You Majored in What? (38 page)

I graduated with a major in sociology at a time when the economy was verging on a recession and there were no jobs out there. At least that’s what the newspapers said. I was determined to have a job by graduation, so I took the first job I could get: as a management trainee in retail merchandising for a large department store.

About a month later I was transferred to the human resources office at one of the stores. I didn’t really like the job much, but the one thing I did like was working with the manager of the department store’s restaurant. He liked to hire people with disabilities because he had a sister with a disability and he knew how much she had struggled in the job market (this was before the Americans with Disabities Act was passed). Because part of my job was to interview candidates for positions in the store, he taught me how to ask people about their strengths and focus on what they could do, not on their disabilities. I gradually learned that the only part of the day I truly enjoyed was when I was interviewing the candidates for his restaurant.

With that nugget of understanding, I quit my job to become a caseworker for a nonprofit agency serving individuals who were blind. I also took a huge pay cut. My first day on the job was disappointing. I remember telling my parents (yes, I had moved back home to save money) that it was going to be like working with my grandmother every day because the clients were so old. Within a week or two, though, I found it was actually fun and I enjoyed the freedom of driving from client to client on backcountry roads, helping them with everything from reading their mail to sharing cups of tea while they talked about their family issues. (If you’ve ever seen the movie
Doc Hollywood
, it was like the scene where Michael J. Fox is reading letters about the Pakistani to one of his patients.)

But after a year or so, I realized that with a master’s degree, I could double my salary and move out of my parent’s home. So I went to grad school where a whole new thread of an idea developed—working with children with disabilities—and then I went on and on through more jobs and degrees to the point where another butterfly emerged and an anthropology class taken during my sophomore year in college resulted in my finding an agent for this book in 2008.

Did I know exactly what I wanted to do? No. I had way too many Possible Lives that looked interesting. Was I stressed? You bet. I thought it was bad not to have one specific job objective. And my rocky path sure didn’t seem as smooth and easy as my friends’ careers. I had switched from worrying about
THE QUESTION
to worrying about
THE JOB
. When would I finally find
THE JOB
? How would I know which job was the right one to go after?

No one explained to me how the system works. I thought, as many of you do, that I had to have a fixed goal—I had to have a plan. No one had clued me in about the butterfly and how often it would change my life. No one taught me it was OK to wander and experiment, even though that’s what I was doing. After all, I didn’t have a specific goal or plan, but I did have intentions. Sometimes the intention was just to
have
a job, but even then I kept one mindset in place at all times:
learning.
What could I learn from whatever I was doing? And how might I use that knowledge in a job I’d enjoy even more than the one I was currently in?

But for a minute let’s get back to Lisa, the semidesperate and discouraged recent graduate. In just a few sentences, Lisa summed up many of the thoughts, fears, and quite frankly, misconceptions that most recent graduates have about their future. Let’s examine her statements and see if we can make her (and you) feel better:

“It’s September, and I still don’t have a job.”

This statement comes from an arbitrary definition of time and where one should be or ought to be at that time. As Gail Sheehy noted in her book
Passages,
twentysomethings often feel as if everything they do (or don’t do) is going to have a major impact on their lives. Clearly, Lisa has decided in her mind that not having a job by September is a failure somehow. On its face, her statement is true: it is September, she doesn’t have a job, and she would like to have one. But she’s putting a heavy emotional weight on her shoulders by telling herself what she
should
have. She would feel much better if she could treat it as a very simple statement of where she is now (“it’s September and I’d like to find a job”) and focus on the future, not the discouragement she’s feeling. Feeling discouraged won’t make things better, and here’s a little tip from cognitive-behavioral psychology: feelings aren’t always accurate. Just because you feel something doesn’t make it true. But Lisa is thinking a whole lot more than just “I should have a job.” She’s also thinking that there’s something wrong, that she’s done something wrong, that she might never find a decent job, and so on. Here’s where positive thinking and the problem-solving mindset need to kick in: refuse to buy the problem and instead focus on the solution.

“I totally blew the last interview. . . .”

Lisa and I discussed this, and yes, it did sound as if her last interview wasn’t exactly superb. She explained that it had come up so quickly she didn’t have much time to prepare and she simply didn’t answer the questions well. So we took a few minutes to focus on what went right: Did she answer any questions well? It turned out she did. Did she dress appropriately for it? Yes, she did. And most important, did she learn something from the experience? You bet. Just because you didn’t do well in one instance doesn’t mean you won’t do well the next time. Learn. Keep learning.

“. . . which would have been the perfect job”

OK, let’s clear up that fantasy right now. There is no one “perfect job.” In fact, you’ll be pleased to know there are numerous “perfect jobs.” I’ve had several of them myself. You will too. You are turning yourself into a fortune teller when you tell yourself you missed the perfect job. How do you know? Besides, that type of thinking will take you nowhere but back to the land of regrets and “shoulda woulda coulda.” You know by now what I think about regrets. Remember how you’re no longer allowed to say “I should have majored in_”? New rule: you’re not allowed to say “That would have been the perfect job.” You are where you are, so focus on the next opportunity. Author Merle Shain once wrote a book called
Some Men Are More Perfect Than Others.
I like to use that same theory in the job world: there are no perfect jobs, but some jobs are more perfect than others. Don’t worry, a perfect job awaits. And there will be another perfect job after that. Because you will make it perfect with your strengths, talents, and gifts. You will craft it into the “perfect” job.

“It’s just for a part-time job, so I don’t even know why I’m bothering.”

Why do we dismiss opportunities based on superficial characteristics or how they might look to others? Why is a part-time job automatically less valuable than a full-time job? Because here’s what Lisa was missing: the part-time job involved doing exactly what she wanted to do—writing, directing, and producing video shorts for a local news station. It was a chance to get her foot in the door of the very field she was interested in (her ultimate goal was a position at CNN), but she was less than enthusiastic because it wasn’t full time. Sure, full-time jobs pay better, they generally come with benefits, and they sound better when describing them to friends, but Lisa was missing the point—and the true value—of this part-time opportunity. She was upset because she would have to keep her waitress job awhile longer. That’s short-term thinking. When you’re pursuing a Possible Life, you have to focus on what you can accomplish now and where it might take you, not the problems. Remember the quote about driving at night? Lisa can only see a few hundred feet ahead at this point, but there’s every chance this job will lead to a full-time one in her field once she gets the experience. And if it doesn’t, and turns out to be a dead-end job, she’ll figure that out soon enough and move on to the next plan. But when she moves on, she’ll have more skills (and maybe some good references) to take with her.

“All my friends have moved on and they’re starting these really great careers.”

This is comparisonitis and it is a deadly disease. Here’s the deal with comparing yourself to others: you’re always going to look good or bad depending on whom you choose to compare yourself with. You have to be
you,
with all your gifts and talents and, yes, issues. The minute you compare yourself to others, you’ve lost your focus. Your career path is about you and where you want to go, not what your friends are doing. Besides, how does Lisa know that they’re all happy in those “really great careers”? I’ve received many calls from people in “dream jobs” desperate to find a way out. Never assume how others are doing regardless of what they say.

MOVING FORWARD

There are lots of rules out there about the job search. And some of them are good to follow. It’s hard to argue with the linear types who major in engineering, set those goals, and move right into that engineering career. But when you let yourself become discouraged or depressed by all the rules that don’t fit you, then they’re no longer helping you.

One potential criticism of a system that encourages wandering is that somehow the people who follow it aren’t competitive with the more linear, focused people who have a specific goal and shoot right toward it. The system, goes the criticism, is too vague. Well, you can’t be who you aren’t. If you don’t have a specific goal, you have to start where you are. But then you also have to be doubly prepared with the best résumé and cover letter possible and the best interview skills so that you can match (and quite often surpass) the more linear-focused candidates. And be willing to act as if you want the job you’re interviewing for until you find a clearer direction.

A metaphor I like to use to demonstrate the power of Wise Wanderers like you is “the Chicago Way” from the movie
The Untouchables.
In
The Untouchables,
Sean Connery plays Jim Malone, a streetwise cop in Chicago. He’s advising Kevin Costner, who plays FBI agent Elliot Ness, on the way to bring down Al Capone’s gang. He says: “You wanna know how you do it? Here’s how: They pull a knife; you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital; you send one of his to the morgue! That’s the Chicago way, and that’s how you get Capone. Now do you want to do that? Are you ready to do that?”

Now no one is suggesting you follow that advice literally. Knives and guns will not help you at the job interview, and there is
nothing
funny about campus violence. What Connery/ Malone is saying is that you have to know what your competition is thinking, you have to be better prepared than your competition, and you have to be willing to put in extra effort. So how should you, as a now certified Wise Wanderer, use “the Chicago Way” metaphor?

• While other job seekers just think about what they might want to do, you
use the Wise Wandering System
(and do the exercises again if necessary) to analyze your career plans and
create career scenarios
.

• While other job seekers try to fit into a linear path, you have taken advantage of
chaos theory
to get the most out of
synchronistic moments and the butterfly effect
.

• While other job seekers write résumés, you
have written a targeted résumé
that demonstrates the power and value of your education, mindsets, and experimental wanderings.

• While other job seekers prepare for an interview by reading a few things on the Internet, you have completed a
SWOT analysis
before each interview.

• While other job seekers tell their strengths to employers, you have
prepared powerful stories
to show your strengths.

• While other job seekers might read the company Web site to do research, you
became a corporate anthropologist
,
unearthing new information and insight.

• While others just attended class (or not!), you have mined your classes and your major for the value of what you were learning and make sure you let the employer know about it.

You deserve to be the first person considered for whatever job you seek.
But you’ll only get what you deserve if you take the steps necessary to develop the skills and knowledge needed to tackle the job market.

Here are ten suggestions for moving forward with your life, whether you are still seeking that first real job or have found it and are ready to do something else:

1. Make Chaos Theory Your Friend

You’ve noticed that this book is not one of those “find a job in twenty-four hours” guides or a compendium of innumerable resources or suggestions for places to work. There’s a reason for that: chaos theory. It’s too complex. There is no way one book can reach everyone’s needs, particularly when it comes to providing resources for every possible career field. And with everything changing so quickly, any Web sites or references I might recommend could easily be gone by the time you read this. I chose to teach you to fish rather than handing you the fish, with the confidence that you’re smart enough not to starve while you find that first fish. There are literally hundreds of books and thousands of Web sites that can connect you to the most current information about paths you want to follow. And being a Wise Wanderer, you’re an expert at researching and experimenting already.

The mindsets and skills you have developed through the metaphor of chaos theory will help you navigate any choppy waters you encounter in the future. You might be interested to know that chaos theory is increasingly appearing in articles about management due to the constant change and complexity in the world. New trends emerge constantly and companies have to be chaos based to handle the changes. Constantly assess what you know, what you don’t know, and what you need to find out. Consider possible outcomes and create scenarios that will help you predict the future (but don’t try to see too far ahead!). Build up your personal and professional resilience so that you can handle job or even career changes with aplomb.