I have recently had a very busy time which is why I have not been able to write much here. The world around me as well as you has seen some rapid changes over the past month. We have heard positive things about the economy and unemployment numbers shifting for better while we have watched the economic melt down of Greece as well as other frightening financial mishaps. Some of what has occupied my time has been my commitment to life long learning as well as being captivated by some really great books. One of those books that I just finished was Blink by Malcolm Gladwell and he really got me thinking about his concepts and my role in career development helping people connect to the workforce.
If you have read the book please bear with me but if you have not, I highly recommend it. Malcolm talks about using our instincts and improving our ability to know what is right for us or right in our situations. He also highlights how we perceive the world around us but tend to ignore certain signals for our own personal reasons. We have the ability to look at something and know that it is right or wrong however if we are asked to rationalize that feeling, often we lose the momentum. I have always been a firm and passionate follower of my "gut instinct" and I confess that it seldom takes me in the wrong direction. Now sometimes people may have said my decision was not "nice" or "fair" but I knew it was the best decision I had to make at the time. How does all of this relate to job seeking?
Many job seekers are not aware of the science behind career development, job searching or who the original founders of this science were. If you are in the middle of job searching you are in the middle of applying this science. You are looking like everyone else is seeking and you have some patterns or ideas that you are using as a strategy to find work. Many of us use our friends and relatives as trusted advisers to guide us through this process providing opinions or leads. This whole process of job seeking, career development and the questions of "what should I do" actually had a beginning and from this foundation springs forth something you may be more familiar with, the career assessment which you may have taken and suggested you should be this or that occupation. What does this have to do with Blink?
One of my favorite career theorists is a man named John Krumboltz. He talks about our careers and choices we make around them as being based on our life's experiences and how we digested that experience. Our choices are influenced by role models in our lives, what we learn socially impacts our career choice and that our career paths are not planned but that there is an element of planned happenstance to our choice. We make our choices by self-observational generalizations for what is going on around us. What that all means is that while we might come from a family lineage of a certain career or your family had a pretty strong idea of what you should grow up to be, you make your career choices based on what you saw around you, maybe experienced at school or what social influences may have been present. In other words, you blinked a few times and went with what you felt was best for you based on your environment and all of the other factors John Krumboltz was talking about.
We have all had the experience as children in school perhaps being told that we possessed certain traits therefore we should consider that certain job. For example, you may have liked animals so therefore strong typology suggestions were made that you should be a veterinarian. What is so cool about Blink and my coaching of people to find jobs is that we do know deep down what is the best thing for right now in the world of work and what our passions are regarding our careers. We fight with ourselves about what is best but what is even more troublesome is that we are not open to the random, wild possibilities or opportunities that come our way.
I know you have heard stories about someone that you know who has out of the blue landed a job they always wanted, landed an amazing job when they were not looking or has had a very unique opportunity presented but they are paralyzed with inaction because it seems too good to be true or at least this is what the network of trusted advisers is telling them. Opportunities are always around us all of the time. The trick is to know this and be okay with yourself and that thought all at the same time. Every time you take a chance to cold call your resume into a company that you really want to work in, you are creating a chance! Every time you network with someone you are opening the door for a possible opportunity that could be your next career.
Being open to the fact that unplanned possibility is out there and is as prevalent as coffee shops on every street corner in Seattle would not be an exaggeration. Okay, maybe every two blocks or so there is a coffee shop in Seattle but the fact remains, there are many of them. It is what we choose to look at and accept as an opportunity that skews the numbers. When we see a role that we think "yes, this is what I want" or "this is something I can do" but begin to second guess ourselves, I say stop it. Just try, don't freeze yourself in your job search. Anything can happen and anything happens all of the time. There can be some very beneficial results to chance events in our lives but if we are wearing dark thoughts (dark sunglasses) we block them out completely. Chance events are inevitable in our lives and we can choose how we deal with them though keeping an open mind as well as using our good gut instinct.
Create your amazing chances as well as be open to the even more amazing possibilities that are out there waiting for you to accept them without hesitation. You know what is best for you right now so I say exercise your "blink reflexes" and get them involved with your job search. You just never know!
