As the holidays end and a new year begins, are you bummed about going back to work! After the joy and excitement that the holidays bring, does it seem like kind of a drag to go back to your weekly routine? I think many have the impression that you would only want to seek career consultation when you have just lost your job or are fed up with your current one. While my clients are usually ready for a change from their current career situation, the consultation helps them see their work lives in new ways that enhances their current job role.

What often surprises them is how unique their talents are from those of others. My clients tell me all the time that they are annoyed with particular job tasks or co-workers usually because they assume that everyone sees those work situations in the same way as themselves. The key is to remember that your approach is truly, entirely distinct from that of others. "Why does everyone always expect me to do that?" I often hear. "Why can't they just do it?" my clients will say. While it may be true that others are not responsibly fulfilling work tasks, very often my clients learn that their approach to those same tasks makes them the preferred person to complete certain job tasks in the best possible way over others, which helps them view these situations differently.

At EPIC Career, we help you single out those talents. Those are the bits that must be brought out in job interviews, Summary sections of resumes and the like. Employers want to know this about applicants, but job applicants often do not understand or know how to articulate these qualities. As we launch into a new year and back into familiar and perhaps draining work routines, remember that your talents are unique. Career assessment and consultation can help you understand how you are different from others and how you can optimally express your unique potential contributions to supervisors and potential employers to win coveted opportunities. Whether you are ready to make a major career change or simply expand your understanding of your talents, EPIC Career is hear to help!

Somehow every time I hear Bruce Springsteen's waling about running away to pursue his dreams with the love of his life securely holding on on the back of his bike, I get a little emotional? Don't we all want to create a life that is entirely fulfilling? Don't we all want to passionately, entirely pursue our passions in ways that will bring us total fulfillment? 

While we can emotionally well-up with about life choices, the reality of work life for most of us often regularly feels far more mundane.
People ask me questions all the time like, how can you know what career I should pursue? How can I rely on a psychological instrument to help me find something so personal as the passion and central pursuit of my life? More than how we will earn money for many years, if we believe psychologists who argue that we are shaped by our environment, our career choices help shape the people we become.

The truth is, these career and life choices are entirely personal and reflect our essence. Despite their centrality to our being, they can be so difficult to understand and navigate. I respond to the above questions by saying that while they don't offer all the answers, career assessments clearly offer a starting point. Not only do they help you more fully understand how your strengths and weaknesses relate to professions that are highly likely to be a fit based on decades of research, they help you understand yourself relative to others. Many career counselors use assessments that may offer insight about one's abilities, but they lack insight about you relative to everyone else. Our assessments help you build a long-term working knowledge of you and every other personality style, the percentage of folks who are also like you, and the opportunities and challenges that you are highly likely to face throughout your career. 

At EPIC Career, our career assessments offer you the strategic advantage over other job applicants by helping you fully understand how your passions relate to the real world of work. Yes, we are born to run. Are you ready to run toward your career passions armed with how you can fully realize your career dreams? At EPIC Career, we are ready to help!

This week, I start a new series based on cases and common questions (names and exact details are changed for client privacy). 

The assessment results show Social Worker as my best-fit career, but I have no interest in that field. Does this mean that I won't be successful in my career unless I pursue Social Work? No

But That Career Isn't on the Assessment Results?

Client: I want to be an engineer.
Me: It's great that you have an idea. Why do you want to be an engineer?
Client: My father is an engineer, I have learned a lot about what it takes to be an engineer from his experience, and I think this field will work for me.
Me: Many naturally consider career choices of family members with which they are familiar when beginning evaluating options. The top careers listed on your assessment are Pastor, Teacher, Social Worker and other helping professions. Have you ever considered any of these.
Client: No, I don't like any of those professions? Why does engineer not show as a strong fit (client becoming frustrated). These assessments are worthless - why did I even do this?

Interpretation = Fit

Our experiences with tests and exams have typically involved reading results as absolute truths. The beauty of assessment results lies in the wide range of information revealed, all of which may be appropriately used employing a great deal of interpretation. First, the assessments are meant to show you what thousands of others over decades who responded just like you indicated that they preferred in terms of professions, work-related values, tasks, etc. Additionally, the results also present one's learning style, preferences about interacting with and leading others and much more. With interpretation, assessments provide insight for career decision-making rather commandments to rigidly follow.

How Can You Find Your Fit?

For the engineering student, the results showed his preference for practical learning gaining skills that can be immediately used. They also revealed his preference for understanding and listening to the needs and feelings of others, enjoying group work and feeling quite comfortable taking charge and leading others. In my experience, results of those who enjoy Engineering are usually different. While engineers design things that we use everyday (implying a desire for practical learning), their reports typically show a preference for understanding concepts theoretically leaning on their talents in science or math. While engineers work with others, their results don't usually show a preference for taking great time to understand and listen to the feelings of others, as one might expect from a Pastor, Teacher, Social Worker, or similar professional.

What Should This Client Do?

I would suggest that the client research and review many of the professions on the results, including many he had never before considered. If this client chose one of the helping professions discussed, he would likely work with many colleagues with personality preferences and interests that are very similar to his. Because of this, he would likely understand others and be understood reasonably well most of the time by professionals in his field. The drawback is that he may have a hard time standing out to employers and showing how his talents are unique relative to other job candidates. 

If he chose Engineering, he would likely find that most of his colleagues would like him to be the member of the firm who develops and maintains relationships with clients. Having been trained in engineering by that point, he would likely enjoy coupling his talent of listening to client needs and working closely with his fellow engineer colleagues to meet those needs. To be clear, I am not saying that engineers do not enjoy working with their clients or other people! I am, however, saying that in my experience, I have found that they typically exhibit primary satisfaction at using their scientific and mathematical skills toward solving practical problems over striving to understand and manage the challenges inherent in interacting with others as a central work task.

Are you unsure about a career or college major choice and would like decades of research to affirm your career-related decisions? At EPIC Career, we are here to help.

Clients come to me all the time asking what I think they should do with their lives, professionally. What I always find most interesting is what about their past lives they have not considered to be part of that choice. From infants and throughout our lives, our personalities form based on innate characteristics, and developed skills and interests. In my experience dealing with these issues with teens through adults, it is striking to often find that my clients just haven't changed as much throughout their lives as they think they have. When we really examine the elements of activities that we most enjoyed when we were younger with the present, we find the same activities continue to excite us, invigorate us, and compel us to situate our lives so that we can continue to pursue those activities. I am not exclusively talking about leisure activities. Yes, we all enjoy vacations and escape from the basic responsibilities of life, but certain activities continue to drive us. The key, of course, is to learn how we can capture these enjoyed activities in a career from which we can find a lifetime of satisfaction. At EPIC Career, our 37 pages of report about your personality and consultation can help you see exactly this: how what you have always enjoyed can translate into a satisfying career pursuit. When you are ready for this kind of examination of self to inform your career-related decisions, we at EPIC Career are here to help.

Myth 1: I know what I am doing, so I have no need for career assessment.

False!

Are you sure about jumping into that career field? From my experience working with clients about career and college major choice issues, I can often fairly quickly see how a career choice might or might not be a long-term career fit. Actually, sometimes it is a great fit and I breathe a huge sigh of relief. But far too often, I know that the choice is a terrible mistake. 

Why does it bother me to learn that someone is about to embark upon a career from which they are not likely to find long-term satisfaction? First, I think about their future disenchantment with the choice and what a blow to their future self-confidence it will be. Secondly, I think of all of the resources (time, energy, tuition and certification expenses) the individual will personally invest. Finally, I hate to think that the American taxpayers are about to potentially loan that student tens of thousands of dollars to pursue a program that might only lead to disappointment.

So when I hear "This program has great job prospects" or "I have a friend who did that program and everything turned out great for them," my response is "Are you sure that you are completely confident about spending or borrowing all those many thousands of dollars on this program that you are not quite entirely sure will work for you?" Are you sure you don't want to know what more than 60 years of solid research suggests would be highly likely to be an ideal fit for you?" 

Before spending all those thousands, wouldn't it be wise to explore a wider set of options that will offer you understanding of clear pathways for your future career success? Whatever your college major or career decisions, wouldn't this knowledge help you breathe easier as you make them? At EPIC Career, we are here to help.

Myth 2: Because I am happy in my career, career assessments could in no way help me advance in my career.

False!

Making the Case

Career success is wonderful! It is great when you enjoy your career and earn a salary that meets your needs. It's even better to feel you have earned appropriate credentials for your profession and strong references that will support many years of career advancement. My question is: do you know how to articulate your strengths? Yes, past achievements, educational attainment, and references speak for themselves, but is that your whole story? 

If you have ever been a hiring manager you know the conundrum. You have gone through all the appropriate interviews, checked all the references (which were all satisfactory), and involved all the appropriate people with whom the new hire might regularly work. But ultimately, the final decision still lies solely with you. How do you make the decision? What is the ultimate rationale that will help you decide that one applicant will truly be a better fit than any other candidate. The answer is "fit." You know that one candidate just fits in better with yourself or others and you think (often with no rational explanation) that that one is better than every other candidate. As candidates, how can we be the fit?

Being the "Fit"

How do we stack the odds in our favor for the greatest chance of showing that we are the best fit? Personality! We must understand how our natural personality strengths make us the optimal fit for the job. When I have hired, I have always known that all applicants that I have invited to interview have a strong shot at the job. What I ultimately want to hear, however, is what makes the candidates tick. What excites them at work? What successes have they enjoyed enacting that they describe as satisfying? I also want to hear about what is not so fun or not so interesting and how that applicant manages those tasks. These details are what make the applicant a human. After all, if I am hiring them, I want to know that I want to hang out with them in the workplace for a significant amount of time over many years. Personally, I do not want to hear about how they like to go fishing, skiing, shopping or anything else personal about their lives. I want to know about what they enjoy about work. Unfortunately, too often candidates do not convey this side of themselves, leaving the interviewer to only speculate about job fit as the candidate made no compelling case.

The Power of Self-Description

How does a successful professional understand these kinds of intangible, difficult to measure qualities about themselves and most importantly, how does one articulate these qualities to an employer? Career assessment is the key. At EPIC Career, we help you understand how you have always been and will always be. Yes, we all change and improve in many ways throughout our lives, but there are many aspects of ourselves that are quite stable. You need to be able to describe in what ways you are uniquely gifted at particular work-related tasks - how you have been in the past and will always be. You can then use examples from your work experience to verify that success. This information is so much more than saying am a "I good team player". It's better than using generic terms like "focused", "punctual", or "dependable".  (Shouldn't all workers be those things?!) 

Are you ready to stand out from the crowd by describing yourself to employers in ways that most applicants cannot even conceptualize about themselves? At EPIC Career, we are here to help.