Week #11- What Color is Your Parachute- Ch. 9

This week I read Chapter 9 of What Color is Your Parachute, and again it was a fantastic chapter. This one was about how you get to chose where you work. After doing the flower petal exercise you then get to figure this out. The first step is that you have to look at your Flower Diagram and look at the fifth petal and then choose the top three of your favorite Knowledges. Write them down on a piece of paper or on your phone and rank them in order of importance to you. Then look at the Skills petal and chose the top five favorite Transferable skills and again write them down on the same page. Then take this page and show it to at least five people who know you, family, friends, or work professionals who know you and then ask them what what jobs or work that your page suggests to them. Or you can take your skills and make a Venn diagram and see how they all relate to each other to see which job would be best for you. When people suggest all these different things to you, make sure you jot them down so you remember everything. Then once you've talked to everyone, sit down and look at everything people have suggested and circle the ones you like the best and research some things.

The next thing you have to do is to try on jobs before you decide which ones to pursue. Use LinkedIn and see if you can get into contact with people in a field that you are interested in. See if you can go to Starbucks with them just to talk about their job and what they actually do. He gives a bunch of good questions to ask them.

Next, you have to find out what kinds of organizations have the jobs you are looking for. He gives an example of teachers. When people think about where teachers are employed they only think of schools, but he says no, there are tons of other places where teachers are employed at like, corporate training and educational departments, workshop sponsors, foundations, private research firms, educational consultants, teachers' associations, professional and trade societies, military bases, state and local councils on higher education, fire and police training academies and so much more. So do your homework and look to see all of the different options that you might have.

The fourth thing is that you need to find names of particular places that interest you. This way you can use LinkedIn and other platforms like that to help you figure out who people are that work at the places that you want to work and try to get yourself an in with them.

The next thing is that you need to learn as much as you can about a place before formally approaching them. This shows that you've spent the time to learn about the company and it shows that you really want to be there and that you are a hard worker.

The last thing is, you need to send thank you notes. If someone has gotten you in contact with someone important send them a thank you note. If someone gives you their time to go and talk to them about a job, send them a thank you note.