Thursday, February 26, 2015

How to locate "your" jon - phase four

Now that we have talked about the "no-essentials" (but often, extremely important) aspects of a job search, let's get involved with making certain you land the opportunity that is best suited for you.

Understand, I have no idea of your background or your work experience, but having dealt with many hundreds of job seekers over the years, I have developed my own system that has worked well for most of those who are really serious about there future.  I trust that you are.  If you are - in fact, serious, I will expect to see a resume or a reasonable facsimile in my mail box in the next couple of days (sherwood8028@hotmail.com) 

Let's start with an honest answer to the question:  "How did you get where you are today, vocationally speaking?

For me to be honest, I will tell you that far too may of the people I have interviewed over the years have literally stumbled onto the direction of their careers.  If they graduated from college, they started on a job for which their studies and training had prepared them.  Unfortunately, only a few of them had seriously considered their future; most, in fact, many had trusted their employer to provide a proven track leading to retirement.  That might have worked for their parents, but this generation is facing a far different future.  And I must add, a future that contains far more promise than was available in former years.  Do I need to repeat that claim?  I am not using a crystal ball, I am telling it like it is.  I left after nearly seven years in the USAF, almost all of which was involved in personnel affairs, obtained a college degree in Business Administration, and the only job I could find in the city of Atlanta, GA in Personnel, was a clerks job that any high school graduate could have handled.  The other day I took a close look at the corporate structures in Nashville, TN, and estimated there had to be thousands of the jobs I would have been qualified for in my day.

You read the newspapers in any major city and you will find hundreds upon hundreds of potential job openings, yet if you read the business pages, you are likely to find articles suggesting the un-employment rate is surpassing previous estimates.  They are suggesting "bad" times ahead, while ignoring the fact that the Stock Market is at or approaching an all time high.  Yes, I know the Stock Market is not a accurate gauge of our economy, but try to tell that to the average person going to and from their place of employment.  The truth is, we allow the media to control our emotions and never stop to realize, statistics have very little or nothing to do with our career advancement.

That depends primarily upon your attitude and mine.  Here is the most important fact.  If you are not paying close attention to your skills, and your employer's appreciation of your effort, you may fall prey to those business page predictions.

Far too many people prefer to think of that vacation in the Bahamas they plan to take next year without a thought to the path they have chosen to provide for their future.  They seldom if ever pay that much attention to the lives of those with similar skills working in the same work environment who are more intent on advancing their careers by enhancing their educational credentials.

In my day, we had confidence in our governing authorities while the media in our day appear to believe that the behavior of our elected officials is far more important than the efforts that most make to create a more perfect society and more equitable distribution of the wealth in the nation. The ones that are behind our headlines and the spots on prime time TV, more often talk about the problems happening elsewhere, rather than dealing, effectively with the inequities here at home.

You may think I digress and I have, only to point to the fact that we seem to be prone to fret more about the so-called "big" problems, while ignoring the necessity to deal with issues like our bank accounts and much more importantly, our paychecks.

They - those others in the news, have little or nothing to say about your financial future as it all depends on how we deal with the opportunities that are everywhere these days. 

So, it is time for you and I to take a inventory of the skills we possess and those we have ignored and examine the possibilities of those we might obtain by a few days in the classroom.  Actually, you can learn a lot by just taking advantage of the programs one can discover on our TV sets.

You can do it two ways; one, by initiating your own search or we can talk about the possibilities that may have escaped your attention.

But for now, you need to take inventory of where you are, today, and where you would like to in two or three years.  Start with your assets, all of them.  Write them down and re-examine them, over and over again.  You will discover some that you need to discard and others that you need to pay closer attention to.

So, now is the time, this is the day, to get started.  What say you?

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