Search Results for: career change statistics

Career testing is being increasingly questioned by a growing body of professional career counsellors.
Others are calling for the removal of some types of assessments altogether.

Internationally recognized authority in career counseling and bestselling author Howard Figlar opposes the use of career testing for career development.

In his co-authored book with Richard Bolles The Career Counselors Handbook, Figlar says “there is enough anecdotal evidence to tell us that test results are often far off the mark and sometimes even laughable”.

These are strong words by one of the world’s highly regarded career counselors.

In an article entitled ‘Internet-Based Assessments May Be Hazardous To Your Career’, the National Career Development Association in the United States suggests that most free online career assessments are untested and probably invalid.

They note that a career tests product sponsored by the US government was fundamentally flawed

Arthur Miller, in his excellent book The Power of Uniqueness, suggests that psychometric testing is not helpful at all to people wanting to make quality career change decisions.

Miller says:

“Where psychological testing has gotten [and stayed] off the rails is its most foundational assumption that there really are universal qualities of people that can be measured and compared.
This is in contrast to our conclusions and those of many other authorities, that each individual is a unique mix of traits, aptitudes, and intelligence… unless such a universal quality [e.g. dominance over others] was motivationally significant to the person, how that person measured on that quality would lack any real life significance.”

Human beings are too unique and complex to try to figure out their ideal job fit simply from the results of career testing.

Good career counselors advocate a more in-depth self-discovery approach when providing career change advice.

This more robust method is much more likely to produce a long-term fulfilling career that you will be good at and enjoy working in.

To find out more about this method of choosing careers, click here

Other career development articles relating to career tests that you may be interested in include:

Career tests – Why they don’t work!
Career aptitude test – Poor career counseling results?
Career placement test – How they can limit career choices.
Career personality test – Is money the motive?
Career assessment – Uniqueness not highlighted!

Career Research Paper: Are The Self Employed Happier In Their Work Than Employed Workers?

This career survey was conducted as part of my Diploma in Career Counseling studies to establish if there was any difference in worker satisfaction levels between self-employed and employed workers.

Career Survey Question 1: Overall Workers Satisfaction Level

This research concluded that workers satisfaction level overall was higher for self-employed workers than for employed people*.

• 25% of self-employed people rated themselves a 10/10 (where 10=Highly satisfied, 1=Very Unsatisfied)
• 0% of employed people rated themselves a 10/10

* For the purpose of this career survey, all people involved in work from home careers were included as self-employed.

Career Survey Question 2: Autonomy And Meaningful Contribution

Employed people rated higher in their meaningful contribution to work than I predicted.
86.3 % of employees and 95% of the self-employed selected ‘very true of my work’ for this question.

The biggest area of difference here were those that chose ‘not true of my work’.
9% of employees chose this option whereas 0% of self-employed did. The low self-rating given by self-employed on this career survey question was unexpected.

Other research has indicated that one of the most needed aspects of a fulfilling career for an individual is the need to be able to make a meaningful contribution and to utilize their inborn job skills.

Career Survey Question 3: Pride In Products Or Services The Organization Provides

Self-Employed people rated themselves as being more proud of the products or services their organization provides than did employed people – 85% compared to 63% answered ‘very true of my work’ to this question.

This wasn’t a surprising result of the career research paper.
One might expect the self-employed to have a greater sense of pride in their own business.
Often owners have started their businesses from nothing and a lot of planning, hard work, and financial risk had gone into founding the business.
The employed worker’s satisfaction in this area would be much harder to achieve because they are not usually as emotionally connected with their product or service.

Career Survey Question 4: An Opportunity To Be Creative And Implement New Ideas

24% more self-employed people chose ‘very true’ in relation to their being an opportunity to be creative and implement new ideas.

100% of self-employed rated this as either ‘very true’ or ‘somewhat true’.

This was not a surprising result on this career survey issues as a self-employed person will almost always have more opportunity to change things and implement their own ideas due to there being no one to prevent them from doing so.

When I started my first business at the age of 23, I had a full license to implement my own ideas to whatever degree I felt like at the time.
This was an immensely attractive aspect of running a business. Other self-employed people have said to me that this featured high on their self employed motives also.

However, there is a growing number of employers who are aware of their workers’ strong desire to use their creative abilities and have the authority to implement new ideas in their career.

In the same way that these aspects of work attracted business owners to become self-employed, wise employers are encouraging workers to articulate such desires in their own career development plan.

Career Survey Question 5: Stress

Stress in the workplace is a particularly pertinent and topical issue in today’s work climate.

It was interesting to see that of the eleven issues inquired about in this career research paper, both employees and the self-employed rated this issue the worst. This indicates that stress is a real problem for both groups.

‘Not true of my work’ was chosen by 36% of employed people and 25% of self-employed when asked to rate the statement ‘I have a relatively relaxed and stress-free environment’.

Additionally, fewer people answered ‘very true of my work’ than to any other question in the survey. Again, this was true for both groups – employed people answered this in only 18% of cases while self-employed was even less at 15%.

Career Survey Question 6: Remuneration

Considerably fewer self-employed people felt underpaid than did employed people.

Only 5% of self-employed answered ‘not true of my work’ to the statement ‘I am fairly remunerated for my work’ compared to 27% for employed people – a staggering 500% difference.

Although there was a large gap between those who were not happy with their remuneration levels in this career survey question, in contrast there was very little difference between the two groups who were happy with their pay levels.

30% of self-employed answered ‘very true’ to the above statement compared with 27% for employed people.

One of the reasons self-employed may not have scored higher is the fact that they generally work longer hours than employed people (Crowe 1988) and therefore feel they need to receive more to be fairly compensated.

Although Crowe did note that during her interviews, which often took place in the self-employed homes, she observed a good standard of living and most were living in middle and upper-class suburbs of Christchurch.

Career Survey Question 7: Good Relationships And Mutual Respect

More self-employed people felt they had better working relationships and mutual respect than their self-employed counterparts.
75% of self-employed rated the statement ‘Good working relationships and mutual respect are present in my job’ as ‘very true’.
This compared with 55% for employed people in the career survey.

Perhaps it could be said that self-employed people would automatically rate this higher because of their position of authority.

There are likely more cases of employees feeling disrespected by their bosses than bosses feeling disrespected by employees. Employers, because of their position have greater influence over how quality relationships and respect will feature in their culture.

If a CEO is particularly disrespectful to his/her staff the chances increase that this disrespect will prevail throughout the organization.

Career Survey Question 8: Challenge And Stimulation

Both employed and self-employed scored relatively high on this scale – 100% of self-employed answered very true or somewhat true regarding their job offering challenge and stimulation whereas 90% of employed people answered the same.

This was higher for employed people than I would have predicted considering other research suggesting low employed workers satisfaction in this area.

Only 9% of employed people said ‘not true’ to the statement ‘My job offers good challenge and stimulation’.

Possibly this unexpected low score could be attributed in part to the middle to the upper-class area in which the research was done for the employed and also the time the career survey was conducted.
The career research paper was carried out on a mid-Saturday morning outside a suburban shopping mall.

All employees who work Saturday’s would be automatically excluded from the survey.

These participants were clearly people who didn’t work Saturdays and included a good number of moms and/or dads with the kids.

We could possibly assume that those employees who don’t have to work Saturdays, are more likely to be white-collar type workers with better working conditions, better pay and a more stimulating environment, although this theory is untested.

What we do know from research is that intellectual challenge and stimulation is a common characteristic among happy workers (Henderson 2000 p.
311).

Here are the words of a very contented hairdresser who found here Dream Career as stated to Henderson.

“I just got paid handsomely for an hour and a half of work.
If you want to call it work.
It was fun!
And here I am holding a big pile of dollar bills going “Gee this isn’t so bad”. I mean, doing hair is about my second favorite thing in the world at this point and I’m getting paid for it.”

When people are in their niche area of work, being stimulated in the areas of their motivated abilities, they often don’t see their work as work.

One of the issues in today’s workforce is that we have a high percentage of workers who are working in jobs that are mismatched to their natural abilities.

This causes frustration and lack of enjoyment at work.
And this unhappiness is often carried over into the family and other non-work areas.

I have developed the inborn job skills assessment, a tool to help uncover persons inborn abilities.
This is effective regardless of background, age or ‘success’ in life to date.

I recommend anybody seeking career change advice to first complete this assessment. It’s very effective and inexpensive.
Learn more about the inborn job skills assessment

Career Survey Question 9: Variety and Diversity

65% of self-employed people chose ‘very true’ in answer to the statement ‘my job offers variety and diversity’.

This was 20% more than employed people.

This is approximately the outcome I would have predicted given that a self-employed person is more likely to be in a position of being able to delegate tasks which they find repetitive or not aligned to their preferred skills.

In most instances, a self-employed person will be doing a greater variety of tasks that are associated with running a small business because of an owners need to be ‘a jack of all trades’ in the different areas of the business.

But an employee is more likely to be under the division of labor influences thereby reducing workplace diversity and accounting for this lower employed workers satisfaction.

However, when we take a closer look at the figures we see that if we add together both ‘very true’ and ‘somewhat true’ for both groups, the gap is considerably narrowed – 90% for self-employed against 86% for employed.

The extremes, which existed with other results in the research, were not so pronounced on this one.
Nevertheless, the difference is still significantly based only on ‘very true’ scores. The importance of variety and diversity is something that some organizations are aware of and are doing something about.

For example, Delta Airlines (Peters 1991) adopt a philosophy that encourages variety and diversity.

The company insists that all management be interchangeable so that they can step into any job in the company.
This results in top managers becoming baggage handlers at Christmas.

Career Survey Question 10: Ability To Learn And Acquire New Skills

The results of this component of the questionnaire were a bit surprising to me.

This was the one item on the questionnaire where the employed worker’s satisfaction was higher than self-employed people.
The biggest surprise was not so much how well-employed people rated this but how poorly self-employed rated.

Only 45% of self-employed chose ‘very true of my work’ compared to 55% for employed people.
Although it was interesting to note that 0% of self-employed chose ‘not true’ compared to 4% for employed people.

This could be seen as being in conflict with the results of ‘variety and diversity’.
Can a job offer good variety and diversity but not offer the provision to acquire new skills.

Variety and diversity would normally be associated with doing new things and therefore adding to an individual’s job skills list.

It is possible however to have good variety and diversity purely based on a wide selection of skills being used without necessarily learning new ones.
This is something further research could address.

Career Survey Question 11: Flexible Work Hours

Ninety percent of self-employed answered ‘somewhat true’ or ‘very true’ to the statement ‘my work hours are flexible’.

Whereas only 59% of employed people felt the same way.
Although self-employed rated their working hours as flexible, this doesn’t mean they work less.

Crowe (1988) found that not only do self-employed people work longer hours but also they also have fewer holidays and often have family members working for free in their business.

These findings of more flexible working hours for self-employed was to be expected.

Because they are in control and have no one to answer to they can arrange their days how they wish.

If they want to take Friday off to go away for a long weekend, or if they want to meet family or friend for a 2-hour lunch, they can usually do it with ease.
Not so the employee who must seek and gain permission and is always aware of asking for too many ‘favors’ from their boss and the expectation of their peers of equally sharing the workload.

there is a feeling of being locked into a rigid framework of working hours.
This has become a growing issue in recent years with many more families having two parents working and a growing need to achieve a good balance between work and other areas of their life.

This has resulted in more people seeking help with life and career coaching to address this new issue.

Career Survey Questionnaire Summary Workers Satisfaction: What Can We Learn

The evidence from this small research project overwhelmingly puts self-employed people in a better light as far as workers satisfaction is concerned.

In eleven out of the twelve issues surveyed self-employed people beat their employed counterparts.
25% of self-employed people gave themselves a 10/10 for overall workers satisfaction compared to 0% for employed people.

Although it is worth noting that the survey was asking about work only issues.
Some independent research discussed earlier showed that self-employed may be behind in lifestyle.

They work longer hours, have fewer holidays and are very close to employed people on stress levels.

Stress was the surprising negative from both the employed and self-employed.
No other issue was rated so poorly by both groups.

So what can be learned from these workers satisfaction findings?

Firstly, employed people statistically could become happier and more fulfilled if they became self-employed.
This is assuming that the eleven issues surveyed are representative of the key areas that cause a person to enjoy their work.

Secondly, and more importantly, many of the issues that allow self-employed people to be happier in their work, could easily be incorporated into their environment to increase the worker’s satisfaction.

This is evidenced by a minority of organizations who do this already with outstanding results on most of the business and employee indicators.

At the heart of these organizations is a heart- a commitment by management to care about and honor people, to be genuinely interested in their worker’s satisfaction.

Previously in this paper, I have referred to the link between family and the organization.

It is sometimes easy to forget that it is people, not corporations who make decisions on issues that will affect employee’s happiness at work.

Even if we are referring to the worlds largest corporation it is still a person or persons who will decide to pay their workers well or allow flexibility in their employees working hours, or create a culture where employees feel valued and respected.

A corporation is never anything more than a group of individuals.

Where does an individual, who is the leader of an organization, learn these sought after personal characteristics?

Sir Stephen Tindall founder of The Warehouse (Jackson and Parry, 2001, p.194) believes it is in the family.
The personal attributes he tries to install into his organization that create a positive, people-first culture, was learned from his parents and the exposure he had to his great grandfather’s business.

Tom Peters says that the way the excellent companies treat their people can be reduced to the succinct bible scripture ‘Do to others as you would have them do to you’.
These core personal character traits involving empathy, ethics, and morality must inevitably be the domain of the family.

Ultimately if we want to produce a world of excellent organizations that foster a culture where workers will be happier, we must first produce a world of excellent individuals to lead these organizations.

These individuals are a family member first where they learn these core human character traits, then they go on to become a manager or CEO of a corporation.

Excellent individuals will invariably be the product of excellent families.
The happiness and fulfillment levels of employees can be raised closer to that of self-employed if the quality of those that lead organizations can be raised.

Learn more about the inborn job skills assessment using the best-known principles of inborn skills identification that I know of.

Have you ever wondered how much potential you really have.
Most of us know that our lives (and careers) could be much better.

What Do You Want in Life

• Do you want to move into a career that’s always interested you but have never got around to creating a plan to get things moving.
• Do you want to be spending more time building better relationships with those you love and having more fun with your partner or children?
• The goal of life and career coaching is about finding out what you truly want in life and then making it happen.
• Do you want to do something about creating that financial nest egg for later in life
• Do you want to take some action on losing those pounds and attaining a reasonable level of fitness in your life?
• Do you want to become a better boss or a better husband or wife?
• Do you just want to create more space in your life, slow down a bit to be on your own and catch up on some reading or personal reflections?

Most of us want to improve, change or do something different.
But we just don’t seem to get around to doing them.

Life and career coaching is about bridging the gap between what you want to do and actually getting it done.

The life which is unexamined is not worth living

-Plato

You Have No Choice

I have noticed that the people in life who are successful are those who are willing to do things that the majority of us won’t do.

I mean personal discipline.
I don’t know of anybody who has been successful, who hasn’t had a high degree of personal discipline.

As the late Zig Ziglar says:

No plan will work if you don’t”

What this means is that when those moments in life arise where you need to make some firm decisions to advance you towards your goal, you have to learn to say to yourself:

The most meaningful words on personal discipline I have heard are:

No Choice

“Although I may not really feeling like doing this, I have no choice“.

If I am resolute in my attitude to discipline and say “I have no choice” when initially planning my goal, then it becomes easier to get over those discipline hurdles when they arise.

I have discovered that sometimes I need to do things I hate to do, so I can achieve the things I want. We never stop fighting our discipline demons.

Some Commonly Asked Questions about Life and Career Coaching

1. What are life and career coaching?

Life and career coaching are about asking some questions about ourselves.

• “Is this the kind of life I want?”
• “Is this the career I want to be in? If not, do I know how to choose a career that’s right for me? ”
• “When I go to the grave, am I going to be able to say “I’m glad that I dedicated my life to doing this”
• “Are my relationships, whether they be marriage, children, business or other, are they pretty much like I want them to be?

I’m sure most people ask themselves these questions from time to time.
Sometimes we come up with good answers but our own life history has shown that for whatever reason we have not been able to implement the necessary changes to achieve our goals.

In other words, we know what to do but we haven’t got around to doing it.

I am passionate about seeing people exploit the individual potential that lies within them.
I have provided career change advice for a number of years and one repetitious theme that comes through from the people I work with is a person’s inability to truly see their own unique strengths and inborn job skills.

Accurately knowing what you’re innate abilities are in relation to your career, can be a major personal revelation.

2. What actually happens during a life and career coaching session?

Life and career coaching can be split into two parts:

i. Firstly we spend some time identifying what is important to you in life.
What is it that you really want?
What is it that you ache for?
What is it that, when you lie on your death bed, you will be able to say with conviction “I’m glad I dedicated my life to doing that”.

ii. Then it’s all about making it happen.
Strategizing, setting goals and taking specific action steps that we work together on for your benefit and increased fulfillment in life.

Once we’ve identified what’s important to you, together we make a plan to ensure that you get what you want.

This is where life and career coaching is invaluable.
Much of the success of the coaching is simply due to the power of the relationship and the accountability factor.

3. What sort of people use life and career coaches?

1. Employed or self-employed people wanting to maintain a balance in their life with their family and health.

2. Those trying to find their dream career, whether it be a professional person who has been stuck in a job for many years or a mother returning to the workforce.
(It has been estimated that up to 80% of the workforce are mismatched and not naturally motivated towards their current job).
See my dream career finder assessment

3. An employed person who wants to start their own business.

4. Perhaps someone who has tasted ‘success’ in one area of life but found it to be an anticlimax and are now looking for something more.

5. Someone who wants to become more in touch with their spiritual side – See God and work

Self-Employed

I have been self-employed most of my life.
Since the age of 23, I have established a number of businesses; some have been successful, some have not.

So I particularly enjoy working with and have empathy for self-employed people or people who want to become self-employed.

I know the struggles of trying to maintain the discipline of a life-work balance – and in particular the work verse family struggle.

I have a Diploma in Career Counseling and have run programs to help people identify the career that’s right for them – both on an individual basis and in group workshops.
Invariably the question “what job should I do?” becomes “what do I want to do with my life?

Philosophy To Work and Life

My personal philosophy in life embraces the idea that we are unique individuals.
That we can have happiness, health and wealth and these are our God-given gifts.
I believe in the ability of everyone to have big dreams and to achieve them.

One of the saddest things in life for me is to see the frequently untapped potential that lays dormant in many of us.
My desire is to help awaken that sleeping giant.

Why should we settle for the entree when five courses are set before us.

Career Development Coaching

• Do you ever wonder what is it that you really want in a career?
• Are you looking for your dream job but not really sure how to find what it is?
• Are you feeling frustrated and unmotivated in your present job?
• Are you concerned that a job change may not make the difference you are looking for?
• Do you ever ask yourself “Is this it”, regarding your career or life
  

I offer one-on-one assistance with career direction, life balance evaluation, life, and career coaching, C.V. preparation, and interview training.
For more information please see my career advice Gold Coast services page.

All of these services are about all via telephone or Skype to anywhere in the world.

One of the foundations of quality career coaching is to help a person understand what they are best at.

I believe there are certain jobs that every individual on this planet will be good at and enjoy doing.

If you would like to find out about what job type you are best suited to, complete the inborn job skills assessment.

Career Placement Tests Can Be Limiting

Poor career choice outcomes can occur as a result of using a career placement test. Many test results can limit career choices by providing only a small number of job possibilities to choose from.

The Dictionary of Occupational Titles, when in print, listed over 28,000 different careers.

But the dictionary was always outdated because new job types are always being created.

There is a real possibility that you might be an ideal fit for a job type that doesn’t exist yet. Your inborn job skills, values, and desires could point to a job, not in any occupational lists.

A Career Test Will Never Show You a Job Like This!

There are many examples of completely new job types being created by organizations for just one person because somebody decided that the gifts and abilities that they have would benefit their organization.

So a person can secure a job even though the organization didn’t have any particular job opportunity on offer. If that sounds strange, it shouldn’t. It happens a lot.
So a career placement test will always fail to recognize great job opportunities like this.

Create Your Own Job

Robert Greenleaf was someone who was renown for thinking outside the square.
In his excellent book Servant Leadership, he talks about how most of the jobs he had in his life were created just for him.

Responsibility of any career counselor who provides career advice is to be sure that they are using the best possible methods available to help clients.

Using a career placement test where the test recommends a specific list of job types at the end of the test, is probably not the best way of helping a person with their career choices.

When someone is seeking career help, then they are usually making some weighty decisions and need to feel confident that the knowledge and processes being utilized are the best available.

A vocational assessment test that is used to help a person work through their career objectives, will often stifle the process and produce inferior outcomes compared to other career consulting methods. They often lack verifiable reliability and validity data.
This can result in career choices that can be damaged by either leading a person in a direction that isn’t truly suited to them or, the more likely scenario, missing possible career options that may fit very nicely.

In my earlier days as a career counselor, I never felt like I was doing my best job when I used career placement tests with clients.

For quite some time I was unable to put my finger on why this was.
Then I became aware that when I had helped clients most effectively were times when I had not used this type of career test.

If you do take a vocational test as part of your career development plan, then be wary of their limiting results and the danger they have of not identifying some very suitable careers.

Alternative methods, when used by good career counselors, will nearly always produce better career search results for the client than if a career test is used as part of the process.

One of the best methods is to start by analyzing your natural career motivations.
You can do this by using the inborn job skills assessment.

It will take you a bit longer than most career placement tests however the results are nearly always significantly better. And It will cost you a lot less.

Other career development articles include:

Career aptitude test – Questionable career counseling results?
Career personality test – Is there a conflict of interest?
Career assessment – Uniqueness not highlighted!
Career testing – Why the experts are running.

Have you been contemplating a professional career change?

If you are disillusioned, frustrated or even depressed in your current profession, finding a career that provides fulfillment may be your only option!

And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom

–Anais Nin

If you stay in a job that you do not like and is causing you stress and frustration, the cost to stay there may be too high in terms of never realizing your true gifts. Health issues also often develop as a result of remaining in a work situation that is stressful and unfulfilling.

Others Have Done It!

Embarking on a professional career change may be one of the hardest decisions in your life, but many others before you have had success in finding a career that provides meaning and fulfillment.

Let’s face it, it takes tremendous courage to leave a profession in which you have undergone significant tertiary education, spent large sums of money acquiring qualifications and dedicated many years of your working life to the profession.

But I want to suggest to you that when you get to the end of your life, you will be more disappointed and regretful that you didn’t act in such circumstances.

Research suggests that most people are more disappointed with the things they didn’t do in their life than the mistakes they made.

They wished they had avoided taking the safe road when at the intersection of major life decisions involving opportunity.

Professionals Find It Hardest

A professional career change is often more difficult to justify than for nonprofessional changing careers.

Professionals are more likely to have invested heavily in their specialization, making the decision to start over appear more costly.
But it’s not about starting over so much as redirecting the transferable skills you have gained over the years. Then combine those with the new understanding you have of yourself as you embark on finding a career that has significance and meaning.

The more specialized profession you are in and the further away from your natural gifts you are functioning in, the more disillusioned and unfulfilled you are likely to be.

There is only one solution.
Get out!

Many others have executed a professional career change.
Doctors have successfully become sales executives, lawyers have successfully become investment advisors and engineers have successfully become business consultants.

Do any of these comments sound like you?

“My job pays well but I just don’t like it, I’m depressed.”

“I want out but I’m just not sure how to go about it.”

“I don’t know if I am willing to accept a job that pays less”

I encourage clients seeking professional career change advice to begin to take some action.
Many people stay in professions for years that have worn them down because of a poor job fit.

They never get around to doing anything about it.
Up to 80% of the workforce are in jobs where they are not matched well to their natural abilities and professionals are well represented in these figures.

What’s the worst that can happen?

I encourage you to write out the above question on the top of a piece of paper and then list all the “worst” things that could happen.

Then on the second piece of paper take each of those worst-case scenarios and answer this question:

“If this did happen, what are all the different ways I could respond and what would the outcome of each of them be?”

Most people discover that these worst-case scenarios are never quite as bad as they imagined.

When we flesh them out on paper we are usually forced to carry them through to a rational conclusion, something which does not happen if we leave them ping-ponging around in our head.

Once we have discovered that the worst is usually “not all that bad”, it empowers us to take some action knowing that the world will not end if things don’t turn out the way we hope. Then we put all our energy into making it quite a bit better than the worst-case scenario.

Professional Career Change: 4 Keys for Transition

1. Self-Discovery.
   You must find out very precisely what you are good at.
   Even if you have a good idea of this, it is usually worthwhile to employ the services of a career change consultant and/or complete this career assessment
2. Address Your Fears.
   Some of these fears are mentioned above. I am not what I think I am.
   I am not what you think I am.
   I am what I think, you think I am Some of them may involve the loss of prestige; what other people may think of you giving up on your profession.
3. Getting Help –6 Degrees of Separation
   Stanley Milgram put the 6 Degrees of Separation theory to test in 1967 by getting random people to send packages to strangers.
   The senders were given the name, occupation and approximate location of the receivers.
   They had to send the package in the first instance to a person whom they knew and whom they would guess may have the greatest chance of knowing this person based on the information that was available.
   The person who received the package would then do the same and so on until the recipient received the package.
   It took on average between five and seven intermediaries for the package to be delivered.
   The results appeared in Psychology Today.
   If you haven’t arranged a career change consultant to help you with self-discovery, you should consider this to help you assess your next steps and your strategic planning of the transition.
4. Networking.
   The one thing we know works so well but everybody hates to do and thinks they are not very good at. If there is one thing that will help you succeed in the undertaking of a professional career change, it is networking.
   Networking works on the principle of the 6 degrees of separation.
   This means that you can access any person on this planet through no more than six levels of people contact.
   [See sidebar, right]. It is also based on the premise that humans innately like to help others if approached correctly, particularly those who have already had a successful career. We know that up to 80% of all jobs come from the hidden job market.
   And the biggest single means of accessing these hidden jobs is through networking. I recommend this fabulous networking book by Keith Ferrazzi

If you need help with implementing networking after reading this book, employ the services of a career consultant to help you.

Has the day come……..

And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom

–Anais Nin