4 Actions for Planned Happenstance

We’ve been following the career decision-making path of Graham by looking at his talents, passions and values to find appropriate job matches.   Much of what we’ve done so far requires matching personal characteristics with specific occupations. This is a very helpful process, but it doesn’t negate the reality that life happens and sometimes you’ve got to jump start your career pathway with action that may or may not lead to the specific careers targeted in your career exploration activities. John Krumboltz’s, (who with Ed Levine wrote, Luck is No Accident), career development theory is one of “planned happenstance”.   Basically, this view is that people

Personal Leadership Lesson 3: Know your Value

Knowing your value in the marketplace is an important component in establishing personal leadership.  In our first post in this series, we focused on how much emphasis recently has been placed on women’s issues, particularly in the workplace, and in women having the ability to know their value in the market.  It seems as though much of the issue stems from women not knowing their value or undervaluing themselves whether it be as a news anchor as one recent book discusses or whether it be as a stay-at-home mom with a side business.  I’m guilty of this, are you?  Do

Passions via your Holland Code

You’ve analyzed your talents and realize you, lets say, have knowledge and skills in the field of biology coupled with the ability to solve complex problems which may lead you to believe a career in medicine is appropriate for you.  But you don’t particularly enjoy any of these things and the thought of working with sick people isn’t appealing.   Just because you are good at something, doesn’t necessarily mean you enjoy doing it, but oftentimes it does. We typically enjoy what we can do well quite simply because we are good at it.  This is where it is important to consider