What Color Is Your Parachute? (50 page)

In contrast to what I just said, many of you will look at your completed Flower Diagram, and you won’t have
a clue
as to what job or career it points to. Soooo, we need a “fallback” strategy. Of course it involves more “step-by-step-by-step” stuff.

Here’s how it goes. Take a piece of paper, with pen or pencil, or go to your computer, and keyboard in hand, make some notes:

1. First, look at your Flower Diagram, and from the center petal choose your three to five most
   favorite
   skills
   .
   

2. Then, look at your Flower Diagram and write down your three favorite
   special knowledges
   (interests, or favorite fields, or Fields of Fascination—whatever you want to call them).
   

3. Now, take these notes, and show them to at least five friends, family members, or professionals whom you know.
   

4. Jot down
   everything
   these five people suggest or recommend to you.
   

5. After you have finished talking to them, you want to go home and look at all these notes. Anything helpful or valuable here? If not, if none of it looks valuable, then set it aside, and go talk to five more of your friends, acquaintances, or people you know in the business world or nonprofit sector. Repeat, as necessary.
   

6. When you finally have some worthwhile suggestions, sit down, look over their combined suggestions, and ask yourself some questions.
   

• First, you want to look at what these friends suggested about your skills:
  what job or jobs came to their minds?
  It will help you to know that most jobs can be classified under nineteen headings or families, as below. Which of these nineteen do your friends’ suggestions predominantly point to? Which of these nineteen grabs you?
  

• Next, you want to look at what your friends suggested about your interests or special knowledges:
  what fields or careers came to their minds ?
  It will help you to know that most of the job families above can be classified under four broad headings:
  Agriculture, Manufacturing, Information Industries, and Service Industries.
  Which of
  these four do your friends’ suggestions predominantly
  point to?
  Which of these four grabs you?
  

• The next question you want to ask yourself is: job-titles and career-fields can be broken down further, according to whether you like to work primarily with
  people
  or
  primarily with
  information/data
  or
  primarily with
  things.
  

Let’s take the field of agriculture as an example. Within this field, you could be driving tractors or other farm machinery—and thus work primarily with
things;
or you could be gathering statistics about crop growth for some state agency—and thus work primarily with
information / data;
or you could be teaching agriculture in a college classroom—and thus work primarily with
people
and
ideas.
Almost all fields as well as career families offer you these three choices, though
of course
many jobs combine two of the three in some intricate way.

Still, you do want to tell yourself what your
preference
is, and what you
primarily
want to work with. Otherwise your job-hunt or career-change is going to leave you very frustrated at the end. In this matter, it is often your favorite skill that will give you the clue. If it
doesn’t
, then go back and look at the whole Skills petal, on your Flower Diagram. What do you think? Are your favorite skills weighted more toward working with
people
, or toward working with
information/data
, or toward working with
things
?

And, no matter what that
petal
suggests, which of the three do you absolutely prefer, in your heart of hearts?

Click
here
to view a PDF version of 10 Possible Targets.

Once you have these
clues
from your friends, you need to go name your Flower. To do this, you need to answer three questions for yourself, in the order indicated below: