KEY POINTS:
Before you start thumbing through the employment pages looking for your next job opportunity, you should know what it is you're looking for, says Dr Norm Amundson, professor at the University of British Columbia.
"If you don't know what you're looking for then you're just chasing opportunity,"says Dr Amundson.
"I've just seen too many times where people say, 'Oh, this is really a hot field,' and then everybody runs to that and it's over subscribed. They chase these things."
Amundson says to explore your values, interests, skills and personality and find work in a place which is consistent with what's important to you. Ask yourself some questions first.
"What is the nature of your identity? Who are you? How can you get paid for being who you are?"
Amundson spoke at a recent career strategy workshop in Auckland about the importance of knowing what you're looking for before you find it and not simply chasing opportunity.
"If you knew who you were and what you are good at, even if a field didn't look that good, the fact that you are really satisfied in it means you're probably going to stand out."
He says there is not just one career path that we have to follow but we should look at ourselves before we look at the job ads.
"I find that a lot of people really don't know themselves very well. They don't really understand their strengths and passions," he says. "They haven't taken the time to find out what they're about and explore their identity to know who they are."
The traditional linear career path for employment is a relic of the past so people need to change jobs for the right reasons, otherwise, Amundson says, it's a recipe for frustration.
"The fact is we don't just start with something when you're 18 and kind of work your way through life. For most of us it's a bounce more like an arcade game where you're bouncing around."
He has done career counselling since the early 1980s and has studied the emotional aspects of unemployment. He found that when people start bouncing around and fall on hard times, even senior managers and CEOs quickly lose their self esteem.
"Within a period of about six months a lot of top executives were starting to have a lot of doubts. It's amazing to me how quickly our identity fades. We start to lose confidence in ourselves."
Because our careers and the daily activity of work fulfils such a large part of our lives, even if our finances are OK, we miss it. "When somebody's looking for work we have some very basic needs like community, or relationships, having meaning in life and also structure or some kind of organisation to the day."
The second we see an opportunity arise it's like a light at the end of the tunnel but it might also be when the rollercoaster ride begins.
"Because they're on the way down and something good happens, it's almost like a yoyo. You go shooting right up. Then when it doesn't workout you come crashing right back down again."
Amundson worked with some out-of-work fishermen in Canada to make them take a hard look at themselves and avoid the rollercoaster. Their fisheries were closing down and a lengthy career had dried up.
"Sorry, the jobs are all gone so what are you going to be now?"
Amundson asked what is it that fishermen actually have to do.
They had to know how to analyse charts or first aid didn't they?
"We show them how every job has all these different components to it. So rather than starting with being fishermen, we started with the components. Are these components parts of other jobs? Well, yes in fact they are."
Amundson was able to help them construct new careers with the building blocks of their old ones.
"By taking the existing components, you may be adding a couple of other pieces to it, but you're not starting from square one."
People who look outside rather than inside for their next career opportunity are on the wrong path, he says.
"They're not really making choices from inner strengths. They're looking for opportunities. They're throwing out CVs. They're chasing down leads that may or may not be effective for them. And they're not building and maintaining their own sense of self confidence."
But sometimes cold, hard reality rears its ugly head. If the bills are coming in faster than your job offers, you've got to do something.
"I'm not against someone taking a survivor-type of job, or something they don't really want to do but they know they've got to pay the bills and put some food on the table."
A temporary job might be just the thing to give you some time to figure out what it is you really want to do.
"I think it's important they take the time to find out who they are and realise that they're going to be a lot more effective and be happier in life if they can organise ways of getting into professions that are more suited to their own makeup."
Amundson admits some people might not actually find their personal fulfilment in paid work. Artists might be one example.
"They may be delivering pizzas or whatever but they have an identity of themselves as artists or some kind of film maker or whatever. For them they've defined who they are and they know they're not delivery people but they're willing to do that because it puts some bread on the table and lets them carry on with other things."
Asking yourself the hard questions is particularly helpful when you're suffering from a crisis of imagination and just don't know what to do next.
Even if you go right back to doing the same thing you were before, challenging your assumptions might just give you the shake-up you've needed.
But Amundson says don't go looking for fast answers.
"People want fast answers. They believe that you can just do this overnight. Some of them would spend more time looking for a pair of shoes then they would trying to figure out their own career future."
Whatever the results are from you questioning yourself, chances are at the end of it, you're going to have to go and market yourself in some way. Amundson says this is a vital key to finding your next opportunity. He has found that people who market themselves well do so through effective storytelling.
"In telling a story about problem solving for instance, they can leave a lot of residue about other things. As they tell you their story, part of the story might involve creativity, hard work, getting along with others and other types of things."
You can leave people with many positive impressions if you are good at concise and effective communication. For people who can find a career which is meaningful for them and can also market themselves effectively, they can truly excel.
"If you're a top performer then you can just really play the game. Everything is working for you."
