Part 20 (1/2)

Well, let's start with a definition: a job is a job-t.i.tle in a field.

That means, a job has two parts: t.i.tle and field. t.i.tle is really a symbol for what you do. Field is where you do it, or what you do it with.

A dramatic career-change typically involves trying to change both at the same time. It's what's called Difficult Path in the diagram below. Problem with trying to take this difficult path is that you can't claim any prior experience. But if you do it in two steps, ah! That's different.

Let's say you are presently an accountant working for a television network, and you want to make a career change. You want to become a reporter on new medical developments.

If you try the Difficult Path above, if you go out into the job-market as the first-accountant in the television industry-and you try to jump to a new career as the second-reporter in medicine-well, that's a pretty large jump. Of course, sometimes you can pull that off, with a bit of luck and a huge number of links on LinkedIn, friends on Facebook, or followers on Twitter.

But what if?

What if that doesn't work? Then you're likely to run into the following scenario: Interviewer: ”So, I see you want to be a reporter. Were you ever a reporter before?” Your answer: No.

Interviewer: ”And I see you want to be in the medical field. Were you ever in the medical field before?” Your answer: No.

End of story. You are toast.

On the other hand, if you were to change only one of these at a time-field or job-t.i.tle-you could always claim prior experience.

In the diagram above, let's say you move from A to B to D, over a period of three years, and in two steps.

Interviewer during your first move (a change just in your field): ”Were you ever in this kind of work before?” Your answer: ”Yes, I've been an accountant for number of years.”

Interviewer during your second move (a change now in your job-t.i.tle): ”Were you ever in this kind of work before?” Your answer: ”Yes, I've been in medicine for number of years.”

Another example: let's say in that diagram, you make a different set of two moves over a period of three years: you move from A to C to D.

Interviewer during your first move (a change just in your job-t.i.tle): ”Were you ever in this kind of work before?” Your answer: ”Yes, I've been in television for number of years.”

Interviewer during your second move (a change just in your field): ”Have you ever done this kind of work before?” Your answer: ”Yes, I've been a reporter for number of years.”

By doing career-change in two steps, each time you make a move you are able to legitimately claim that you've had prior experience.

Needless to say, your likelihood of getting hired each time has just increased tremendously.

The Fifth Way to Change Careers:

Finding Out What the Job-Market Will Need

With a run of just plain bad luck, you may have used all four previous ways of changing careers, but nothing worked. You're stuck. Your needs or wishes are dying on the vine.

Well, then be glad there is this fifth way of changing careers. It is not based on your needs or wishes, but on projections about the coming needs and wishes of the job-market, during the present decade, 20102020. It starts at the opposite end: not what you want, but what the market wants.

These are typically called Hot Jobs, though I'd take that with a grain of salt, if I were you. There are dozens of these lists online and off (just Google Hot Jobs). Just remember: take what you read, wherever you read it, not with just a grain of salt, but with a barrel. ”Projections” is just a nice word for ”guesses.” The way that some of these guys and gals decide what const.i.tutes a ”hot job” would make your hair stand on end. I know; I've talked with them. (Think dart boards.) The U.S. government gets into this projections game with their Occupational Outlook Handbook 20122013, which you can find at your local library, or better yet, online at e Prince calls it) and speaks directly to the right side of your brain (”the experimental self”), whose job is to engineer change. Do fun things like this, as you're exploring a new life for yourself.

8. One final word of caution here: if you're just graduating from high school, don't go get a college degree in some career field just because you think that this will guarantee you a job! It will not.

I wish you could see my e-mails, filled with bitter letters from people who believed this myth, went and got a degree in a field that looked just great, thought it would be a snap to find a job, but are still unemployed two years later. Good times or bad. They are bitter (often), angry (always), and disappointed in a society that they feel lied to them. Now that they have that worthless degree, and still can't find a job, they find a certain irony in the phrase, ”Our country believes in getting a job by degrees.” To avoid this costly mistake, what you must do is take the choosing of a career into your own hands, with the help of this book, and then explore the career you've chosen down to the last inch, find out if you love it, and then go get your degree. Not because it guarantees a job, but because you feel pa.s.sion, enthusiasm, and energy with this choice. You feel you have found the kind of life that other people only dream of.

1. In case you care, a scholarly a.n.a.lysis of the limitations of O*NET by Robert J. Harvey at Virginia Tech may be found by putting ”Robert J. Harvey Construct Validity” into your favorite search engine, and clicking on the first entry. To keep up-to-date on what O*NET is doing, or has to offer, you can go to .

4. Archimedes (ca. 235 BCE), Greek inventor, mathematician, and physicist. His saying here is loosely paraphrased.

I do not think there is any thrill.

That can go through the human heart Like that felt by the inventor As he sees some creation of the brain Unfolding to success....