then you won’t get a job offer from that employer. Making a connection between you and prospective employers can follow a traditional process that this chapter describes. But alternatives exist to the traditional job-search process. This chapter ends with some examples of non-traditional paths into jobs.

Identity

A first step in the traditional job-search process involves identifying who you are along the measures that employers value. A large part of this guide so far has been to help you discern what you could share with employers that would attract them to you. All the reflection you’ve done over your knowledge, skills, experience, interests, and aptitude should have given you a rich store from which to draw when projecting to employers who you are and why they may want to hire you. From your reflections, you should be able to give an account and examples that identify you as competent, masterful, qualified, resourceful, accomplished, creative, innovative, trustworthy, credible, committed, and even unique in your knowledge, skills, and aptitude for certain fields. You should have a clearer sense of yourself and how you can communicate that sense to others who might be interested in having you work for or with them. Draw on your Career Journal to project that identity.

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16  What About a Second Job?

Julio couldn’t remember ever working just one job. He’d always had a side hustle. His main job working construction hadn’t changed much since his start. Oh, he’d gotten pay raises and even now did a lot of supervision. He was also working for a more-reliable company than the one with which he had started. But Julio knew his day job wasn’t going to change much for him. He did his daily construction work and went home, and his company paid him. Julio’s side hustles were entirely different. They changed constantly. They also amused, engaged, and challenged him. Julio also learned and grew in his second jobs. And all of that was why he’d always had a second job. Oh, sure, the income was helpful, at times even important. But Julio didn’t really work his side gigs for the income. He worked his side gigs for himself. 

Definition

A second job involves a part-time role earning extra income, whether on a contract or employment basis, supplementary to a full-time job. A second job, sometimes called a side gig or side hustle, implies its subsidiary role to the main job or day job that undergirds the worker’s finances and serves as the worker’s career. Most American workers have only one job at a time. Only about one out of twenty workers have multiple jobs. But still, that means that around nine-million workers hold second jobs, which is a lot of extra employment. And as this chapter highlights, second jobs can offer workers substantial advantages, beyond the extra income they earn. If you’re in a solid career but have a yearning to explore other opportunities, consider taking on a second job. If you’re in the wrong career or in a career that looks like it will soon be ending, and you don’t have other obvious prospects, then seriously consider taking a second job to see what develops from it.

Examples

Delivering pizzas may be the classic second job, one that often comes to mind when a worker with a weekday job needs a little extra income. Pizza delivery, or food delivery more generally, can make a good second job because of its evening and weekend hours, and little to no need for training or equipment other than a vehicle, which most workers already have. Food delivery also requires little or no loyalty and has few if any disqualifying conditions. Workers with poor employment histories and even criminal convictions may still qualify for the job. But other second jobs abound, and for workers at all education, skill, and experience levels. Some employment roles, not just pizza delivery, even depend largely or solely on second-job workers. Adjunct teaching is an example. If you’re interested in extra work, don’t hesitate to look around your field for opportunities, even if you’re in a high-skill field. I’ve taken on extra outside work, even while a full-time lawyer and full-time professor.

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17  What About a Retirement Job?

Ben had been thinking about retirement lately, a lot. Indeed, hardly a day didn’t go by at work when he wasn’t thinking why he hadn’t already retired. But Ben knew the reasons why he continued to work. First, he and his wife were concerned that their Social Security retirement income and modest retirement savings weren’t going to be enough. Health expenses had already eaten up some of their retirement savings. And second, Ben and his wife both knew that he needed to stay busy in retirement. He just wasn’t cut out for a sedentary life. Yet Ben was also increasingly convinced that the job he had long held wasn’t a good job to carry into his retirement years. The job took too much out of him and offered no part-time options. Ben needed a retirement job, if that was even a thing.

Definition

Retirement job is an oxymoron. You’re not retired if you have a job. You’re retired when you don’t have a job. Yet lots of workers retire but then pick up some work, often part-time work but work nonetheless. And even more workers, indeed all workers, have a last job leading up to retirement, even if that job is the only one in which they have worked. That last job leading up to retirement may itself be a job specially suited to the worker who is preparing for retirement. Employers can gently move employees anticipating retirement in the next few years into jobs with fewer long-term expectations, fewer advancement opportunities, fewer management responsibilities, and frankly fewer demands, as the aging workers lose vitality and naturally lower their work commitments. One’s last job before retirement, and one’s last job carried over into retirement or picked up during retirement, can and probably should be different. Plan accordingly, if you can.

Need

Consider your needs as you head into ending your full-time career and dedicated work life. You and your spouse or family may have income needs. Develop a retirement budget well in advance of retiring, to see where earned income may be necessary and, if so, how much and for how long. Use that projection to evaluate your current employment for its options for reduced workloads, part-time work, consulting work, or project contract work, after full-time retirement. If your current employment offers options that fit your need for earned retirement income, then begin the process of alerting your employer to your retirement and work-in-retirement plans. If your current employment offers no such options, then begin to explore adjacent work in your field or new work for which you can qualify with your current skills or with readily acquired new skills. You see many retired folks happily doing part-time work that they’ve always wanted to do and now do out of both interest and need.

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18  How Do I Decide on a Job? 

Darlene hadn’t expected to get the job offer, which was kind of funny because she had done her best with her resume, cover letter, and interview. Maybe her surprise at the offer was because she had heard that they interviewed several others for the same position. Darlene didn’t even think she’d done that well in her interview. When she got the call with the offer, Darlene was a little taken aback. Fortunately, the person conveying the offer said that they’d follow up with an email and letter for her to consider. Darlene had just enough composure in the telephone call to thank the caller and say that she looked forward to receiving the email and offer. But something told her she wasn’t really looking forward to the offer. Had she applied for the wrong job?

Offers

So, you’ve gained a job offer. Should you take it? An offer is not an acceptance. Offers may assume your acceptance, but you still have a choice. Presumably, if you went through the hiring process far enough to get an offer, you had a strong, earnest, and honest interest in the position. But offers can change the position, compensation, or terms of employment from the job posting to which you applied. And you may have learned something in the application process, including in the interview or even after your interview, that has you rethinking your interest. You may even have gotten another offer in the meantime. This chapter gives you some guidance on how to handle offers and how to decide what to do with them. An offer may relieve you greatly. A bird in hand is worth two birds in the bush. But an offer brings a new set of issues. Prepare to address those new issues.

Advice

You may have your own clear and firm thoughts about what to do with an offer of employment, whether to accept or reject it. You may not need or want advice. Yet pause for a moment before going through with your decision. You may owe others who are important to you the courtesy of consulting them before accepting or rejecting the offer. Those whom you consult may include any mature family member who depends on your employment and helped you through the application process, particularly your spouse but potentially a parent, sibling, or child no longer of tender years. Your objective in consulting them includes not just learning what they think to see how it affects you but also not to shock, disappoint, or alarm them with your decision. Also consult others who do not depend on your employment but whom you involved in the process and might involve again, such as recommenders or references. If instead you haven’t decided, then consult anyone who you think could help, but do so only confidentially and if you can trust their confidence. You don’t need scuttlebut getting around about offers you received and rejected, or your reasons why. Listen carefully to advice, whether or not you follow it. You might learn something that can help you, even if the advice doesn’t change your mind.

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19  How Do I Manage Transition? 

Robert had finally settled into his new job, but it hadn’t been easy. He felt like everything that could go wrong with his transition had gone wrong. He also realized that most of it was his own fault. Robert hadn’t thought through his transition. Things had been much more complex than he had expected, when if he’d just given it a little thought, he could have seen those things coming and prepared better to address them. Robert wished someone who’d been through a few job transitions had warned him. He knew he’d do better next time, if he had a next time, but he sure hoped that next time wouldn’t be soon. If his next job transition was soon, he was going to prepare for it as soon as he saw it coming.

Period

Think of your transition from your old job or school program to your new job as an important period in its own right. How you manage transitions in life can have a lot to do with how well you do in life. To have a smooth and helpful transition that cleans up loose ends while preparing you for the new job, give your transition some thought and planning. This chapter reminds you of some transition issues to consider and address, while giving some clues for how to address them. Expect to have more transition issues and harder transition issues than you first imagined. Plan for those issues, and arrange extra resources and backup plans in advance, in the event they arise. That way, you’ll save yourself embarrassing and disconcerting hardships along the way, smoothing and easing your transition. You want to start your new job fresh, not frazzled and weary. You also want your new employer to see how well you can manage yourself and your matters in transition.

Budget

One thing for which to plan during a job transition is your finances. As soon as you see a job transition coming, budget for it, and begin to plan and put in place the finances. First, estimate the period that you’ll have without employment income during the transition, taking your longer rather than shorter estimate. The difference between a few days without work and a few months without work is vast, when the question is your transition budget. Then, estimate the funds you’ll need to cover that period. Then, examine and plan your savings to build those funds, even if it means cutting back on other usual expenditures. If you cannot close the gap, investigate family gifts or loans, interim gap employment, and other sources. Try to avoid credit card debt to fund employment transitions. The interest costs can be enormous. Credit cards are easy for withdrawal, hard for repayment. Better to find other, less painful means.

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20  How Do I Assess My Work?

Norma was on one of her brief annual vacations, just a long weekend, really, because she didn’t take week-long or two-week-long vacations. Norma was what her colleagues called a workaholic. She didn’t like to think of herself that way. She instead believed that she was appropriately devoted to a generally rewarding career. Yet lately, her career hadn’t seemed all that rewarding. Indeed, she was beginning to think that maybe she wasn’t all that devoted or even well rewarded, and that she might instead just be a workaholic after all. And so, with a couple days left in her long weekend, Norma sat down for the first time in years to examine her career.

Evaluation

A little introspection and retrospective over a career can be a good thing at times, to help one look forward, out, and up. Some of us go an entire work life without giving our career direction, accomplishments, challenges, and opportunities much thought. We do well now and then, say, at least every five years, to assess where we stand from a job and career standpoint. Otherwise, without thoughtful evaluation, how do you influence your career? You may as well in that case be at the mercy of industry or professional trends, market and technological changes, and the winds of chance. So while reviewing this chapter, sit back, relax, and deliberate over your job and career, until you have a fresh perspective on where and how you stand, and perhaps also on where you should head from here.

Measures

Assessment generally requires measures. If you’re going to evaluate your career, you’ll soon need some standards, benchmarks, objectives, goals, or values against which to measure it. You choose your goals and measures. The following sections make some suggestions. But as you choose goals and standards, try to make them smart measures, which is an acronym for specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time bound. To say, for instance, that your measures should be achievable means to hold yourself to a reasonable standard that you could reach with appropriate effort, not to a standard that only miracles could achieve. Likewise, to say that your measures should be time bound means to assume that you only have a reasonable time within which to achieve them. Don’t set as a measure something that you could only achieve with another hundred years of work. Smart goals and measures make for smart assessment. You’ll discern more and be able to adjust better with smart measures.

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