One of my favorite people, who I met in the early days of JibberJobber, is Billie Sucher. I reviewed her first book called Between Jobs over three years ago (it’s still relevant). This week’s giveaway is her second career book (she has non-career publications) titled Happy About the Career Alphabet. She gave me a copy in New Orleans… so you’ll either get my signed copy or perhaps I can talk her into mailing it to you (she doesn’t know I’m writing this post).
Here’s how one person will get it … answer the question below on this blog (not on Facebook or Twitter, etc.) and Billie will choose her favorite response.
My question centers around something I saw on the news on Saturday morning. A young fella from New Orleans was talking about his future and said something like this: “either join the military or go to college – those are my two best career paths.”
I have been thinking about that since I saw it – I don’t think those are his only “career paths,” but what bugs me more, are those really “career paths?” I guess I would have used a different phrase as I’ve traditionally thought of a “career path” as a sequence of jobs that helps me get to where I end up… not the stepping stones to get their. So here’s the question:
Assuming you are giving advice to a young person (I’ll let YOU define young! :)), what are significant parts of the “career path” that you help them understand? In other words, say they want to be a financial planner, CEO of a big company, entrepreneur, etc… what are the components that they need to think about for their career?
Answer on this blog and I’ll ask Billie to pick her fav!
The winner of last week will be announced soon…. !
I’ll buy Billie’s books directly, Jason, but I wanted to give a plug for Billie in particular. I have known her through e-lists and online for awhile but meeting her in person really made me value her. Dawn Bugni and I had an unofficial networking meeting at breakfast in the hotel restaurant Friday morning with Billie and her husband, Richard. Such a wonderful pair! I instantly liked both of them and we bonded instantaneously. I like books from people who are really people (honest, caring, dedicated…). It makes reading their books more valuable.
As far as the career path question, I see a career path as goal-setting. Define who you want to be and work toward that goal. Define what you want to learn and get out of life, and work at putting yourself in positions that get you there. I have a friend who has a definite plan. He was an OSHA consultant first… to gain that background, then he was an admissions representative to get the sales background from selling in a college market, now he works for an insurance company, as an underwriter, using his OSHA investigatory skills and his selling skills to evaluate risk while at the same time understanding that he needs to realize that his underwriting must be fair and dedicated to making the best decisions for his company and the customer. I don’t know his path after this, but he is one of the few people who could articulate that he did X to understand a, then Y to understand and grow skills in b, so he could progress to Z…