Reviewing Your Skills to Ensure You Get the Right Type of Job

Before you start looking for a job, you need to know what type of job you want. For people who have had extensive experience or who have a license or certificate in one type of job, this is a simple decision. Licensed beauticians, electricians, barbers, teachers, social workers, auto repairpersons, plumbers, and so forth usually know exactly what type of job they want—and being licensed puts them in a better position to get it.

Similarly, there is no decision problem among food store managers, clothing salespersons, real estate salespersons, machinists, truck drivers, and others who may have had many years' experience and want to continue in the same line of work. For such people, the choice is easy: Look for that type of position.


Check whether your objectives are too narrow or too broad

If your objectives are too narrow or too broad, you may have a problem deciding on a type of job. For example, if an engineer searches in a place where no engineering jobs are available, or someone looks for teaching jobs when school enrollment is being reduced, or wants to join radio announcing in a town that has only two such positions, things would be difficult. Job seekers who have exhausted the possibilities in this direction must decide either to relocate or to consider other jobs.

Other job seekers have a different kind of problem: they have no specific job type in mind. These people tend to say, "I'll take anything" because they haven't had sufficient experience in any one type of job. And until they decide on some particular type of job, they won't be able to concentrate their efforts in one direction.

Review your employment skills

If your job focus is too broad or too narrow, you need to reexamine your employment skills. Ask yourself whether you would take a job if it emphasized one of these skills. For example, if you had been a teacher, would you take the right kind of job as a purchasing agent, promotion worker, supervisor, newspaper reporter, teacher of physically handicapped, recreation director, or travel agent?

Or, if you have had only limited work experience but have had no employment experience, including sports activities, repairs, or selling for a club project, would you be interested in a good job as a sports department worker, machine maintenance person in a factory, music store salesperson, typist, or wholesale salesperson?

Once you have reviewed your employment skills, list the types of jobs that interest you. Having two or three job types in mind will give you more choice, and writing them down in the following space will help you reach a decision. You can then use this decision as a starting point.

Be flexible in your job search

According to the Job-Club approach, you are capable of many different types of jobs, not just one.

A professor may become a dean who no longer teaches but manages. A lawyer may become a business owner. A teacher may become a realtor. A plumber may start his or her own housing development as a contractor. A given person has many skills and interests and—if given the opportunity—can learn to do many jobs through on-the-job experience. Some types of jobs—being an electrician, doctor, lawyer, barber, and so forth—cannot be obtained without formal training because of licensing laws.

But many others require skills that can be acquired on the job, and which most people can learn. These include selling, supervising, managing, owning a business, operating a machine, being a businessperson, driving, doing office work, clerking, being a business manager, being a personnel officer, working in a hotel, working in a restaurant, repairing autos, welding, being a politician, administrating, being an accounts clerk, working as a bank teller, and so on for hundreds of different occupations. Indeed, many of these pay more than those for which extensive formal schooling or a license is required.

Be convinced, you are a person and not a job description

The Job-Club view is that you are not a salesperson, or a truck driver, or an historian; you are a person, possessing many skills and capable of learning almost all others. Consequently, you can consider many different types of jobs, not just the one you happened to select many years ago when your interests and skills were different. This lets you stop viewing a period of unemployment as a total catastrophe and start viewing it as a blessing in disguise. Now you have the opportunity to take stock of yourself and change your direction. You may end up with a new job that's far more satisfying than the old one.