YouMap

by Kristin A Sherry

  Interestingly, when reviewing her career interest code, Antonette shared she had once considered becoming a medical doctor but didn’t end up pursuing the profession. When working with clients, I will ask them about careers they’ve considered but didn’t pursue. Often their early instincts about their interests are consistent with what we uncover in coaching.

  The need for I/S individuals in the workplace is great because most I/S careers are in healthcare, which requires a scientific approach with a social orientation. These jobs will stay in high demand, especially with an aging population. Jobs in certain medical and health specialties are far more plentiful in larger metropolitan areas, while more general I/S jobs are widely available everywhere.

  During our final session, I asked Antonette to strike out anything she disagreed with in the I/S profile above. We also discussed career ideas for next steps, and I helped her evaluate them against her YouMap® information.

  After much reflection on what she had learned about herself, she decided to transition from sales into teaching and training. This career choice uses a combination of her thinking preference and her social orientation to help others. She began teaching business classes in the evening at a local college with the intention of seeking a full-time training role during the day.

  If you’d like a deeper explanation of your career type, consider picking up a copy of CareerCode: Know Your Code, Find Your Fit.

  In the next section, I’ll introduce tools and methods you can use to investigate and evaluate career options.

  Blaze Your Path

  “There are plenty of difficult obstacles in your path.

  Don’t allow yourself to become one of them.”

  – Ralph Marston, Author

  Information without application can leave you feeling stuck. Therefore, the next important step is to tackle the question, “Now what?” Blazing a new path can be difficult, but nothing that’s worth anything is ever easy. Jim Rohn said, “If you really want to do something, you’ll find a way. If you don’t, you’ll find an excuse.”

  “Blaze Your Path” will help you figure out what to do with all the information we unearthed in the first section of the book—resulting in your YouMap®—and apply it practically to gain clarity and focus.

  To make the most of this section, you should complete at least a rough first draft of your YouMap®. In “Find Yourself,” you received a lot of information about what makes you who you are. If you haven’t completed that first step, consider doing so before moving forward because you will use your YouMap® to complete tasks in this section.

  After you’ve completed the “Find Yourself” section, you might think one of the following statements sounds like you:

  1.“I’m in the right kind of role. I’m just not performing the role in the right workplace environment or industry, or for the right manager.” This usually happens when the biggest cause of role misfit relates to your values and to some extent your skills, depending on how your manager or organization established your job description.

  2.“The discovery process confirmed the career path I’m considering appears to fit well with my YouMap® insights.”

  3.“I’m on an entirely wrong career path, and a career change is in order.”

  4.“It’s become clear I no longer want to be an employee of someone else.”

  If number one or two sounds like you, you can read this section or skip to the next section. However, I recommend you check out the tips in “Job Boards and Job Descriptions” and “Informational Interviews” before you skip ahead to “Show the World!”, where practical strategies will be shared to communicate your value proposition in networking conversations, cover letters, resumes, LinkedIn profiles, and interviews.

  If number three sounds like you, you should work through this section to gain clarity and direction.

  If you relate to number four, you will find additional information in “Show the World!”. I also recommend taking an entrepreneurial strengths assessment called “Builder Profile 10,” created by the Gallup organization. After years of research, Gallup has identified ten innate talents entrepreneurs share. At the time of this writing the profile is US$19.99.

  The ten entrepreneurial talents are: Determination, Confidence, Knowledge, Relationship, Disruptor, Risk, Independence, Delegator, Selling, and Profitability. These ten talents combine to create distinct entrepreneurial styles. This can help you assess your entrepreneurial strengths and where you might need support.

  You can take the Builder 10 Profile here: tinyurl.com/ya5lvyd6

  Next, I’d like to introduce you to some resources and techniques I use with my own clients to help them make career decisions. The first is O*NET.

  Introduction to O*NET

  The O*NET (Occupational Information Network) Program is the United States’ primary source of occupational information.

  Central to this program is the O*NET database, containing hundreds of standardized and occupation-specific descriptors on approximately 1,000 occupations throughout the US. The database is accessible at no cost and is continually updated from input by a broad range of workers in each occupation.

  O*NET information is used by millions of individuals annually, including those taking advantage of O*NET Online and My Next Move, which are two features of O*NET I will cover below. O*NET is developed under the sponsorship of the US Department of Labor/Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA).

  You can access O*NET online at www.onetonline.org

  One of my favorite features of the O*NET online site is the Career Interest Profiler.

  Career Interest Profiler

  This interest profiler is built on the personality-based Holland Occupational Themes I introduced in Discover How You’re Wired in the “Find Yourself” section.

  The profiler provides three ways to approach career discovery.

  Search Option 1: “I want to be a…”

  This feature allows you to describe your ideal career using key word searches. For example, I entered “Help people heal” into the search box, and the following list of occupations returned in the search results:

  • Home Health Aides

  • Community Health Workers

  • Occupational Health & Safety Technicians

  • Health Educators

  • Mental Health Counselors

  • Occupational Health & Safety Specialists

  • Sociologists

  • Occupational Therapists

  • Veterinary Assistants & Laboratory Animal Caretakers

  • Medical & Health Services Managers

  Search Option 2: “I’ll know it when I see it…”

  This search option allows you to discover careers by industry, such as Education, Health & Counseling, Media & Communication, Management, Manufacturing, and others.

  Once an industry selection is made, a list of occupations in your selected industry is returned and includes additional helpful information, such as the occupation’s projected growth, which is referred to as a Bright Outlook field in O*NET.

  Search Option 3: “I’m not really sure…”

  This option invites you to take the Career Interest Profiler. After you complete the short profiler assessment, the site returns your Holland Occupational Code results. I have included my results here as an example.

  In my example, my primary career interest is Investigative (27%), followed by Artistic (25%), with my top three types shown above in bold (Investigative, Artistic, Social – Thinker/Creator/Helper). The Investigative/Artistic combination is known as The Scholar and suggests I should picture myself as a sociologist.

 
I’ve never wanted to be a sociologist (and I still don’t), even though the field intrigues me. If you recall, I suggested treating the career recommendations as instructive rather than firm suggestions.

  Let’s review the description of The Scholar: highly observant, deep thinkers, intuitive, insightful, complex, researcher, introverted, intellectual, independent, opinionated.

  I agree those descriptors sound like me (though I’m not an introvert). Interestingly, if I flip my first two codes to Artistic/Investigative, The Idealist, the career suggestion is an author!

  After my career code results appeared, I clicked the “Next” button in the bottom right corner to move to the next step of focusing my occupation search by Interest and Job Zone. Job Zones group occupations into one of five categories based on level of education, experience, and training necessary to perform the job, as follows:

  Job Zone 1 – Requires little to no preparation and could be performed without formal education and with little training.

  Job Zone 2 – Requires some preparation and might require a training program for a pre-determined number of weeks or prior experience.

  Job Zone 3 – Requires moderate preparation and could require an Associate’s or Bachelor’s degree plus three years of experience.

  Job Zone 4 – Requires considerable preparation and could require post-graduate education such as a Master’s degree and five to seven years of work experience.

  Job Zone 5 – Requires extensive preparation and could require a Doctoral degree and Post-Doctoral training or a Master’s degree with an additional license.

  I selected Job Zone 4 to retrieve a list of occupations according to my interest and desired job zone, which is displayed below. I’m not entirely surprised to see Creative Writers as an occupational match (although I prefer to write prescriptive nonfiction), nor was I surprised to see a Career/Technical Education Teacher match in my list. Though, I certainly wouldn’t be interested in performing a career education role at the middle school level because I know I work best with individuals who are in high school and older. Think of the career recommendations as a starting point for your research.

  If you’re an active member of the military, or a veteran (Thank you for your service!), there’s also a Career Interest Profiler available just for you. It enables you to select the military branch in which you serve(d) and your MOS classification. The Career Interest Profiler will return private sector job recommendations that are most similar to your MOS. The roles are not necessarily in specific tasks but in the underlying career interests associated with your classification.

  For example, if you were in the Army with MOS classification 13F, Joint Fire Support Specialist - Enlisted, the Career Interest Profiler would return occupations that might appeal to similar personalities interested in data, detail, regular routine, and additional matching factors.

  If you’ve had a long military career, consider finding a mentor who has had similar experiences and has also successfully transitioned to a career in the private sector. Mentorship by someone who has traveled the road you are pursuing is going to be much more beneficial than using the Career Interest Profiler alone.

  You can take the Career Interest Profiler at the My Next Move website using the following links:

  Military Veteran Career Interest Profile

  www.mynextmove.org/vets/

  Standard Career Interest Profiler

  www.mynextmove.org/explore/ip

  Spanish Language Career Interest Profiler

  www.miproximopaso.org/

  O*NET Occupational Database

  After you have your career interest results, you’ll notice each of the possible occupation matches are hyperlinked. This is where the Career Interest Profiler integrates with the O*NET Occupational Database. You can click on any occupation title and review a wealth of information about that occupation contained in the O*NET Occupational Database.

  The images below capture the information displayed when I clicked the Career/Technical Education Teachers, Middle School occupation title in my Career Interest Profiler results.

  You’ll notice a description of the occupation includes the core responsibilities. In addition, it provides the knowledge, skills, and abilities related to the role, personality characteristics associated with the occupation, technology skills needed, required education, and the projected outlook for the occupation (growing, steady, or shrinking field).

  Additional links encourage you to explore a sample of additional, related occupations if the occupation you’re researching doesn’t seem quite right for you.

  Take a moment to review the images below to familiarize yourself with the information the O*NET Occupational Database provides. Make note of the “Also called” section at the top left beneath the job title. This is a useful source of information to search opportunities on job boards by job title.

  You can also access the O*NET Occupational Database directly without completing the Career Interest Profiler by going to www.onetonline.org and entering occupation titles into the search box in the upper right corner of the site. Notice also, the “Explore More” section lists some additional occupations and industries you might be interested in.

  Tip: To obtain a complete list of suggested occupation matches based on your interest code, go to www.onetonline.org. Click “Advanced Search” from the main menu, then select “Interests” from the Advanced Search submenu. The six Holland codes will display as hyperlinks. Click your primary interest code, and then select your secondary interest code from the drop down and click “Go.” An expanded list of career options will display for you to research.

  Use the space below to capture occupations of interest and any details about those occupations you want to note. List requirements needed to pursue the occupation such as education, certification, or experience. Next, rank desirability of pursuing the option (low, medium, high) and feasibility (low, medium, high). Feasibility is usually related to resources, such as time and money. Select the most feasible, then most desirable, option. Download my Career Decision-Making Tool at MyYouMap.com.

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  If your most feasible and desirable career option requires additional credentials, training, education, or licensure, O*NET can help you obtain more information regarding education, too. When you search occupations using the quick search from the www.onetonline.org home page, the detailed results for each occupation include an “Education” section near the bottom of the occupation summary report.

  The following example is for a mechanical engineer. Notice the survey respondents working in this job title indicate their current level of education. You can see 85% of mechanical engineers have a Bachelor’s degree. You can click on Find Training, Find Certifications, Find Licenses, and Find Apprenticeships to discover education and training opportunities for your desired occupation by geographic area.

  Another helpful resource to identify education requirements for various occupations is Study.com. Or you can go directly to study.com/directory/category/index.html to search degrees by subject (engineering, business, architecture, psychology, etc.).

&nb
sp; Job Boards and Job Descriptions

  Once you’ve researched occupations of interest using the O*NET Occupational Database, you’re ready to begin using job boards to search job descriptions to discover what employers are looking for. This also helps you confirm job descriptions align with your research on O*NET and your current expectations.

  Job boards I prefer to use to search postings are Indeed.com, Glassdoor.com, LinkedIn.com, CareerBuilder.com, and Crossroadscareer.org.

  Tip: Online searching should comprise the smallest percentage of your job search time, no more than 10-25%. The purpose of job board searching is to identify opportunities you can use as a basis to network with other people. Your goal is to identify companies hiring for positions you’re well suited for and then use both online and in-person networking to reveal people you know who can make an introduction into the organization.

  Not sure what job titles to search? I recommend two strategies:

  1. Create keyword searches from your YouMap® by combining a strength or description from My Strengths and How I’m Wired sections, plus a skill from the My Skills section.

  For example, if you’re strategic and you like project management, you can search “strategic project management” on the job board. If you have your Six Sigma Green Belt or PMP certification enter that into the job board search, as job descriptions are fully searchable, and you might not know what jobs require a credential you hold.