A Career Changer's Checklist - 12 Common Sense Questions to Find Your Career: Conclusions
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We have arrived.
You're finished. We are now at the end of this series of career-oriented diagnostic questions titled the Career Changer's Checklist.
We have spent close to six months together—diagnosing what you need to reflect on to successfully change careers. That is a good amount of time.
The goal of this six-month exercise was to help you identify what you want to do in your career and help you find the career that is your ideal. The best job is one in which you will be fulfilled and compensated in a manner that makes you satisfied.
As I said in the Genesis article: You are the final diagnostician who will take the answers to the questions and come up with a course of action. The hope is that your careers' health will improve.
Could you have predicted six months ago how our worldwide economy would change? How unstable the job market would become? How many of you would be reading this because your job status suddenly changed? I know I could not.
It seems to me that this whole series was timed just right. At least it felt that way to me.
But before we go any further, let's briefly revisit the 12 questions we have considered.
The Questions
- Question 1: What do you want to do? (Goals!)
- Question 2: What do you like to do? (Pleasure and passion!)
- Question 3: What can you do? (Restrictions!)
- Question 4: What can you afford to do? (Economic reality! Ugh!!)
- Question 5: What do you know how to do? (Knowledge and experience!)
- Question 6: Where do you want to do what you want to do? (Location, location, location!)
- Question 7: Who do you want to do this with? (Community?!)
- Question 8: What is the expected life cycle for what you want to do? (Time is everything!)
- Question 9: What do you need to get started? (Laying a foundation!)
- Question 10: How willing are you to change? (Flexibility!)
- Question 11: What is your chance of fulfillment? (Not success, but fulfillment!)
- Question 12: What are you waiting for? What is stopping you? (Lift off and enjoy the ride!)
As you remember, I asked the 10 most important questions related to each main question, and you recorded your honest, objective responses to each.
And then I tried to provide you with a least five strategies that might help you address each opening question.
I have heard from many of you over the course of this series. It seems that the articles have helped you and the readers in your organizations migrate through this tumultuous employment time.
When I get email asking when the next article/question would be posted, I am grateful to InformIT for taking a chance on this series.
Now I can only conclude that you have read each question/article, taken notes, done the research, and now have a direction. And direction is so important.
Have you ever been lost, truly lost? It is terrifying. But when you know where you are and where you are going, there is a degree of certitude in the future. Hopefully, you now know where you are going.
For those of you new to the series, who are coming late to the party, this whole series is posted on InformIT.com and can be referenced in the future.
Through these questions you have also confronted what could be holding you back as you make a career change.
My hope is that many of you have already landed a dream job—one that fulfills you and provides you with the compensation you need to live the life you want to live.
Because I have been going through this journey with you, I want like to conclude this series with the following three thoughts:
- The most difficult and intimate final question that every career changer, and every person must confront
- My reflections on this journey with you
- Some good news