مکالمه

BEC : Careers -Conversation

AJ: So finally, we’re going to talk about the subject of careers. We’ve been mentioning this subject pretty much through the whole program, but in this conversation we really want to discuss I think the kind of long-term view and especially this idea of job obsolescence. In other words, certain jobs can become obsolete. What that means is they cease to exist.

We can think of whole industries that can become obsolete. So if you’re working in an industry that becomes obsolete, in other words, it fades away.

An example would be like the old long-distance phone services, which now are replaced by cell phones. So if that was your only skill and you knew everything that you needed to know about long distance and regular old landlines and things and then suddenly the world starts to change and everything is about cell phones, mobile and all this technology, if you don’t continue to learn and adapt you’re going to be out of a job and your whole career could disappear.

Another aspect of this is just that your own feelings, your own interests, your own strengths can and will change through your life, so you don’t need to be stuck in one career. I mean I’ve been through so many careers it’s hard to count them all. I originally got a degree in journalism and did that just a little bit. I quickly figured out that I didn’t like it and that there was also not much money in it. Then I worked a bunch of jobs like security jobs, bunches of little jobs that didn’t pay anything. Then I went back to school and got a Masters Degree in social work and then built a whole social work career over several years and got better and better jobs and got more and more skilled at social work.

Then I just wanted to travel, so I got a job teaching English. I really liked both the traveling and the teaching and realized that I loved that so I got several more jobs, got more experience. Then went back to school again and got a Masters in teaching English and then built that career better and better and better and developed my own system. Then decided to start my own business and then had to teach myself business, which is really a whole new career now running my own company. These are multiple careers. You can have this same thing happen to you and you probably will because over the course of 20-30-40 years the world changes so much. You change so much that you’ve got to have that flexibility, I think.

George: Yes, I agree. I think everybody is going to go through or is maybe going through a lot of changes, a lot of changes. Like AJ I’ve had different careers.

I think while I was in college I changed my major six times because I couldn’t figure out what I wanted to do.

Then after I left there I went into the teaching and coaching area. Then finally got into business and even though I was with the same company for a long time I probably had 16 or 20 different jobs and each one of them were in different parts of the business. Since leaving there I’ve done a number of things.

A lot of that has come about, I think, by recognizing the skills and abilities that I had. Not only recognizing, but finding out what I really liked to do and what I was pretty good at doing. Strange as it may sound, sometimes it takes us a little while to recognize that what we like to do and what we’re good at, hopefully, are one in the same thing. They usually are and for whatever the variety of reasons we go off on a path thinking this is our destiny and our career until we finally face reality and realize hey, I’m pretty good at this and you know what? I like this.

AJ: Yeah, I think the worst possible thing to do is to choose a career just based on money or based on the job prospects. I mean those are nice things to consider, but I think a lot of people, especially younger people, you’re going to college or university maybe or some technical training, you really don’t know what you want so people are constantly trying to push you in some certain direction or maybe you just eventually choose.

I still had no idea through all of my undergraduate studies and I just picked journalism because I like writing and I like doing video stuff. So I did both of those in the journalism program, but then it took me several years of working and trying things to really figure out what my strengths were, what I loved doing, what I could do a really great job at, what I could be special or unique at.

So, I think an important message is to be patient and to keep trying things.

Don’t just decide because you read an article that well, the world needs a lot of nurses now so I’m going to become a nurse and then you’re stuck with that your whole life. That’s crazy. I mean try it if you want to, but you may decide after going through nursing school and doing it a few years that ah, you know I really don’t like nursing. Maybe I’d better find something else.

That’s fine. Be open to that because that’s how the world works now.

George: Yeah, I think we’re coming to a point here at the end of our total program and guess what? I think we’re going to continue saying the same thing that we’ve said all the way through every one of these lessons. It’s a matter of continuing to grow yourself, to grow your skills, to increase your knowledge, to develop new skills. If you’re looking for that perfect job, that right job, what you really want to do, that’s how you do it. You just keep learning every day, every day.

I’ve always said a day that goes by that you didn’t learn something that’s kind of a wasted day. You should learn something every day. It doesn’t have to be something great, but learn something and, most importantly, learn something about yourself, what you like, what you can do and what you can’t do. Take advantage of everything out there to learn something.

AJ: Yes. You know another aspect of this and of being flexible and constantly learning is that sometimes over the long term you may have to kind of go backwards a little bit in order to go forward. So, in other words, you start a certain career or a job path and you go forward and then something happens. You discover that you don’t like it or the economy changes. You lose your job or that career becomes obsolete. Whatever happens, suddenly, oh, my God, you’re stuck and you have to start again.

Just be prepared for that. Don’t get scared about it. You may need to accept a position at lower pay for awhile while you learn and grow in your new career path. You may need to just focus on learning for a while so you might want to get a job or a couple jobs where you’re not so much focused on making a lot of money, but you’re more focused on getting new skills that you think will be useful for you.

Again, some people might think that’s stepping backwards because maybe you change careers and you’re starting towards the bottom again and you’re really focused more on learning and developing skills instead of getting more money, but as you do that you’ll grow and then you’ll move forward again.

It’s not a linear path. There tend to be ups and downs, a little back and forward, but like my dad said, you keep growing, you keep learning. You kind of have that veracious hunger for learning and growing and acquiring skills.

Constantly, constantly, constantly doing that will ultimately guarantee that something special is going to happen. It might take a few years, in my case it didn’t really explode and start doing great until towards my late 30s. Just enjoy the ride, I would say.

Enjoy learning and growing and don’t be constantly obsessed about how much money you’re making right now. Keep a long-term view.

George: Yeah, try to avoid that thought process that seems to be prevalent in the world today - instant gratification, instant satisfaction. It’s not going to happen. As AJ said, he was in his 30s before he really finally began to focus in on moving him to where he is today and guess what? He’s more than 30 years old.

Well, I went through the same thing. I considered it a step forward when I left the teaching business and got into the business environment, but it was really a step sideways or maybe a half a step backwards because when I left the teaching field I was not only a teacher, but I was a coach and I was athletic director of a big school and a business manager of a big school and when I started at IBM I was just a clerk. I think they even called me an associate clerk sitting at a desk shoveling papers around.

Was that a step back? I don’t know. It was into something that I thought I wanted to do and I, quite frankly, didn’t realize what I wanted to do and where I wanted to go until I had been in the company probably four a couple years and moved around to some different jobs. Then I began to realize what some of my true skills were and what I enjoyed doing. That’s when I said hey, I’ve got to start learning a lot more and I’ve got to improve my skills and my knowledge if I’m going to be able to accomplish what I want to do and that’s where it went.

AJ: Yes. I can’t remember where I heard this, but there’s a great little phrase or saying. I think it was Robert Kiyosaki actually. He said first you work to learn and then later you work to earn. In other words, in the beginning --the beginning, who knows how many years that is - sometimes you have to start over.

So you might have several new beginnings through your whole life, but in those beginning stages of any career you’re really working to learn, learn more about yourself, learn more about the job, and learn more about the career, all of these things. Then only years later, for most people, do you really start to earn a good amount of money in that field after you’ve learned everything you need to do.

So yeah, this instant gratification idea of I will instantly get a job that pays me tons of money and is super fun and everything is great rarely happens. It can, but it doesn’t happen often. Usually you’ve got to get in there because there’s just no replacement for experience. You can read about something. I learned this in my career too, thinking about or imagining a certain job was not the same as doing it. Rarely does the actual real job resemble what we imagine it might be.

You know we might think of a fireman. Oh, that sounds heroic and oh, it sounds amazing, but then if you actually get a job as a fireman or you go and hang out around fireman you might realize well, actually, a lot of this job is boring. You just sit around waiting. There’s nothing to do. That’s just an example, I’m not saying anything bad about fireman, but that’s true of all jobs.

We have the image of the job, but then there’s the reality and until you get in there and try it you never really know. There’s no replacement for experience. Getting out there just trying lots of things and learning and really experiencing things, that’s how you really figure out what you can be great at, I think.

George: Yeah. I’ll give you another great example of what AJ mentioned there - a professional golfer. You know I spent a lot of my life playing golf, all my life, 50 years or more playing golf and I always thought what a great job to be a professional golfer, to travel around the country and play golf four days a week. Wow! That’s really neat.

Well, when you look under the covers and take a look at what the job is of being a professional golfer it entails a lot of practice. By a lot of practice I’m talking about hitting a thousand golf balls a day. Just think about that. If you play golf, think about that. That’s hard on the hands. It’s hard on the back. It’s hard on everything.

AJ: Plus, those guys are traveling and living out of hotels for a huge number of days.

George: Absolutely, when they start out they’re driving their RVs or SUVs around the country, probably away from their family staying in cheap hotels just trying to make a living and still trying to practice, practice, practice. They are in business. Most of them have to have somebody supporting them financing their entry into golf. You look at it and say no, maybe that’s not such a great job because in the end it’s just a job and you’re really going to have to like it to do it.

AJ: Yeah, I think that’s probably the final message. Maybe golf is your thing, who knows, but you won’t really know until you try it. You can imagine, so you’ve just got to get in there and work to learn. Work to learn. Even if you are making a lot of money, constantly be working to learn more and maybe when you take a new job or you look for a new job maybe you’re not always just focused on how much money you’re going to make or getting more money, but having a longer-term view and thinking what will I learn at this new position.

If it pays well but you won’t learn anything new, short term that might be nice, but long term maybe not. You really have to think in the big picture and build, build, build your skills constantly and always be flexible. Always be ready to jump to something new because you want to or because the economy demands that you do it.

So, good luck to you.

The End.