Writer, Agilist, Elder Geek
One of my biggest advantages in my career was the fact that I got a home computer early in life.
That meant I could use job search sites back when they were just evolving, or send faxes over the modem. It meant I could train myself on software and in coding whenever I wanted. it let me build resumes and skills.
Now, years later (fifteen or sixteen to be precise), the home computer is nearly omnipresent, but one fact hasn't changed: the technology in your household can be a career advantage.
Here's a little career exercise to try for yourself.
Get a good image of what you do for your job. Now get a good image of what you do on your hobbies.
Now ask what your life would be like if you reversed them. How could what you do on your job make an interesting hobby, and what would you be doing if you could do your hobbies as a job?
Think this over for a moment, then ask yourselves these questions:
1) How similar would your life be in such an inversion? Why?
2) If your job is something you dislike, but you visualize it as a fun hobby, how can you take that to improve your job?
3) If your hobby was a job, do you see any flaws or unforeseen things you wouldn't like?
I enjoy this exercise as its very revealing, and sometimes surprising. I rather like my job and its often similar to what I do in my hobbies – I can see how, under such an inversion, I'd rather miss aspects of my job and how they may make interesting pastimes.
Keep this in mind, see what you find.
– Steven Savage
A strange thing keeps coming up in my readings on employment – the fact a lot of people put surprisingly little time into finding some. As in perhaps ten hours.
This is an alien idea to me, since my past job searches involved, on average, 30-50 hours of work a week, and at worst about 25 (and that was in a really slow economy). Or in short, it was a full or part-time job for me.