I ran across this article predicting jobs that don’t exist yet and wanted to share it. Looking at changes coming down the pipeline in your industry is a great way to navigate your career development and learning plan. Take time once a year or so to think forward in your career and look for neat niches you can steer toward as one strategy for knowing what learning experiences will best add to your repertoire.

Other ways to stay ahead of the curve is to host discussions with colleagues, to have periodic informational interviews with experts in your field, and to read the professional literature related to your occupation. All the while asking questions in order to encourage your brain to make connections and notice developing trends.

Questions such as:

• what is the biggest problem in my career field right now?
• what industry is my industry starting to merge with?
• how will changes in the industry influence what happen in my occupation?

A career keyword is what your ideal career is all about. When self-reflecting to cover step one of career research, consider this: What is your career keyword? This is an exercise in big picture thinking and zooming in on what jazzes you most. Here are some examples keywords just to get you thinking.

My career is about _____.

• competition
• action
• beauty
• building
• communicating
• nurturing
• performing
• service
• healing
• relating to others
• research
• detecting
• exploring
• teaching/learning
• administrating
• protecting
• sales
• science
• art

When you come up with a career keyword or two you can use it as your north star along your career journey guide your progress always building on your strengths. Your career keywords also becomes the basis of your personal mission statement.

Career research is a process of getting in-depth knowledge of yourself and the different opportunities that are out there for the purpose of developing a career strategy. In preparing for a seminar I recently presented, I got to thinking about career research again. I’ve written about career research and important factors in career choice in the past and I want to expand on these ideas now.

So often people get it backwards. They arrive at a time in their lives where they need a job so they immediately start looking for what opportunities are available around them and where they might fit in. I know it seems logical but that is not the most beneficial way to go about it because many of those jobs are just distractions. I want you to flip that process around and begin with yourself!

So the process looks like this instead:

1. Begin with self-awareness
2. Study occupations
3. Then industry trends
4. Then company culture and job openings.

There are strong advantages to working career research from this angle. First is that you are developing your personal brand along the way. You will be able to strategically network with others knowing what you want them to remember about you. You also gain a deep understanding what makes your heart sing and will be able to zoom in on opportunities that are more likely to work optimally for you. Lastly, you will come from a position of passion in job interviews and will be more convincing and so more likely to win the offer.

I ran across this post from Hunter Edwards recently. It contains particularly relevant information for people looking to get hired in the accounting field. The reason it caught my eye though, is that it is a fine example of a special report. You could create something similar for your portfolio where you identify a relevant question for your industry, conduct the research, and write it up.

This is a nice collection of articles to stimulate thinking about traditional educational investment in higher education and potential career development payoff. While it is possible to get too analytical in coming to a decision about whether to invest in further education and when, it is a good exercise to check these kind of statistics in the process.

Even more important, have fun with the decision! Talk to people who are already in the field you are considering further study in, and talk to a coach for feedback and insight through your research and decision making process. It can’t be emphasized enough that whatever steps you take to further your career should be in line with what you truly enjoy and not just to impress others or fulfill someone else’s expectation for you. Your career is about you and what you desire to have and create.

O*Net is an excellent site for exploring occupations. They also have a skills search which I linked below. Only put checks on the skills you enjoy using…any skill you are good at but do not enjoy using is a recipe for burnout.

O*Net Free Skills Assessment

Go to the homepage to begin researching careers when you have a career choice you are curious about or just browse careers by clicking the pull-down menu in the “Find Occupations” area on the homepage.

http://online.onetcenter.org/

You’ve noticed a potential mentor but suspect they are too busy to be a mentor? Or maybe you just don’t know how to break the ice with them. Try informational interviewing. Its not just for students or those choosing a career for the first time! Informational interviewing can help you transition to a new career field, further your network, or find a mentor.

Approach people who you suspect are too busy to be mentors and ask them for an informational interview. This is only one meeting of 30 minutes or so in duration but it has great potential for you to get excellent advice and information about the transition you are considering. It is also a way you can receive a little mentoring from several different people. Of course, be on the lookout for ways you can contribute to your interviewee’s efforts too, now or at a time in the future.

Here are the steps to make an info interview happen. Call your contact. Let them know you want to learn more about their career field and you were hoping they could help. Ask if you can schedule a time to speak with them for 30 minutes because you would like to ask them how they got into the field and about their recommendations for people considering entering the profession.

Following are some questions typically asked in an informational interview. Remember you most likely will not be able to ask them all since you want to keep the interview to only 30 minutes unless they encourage you to continue.

• How did you get to this point in your career?

• How did you find this job?

• What would you do differently if you were starting over in this field?

• Are there any professional associations you can recommend?

• What do you read to stay up-to-date in the field?

• What is happening in this industry?

• What recommendations do you have for a person interested in this field?

• Do you know others I should speak to about this career field?

Be sure to take a pen and paper for quick notes and recommendations and ask for their business card before you leave. Don’t forget to write and send a thank you note the following day.

Sometimes people are surprised to realize what an inside game career management is. In fact if you are feeling stuck about what major to choose or what career to choose or what job to look for next, a great first step is to start envisioning what your ideal career or job looks like. This can only come from the inside! Only you know what you prefer and how you would like to live.

People really underestimate the importance of thinking about the the lifestyle they prefer when choosing too. It reminds me of a story I once heard about a fisherman who goes out to fish for a few hours everyday to earn his living. Then comes home, enjoys lunch, plays with his kids, then goes to town to play guitar each evening with his wife. Some vacationers come to town and one guy can not resist telling the fisherman how he can get more wealth by building up his fishing operation. Long story short, the fisherman is already living how he wants to live! The point is that that often lifestyle choice is a good way to weed out distractors. You might like to hear the short story for yourself though.

Another thing to consider early on in your decision making process is your natural strengths. This is very important because a fulfilling career is built upon natural strengths which enable one to work with ease and to gain expertise faster. Sometimes defining your strengths can be tough because we often tend devalue what we do well — everyone can do that, it’s not special…that kind of inaccurate thinking.

So one action to take is to record what you believe your strengths are. Then take some time to go to 3-6 people who know you well and ask them what they have observed that you do easily and well. Take notes and compare responses, including your own, to come up with a list of your natural strengths. Another good tool to try which I have mentioned before to get more data about your natural strengths is Marcus Buckingham’s “Now, Discover Your Strengths.”

Next, you can take what you have learned about yourself and start comparing that data to what is required in careers you are considering. You do that not only with internet research but with invaluable field research a.k.a. informational interviewing. Can I just tell you, it is amazing how much the view of a potential choice can change after talking to a few folks already in the career field. I cannot overemphasize how learning about careers in this way brings career choice to life (in addition to the other perks of actually talking to people and building networking relationships)!

Mostly though, I encourage you to follow what appeals to you now as that is a big indication of your intuition at work. Follow your nose with an understanding that you may not end up where you thought but career choice a process not a destination. I encourage you to dive into the process one optimistic step at a time.

I was thinking the other day about how child’s play reflects interests and strengths. It is amazing to me how very quickly you can begin to see a child’s natural strengths emerging. Also the preschool years are a time when the child is just doing their thing without worrying about other people’s opinions for the most part.

If you are stuck trying to figure what what you want to do for your career, or if you are trying to build your personal brand based on your strengths, you might try thinking about your preschool years to get back in touch with what really brings you joy. Or you could talk to several people who knew you as a toddler and preschooler. Ask them what you seemed to learn quickly at those ages and phases of interest you went through. What would your relatives and caregivers say about you? Now, you may need to take this info with a grain of salt but by asking 3-5 opinions you should get some interesting data to consider about yourself.

Here are some tools that will come in handy for careerillionaires and infopreneurs!

Meta Search Engines (a.k.a metacrawlers)

• This type of internet search sends search requests to multiple search engines at once and puts the gathered responses in one long list. It’s a good idea to use a metacrawler in addition to your favorite search engine just to make sure you aren’t missing anything major. Using a meta search engine saves time since you won’t have to go to multiple websites to perform the same search.

• Top examples include www.mamma.com, www.dogpile.com, and www.clusty.com.

• I like www.clusty.com because it also divides the search results by category which makes quickly reviewing more precise results much easier.

• A variation is this tool specifically for searching career advice related articles – www.chimby.com.

• Meta searching job openings posted on the web can also be done. Try www.simplyhired.com and www.indeed.com.