Proposal for a career/business counseling self-help group

[I D Shukhov]

Has anyone ever met a truly helpful job/business counselor?

The person I'm thinking of is a combination vocational counselor, head-hunter and psychologist.   They spend half the time with you helping you to clarify your goals and work on your statement of capabilities and training plan, if that's in the picture.   The other half of the time they're talking to you  about your marketing activities and they may poke around themselves a little bit in the proposed market, as a second set of eyes, in order to offer helpful suggestions.

Now, remove the "helpful job/business counselor-agent" person, because they'd be way too expensive, and substitute:  "helpful job/business counseling self-help group" .

Does anyone think that it would be helpful to start a session lasting TBD weeks where we use What Color is Your Parachute? , or something else if it's better?  I'm thinking that it would be good to have something structured. 

Should there be an interest in this idea, I also propose that Gorn create a new, private section, just for the people who want to do this, and  that the size of the group be limited to around eight people.

[TechTalk]

Should there be an interest in this idea, I also propose that Gorn create a new, private section, just for the people who want to do this, and  that the size of the group be limited to around eight people.

Hmmm.....  First, there is already a private section to this forum.  Second, does creating an additional and even more exclusive section make any sense?  For example, I don't believe that there are more than 8-10 active members left on this forum.

Does anyone think that it would be helpful to start a session lasting TBD weeks where we use What Color is Your Parachute? , or something else if it's better?  I'm thinking that it would be good to have something structured.

Re: The book What Color is Your Parachute
It has been over twenty years since I skimmed over that book, however, I believe that the intended audience of that book is for job seekers and it does not cover contracting or starting a business.   Also, when it comes to job search books or start-up business books here is my caveat -- there is no one right way or process to follow that will guarantee success.  I take issue with most of the job-hunting articles and books which tell you that the only way is the way the author advocates.  Simply stated there are too many variables for any one formula to work for everybody.  Such variables range from a job hunter's experience to the mood of the interviewers.  Each job seeker's work experience is different and cannot be made to fit a mold.  Thus the central theme of What Color is Your Parachute as I see it, is that each and every reader (i.e. job seeker) is different and this difference can be utilized to determine, set, and then achieve the goal of getting a job (hopefully one that is desirable).

Re: Job Search Strategy
Here is my advice on what job search strategy people should think about following.  Treat the job hunting process as an entrepreneurial venture.  In other words, sell yourself just like you would if you were starting a business.  Job hunting is a short-term sales/marketing job with the only difference being that you have only one potential customer that you need to make a sale to and that customer is your next employer.  How to do this?  Well, I am certainly not going to provide step-by-step instructions on how someone should devise a job search strategy, however, I believe that if someone made the effort to write a business plan then he/she would probably be far better off than simply sending out thousands of generic cover letters and resumes.  There are two major purposes behind my suggested strategy.  The first is to crystallize your thinking and communicate a consistent strategy that can be understood by everyone involved in the job-hunting venture (i.e. family, friends, and acquaintances).  In other words, in order to get assistance/support a job seeker has to communicate his/her objectives and strategy in clear and simple terms.  It is my belief that each and every one of us are entrepreneurs, responsible for our own destinies, and that while most of us will never be in complete control of our careers we should still make the attempt to control as much as we can.  The second purpose is my belief that companies are expecting to interview job candidates who can describe what he/she can do for them and I believe that this is the most important thing to convey to a prospective employer. 

Of course, the above mentioned strategy would not work for someone who is looking for the next contracting gig.

[The Gorn]

The private section is non-exclusive. I have brought into it essentially anyone who has posted for more than a few months who has appeared to be reasonable and not given to flame wars. It's still a fairly wide scope of individuals who can potentially stop in and read the stuff in there.

So what I D is proposing is different: a truly private working group with very limited membership, working from a new list.

Unfortunately, I think the *only* way this can work for I D's intended purpose - to build enough trust to discuss important career issues - is for everyone who joins that section to reveal their actual name/identity. So a prerequisite of joining such a work group is "decloaking". Otherwise you have the same "revealing personal info to unknown strangers" issue that you have now on the forum, but with just a smaller group.

My observation with this group is that most members here are outright paranoid about revealing more than a first name - if that. Even in the private section we have now.

So, I wonder if it would work. In addition to being one new feature in an almost dead forum.

[Walter Mitty]

Has anyone ever met a truly helpful job/business counselor?

I met a handful of very good career mentors while I was in the ICCA.  Most of the people in the ICCA were people more in need of mentoring than capable of giving it.  I guess, in retrospect, I'd include myself in the needy group.  I met no good career mentors in the Consult forum on Compuserve. 

At that time, the forum format did not lend itself to good mentoring.  I think there are still problems with the forum format.

I'm drawing a distinction between mentors and counselors.  To me a counselor specializes in counseling.  A mentor is somebody who does what you do, and has learned how to do it well.  The mentor shares what they have learned from positive and negative experiences.

To some extent, Janet Ruhl was a mentor.  But I was not able to apply her mentoring with good results. 

[I D Shukhov]

TechTalk:

It's true that WCIYP is oriented to job-seekers.  Since most people are probably not going to be business owners, Bolles takes the pragmatic view that people should work "within the system" to find the best possible job -- meaning a job using your highest abilities in a decent environment.  The book does encourage one to analyze yourself and identify what your highest level capabilities are, so that you don't see yourself as "a programmer" during your job search.  Bolles is a big believer in what you write:

Treat the job hunting process as an entrepreneurial venture.  In other words, sell yourself just like you would if you were starting a business.  Job hunting is a short-term sales/marketing job with the only difference being that you have only one potential customer that you need to make a sale to and that customer is your next employer.

The question, though, is a "good job" possible to find?  Most people here, myself included and the "startup-culture" proponents, think that the "one potential customer"  idea is a mistake people make in their careers.   Don Lancaster in The Incredible Secret Money Machine identifies it as the fundamental flaw in the Bolles/"Job-Hunt" strategy.  Lancaster believes it's impossible to find a "good job", that it's a snipe hunt:

Having  only  one  source  of  income  is  so  incredibly  stupid  that  we won't  even  talk  about  it  here.  Whatever  that  single  source  is,  it  will 11 certainly  be  using  you  to  its  own  profit,  having  you  do  what  it  wants rather  than what you  want yourself and your money machine doing.  It may  even insist  on  such  dumb  things as  your  being at  a certain  place at  a  certain  time,  wearing  spedfied  costumes,  or  paying  tribute  to others in its hierarchy.  It may even  think it is giving you security or that it  owns  you  in  some  way. -- Don Lancaster from the Incredible Secret Money Machine

   http://www.tinaja.com/ebooks/ISMM.pdf

A worker cooperative is a business that takes a somewhat middle road.  There, however, one faces human nature problems.  Without the authoritarian orderliness of a traditional company people are free to express their center-of-the-universe worldview, which probably explains why worker co-ops don't exist.  To be fair, the "me-foremost" way of thinking is taught by our culture from birth and all societal structures support it.  The start-up and open source cultures may encourage cooperation, however.   A great mystery to me, being from the old school, is how people can get excited about OS  -- if they have to feed a family.  Maybe they don't.

Also, TechTalk, I've thought the same as you: 

The first is to crystallize your thinking and communicate a consistent strategy that can be understood by everyone involved in the job-hunting venture (i.e. family, friends, and acquaintances).  In other words, in order to get assistance/support a job seeker has to communicate his/her objectives and strategy in clear and simple terms.

   The proposed group would be the "friends and acquaintances".   The problem with "family" is that they have way too many preconceived notions about who you are.

Gorn:

I think you are saying that decloaking is necessary to build trust.  I'll have to think about this.   I think the purpose of this group is mostly about bouncing career/job/business marketing ideas around.

I look at the private section as just a way to shield posts from Google.  The main prerequisite I see for the proposed group is participation.   I.e one would have to agree to submit a marketing plan and the reviewers would have to agree to thoughtfully comment on the plan, and everyone would have to agree to do both things.

I don't think I'd care too much about revealing my name.  In any case, I'd look at the group, as you write, as a "working group" and probably wouldn't spend too much time on my past history or whining about things.

Also,  I think there are eight people here I would feel ok about being in this group with.   It would definitely take energy away from the board, so for that reason it may not be a good idea.   If you think the board is dying it could be an "adios" strategy  .











 

[The Gorn]

Has anyone ever met a truly helpful job/business counselor?

...
I met no good career mentors in the Consult forum on Compuserve. 
...
To some extent, Janet Ruhl was a mentor.  But I was not able to apply her mentoring with good results.

I agree with both of those statements. Consult had several douchebags who dominated the discussions. It had the same flavor I attribute today to ASP - an old timer's insular, negative culture.

And Janet's actual advice never really clicked with me. I guess she advocated a lot of networking, or what? But she seemed to help a lot of people.

[The Gorn]

I think you are saying that decloaking is necessary to build trust.  I'll have to think about this.   I think the purpose of this group is mostly about bouncing career/job/business marketing ideas around.

I look at the private section as just a way to shield posts from Google.  The main prerequisite I see for the proposed group is participation.   I.e one would have to agree to submit a marketing plan and the reviewers would have to agree to thoughtfully comment on the plan, and everyone would have to agree to do both things.

A few things -

Bouncing career or business ideas around is the point of the B2B and the normal employment forums, and "any subject" but private is the agenda of the private section. What you appear to be proposing is a new section that is specifically targeted to B2B as well as employee/contractor issues and which is private.

Lack of participation is one of the things I am irritated by here. Good luck getting a group of qualified members here to regularly check a thread and comment on it.

I couldn't even get that many votes on polls I posted in the recent past. Probably something like 1/3 the total number of users at the time. A poll takes 5 seconds to answer.

[Walter Mitty]

For years and years I used to insist on posting only under my own real name.  Then I finally gave in.  "When in Rome..."

Now that I've made the switch, I don't want to switch back, even though I no longer have a career to defend. 

I can see where "decloaking"  might be useful in the context of career mentoring.  But maybe face to face would be good too.  And I don't mean video-conferencing.  I mean being off the internet. 

[The Gorn]

What I mean about decloaking in this context is that in order to gain access to such a group, you'd agree to house rules for the group. Which includes allowing yourself to be identified as John Doe of Bigtown, Tennessee, a SaS developer. (for example)

The problem I see there is that people's personas here carry baggage that they may wish to absolutely firewall from their real life identity. (IE - will I be hit by a truck, and then the membership database here falls into the hands of a spammer for the highest price, and then everyone's identity is leaked? Oh noes!)

I personally don't think this can be expected on this board. We have quite a few utterly paranoid members. Or rather, members who are assiduously complete about not providing clues to their specific identity in any way, even in the email address they use for registration here.

I think an entirely new, separate group, administered separately, on a different site would have to be formed.

As I see it, I D's proposal is interesting, and maybe it's a need, but it would have to be divorced from this site in order to gain users.

[Origisaurus]

I think an entirely new, separate group, administered separately, on a different site would have to be formed.

Exactly.  It would have to be encrypted, and that would lead to a subscription fee.  Say $100 for 90 days.

[Origisaurus]

The thing is that we each have a different "career" goal.  EFT, consulting/contracting, generic small business.  Immediate, long-term, gestalt.

For wannabe efties, WCIYP is necessary and maybe sufficient.  It is certainly the prime tool for the mid-career person needing a paycheck.

I used to have an extensive library about consulting and contracting.  And of course there are trainloads of books about starting and running your own business.

I D, how does this fit with your suggestion?

[The Gorn]

Well, I wasn't thinking of encryption or an SSL certificate. I was just thinking that it would be an invitation only forum. If you can't log in, you can't see anything. 

The main issue I was describing was that for the purpose of such a forum, known handles of individuals who have posted "anti business" and "anti management" talk in the past would not be usable. Which is virtually everyone on this board. Almost everyone here who has posted somewhat regularly has things in their posting record here which they do not want associated with their real person.

Almost everyone on this board (no matter what the poll results show) would not want to out themselves even in a separate private board among confidantes. So a new board as we are describing would be a "clean slate" environment, separate.

The ultimate weak link of any web host is the hosting provider, anyway.

[I D Shukhov]

The thing is that we each have a different "career" goal.  EFT, consulting/contracting, generic small business.  Immediate, long-term, gestalt.

For wannabe efties, WCIYP is necessary and maybe sufficient.  It is certainly the prime tool for the mid-career person needing a paycheck.

I used to have an extensive library about consulting and contracting.  And of course there are trainloads of books about starting and running your own business.

I D, how does this fit with your suggestion?

Right, I think everyone:  FTE, self-employed people and retired people all want creative, satisfying work.  If a person really does not care about income, they still want to do something useful like leaving a legacy or whatever gives meaning to life.  Nobody gets out of here alive.   WCIYP is largely about figuring out what that something is, and how do you relate it to the world at large -- i.e. market it according to what your goals are.  I imagine one even needs to market volunteer work in order to find satisfaction. 

[I D Shukhov]

Well, I wasn't thinking of encryption or an SSL certificate. I was just thinking that it would be an invitation only forum. If you can't log in, you can't see anything. 

The main issue I was describing was that for the purpose of such a forum, known handles of individuals who have posted "anti business" and "anti management" talk in the past would not be usable. Which is virtually everyone on this board. Almost everyone here who has posted somewhat regularly has things in their posting record here which they do not want associated with their real person.

Almost everyone on this board (no matter what the poll results show) would not want to out themselves even in a separate private board among confidantes. So a new board as we are describing would be a "clean slate" environment, separate.

The ultimate weak link of any web host is the hosting provider, anyway.

I was imagining creating a new handle  .  I think I can probably summarize where I'm at with trying to define my business ideas and post it in the private section.