10 June

I've come to the library again after work tonight. Each day this week I have focused on describing the career I want or finding career descriptions that I will be able to use in my updated resume. My desire is to find a career involving books. Ultimately, to be a published writer, in the interim to work with books. On Monday, I went through the Publishers Lunch database of job postings to find out where jobs in publishing were and what skills they required. Needless to say, like any business they require every aspect of a traditional business from finance, to sales, to marketing, to producing the product, editorial. Given this, there should be a variety of ways for me to enter the industry. The challenge is how to convey my skills from previous work experience in my resume to make me a contender for one of these jobs. Or to find a job in another industry that uses the skills I enjoy within that particular industry.

At the library I am once again reading The Career Guide for Creative and Unconventional People. Tonight we're focusing on skills assessment. How would you answer the following questions:

1. What are you doing when you are so engrossed or absorbed or involved that you lose track of time?
2. In what kinds of activities, relative to yourself, not to others, do you make the boldest choices and take the greatest risks?
3. What are your occupational daydreams? Look for themes in the kinds of work you imagined yourself doing as a kid.
4. How quickly do you accomplish certain tasks?
   

The author, Carol Eikleberry recommends taking the Ball Aptitude Battery, or the O*Net Ability Profiler or the skills analysis in What Color is Your Parachute to identify your natural skills and with that information to learn which jobs use those skills. The result being that if we are doing a job that uses skills we enjoy, we will enjoy our jobs.

Eikleberry then breaks the skills into three categories by how the skill is utilized. Are you working with ideas, with people, with things?:

• Information e.g. writers, coordinators, investigators
• People e.g. mentors, instructors, supervisors
• Things e.g. designers, food preparers, model builders
  

My preference is working with information. Once you have identified a category that is a fit with your skills, you are directed to a list of careers that match these criteria. And then the fun begins, taking action to obtain or create a career that best fits your identified skills and interests.

The library is closing now. We continue tomorrow.