What Color Is Your Parachute? (52 page)

Sometimes your problem will be just the opposite. We come here to the second possibility: if your Informational Interviewing doesn’t turn up enough names of places where you could get hired in your new career, then you’re going to have to expand your list. You’re going to have to consult some directories.

Your salvation is going to be, first of all, the Yellow Pages of your local phone book. Look under every heading that is of any interest to you. Also, see if the local chamber of commerce publishes a business directory; often it will list not only small companies but also local divisions of larger companies, with names of department heads; sometimes they will even include the North American Industry Classification System
(NAICS) codes, should you care. If you are diligent here, you won’t lack for names, believe me—unless it’s a very small town you live in, in which case you’ll need to cast your net a little wider, to include other towns, villages, or cities that are within commuting distance.

There is a name for this process I have just described. It is called
Informational Interviewing
—a term I invented many many years ago. But it is sometimes, incorrectly, called
by other names
. Some even call this gathering of information
Networking,
which it is not.

To avoid this confusion, I have summarized in the chart,
here
,just exactly what
Informational Interviewing
is, and how it differs from the other ways in which
people
can help and support you, during your job-hunt or career-change—namely,
Networking
,
Support Groups
,
and
Contacts
.
I have also thrown in, at no extra charge, a
first
column in that chart, dealing with an aspect of the job-hunt that
never
gets talked about: namely, the importance before your job-hunt ever begins, of
reestablishing friendships you have let slip
—by calling or visiting them early on in your job-hunt—
before
you ever need anything from them, as you most certainly will, later on in your job-hunt. The first column in the chart explains this further.

Click
here
to view a PDF version of The Job Hunter’s or Career Changer’s Guide to Relationships.

When you go talk to people, you are hoping they will give you ideas, as we saw, about
which careers
will use your skills and special knowledges and interests.

That’s the first step.

The second step is that you want also to get some idea of
what that work feels like, from the inside
.

Therefore, during Informational Interviewing, you want to talk to people who are actually doing the work you think you’d love to do. Why? In effect, you are mentally
trying on jobs
to see if they fit you.

It is exactly analogous to your going to a clothing store and trying on different suits (or dresses) that you see in their window or on their racks. Why try them on? Well, the suits or dresses that look
terrific
in the window don’t always look so hot when you see them on
you
. The clothes don’t hang quite right, etc.

Likewise, careers that
sound
terrific in books or in your imagination don’t always look so great when you see them up close and personal.

What you’re ultimately trying to find is a career that looks terrific inside and out—in the window,
and
also on you. As mentioned in the chart on the previous page, here are some questions that will help
with workers who are actually doing the career you think you might like to do
:

• How did you get into this work?
  

• What do you like the most about it?
  

• What do you like the least about it?
  

• And, where else could I find people who do this kind of work?
  (You should always ask them for more than one name, here, so that if you run into a dead end at any point, you can easily go visit the other names they suggested.)
  

If it becomes apparent to you, during the course of any of these Informational Interviews, that this career, occupation, or job you were exploring definitely
doesn’t
fit you, then the last question (above) gets turned into a different kind of inquiry:

• Do you have any ideas as to who else I could talk to, about my skills and special knowledges or interests—so I can find out how they all might fit together, in one job or career?
  

Then go visit the people they suggest.

If they can’t think of
anyone
, ask them if they know who
might
know.

Next step: having found the names of jobs or careers that interest you, having mentally
tried them on
to see if they fit, you next want to find out
how much training, etc., it takes, to get into that field or career
. You ask the same people you have been talking to, previously.

More times than not, you will hear
bad news
. They will tell you something like: “In order to be hired for this job, you have to have a master’s degree and ten years’ experience at it.”

If you have the time, and the money, fine! But what if you don’t? Then you search for
exceptions:

Throughout Informational Interviewing, don’t assume anything (“But I just assumed that…”). Question
all
assumptions, no matter how many people tell you that “this is just the way things are.”

Keep in mind that there are people
out there
who will tell you something that absolutely
isn’t
so, with every conviction in their being—because they
think
it’s true. Sincerity they have, 100 percent. Accuracy is something else again. You will need to check and cross-check any information that people tell you or that you read in books (even this one).

No matter how many people tell you that such-and-so are the rules about getting into a particular occupation, and there are no exceptions—believe me there
are
exceptions, to almost
every
rule, except where a profession has rigid entrance examinations, as in, say, medicine or law.

Rules are rules. But what you are counting on is that somewhere in this country, somewhere in this vast world,
somebody
found a way to get into this career you dream of, without going through all the hoops that everyone else is telling you are
absolutely essential.

You want to find out who these people are, and go talk to them, to find out
how they did it.

Okay, but suppose you are determined to go into a career that takes
years
to prepare for, and you can’t find
anyone
who took a shortcut? What then?

Every professional speciality has one or more
shadow
professions, which require much less training. For example, instead of becoming a doctor, you can go into paramedical work; instead of becoming a lawyer, you can go into paralegal work, instead of becoming a licensed career counselor, you can become a career coach.