Richard Bolles - What Color Is Your Parachute?

17. Work for Yourself.You start your own small business, trade, or service, after first carefully observing what service or product your community lacks but really needs (see http://tinyurl.com/3rwxmka ; also http://tinyurl.com/3syrmq7 ).

18. Retraining.You go back to school and get retrained for some other kind of occupation than the one you’ve been doing. Especially important if you don’t know computers at all.

That’s how some wag once declined the word “lies.” I mention this here, because Alternatives do give you Hope, but statistics can take that Hope away, if you give them undue weight.

Much of it depends on what statistics you pay attention to. The media, the Internet, blogs, tweets, twenty-four-hour news channels on TV, newspapers, and magazines, all love statistics. But they generally are in love with a very particular kind of statistics, namely those that convey bad news . Discouraging news. Doom and gloom.

Why is this so? I dunno. But it is. Example? With regard to the labor market in the U.S., there are always two sets of statistics floating around for each month . First set of statistics: let’s take the month of February 2009, the height of the recent Recession. As reported on a website called JOLT (Job Openings & Labor Turnover ) [1]4,360,000 people in the U.S. found jobs that month. Yes, you read that correctly. And at the end of that month, 3,006,000 additional vacancies remained unfilled and available. Good news, right? 7,366,000 vacancies were available or filled, that month alone. At the height of the Recession.

Ah, but every month there is a second set of statistics, reported on the first Friday of each month by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, called the Current Population Survey. [2]It is typically called The Unemployment Statistic , though it is more accurate to think of it as “the monthly measure of the size of the work force in America.” Anyway, the CPS said that during that same month, February 2009, the size of the total labor force in the U.S. shrank by 726,000 jobs. And so, the unemployment rate rose from 7.6 percent to 8.1. Bad news, to be sure.

Okay, there you have it: two sets of statistics, one good news, one bad news. Now, which of these two sets do you think the media pounced on? Yep, you guessed it: the bad news set. “726,000 workers lose their jobs,” commentators and news analysts shrieked. “Unemployment rises to 8.1 percent.” Along with that, they threw in, “There are six unemployed workers now for every vacancy.” All in all, it was enough to take the heart out of even the most optimistic job-hunter that month. Or any month.

We have to always watch which statistics we are paying the most attention to.

For, surely, statistics can sometimes help us, and not merely depress us.

Let’s post a few guideposts here about how statistics can help you:

1. Statistics can save you from wasting your energy . For example, when considering job-hunting methods, it can be helpful to know what the odds are that a particular method will richly repay you for the time spent on it, or what the odds are that a particular method will likely be a complete waste of your time. We will see this, when we discuss the five best ways to hunt for work, and the five worst ways (comparatively speaking).

2. Statistics can guide you toward particular targets . They can tell you when a particular company is having the kind of challenges you would love to help solve, and when a company has more problems than you would ever want to deal with, because they’re about to tank.

3. Statistics can encourage you , if you know how to read them. Consider, for example, this set of encouraging statistics just published, as I write (by CBS News Report [3]):

a. Laid-off workers thirty-four and under have a 36 percent chance of landing a job in a year

b. Laid-off workers in their fifties have a 24 percent chance of landing a job in a year

c. Laid-off workers over sixty-two years of age have an 18 percent chance of landing a job in a year

Encouraging? Sure. Look at it again. It says that if you’re under 34 years of age, 36 out of every 100 are going to find a job this year; and even if you’re over 62 years of age, 18 out of every 100 are going to find a job this year. So the only question is: why shouldn’t you be among them?

After all, the above statistics summarize the experience of all job-hunters, most of whom typically choose only one method of job search. You, however, know enough to choose two or more methods, and thus increase the odds that you will indeed find meaningful work.

Hope can give you wings, persistence, and energy. If you’re out of work, and want to stay upbeat, then greet the sunrise, go for a walk, count your blessings, listen to beautiful music, drink more water than usual, eat simpler, exercise more, laugh with your family and friends, watch cartoons, take naps in the daytime if you can’t sleep well at night, but for heaven’s sakes, don’t obsess about depressing statistics. Just determine to find alternatives for everything you are doing about your job-hunt and your life. You want to be the exception to whatever the odds are, about anything. Hold on to Hope, and you can beat those odds.

Job-hunter: Well, there may be all those vacancies out there that you claim, but I go on the Internet every morning, and I can’t find any of them in my area or specialty .

Career-counselor: Searching the Internet is only one way of hunting for those jobs that are out there. What’s your second way of searching for jobs?

Job-hunter: I only have the Internet .

Career-counselor: Well, there are at least 17 other ways of looking for those jobs that are out there. Read them, then choose and use three other alternatives to “just the Internet.”

Job-hunter: I’m a construction worker. I see there are lots of job vacancies, but none in construction that I can find .

Career-counselor: How else would you describe yourself besides “construction worker”?

Job-hunter: I’ve always been a construction worker .

Career-counselor: Well, that’s a “job-title.” There are other ways to describe yourself besides a job-title.

Job-hunter: Like what, for example?

Career-counselor: Like: “I am a person… who…”

Job-hunter: Who what?

Career-counselor: “I am a person… who has these skills, and these knowledges, and this experience.” Take the job-title off yourself; find a more fundamental way to describe yourself to yourself. And to others. Once you have at least two alternative ways of describing yourself, you increase the range of jobs you can apply for, and thus keep Hope alive.

Maybe you’re not unemployed. Maybe you’re just adrift, or bored, or puzzled about where to go next, with your life. You’re at some crossroads in your life: you can’t stand your job anymore, or you have a new handicap you’re trying to adjust to, or you’re just out of the military, or just out of prison, or just out of college, or just out of a divorce, or you’ve just lost an important person in your life. Or you’ve just found the most important person in your life, and you’re ready to look for some deeper purpose for your remaining time here on Earth.