Start Your Career Transition: Step 3 – Word Research

In this step, you get to do job REsearch, without job searching.  Job research for the sake of finding words and work activities that sound interesting to you.  This step will help you focus future job search (or job creation) activities on the type of work that most interests you, leverages how you are uniquely wired, and provides engaging challenges.

Online Job Research

1. Go online, at least two or three times, and look at job postings that look interesting.
2. IGNORE job qualifications at this stage (remember, this activity is NOT an actual job search).
3. Capture critical information along the way:

• search terms that produce interesting job results,
• job titles that seem exciting and just sound “cool” to you, and
• job responsibilities that you find within job descriptions that seem exceptionally interesting.

Resources

• Indeed (collects jobs from a variety of sources)
• Monster
• Dice (focus on high-tech jobs)
• USA Jobs (Federal jobs)
• Creative Jobs Central
• The Ladders (Exec level, > $100K jobs)
• Non-Profit Jobs (Search for your state or local non-profit association)

Reflection Activity

1. Review the words, titles, and responsibilities that you captured
2. Review your reflection from Step 1 and Step 2 activities to refresh your thinking about your strengths/type/preferences/style
3. Use a Reflective Writing Technique to draw meaning from your job research findings in context of what you know about yourself.  Consider the following writing prompts:

• I am surprised by …
• I notice that …
• It seems consistent that I liked [Words/Titles/Responsibilities] given that I am …
• Is seems inconsistent that I liked [Words/Titles/Responsibilities] given that I am …
• Given what I know about myself, maybe I should also look at other jobs using words such as …

Previous Posts in This Series:

Start Your Career Transition, Step 1 – First Know ThyselfStart Your Career Transition: Step 2 – Engage Others