I just finished this book yesterday. The author is Dan Miller, an Amish boy turned business owner and then life coach. It's a great book for starting the new year. I don't know if I'll necessarily be doing something workwise that I absolutely love in the next 48 days, but it was a good help towards taking a sort of life-inventory of where I had been and where I am going. The author often says things like, "Don't consign your future to decisions made by an 18 year old." Meaning, the decisions and choices you made while in college or while you were applying for your first job may not be a good fit for who you've become. He says people should try to figure out their "calling" in life, and then look for jobs or business ideas that somehow fit in around that calling. To figure out what sort of job you will likely be most successful at, he suggests to look for recurring themes in things that you enjoy, that get you excited or that seem to make time pass quickly for you.There seems to be some good logic to these suggestions. Undoubtedly there are people whose jobs correspond exactly to their calling but they are pretty lucky and pretty rare in my opinion. But it has given me pause to think that maybe there is something I could be doing, maybe something that I should be doing. I'm not sure yet what that is, and according to this book, that is true of most people. I think it's worth thinking about.
As far as how to apply for a job and prepare for a job interview this book is excellent. I asked Sara to remind me to reread this prior to my next job search. It's definitely a confidence builder.
He's got some surprising statistics. Which method of getting a job do you think is more likely to be successful?
A. Answering a newspaper ad
B. Answering an internet ad
C. Contacting an employment agency
D. Walking in unannounced and simply asking for a job.
The answer is D, though he doesn't recommend it as the best way. A is successful for 8 percent of people, B for 1 percent, C for up to 22 percent, and D for 47 percent. Pretty amazing, but that was the way I got my job at Farm and Family....
I thought this was the best quote by the author in the whole book: "Vocation then is not so much pursuing a goal as it is listening for a voice."
3 comments:
that sounds like a great book. i am very lucky to have found a job that i love and am very good at.dog grooming to some may seem like a pidily career but i just accepted a promotion and now i am manager of the grooming department at Petsmart. it's a very big pay increase and will have the potential to make up to 70'000 a year. so to anyone that says you can't do what you love to do and make a good living doing it, i would tell them that is not true as long as you make smart choices on what you do with with your talents.
Way to go Julia!
That's great Julia! Glad things are going well there. Hope to catch up with you soon:)
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