You Need to Understand More Fully Who You Are

As you may have understood from the last few blog posts, job hunting is not an easy task. Doing your best to more fully understand who you are could help you find a job, and the following seven answers will inform you why it works so well.

1. By doing homework on yourself, you will learn to describe yourself in six different ways and it will allow you to approach multiple job-markets.-Becoming someone who is different skills and experiences has become very important. Being someone who is identified by only one job-title will not work any more because it limits you to only one market. You need to be someone who has multiple skills because it will allow multiple job markets to be open to you instead of only one.

2. By doing homework on yourself, you will be able to describe exactly what you are looking for-Doing this will allow your family, LinkedIn contacts, and friends to better help you with your job search. You will now be able to describe what kind of job you want and what kind of setting you are looking for. This will allow them to be able to help you a lot more.

3. By ending up with a picture of a job that would excite you, you will most likely end putting more energy and determination into your job-search-Previously, your job-hunt probably felt like a duty that you were required to do. Now, you will be dying to find the jobs that would like and become determined and persistent in finding them.

4. By doing this homework, you will no longer have to wait to approach companies until they say they have a vacancy-Once you are done with the "homework", you can choose places that best match who you are, and you will approach them through someone who knows both you and them.  This person is known as a "bridge-person".  More often then you may think, a bridge-person is able to help create a job for someone.

5. When you are facing other competitors who are equally experienced, and equally skilled as you,  for a job you want, you will stand out because you will be able to describe what is unique about you and what you can bring to the table that others cannot-Having good traits is what will make you stand out from the competition. If you have done the homework, you will be in good shape when you have to inform a business what you can bring to the table that others cannot.

6. If you are thinking about a career-change after you inventory yourself, you will be able to see what new career or direction you want for your life-This may be an option, but please first consider finding out who you are and what you love to do. Often times you can put together a new career by using what you already know and can do. It may even turn out that the knowledge you may need to pick up can be found in one or two year college. It could even be found simply nby doing enough informational interviewing.

7. Unemployment is an interruption is people's lives.  However, interruptions are opportunities, to pause, to think, and assess where we really want to go with our lives-Although it may seem like unemployment has interrupted your life, the parachute approach explains that it really can be an opportunity. The parachute approach says that this interruption should allow you to do an inventory of who you are and what you love to do, before you set out on your search for work.