GET HIRED

Alisha S Pean

• Publisher: House of Vanity
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781087906003
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Careers

The job market is becoming more and more competitive with emerging talent, artificial intelligence, and job losses. This book will equip you with the information necessary to remain competitive in the job market or position yourself as valuable in your organization. The eBook is a collection of steps and experiences of my journey from holding many jobs, in many industries, to finally understanding where my talent can thrive. This book is a guaranteed return on your investment; it costs less than your first hour of work at your current and/or new job!

“Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.”

-Aristotle

Step 1: Self-Assessment & Filling the Gap

Let’s begin with where you are in your career development now. Are you a college student/graduate? Entry level professional? Transitioning? Unemployed? Below you’ll find perceived advantages and common disadvantages of all stages.

Career Development Stage	Advantages	Common Disadvantages
College students/recent graduates	Knowledgeable, coachable internships	Little to no work experience in major field
Entry level professionals (1-5 yrs experience)	Secured position in your desired field and gaining experience	Not taking advantage of training opportunities, little to no relationship building in industry or organization
Transitioning professionals (promotions, career changes, and job dissatisfaction)	Transferable skills, expertise, knowledgeable	Poor or no planning for transition until an uncomfortable event occurs
Unemployed (gaps in employment, laid off, fired)	Time for intensive job searching and/or learning a new skill	No activity during job search, employment gaps

Questions to Ask Yourself

• What do I know about my industry field and where it's headed?

• What education is required to increase my value in my current stage to upskill?

• What skills am I missing that would make me more marketable for the position I want?

• Am I operating in a worker mentality or developing a talent work ethic?

The first step in identifying your skills gap will require some research. Some basic tools for assessments are personality tests, researching job descriptions, and looking in the Occupational Outlook Handbook.

PERSONALITY TESTS

Personality tests can help you to identify soft skills like communication style, emotional intelligence, and other social skills. Soft skills are very important in any occupation and are often tested for in pre-employment assessments (these will be addressed in Tip 4). The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is a common, trusted (Psychology based) test you can take online for insight into the behaviors that shape your personality.

Understanding who you are first can help you make better career decisions. For example, if you are typed as an Introvert, working in an environment where people are talking all day long may not be the best place for you to thrive. Introverts process their world on the inside and being “on” all day long can deplete the source of your energy. Working in this type of environment can cause social anxiety, stress, and burn out. Inversely, could you imagine being an extrovert working as a Librarian?! You would probably explode because you wouldn’t be able to expend all the awesome energy you have inside you. You would most likely over do it at after work happy hour just to release your need for socializing! I encourage you to explore this test further to make better sense of how you process the world and use it to help you choose the best type of work culture for you.

RESEARCH JOB DESCRIPTIONS

Researching job descriptions can be helpful to identify common skills listed by a variety of employers. You can use search sites like Indeed, LinkedIn, and ZipRecruiter to browse for job descriptions and view duties, education requirements, and other skills associated with your prospective job. The key is to look for skills and duties that are consistent among employers. Let’s paint a picture of how to do this process effectively with an example:

Occupation: Administrative Assistant

Industry: Logistics & Transportation

Universal Skills: Data entry, Microsoft Office, QuickBooks, Organization, Customer Oriented

Education Requirement: Associates or Bachelors

Experience Level: 1-3 years

Language Requirement: English

In this example, an Administrative Assistant (AA) is a general occupation, however, the skills can vary between industries. An AA can have a heavy data entry requirement for dealing with incoming and outgoing shipments daily for a logistics company, but an AA for a finance company will be more involved with accounting and bookkeeping duties. The educational requirement can also be targeted differently for different industries. In this example, Logistics and Transportation can require at least an Associates in Business Management, and Finance companies can request at least an Associates in Accounting and/or Business Management. To take it a step further, let's look at language requirements, after all we do live in a melting pot and customers targeted by a company may not primarily speak English. A logistics company may transport goods internationally, let's say to China. How’s your Chinese? Exactly! The average American does not speak Chinese so guess what? You’ve been overlooked for someone who is bilingual. This is a problem that is all too common for job seekers. Hopefully you are beginning to understand the importance of the process involved in job searching and why shooting your shot on Indeed all day may be the reason that you haven’t been successful in securing interviews or job offers. Use the space below to record the results of your own job research. Remember, the details of industry are very important.

Job Research Results

Occupation:

Industry:

Universal Skills:

Education Requirement:

Experience Level:

Language Requirement:

Occupational Outlook Handbook

The Occupational Outlook Handbook (OOH) is an additional resource to help you make an informed decision about your career path. The OOH is updated and maintained by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and lists the duties, salary, skills, education, and outlook for hundreds of occupations. I will include a link to the website at the end of this section. The Bureau of Labor Statistics OOH serves as a credible source for verifying that universal information we discussed in the last section (Job Research). The most valuable information you are going to draw from this resource is the outlook of your chosen profession. Where will your job be in the next 10 years? One of the biggest mistakes high school/college students make is choosing a profession that is declining because they did not know the outlook. Hey, don’t beat yourself up about it because, like financial education, career development is not taught in school or learned at home for many. Some get caught in a tug of war between what they love/are good at and where the field itself is headed; this too is a common theme with transitioning professionals. You may find that you’ll need to update some information in your activity from the Job Research section; feel free to add “Job Outlook” under langu...