Looking for The Job You Used to Have
I lost my job, but I liked the kind of work I was doing. How can I find That Kind of job, again?
You begin, of course, with the Internet. Your best friend here is a search engine, such as Google (www.google.com). You put several terms into the search engine at the same time: name of the job-title you previously held, your geographical preference, your field, and the word “jobs.” See if that turns up anything.
Next, you put the same terms into an omnibus job-search engine such as Indeed.com or SimplyHired.com that sweeps through many if not most of the Internet’s job listings, in one fell swoop.
What do I do if nothing turns up, there?
Well, that wouldn’t be surprising. This is a brutal economy, right now, as you know. So, plan B, you’ve got to do some thinking. Dust off your brain, and ask yourself what jobs would be related to what you used to do. Think about questions like these, to find Related Jobs:
1. What supplies, equipment, or support services did you use at your last job? Would the suppliers or manufacturers of that equipment or those materials be willing to tell you other places where their equipment or supplies are used? For example, if you worked at a digital photo place, would those who supplied the photo paper or the digital equipment be willing to tell you where else their customers are? It can’t hurt to ask them. Maybe that information is confidential, but then again, maybe it isn’t. If you do get the names of other places that use the equipment or supplies you are familiar with, don’t think they’re unapproachable until they have a known vacancy. Once you have their names, you can approach them anyway, and please do. (Somebody there may have quit just that morning.)
2. What machinery or technologies did you learn, master, or improve upon, at your last job? Can you find out what other places use such machinery or technology? Try. You could then approach them and ask them if any of them would be interested in hiring you. Sure, they’ve cut their staffing due to budget constraints; but they may have cut too close to the bone, and now find they need to hire someone with your skills and experience.
3. Who supplied training or development to you, at your last job? If it was an outside training organization, would they be interested in hiring you—assuming you’re good at communication? It doesn’t hurt to approach them and ask. Some training places will be losing customers, as their former clients cut back; some training places may be struggling for their own life. But not all. It never hurts to ask.
4. What companies, organizations, or customers did you serve, in your last job? Since they know you, you can approach them and inquire if any of them are in a position to hire someone with your talents and experience.
5. What community or service organizations were interested in, or a participant in, or helped fund any projects you headed up, at your last job? Would any of them be interested in hiring someone with your known talent and experience? Contact them, and ask.
6. What were the skills and problem-solving abilities that you learned or demonstrated at your last job? Can you think of any place that is wrestling with similar problems that would call for those kinds of skills? If so, approach them and ask if they could use you. Remember, in the jargon of management, you are presenting yourself to them as a resource-broker, not a job-beggar.
7. What temp agencies, outsourcing agencies, or subcontractors were used at your last job? Would any of them be interested in hiring you—temporarily, or for a one-time contract, or longer term? Anyway, approach them, and ask.
8. You know your own community, I presume. You sleep, shop, and play there, even if you didn’t work there. What kinds of needs does it have, that aren’t being taken care of? What kind of services are people willing to pay for, even in brutal times, because they can’t—or don’t have time to—do them for themselves? Are your skills and experiences such, that you could start your own little business, to fill those needs?
And if I pursue some of these Related Jobs, but come up empty, what should I think about, next?
Take a hard look at your hobbies that you’ve done in your leisure time, over the years. The late John Crystal used to define leisure as “what you do when no one is telling you what to do.” So, what do you do when no one is telling you what to do?
Maybe you’ve spent quite a bit of time on one thing or another, and become something of an informal expert.
Hobbies? What kind of hobbies?
Right off the top of my head, I can think of such hobbies as: antiques, bicycling, birding, boating, camping, cars, collecting, computers, cooking, dance, electronics, exercising, flowers, gardening, horses, hunting, martial arts, math, models, motorcycles, oceanography, pets, photography, scrapbooking, skiing, sewing, and woodworking. More complete lists can be found on the Internet at such sites as http://tinyurl.com/ce86y6 (the site has the memorable name of Buzzle.com).
The question, of course, is: are there any kinds of jobs you could look for, that are related to your favorite hobby? To find out, put your hobby words along with the word “jobs” into your favorite Internet search engine such as Google.
Alternative sources of information: Go to libraries or stores with large magazine sections. Browse. See if there’s a magazine that covers your favorite hobby; buy it, and read it from cover to cover to see what kinds of jobs are advertised there.
I see the merit of doing a lot of hard thinking here, but why didn’t my old job-title pop up some vacancies during my Internet job-search?
Well, it probably did if you were looking for simple job titles like “accountant” or “plumber” or “secretary.”
But with any title more complex, you may indeed turn up nothing. That’s because the job-market in general, and various jobs in particular, are always going through a process of shapeshifting.
Shapeshifting, as you may recall, is a common theme in mythology, folklore, and fiction, down through history, in many cultures of the world. The word refers to mythical creatures—shapeshifters—that have the ability to change their shape, size, and physical appearance at will, often as they are moving about, or being pursued. (An apt metaphor therefore for the jobs we may be chasing during our job-hunt.)
This idea of shapeshifting originated of course in biology and human development. If someone were from Mars I could show them several pictures: one of a baby, one of a young child, one of an adolescent, then a forty-year-old, and an eighty-year-old. And they might not guess that this is all the same person, me, in different time periods.
I change shape, and so do you, just not as magically or quickly as in mythology and fiction. But in the end, we are all shapeshifters.
And so are jobs. And, therefore, job-titles.
To see this shapeshifting in the case of one such title, teacher, go to http://tinyurl.com/27ofza to view an eight-minute video on YouTube, called “Pay Attention.” Click on it, and play it. See how much the work of a teacher is shifting shape before our eyes. Eventually the job-title will change as well.
That’s what job-titles do. “Personnel director” has become “human resources professional,” “librarian” has become “information-management specialist,” “salesman” has become “sales manager,” and so it goes—on and on and on.
Job-titles are changing all the time, because the job beneath that title has shifted its shape. That’s why pursuing your old job-title during your job-hunt often turns up nothing. That old title has now fallen into disuse. At least at some companies or organizations. And you may not have guessed, as yet, what their new title is.
How then do I dig beneath the job-title I used to hold?
You can dig beneath the job-title by learning to analyze jobs in terms of their component parts, even as you can describe a flower in terms of its individual petals.
A job—any job—has seven parts to it. If it were a flower it would have seven petals. The two most important parts to a job are:
1. Your functional/transferable skills.
2. The field you use those skills in.
The remaining parts of any job are:
3. The working environment, or working conditions, at that job.
4. The people you are working with, or serving, at that job.
5. What your goals are, as you do that work.
6. Geography: what part of the country, or the world, that job has you working in.
7. And finally, what the salary or other compensation is, at that job.
There you have it: beneath an unknown job-title lies skills, field, work-environment, people, goals, geography, and compensation.
It will do you lots of good if you practice thinking of a job in these terms, rather than in terms of job-title.
What kind of practice?
Well, to keep it simple and familiar, let’s try analyzing that job you loved, which you just lost. Or lost a while back.
Even if there was no love lost, try analyzing your last full-time or part-time job, anyway.
To help you here is a little diagram—a Flower diagram, naturally—which you should copy onto a larger piece of blank paper.
Some guidance in filling it out might be helpful, so here it is:
1. The Transferable Skills You Used at Your Last Job. What were the main skills, or your personal favorites, that you used to accomplish the work you did there? Transferable skills can be used in any job or career, because they are not rooted in just one career. Choose three to five from the list below:
Once you have your three to five, put them in order of importance, at that job, then copy them to the center circle of the Flower diagram (Transferable Skills).
2. The Special Knowledges or Field at Your Last Job. What field was your last job in? What special knowledges did your job expect you to be familiar with? List no more than three to five. Here is a sampler to get you going:
Put your choice(s) on petal #2, in the Flower diagram (Special Knowledges).
3. The People You Served, or Served With, at Your Last Job. List the characteristics of the people you loved working with, or serving, there. Here is a sampler of characteristics you might find were important to you, at that job. Choose any number of them, up to ten.
Put your choices in their order of importance to you, on petal #3 in the Flower diagram (People Environments).
4. The Goals Your Work Was Trying to Achieve, at Your Last Job. It’s easy to keep busy, at a job. But that busyness is meaningless unless it’s working toward some end. So, when you were busy there, what were you trying to achieve?
I will list some broad goals here. Pick or choose the one that seems to you was the overall, if unspoken, goal there. If you don’t see anything that applies, then invent your own definition of what you were trying to achieve at that job. If “just keeping busy” is your answer, then think of what goal you would like to have been working toward:
Goal #1. You were working with the human Mind; you were trying to bring more knowledge, truth, or clarity into the world. (If so, how? and concerning what?)
Goal #2. You were working on the human Body; you were trying to deal with the human need for shelter, food, and clothing; you were trying to bring more wholeness, fitness, or health into the world, more binding up of the body’s wounds and strength, more feeding of the hungry, and clothing of the poor. (If so, what was the particular issue your work was focused on, there?)
Goal #3. You were working with the Eyes or other senses; you were trying to bring more beauty into the world. (If so, what kind of beauty: art, music, flowers, photography, painting, staging, decorating, crafts, clothing, jewelry, or what? in that job.)
Goal #4. You were working with the human Heart; you were trying to bring more love and compassion into the world, in your work there. (If so, love or compassion for whom? Or for what?)
Goal #5. You were working with the human Will, or conscience; you were trying to bring more morality, more justice, more righteousness, more honesty into the world. (If so, in what areas of human life or history, in particular? And in what geographical area?)
Goal #6. You were working with the human Spirit; you were trying to bring more laughter, more spirituality, more faith, more compassion, more forgiveness, more love for God, into the world. (If so, with what ages, people, or with what parts of human life?)
Goal #7. You were working on the Earth; you were trying to ensure there is more protection of this fragile planet, more exploration—not exploitation—of this island in the Universe. (If so, which problems or challenges in particular, were you trying to deal with, in that job?)
Enroll your target goal at your last job, in your own words, on petal #4 in the Flower diagram. Next?
5. The Working Conditions at Your Last Job. To begin with, were you working indoors, or out? Were you pretty constant as to place, or did you travel a lot? Were you free to keep your own hours, or did you have to punch in on a time clock? Were you pretty much working alone, or were you a constant member of a team? Were you given lots of room for your creativity or was your job pretty much prescribed as to what you did? Were you overly supervised, until you could just scream, or were you undersupervised, so you had to guess a lot as to what you were supposed to do next? Those are the kinds of questions that the subject “working conditions” refers to. Put the chief characteristics that stand out in your mind about your last job, and then enroll them on petal #5 on the Flower diagram (Working Conditions).
6. The Salary or Compensation You Had at Your Last Job. This petal #6 (Responsibility and Salary) should be easy to fill out. You know what you were paid, you know at what level you operated within the company or organization.
And lastly,
7. Where, Geographically, Your Last Job Was Located. Chances are, it’s where you still live; but maybe not. Put down where the job was located, here on the petal at the eleven o’clock position on the Flower diagram (it’s labeled #1, because the central part of the Flower diagram has no number). If you want to go the extra mile, if you liked the location, put down three reasons why you liked it.
That’s it?
Yes, that’s it. You’ve dug beneath the job-title to what it is you essentially did, in your last job (never mind what title they gave it). But now that you know how to do the analyzing, we turn in the next chapter to your filling out the same diagram—only this time with respect to your future career, your dream job.
This involves your taking inventory of yourself. Yes, I know, I know: this seems so silly. You’ve lived with yourself all these years, and you certainly should know by now who you are.
Trouble is: it’s not just jobs that have shifted shape. You have shapeshifted, too. I hope. As John Cardinal Newman said: “To grow is to change, and to become perfect is to change often.” So a new inventory of you is essential during this brutal economic time.
Conclusion: Here is the ultimate truth if you want to live a life that matters: You shouldn’t decide what work to do, until you first know just who you presently are.
For, what you do should flow directly from who you are. That is the key to living a life that makes a difference.
