What Color Is Your Parachute? (47 page)

BOOK: What Color Is Your Parachute?

6.97Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

ads

Another Holland website is Lawrence Jones’s
Career Key
, found at
http://careerkey.org/asp/your_personality/take_test.asp
. It costs $9.95 to take it, but offers suggestions as to related college majors, possible careers, etc., when you are done. Great test!

The final
Holland
-related site I want to mention is CareerPlanner.com’s
Career Test
, invented by Michael T. Robinson, and found at
http://careerplanner.com
. I recommend it; it will cost you $29.95 to take this test, so you must decide if it’s worth the cost
.
You get a listing of thirty to one hundred careers related to the results of your test. As in all test results, treat these as starting points, only, for your subsequent research and informational interviewing. Please.

There is, incidentally, a relationship between the people you like to be surrounded by
and
your skills
and
your values. See John Holland’s book,
Making Vocational Choices
(3rd ed., 1997). You can procure it by going to the Psychological Assessment Resources, Inc., website at
www3.parinc.com
or calling 1-800-331-8378.
The book is $52.00 at this writing.
PAR also has John Holland’s instrument, called
The Self-Directed Search
(or SDS, for short), for discovering what your Holland Code is. PAR lets you take the test online for a small fee ($4.95) at
www.self-directed-search.com
.

The Seven Steps to Finding a Life That Has Meaning and Purpose

Plants that grow beautifully at sea level, often perish if they’re taken ten thousand feet up the mountain. Likewise, we do our best work under certain conditions, but not under others. Thus, the question: “What are your favorite working conditions?” actually is a question about “Under what circumstances do you do your most effective work?”

The best way to approach this is by starting with the things you
disliked
about all your previous jobs, using the chart on the facing page to list these. You may copy this chart onto a larger piece of paper if you wish, before you begin filling it out.
Column A may begin with such factors as: “too noisy,” “too much supervision,” “no windows in my workplace,” “having to be at work by 6 a.m.,” etc.

Of course, when you get to Column B, you must rank these factors that are in Column A, in their exact order of importance, to you.

As always, if you are baffled as to how to prioritize these factors in exact order, use the
Prioritizing Grid
.

The question to ask yourself, there, as you confront each “pair” is: “If I were offered two jobs, and in the first job I would be rid of this first distasteful working condition, but not the second, while in the second
job, I would be rid of the second distasteful working condition, but not the first, which distasteful working condition would I choose to get rid of?”

Note that when you later come to Column C, the factors will already be prioritized. Your only job, there, is to think of the “positive” form of that factor that you hated so much (in Column B). (It is not always “the exact opposite.” For example,
too much supervision,
listed in Column B, does not always mean
no supervision,
in Column C. It
might
mean:
a moderate amount of supervision, once or twice a day.
)

Once you’ve finished Column C, enter the top five factors from there on the Working Conditions petal of the Flower Diagram,
here
.

Click
here
to view a PDF version of Distasteful Working Conditions.

Salary is something you must think out ahead of time, when you’re contemplating your ideal job or career. Level goes hand-in-hand with salary, of course.

1. The first question here is at what level would you like to work, in your ideal job?

Level is a matter of how much responsibility you want, in an organization:

Boss or CEO (this may mean you’ll have to form your own business)