So you don't know what you want to do next?
So you don’t know what you want to do or be next? I assume that you’re reading all kinds of books and listening to podcasts and talking to people as you’re trying to figure this out (I share my favorites at the end of this post). I think that a big part of the challenge is just getting a sense of the huge variety of things that people do to make a living. You’ve no doubt heard people say things like “you’ve got to network!”. But with whom? What if you really don’t know where to begin? Let’s start at the top of the funnel, as it were, with different directions, so that you can eventually talk to people who are doing something that you might like to do, too.
For me, the world after college divided up into a few silos: medicine, academia, law, and everything else. The first three involve going to grad school. You’re in academia now and looking to get out. Medical school and law school have clearly defined paths for entry; if those interest you, start studying for the MCAT and LSAT. What about “everything else”? Try this.
Make a list of 3-5 things that you like to do. Here’s my list: cooking, drinking cocktails, reading, fishing.
Go to www.Indeed.com and start searching for jobs that seem connected to these activities. I started with cooking and Illinois (Indeed.com asks for a city/state/zip). Not surprisingly, a lot of jobs for cooks and culinary instructors turned up. I actually would like to go to culinary school, so that’s kind of interesting to me. Here’s one that I didn’t expect: “Cannabis Class Instructor/Educator”. I wonder if this is where Jeff Spicoli is working today? Here’s another that I wouldn’t have thought of: “Direct Support Professional”. It’s a part-time job teaching lifeskills (cooking, cleaning, etc.) to people with developmental and intellectual disabilities. Continuing to scroll, I find another cannabis-related job: “Illinois Cannabis Kitchen Associate.” I scroll through another 5 pages, and find more cannabis-related jobs and direct support professional jobs. Time to move on. But before I do, let’s take stock of what we’ve learned. One thing that hadn’t occurred to me is that in addition to straightforward cooking/prepping/dishwashing jobs, there are teaching opportunities in cooking, too. And pot!
OK, let’s try another angle on cooking. One of the things that I like about cooking is new/strange/imported ingredients. Hmmm, I wonder what the food import/export business is like? I search for Import/Export in Illinois. A lot of compliance and logistics-type jobs come up. So, I learn that compliance (whatever that is) is a big deal in Import/Export. Sounds somewhat specialized and niche-y. Then I see this: “Marketing Copywriter”. Here are the opening bullets in this job description:
“We program signs all over the world. You will have to be creative at producing catchy ads for digital signs and instruct animators on what you want ad to look like. (You will be trained on this).
First and most important- you must know how to spell and use proper grammar. I cannot stress how important this is.
Read no further unless you are a highly detailed oriented person. Do you watch the news? Know what is going on in the world? Our clients are all over. Candidate will need to be aware of client’s weather, sports, etc. as this all comes into play.
It is an exciting and fun position. I am needing a special person who wants to help our clients bring in more business using their LED sign versus using sign for cheesy canned graphics or time and temperature. We create real video ads and social media ads.”
First of all, I don’t know what these signs are or where they are, but I guess that it makes sense that someone has to program them. I can spell, I know grammar, and I’m detail-oriented (I was a Classicist, for chrissakes!). Interesting. Now, take a couple steps back. What else is here? First of all, Marketing Communications. I can communicate (I think!? I hope!). What else? “Video ads and social media ads”. Ugh, I hate Facebook and I don’t InstaTwitSnap anything, but my kids do, and I think I should pay attention to this.
Let’s move on. I keep scrolling. I see “Fairs and Exhibitions Specialist.” The word “international” catches my eye. In the job description, I see “must travel.” Time to make sure my passport is up to date! Moving on, I see “Bilingual assistant”. This one is for someone who speaks Japanese…
I hope by now that you see what’s happening here. I took one interest that I have – “cooking” -- and I started looking for different jobs within that category. I’m not going to apply for any of these jobs (although that digital sign thing seems cool!) – that’s not the point. Rather, look at some of the “sandboxes” that we identified that might be worth playing around in further:
Cook/Chef
Culinary/Life Education
Cannabis
Marketing Communications
Video and Social Media
Import/Export logistics & compliance
International exhibitions/tradeshows
Bilingualism
What’s more, as I was doing this, a few other ideas popped into my head. I like to read cooking magazines and cookbooks. Maybe I should explore “culinary journalism”. I like to make and eat lasagna; maybe I’d like to write about lasagna, too. And that reminds me that I know someone who used to be a food stylist for photographers and catering organizations. Hmmm. And, finally, I didn’t even run across what I had imagined with the import/export angle – I was thinking olive oil, sun-dried tomatoes, and Sicily from a warehouse in Brooklyn. I’ve got to dig deeper into that import/export thing and see what else I learn!
Let me emphasize again that the point of this exercise is not to find a particular job in which you’re interested, but rather to browse: expand your horizons, learn some vocabulary and job titles within a category (here, “cooking”), kickstart your imagination about options, and identify some possible new directions.
Hanging around Indeed.com exploring my future culinary career to write this post reminded me that sometimes people are miserable because of what might feel like peripheral preferences that might not be that peripheral when they are central to your daily professional life. Poking around your interests in the way that I’ve described implicitly addresses that, since it seems likely that you won’t follow a thread that doesn’t interest you, but it’s still worth tuning your internal radar to this. Like to be outdoors a lot? Small offices make you feel claustrophobic? Feel like you need a deep sense of purpose or altruism in your professional life? Prefer to work alone? In teams? At home? And while you’re taking stock of your preferences, foibles, desires and what-have-you, you might benefit from some professional guidance down the jungle path of self-awareness, and look into some different tests that can help you identify strengths and weaknesses, likes and dislikes, and so on. The Myers Briggs Test & Personality Assessment is perhaps the best known (www.mbtionline.com). Others worth looking into are The DiSC Personality Test (www.thediscpersonalitytest.com); the Benchmarks 360 Assessment Suite, by the Center for Creative Leadership (www.ccl.org); and Clifton Strengths (formerly StrengthsFinder 2.0), by Gallup (www.gallup.com).
Now what? You have to keep track of everything that you’re learning, so I suggest that you open up a spreadsheet and start dumping information into it. I’d set up a different tab for each area in which you’re interested: say, Cannabis, Marketing Communications, and Bilingualism. Save websites, links to job descriptions, names and any contact info of people that come up, and related ideas that pop into your head. In the not-too-distant future, when you begin having conversations about the paths you’re thinking about, you’re going to return to this spreadsheet again and again. That gets us to networking, which I’ll dive into in another post. For now, expand your horizons, think big and flexibly.
And, finally, like I promised at the beginning, here are a few of my favorite books about careers:
Scott Adams, How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life
Ken Robinson, The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything
Ken Robinson, Finding Your Element: How to Discover Your Talents and Passions and Change Your Life
Ben Arment, Dream Year: Make the Leap from a Job You Hate to a Life you Love
Bill Burnett and Dave Evans, Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life
Daniel Pink, A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future
Scott Galloway, The Algebra of Happiness: Notes on the Pursuit of Success, Love, and Meaning.