SampleChapter:

Deciding What You Want:
Selecting Your Job Targets

To have a great purpose to work for,
a purpose larger than ourselves,
is one of the secrets of making life significant;
for then the meaning and worth of the individual
overflow his personal borders, and survive his death.
Will Durant

Studies have shown that up to 85 percent of all American workers are unhappy in their jobs. They feel that they would be happier elsewhere, but they don't know where. After going through an evaluation process (assessment), many decide that their present situation is not so bad after all, and that no change is required. Some may find that a small change is all that is needed. On the other hand, some may want to make a major career change.

The exercises in this book will help you assess your work life so that you can better understand the situations in which you perform your best and are happiest. And, since we will all have to change jobs--and probably even careers--more often in the future, we should get to know ourselves better.

Assessment is helpful even if you do not want to change jobs. You will learn more about the way you operate and how to improve the situation where you are currently working.

Getting Started
The following exercises help you identify the aspects of your jobs that have been satisfying and dissatisfying. You will know which parts need to be changed and which parts need to stay the same.

You may do certain exercises and skip others. But don't skip the Seven Stories Exercise, and try to do the Forty-Year Vision. If you have had problems with bosses, you need to discover what those problems were and analyze them. Or perhaps examining your values may be an issue at this time. Your insights about yourself from the Seven Stories Exercise will be the primary source for your accomplishment statements, help you interview better, and serve as a template for selecting the right job.

After you do the exercises, brainstorm a number of possible job targets. Then research each target to find out what the job possibilities are for someone like you.

This workbook will guide you through the entire process.

. . . and then I decided that to turn your life around
you had to start from the inside.
Ethan Canin, Emperor of the Air
Consider Your History
If you have enjoyed certain jobs, attempt to understand exactly what about them you enjoyed. This will increase your chances of replicating the enjoyable aspects.

For example, an accounting manager will probably not be happy in just any accounting-management job. If what he really enjoyed was helping the business manager make the business profitable, and if this thread of helping reappears in his enjoyable experiences (Seven Stories Exercise), then he would be unhappy in a job where he was not helping.

If, however, his enjoyment repeatedly came from resolving messy situations, then he needs a job that has messes to be resolved and the promise of more messes to come.

Furthermore, if he wants to do again those things he enjoyed, he can state them in the summary on his resume. For instance:

Accounting Manager
Serve as right-hand to Business Manager, consistently improving company's profitability.
or
Accounting Manager
A troubleshooter and turn-around manager.

The Results of Assessment:
Job Targets--then a Resume
A job target contains three elements:

• industry or company size (small, medium or large company);
• position or function; and
• geographic location.

If a change is required, a change in any one of these may be enough.

Geographic Location
Let's take Joseph, for example. Joseph had been in Trusts and Estates for twenty-five years, and had taken early retirement. He didn't know what he wanted to do next, but he knew that it had to be "completely different."

Joseph did all of the exercises in this section. I also gave him a personality test, and did "confidential phone calls" on his behalf--a process by which I called people who know him well and asked them about him. I assured them that I would compile the results and not tell him who said what.

Based on all of this information, we developed a number of targets for him to investigate. We also developed a resume that positioned him for these new targets.

Joseph conducted a campaign to get interviews in each of his three target areas. However, once he clearly looked at these new fields, his old field began to look more appealing. (This happened to me years ago when I desperately wanted museum work--until I actually looked into it and found it wasn't for me.)

Joseph decided to stay in his old field--but on the West Coast rather than the East--because he is bothered by the climate in the East and because many of his old friends had moved West. This change in location would get him out of the old rut and give him a new lease on life. But it was a relatively minor change compared with what he originally had in mind.

Industry or Company Size
Many unhappy people may be in essentially the right position but in the wrong industry. A minor adjustment may be all that is needed.

A person could be a lawyer, but it makes a great deal of difference whether that person is a lawyer in a corporation, in a stuffy law firm, or in a not-for-profit organization. A change in industry may end the dissatisfaction.

By the same token, moving from a large company to a small one--or vice versa--could increase your satisfaction.

A man is what he thinks about all day long.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Position or Function
On the other hand, a new field may be what is called for. My own career is a case in point. I had a successful career in computers, advertising and the financial end of business, with a respectable amount of prestige and money. However, when I did the Seven Stories Exercise (to identify those things I enjoyed doing and also did well), I discovered that only one of my "stories" related to my work life. The message was clear: my true enjoyment was coming from those things I was doing on the outside, such as running The Five O'Clock Club and other entrepreneurial ventures. I had a choice to make:

• I could stay in the lucrative field I was in, and continue to do on the side those things that gave me the most satisfaction; or
• I could move my career in the direction of those things I found most satisfying.

Being risk-averse, I was reluctant to give up the twenty-plus years I had invested in a business career for a profession that might have proved to be financially or otherwise unsatisfying. I decided to hedge my bets. I took a job as the chief financial officer of a major outplacement firm, and also headed up one of their career counseling offices. That way, I could slide into the new career, or go back into the old one if I was unhappy.

Many major career changes are made this way. A person somehow gets some experience in the new field while holding on to the old one. In general, it is relatively easy to get experience in the new field if you really want it.

Looking Ahead--A Career Instead of a Job
Assessment will help you decide what you want to do in your next job as well as in the long run. You will become clearer about the kind of boss you work best with and about all the other things that are important to you in a job.

Through your Forty-Year Vision, you will have the opportunity to look ahead to see whether there is some hidden dream that may dramatically influence what you will want to do in both the short and long run. I did my own Forty-Year Vision about fifteen years ago, and the vision I had of my future still drives me today, even though that vision was actually rather vague at the time. Knowing where you would like to wind up in ten, twenty, thirty, or forty years can broaden your ideas about the kinds of jobs you would be interested in today.

The Forty-Year Vision is a powerful exercise. It will help you think long-term and put things into perspective.

The Seven Stories Exercise is equally powerful. Without it, many job hunters develop stilted descriptions of what they have accomplished. But the exercise frees you up to brag a little, and express things very differently. The results will add life to your resume and your interviews, and also dramatically increase your self-confidence.

No Easy Way
It would be nice if you could simply take a test that would tell you what you should be. Unfortunately there is no such sure-fire test. But fortunately, in today's rapidly changing world, we are allowed to be many things: we can be a doctor, a lawyer and an Indian chief. We have an abundance of choices.

A Clear Direction
People are happy when they are working toward their goals. When they get diverted from their goals, they are unhappy. Businesses are the same. When they get diverted from their goals (for instance, because of a major litigation or a threatened hostile takeover), they too are unhappy. Life has a way of sneaking up and distracting both individuals and businesses. Many people are unhappy in their jobs because they don't know where they are going.

People are happy when
they are working towards their goals.
People are unhappy when
they are deflected from their goals--or have no goals.
People without goals are more irked by petty problems on their jobs. Those with goals are less bothered because they have bigger plans. To control your life, you have to know where you are going, and be ready for your next move--in case the ax falls on you.

Even after you take that next job, continue to manage your career. Companies rarely build career paths for their employees any more. Make your own way.


Your health is bound to be affected if,
day after day, you say the opposite of what you feel,
if you grovel before what you dislike
and rejoice at what brings you nothing but misfortune.
Boris Pasternak, Dr. Zhivago

Wherever I went, I couldn't help noticing, the place fell apart. Not that I was ever a big enough wheel in the machine to precipitate its destruction on my own. But that they let me--and other drifters like me-- in the door at all was an early warning signal. Alarm bells should have rung.
Michael Lewis, Liar's Poker

My illness helped me to see that what was missing in a society is what was missing in me: a little heart, a lot of brotherhood.

The 80's were about acquiring wealth, power, prestige. I acquired more . . . than most. But you can acquire all you want and still feel empty. . . . I don't know who will lead us through the 90's, but they must be made to speak to this spiritual vacuum at the heart of American society, this tumor of the soul.
Lee Atwater, formerly of the Republican National Committee,
shortly before he died, Life magazine, February, 1991

I've never been poor, only broke. Being poor is a frame of mind. Being broke is only a temporary situation.
Mike Todd

Natural talent, intelligence, a wonderful education--none of these guarantees success. Something else is needed: the sensitivity to understand what other people want and the willingness to give it to them. Worldly success depends on pleasing others. No one is going to win fame, recognition, or advancement just because he or she thinks it's deserved. Someone else has to think so too.
John Luther