Horizon Point Consulting

Category: Changing Careers

Beyond Work is our line of resources for people and community leaders looking for something new and innovative, be it a new job, career change, or personal development outside of work. Read this category specifically for Changing Careers.

  • Computers Don’t Give People Jobs- People Do.

    Computers Don’t Give People Jobs- People Do.

    A recent LinkedIn group posting by a job seeker asked the question, “Tons of  applications vs. networking (in a new place) – Which might work best?”


    While applying online for openings is a necessary component to job search, I think this chart and table answers the job seeker’s question clearly:

    wherejobopportunitiescomefrom

    Mark S. Granovetter, a sociologist at Harvard, investigated how people get jobs. His study included professional, technical, and managerial workers who recently found jobs, and the chart shows the methods by which jobs were obtained.

    Granovetter’s data also indicated that of the people who found jobs through personal contacts, 43.8% had new positions created for them.

    Granovetter concludes: “Personal contacts are of paramount importance in connecting people with jobs. Better jobs are found through contacts, and the best jobs, the ones with the highest pay and prestige and affording the greatest satisfaction to those in them, are most apt to be filled in this way.”

    Recommended Job Search Effort Allocation

     

    Priority

    Method

    Recommended Effort Allocation

    1

    		 Unpublished Sources

    70%

    2

    		 Advertisements

    10%

    3

    		 Executive Search Agencies, Job Fairs

    5%

    4

    		 Present or Former Employer

    5%

    5

    		 Targeted Mailings

    5%

    6

    		 Other

    5%

    So if you are searching for a job, spend the majority of your time focusing on networking to find out about most of the jobs- the unpublished ones.

    Next week, we’ll give some recommendations on how to network and provide you with a tool for planning and tracking your networking efforts.

  • Are You A Free Agent By Nature?

    Are You A Free Agent By Nature?

    Do these characteristics describe you and your work/life values?:

    • I desire flexibility in my work (work hours, days, etc.). This is more important to me than the stability of a consistent check or the stable benefits a company can provide.
    • I desire autonomy or control in how work gets done (when, where, etc.)
    • Or to more bluntly sum up the above two bullets, quiet frankly I don’t like other people telling me what to do! I’d rather decide how things get done and be rewarded (or not rewarded) according to the outcomes I decide to achieve.
    • I don’t mind taking risks
    • I have a strong sense of what work is important for me in relation to my purpose and who I am.

    If most of these characteristics describe you, then you may be designed to a free agent instead of an employee. People who seek an arrangement where a particular company does not employ them have been called many things from contractor, to freelancer to self-employed and the number of these types of workers is growing. Do you desire to be one of them? As both individuals and companies desire more flexibility in how work gets accomplished, the trend for a “Free Agent Nation” will continue.

    If the above description fits you, how might you transition into yourself out of an employee role and into a role that allows you to more fully foster the personality and values that exhibit best who you are?

    Here are some tips:

    • Use the Power of 3 Worksheet to help you determine your mission/purpose. This helps you explore your talents, passions and values to set goals, create ideas and identify accountability partners to help you on your pursuits.
    • After defining that purpose, explore avenues where you could live the purpose through providing a service or product that meets needs. Create of list of these ideas.
    • Create a plan, complete with goals, to act on the path you have determined through your mission and ideas.
    • Already doing work you enjoy, but just don’t like the structure that is required in being an employee? Talk to your current employer about how you might shift your relationship to an employer contractor model instead of an employer employee one.   Come prepared with facts that will help show that it will create a win situation for the company.
    • Explore websites that can act as platforms for you to pursue a free agent approach. Here are some:
    1. Etsy
    2. Udemy
    3. Google Helpouts
    4. Freelance.com

    Are you a free agent by nature? What’s holding you back from pursuing this path?

  • What Do You Envy?

    What Do You Envy?

    Are you envious of the guy who has started his own restaurant? What about the attorney who has argued a case before the Supreme Court (this is one of the examples in Quiet)? How about the friend who is a stay-at-home mom by day, painter by night with happy kids and her art in galleries all over the country? Maybe you’re jealous of the teacher who inspires you when she talks with passion about what the students in her class are learning. You wish you had that kind of passion.

    In reading, Quiet- The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, I came across another great question to ask in determining work values: What do you envy?

    We are taught to see jealousy as an unbecoming trait, but the author, Susan Cain, is so insightful in her reasoning for examining what you envy as a way to identify what she describes as your “personal projects.” She states, “Jealousy is an ugly emotion, but it tells the truth. You mostly envy those who have what you desire.”

    Work and life values should be a key driver of career choice because they impact career satisfaction. There a host of questions (and assessment tools), which can help identify a person’s work values, but maybe the best place to start is by examining a feeling that we are discouraged from seeing as valuable.

    What do you envy?