Holland’s Theory Promotes Innovation Skills

Taking advantage of Holland’s Theory of Career Choice in the form of a good person-work environment fit promotes skills needed for innovation.  These skills include collaboration and problem-solving, which top the list of 21^st Century “in-demand” job skills in employer surveys. When people work with people of similar interests, abilities and values, collaboration and problem-solving are natural outcomes. 

I made the Holland Theory/Innovation connection while listening to innovation evangelist Tony Wagner’s keynote at this summer’s National Career Development Association conference. Here are three other ways applying Holland’s Theory to career choices promotes innovation:

1. Person-environment fit encourages curiosity.  Wagner says that “curiosity, which is a habit of asking good questions and a desire to understand more deeply,” is an “innovation skill.” A good person-environment fit encourages immersing oneself in a career field, especially in a job market rewarding specialization. Colleagues interact with others of similar interests, learning from one another and feeding off mutual enthusiasm and curiosity in a career field.

2.  Knowing one’s strongest personality types leads to healthy risk-taking and confidence in career decision-making. Knowing more about themselves gives people a platform from which to take risks and create innovation within a job. It also enables necessary job and career changes required in the new economy. If you know your compatible environments within the world of work, you can see more options to make better, more informed choices.

3. Learning about the six different personalities and work environments teaches people about the value of “differing gifts.” Understanding Holland’s Theory highlights the need to collaborate and network with people blessed with “differing gifts.” Wagner says collaboration is an integral part of innovation – especially across disciplines. For example, an architect who wants to promote her innovative designs would likely be more successful integrating advice and ideas from Enterprising and Conventional types to promote and sell her work.

For more on innovation, see Tony Wagner’s book, Creating Innovators: The Making of Young People Who Will Change the World.

New Work Skills List Helps with Job Search and Career Choices

Putting yourself in the driver's seat with work skills....

Career Key's new "My Work Skills List" helps people with a job search, choosing a career, career change, and keeping up to date with a current career path.

This new, free, fill-in PDF is part of 7 Ways to Be Job and Work Skills Smart,  one of Career Key's most popular self-help articles on identifying skills.

When you fill out the list, you'll identify Foundation Skills you have and those you need to strengthen. You'll also learn about Motivated Skills and Dependable Strengths, those skills you enjoy using most and want to do more of in future jobs, career choices, and in your personal life.

The "fill in" capability of the form allows you to copy and paste lists of skills you find using the O*NET Code Connector. Just follow the directions in the "Make My Skills List" section of the article.

You'll be surprised at the quick payoff from doing this list, and the other activities recommended in 7 Ways to Be Job and Work Skills Smart.

Strengthening job skills is a critical part of our Free Agent Outlook on Work - putting you in the driver's seat, in control of your work life.  I know this is a less warm and fuzzy view of employers and the world of work, but we tend to be more realistic and entrepreneurial towards work and careers. Career Key author Dr. Jones's personal story shows why.  Voting with your feet, if at all possible, is a great option to have when working for someone else. In demand job skills make that possible.

Click on My Work Skills List to download the PDF directly.

Finally, we intend to release a new, related eBook on job skills later this year - so stay tuned or leave a comment that you want to be emailed when it comes out.

PRWeb has the latest press release about our new job and work skills article and My Work Skills List.

Improve Self-Esteem Skills & Self-Management: Job Skills Part 5

Learning how to identify and improve your beliefs, handle setbacks, and show responsibility are Foundation Skills for the 21st Century.  In Part 5 of this 6 part Improving Job Skills series, we look at personal qualities, like self-esteem, self-management and responsibility.  We'll recommend ways to strengthen yours. First, visit the Career Key website article on Foundation Skills for a quick overview and free download of the 17 Foundation Skills.

Foundation skills related to Personal Qualities:

Self-Esteem

• Understand how beliefs affect how a person feels and acts;
• "Listen" to and identify irrational or harmful beliefs you may have;
• Understand how to change these negative beliefs when they occur.

Self-Management

• Assess your knowledge and skills accurately;
• Set specific, realistic goals;
• Monitor progress toward your goal.

Practice self-management skills by using the ACIP decision making process at the Career Key website to choose or change careers - or use it for any important life decision you are facing.

Responsibility

• Work hard to reach goals, even if task is unpleasant;
• Do quality work;
• Display high standard of attendance, honesty, energy, and optimism.

This may seem obvious, but we all have encountered people in school or at work who show a lack of responsibility.  Think critically about your own work or efforts - do you care about what you do? How you treat others? Are there personal standards you could improve?  Everybody wants others to think they are responsible, but the real person who's important in this is you.

Recommended Activities

Because there is so much to say about self-esteem skills, I'm primarily focusing these recommended activities on that job skill in this blog post.

Self-Esteem Skills
Low self-esteem can have several negative impacts - you are less likely to choose an occupation that fits your abilities and your work-performance will suffer.  Low self-esteem also affects your relationships with others and your health.

Your beliefs control how you feel.  As William Shakespeare said, "There is nothing either good or bad by thinking makes it so."  This simple but powerful idea explains why your self-esteem is positive or negative. So understanding your beliefs and being able to change them is critical to improving your self-esteem skills, enabling you to handle the inevitable setbacks and difficulties of working.

• Think of a time when you have had a setback or disappointment at work or in school. Apply this A-B-C approach to it:
• A: What was the Activating event? What started the experience?
• B: What Beliefs did you have about it?
• C: What were the Consequences of your belief about what happened? How did you feel about it?
• Example: Sam, a second-year social studies teacher, is trying a new way to teach students about the U.S. Constitution. When he tries it out, the students find it confusing and frustrating.  Instead of thinking, "Why can't I do things right? Why didn't I see this wasn't going to work? What a waste of time!," Sam thinks, "I'm disappointed, but I will learn from this and try something different next time."
• A: Sam tried a new learning activity that confused and frustrated his students.
• B: He believed, "It will go better next time. It's not the end of the world."
• C: He felt disappointed but was willing to try something different another time.
• Think of a setback or disappointment that you feel you did not handle well (It may be the same one you chose above).  Learn and practice these skills:
• Understand how your beliefs affected how you felt and acted. 
• Listen to what you said about yourself to identify irrational or harmful beliefs you may have.
• Understand how to avoid these negative beliefs and substitute positive ones.
• Keep a "Thought Log" by writing 3 columns on a piece of paper: A: Activating Event, B: Beliefs, C: Consequences: Feelings and Behavior. The next time you have an emotional event or encounter a disappointment, evaluate what happened using this Thought Log.

Learn to look for and avoid these common irrational and harmful beliefs that cause low self-esteem:

1. I am a bad, unloveable person if someone rejects me.
2. I am a bad or worthless person when I act weakly or stupidly.
3. I must be approved or accepted by people I find important!
4. I can't stand really bad things or very difficult people.
5. I must do well in everything I do or it is terrible.

(from A. Ellis, 1992, in L.K. Jones, Encyclopedia of Career Change and Work Issues, pp. 242-246, The Oryx Press.)

You may also find this article on "catastrophizing" helpful.

Bottom Line: Having positive, realistic beliefs about life is the key to success. By believing in yourself and your ability to improve, learning from your mistakes and "bouncing back" from disappointment you show self-esteem skills. You will be successful.

Previous posts in this series:
Part 1: Getting Started with Job Skills: 3 Reasons to be Optimistic
Part 2: Improving (Not So) Basic Skills
Part 3: Thinking Skills
Part 4: People Skills

Next week - the final wrap up with "Identifying Your Motivated Skills: Skills You Enjoy Using the Most."

People Skills: Improving Job Skills Series Part 4

People skills are required in all 21st Century jobs - a big part of the Foundation Job Skills. Whether you work from home, in an office, or out in the field, you come into contact with all kinds of people: customers, co-workers, and supervisors.  Many people you work with look different from you, have different life experiences, and different education levels. You'll need to work with them to help your team, your employer, and your customers be successful. Free agents, people who have marketable skills, master and excel at people skills.

This blog post will help you get started with improving these skills. If you haven't already, start with Part 1 in this improving job skills series: 3 Reasons to be Optimistic and Get Started.  Below, I'll describe the different people skills and then suggest activities to improve each.

There are 5 types of people skills:

• Social skills, 
• Negotiation skills, 
• Leadership skills, 
• Teamwork skills, and 
• Skills handling cultural diversity.

To see descriptions of these skills, visit the People Skills section of the Foundation Skills article on the Career Key website, or download the Foundation Job Skills handout. 


Below are activities to improve your people skills that you can tailor to your career interests.  

Social Skills

• Teaching requires well-developed social skills. Teachers must challenge students to think critically and express themselves.  At the same time, they must be sensitive to students' needs and encourage them.  Find a topic interesting to you and an opportunity to teach others.  Friends, family, community organizations, business networking groups all offer these opportunities.
• Choose a volunteer activity that requires you to work with a child or adult who needs help. This will require you to show understanding, friendliness and respect for the feelings of others. You'll also need to take interest in what people say and do and why they think and act as they do.  It may be visiting a church member in the hospital, a Boys and Girls club mentorship opportunity, or an outreach activity with a local service organization like the YMCA, Lions or Rotary International.

Negotiation Skills

• Get real practice negotiating and resolving conflicts by volunteering for a local conflict resolution, peer mediation (some schools offer it), or mediation program. Often, mediation is used to help people resolve minor legal disputes so if you are near a courthouse, contact them to see if they have any mediation programs who need volunteers.  Most of the time, you do not need to be a lawyer to serve as a mediator for these programs but you will be given training, sometimes free or at low-cost.
• Think of a conflict at home, in school, or at work that you feel you did not handle well. Mentally re-create the incident, writing down what happened and think of reasons why it was not resolved satisfactorily.  What goals did you share with the other people involved. If you had the same conflict today, how would you handle it differently to feel better about the outcome?

Leadership Skills

• Take part in an activity that interests you that requires you to look beyond the work you do yourself, where you consider how well everyone and everything is working. For example, volunteer with an organization that needs help expanding and improving its services with current resources. Neighborhood cleanup, community event organizers, and environmental organizations are good examples.  They always need people to help and ideas for reaching out to the community.  They offer ways for you to justify ideas, persuade others to adopt them, and to implement them - leadership!

Teamwork Skills
For activities to improve teamwork skills, read my previous post "6 Critical Teamwork Job Skills and How to Develop Them."

Cultural Diversity Skills

• With a partner, play a word association game with the terms below.  Choose one term from the list below.  For one minute, you and your partner(s) write down all the terms from this list that you associate with the term you chose and anything and everything that comes to your mind when you think of that term.

Asian American      male                unemployed person

African American   female             employed person

Hispanic                 rich person       nonprofessional 

Caucasian               poor person     professional

Native American    middle-class     elderly person

disabled person      homosexual      fire fighter

lawyer                    doctor               nurse

teacher                    engineer          college graduate

In doing this activity, you identified your stereotypes, the beliefs you have about classes or groups of people.  These beliefs can be positive or negative. Everyone has them. Unfortunately they often mislead us and can be harmful.  For example, not that long ago, people believe that occupations like airplane pilot, scientist, and police officer could only be done by men. Today, we know these were untrue but these stereotypes kept women out of these jobs for a long time. Are there any careers you are not considering because of stereotypes? People still view nursing and some other health care occupations with lingering stereotypes.

Stereotypes and assumptions about racial groups are also harmful. Be aware of your own stereotypes about people and how they can mislead you.  You can avoid letting your stereotypes harm others or your relationships with them.

• Read a magazine or online media source for another culture or ethnic group. Write about what you felt about what you read or saw.  You can also try this with political media - if you watch MSNBC or read the Huffington Post, try reading Fox News or reading a more conservative news source. (and vice versa!) 
• Start a conversation with someone different than you, like someone from the list in the first activity. You can do this on the bus, at a social gathering, or at work. Later write down what interesting things you discovered about this person and whether what you discovered agreed or disagreed with what you thought about the person before your conversation.

See how the careers that interest you require people skills by conducting informational interviews; ask people what skills are most important in their work. That will help you build skills around a specific career path. These articles will also help you gather career information:
Learn About Occupations
Learn More about the Jobs that Interest Me
Identify Your Skills

Activities in our most popular e-book, "What Job is Best for Me?" also helps you focus your career development efforts with skills.

Previous posts in this series:
Part 1: Getting Started with Job Skills: 3 Reasons to be Optimistic
Part 2: Improving (Not So) Basic Skills
Part 3: Thinking Skills: Improving Job Skills

Next week: Part 5: Improving Personal Qualities - Yes, it is possible...

Improving Job Skills Part 3: Thinking Skills

Example: Solving a workplace safety problem...

Thinking Job Skills include creative thinking, problem-solving skills, decision making skills, and visualization. In this part 3 of 6 blog series, we'll explore ways to improve these skills, the second group of Foundation Job Skills found at the Career Key website.

Avoid any occupation or job that simply requires following instructions and little training; employees in those kinds of jobs can be easily replaced.  To see examples of these types of jobs, see O*NET's Job Zone 1 (little to no preparation needed) and some listed in Job Zone 2 (some preparation needed).

When you use thinking skills, you are more valuable as an employee. When you recognize and define problems, invent solutions, and think of better ways to do something, you are marketable.  You'll be a more powerful "free agent"; learn more about how to adopt a "Free Agent Outlook on Work."

Thinking Skills are the second group of Foundation Skills, skills all jobs require in the 21st Century. They are:

Creative Thinking

• Use imagination freely;
• Combining information in new ways;
• Make connections between ideas that seem unrelated.

Problem-Solving

• Recognize problem and identify why it is a problem;
• Create and implement a solution;
• See how well the solution works and revise if needed.

Decision Making Skills

• Identify goals;
• Generate alternatives and gather information about them;
• Choose the best alternative;
• Plan how to carry out your choice.

    See this skill applied to how to make a career decision.

Visualization

• See a building or object by looking at a blueprint, drawing or sketch;
• Imagine how a system works by looking at a schematic drawing.

Activities to Strengthen Thinking Skills

These will help you get started; if you are working on choosing a career or changing careers, think about how these skills are used in the career options that interest you.

Creative Thinking

• Keep a weekly journal of creative ideas. Record each week any problems you notice in an environment like school,  church, an organization you volunteer for, or at work. Are there any processes that don't work very well? Create a solution to the problem.  At the end of a couple of months, go back and read your journal, identifying problems you would like to work on.  Create solutions and present them to a class or to people you work with.  What are the strengths and weaknesses of your solutions?
• Create a new business idea based on your interests and knowledge. How would you market it? What are the strengths and weaknesses of your business idea? (product, service, etc.)  Present your ideas to friends or a class for their feedback. Create a marketing hook, ad or catch phrase for your idea.  Maybe being self-employed is for you?

Problem-Solving

• Identify a problem using the activity in bullet #1 above under Creating Thinking. Research the problem, gathering as much information as you can. Do you know what the problem really is? List everything you know about it - maybe you know more than you think. Contact people who know something about the problem.  Gather and organize all your information before taking action.
• Choose a complex problem and make a problem-solving action plan. Breaking down a complex problem into smaller chunks can help solve it.  Write down all the steps needed to solve a problem can make a larger problem more manageable.  

Decision Making Skills

• Narrow down your career choices using the four steps in Career Key's High-Quality Decision Making article.
• Identify several decisions you made this week.  For example, what you ate, where you went for entertainment, whether you purchased something, or who you invited to a social event. Record what you thought about these decisions: what were the consequences? Did you make the best choice? Could using a decision-making process help you make a better decision the next time?  Is there a major life event choice you face right now where that process could help? (changing jobs, choosing a college, having a baby, etc.)

Visualization

• Draw a road map from your house to your school or workplace without looking at a map.  Add street names and important landmarks.
• Put together a model, item, or toy using instructions (you may do this already!) Legos, model kits, and DIY craft kits are a few ideas.
• Design the floor of a dream house or apartment, creating a blueprint using grid paper. Each quarter or eighth inch block can be 1 foot. Visualize walking through the house. What are your plans' advantages and disadvantages? Are the bedrooms properly placed away from noise? How is the traffic flow?

Make sure to learn how the careers that interest you require these skills by conducting informational interviews. That will help you focus your energies on building skills around the problems and ideas related to that career. These articles will also help you gather career information:
Learn About Occupations
Learn More about the Jobs that Interest Me
Identify Your Skills

Previous posts in this series:
Part 1: Getting Started with Job Skills: 3 Reasons to be Optimistic
Part 2: Improving (Not So) Basic Skills
Next week: Part 3: Improving Your People Skills

How to Improve Job Skills - Part 2: (Not So) Basic Skills

In part 2 of 6, we’ll talk about ways to strengthen basic job skills – in ways that are relevant to students and adults changing careers.  Before you brush aside “basic skills” as too “basic” for you, take a closer look at them. For example, writing skills means more than just the ability to handwrite a sentence. It includes using the computer to communicate ideas and information.

Download the list of skills and their description in the Foundation Job Skills handout at The Career Key website if you haven’t already.  Our affordable printable e-books “Parent’s Role…” and “Advice and Actions for Smart Career Decisions” contain this handout – your eBookstore purchase help support our public service mission.

In the workplace, people use these skills differently than in school – in ways you may not have thought about. There is more to learn than you might think. If you’re just joining this series, I recommend starting with our optimistic Part 1.

Basic Skills are the first group of Foundation Skills, skills all jobs require in the 21st century. They are (click here for the more complete Foundation Skill descriptions):

Reading

• Read for detail quickly and accurately;
• Find meaning of unknown or technical words and phrases; and
• Use the Internet and computers to find information.

Writing

• Communicate thoughts, ideas, information, and messages in writing – on paper and using a computer;
• Record information completely and accurately;
• Check, edit and revise documents for correct information, grammar, etc.
• Using a computer to communicate information.

Math

• Use numbers, fractions, and percentages to solve practical problems;
• Read tables, diagrams and graphs;
• Use computers to communicate data and ideas.

Speaking

• Organize your thoughts and explain how things work, procedures to follow;
• Speak clearly and use the appropriate tone and level of complexity for your audience;
• Ask questions when needed and answer questions from the audience. 

Listening

• Listen carefully to what someone says and how they say it, to understand the content and the feelings the speaker expresses.
• Respond to what a person says in a way that shows you understand them.

Real-Life Example using all the Basic Skills– Police Officer. 

When called to a domestic violence incident, the officer listens carefully while interviewing witnesses and mediating disputes.  The officer explains to the parties what happens next in the process, especially if someone is arrested or a child is put into protective custody.  The officer records and submits witness statements by laptop computer using the Internet.  The officer can be questioned in court by lawyers and judges about the accuracy of that information.

Math skills come into play especially if the police department uses data-driven policing (see a video here). An officer is asked to gather data (location, type of incident, etc.) that is then used to make a graph or visual used to find relationships between types of crimes and location. An officer could be asked to interpret that data. Officers also use math skills in accident reconstruction; they measure the accident scene and show visually how the accident likely occurred.

Activities to Strengthen Basic Skills

These activities are a starting place for you - come up with your own that are the most relevant to a career option that interests you.

Reading

• Go to the library and pick a magazine you might not normally read but has an article that interests you. For example, you might not read the Economist or Vanity Fair but you see an article about a type of business or politics that interests you. Read the article carefully, finding words that you don’t know or are uncertain what they mean.  Try to figure out the word's meaning from the surrounding sentences or context. If you need to check your answer, look it up in a dictionary.  You’ll find that most of the time you can figure out a word’s meaning by “reading for meaning.”
• Use an Internet browser to search for a business near you, like a type of restaurant. What search terms work the best in finding a restaurant?  Is there a difference between browsers? (Try Chrome, Safari or Bing) Do quotation marks around words make a difference?
• Practice reading ideas and picturing them in your mind.  The next time you read a story, try drawing pictures of the people and the settings. Try looking up individual houses or condos for sale in your neighborhood on a real estate website. After reading the description, picture the house in your mind without looking through any online photos of it. Go look at the house and see how it differs from what you pictured.  What information was left out of the ad and why?
•  Also try the graph creation exercise listed below for improving math skills. 

Writing

• Create your own front page news article based on an event (real or fiction). Use your favorite newspaper as an example. Write a catchy headline and include photos with captions relevant to the article.
• Go to the Grammar Girl website and read the “Top 5 Tips” box. Have you ever used the wrong word by mistake?  What rules do you have trouble remembering?  Pick one problem you keep having and practice creating sentences that use the words correctly. 

Math

• Learn how to create a graph. Ideally use a software program like Microsoft Word or Google Docs that you would normally be using at work.  Pick a fun subject you’d like to learn more about. For example, what animal moves the fastest? (the cheetah, at 70 mph) Find the speeds of six other animals and create a graph with the data.
• Explore a topic of financial literacy (See www.financiallitnow.org for topics, resources)  Learn how to answer questions, like, if I make a $300 purchase with a credit card with 18% APR interest, how long will it take me to pay of the loan just making a minimum balance payment of $20? (18 months at a total cost of $340)  Can you find a calculator on the Internet that will help you answer that question? 

Speaking

• Practice speaking in front of mirror, where you will see what others see. Notice your facial expressions, posture, eye contact, and gestures. Any interview should be practiced in front of a mirror until your answers become natural and easy.
• Record yourself talking with a friend or giving a presentation. Most cell phones and computers have a way to do this.  When you playback the recording, listen for “you know”, “like” or other mannerisms that are not as professional as you would like. Do you moderate your voice? In making improvements, focus on one thing at time. Practicing in front of a mirror or rehearsing a speech or answer several times will help.

Listening

• Find a partner to help you.  Use active listening skills as your partner describes an emotional situation. Try summarizing and restating to your partner what they said and how they felt, without being judgmental.
• Watch a newscast or television show with your partner.  Afterwards, summarize the plot, describing the major characters and what they did. Ask your partner to critique your summary.

I hope this gives you ideas for creating your own activities to practice these skills, connecting them to the careers that interest you.  Imagine how these skills might be used in a job that interests you. Conduct an informational interview with someone in that career and ask him or her how they use those skills in their work.

Next posts:
Part 3 of 6: Improving Your Thinking Skills…
Part 4: Improving Your People Skills

Previous post:
Improving Job Skills, Part 1 of 6: 3 Reasons to be Optimistic

How to Improve Job Skills - Part 1 of 6: 3 Reasons to be Optimistic and Get Started

How strong is your foundation?

This 6-post blog series will help you improve and strengthen Foundation Job Skills.  Whether you are just starting to explore your first career or an adult changing careers, all jobs require the 17 Foundation Skills (free download for non-commercial use*).  In the series, one blog post will cover each of the four groups of Foundation Skills, recommending free or low-cost activities to strengthen them:

- Basic Skills;

- Thinking Skills;

- People Skills; and

- Personal Qualities.

Look at each Foundation Skill – do you think they are accurate? How would you rate yourself for that skill? (Compare yourself to others of the same age)  How does someone use that skill in a career you’re considering?

Start thinking about Foundation Skills, how you can improve yours and show an employer you have them. By the end of this blog series, you’ll also be able to identify your motivated skills, those you enjoy using most, and how to choose a career that makes the most of them.

Even if you have little job experience or have been under-employed, you’ll be surprised how adding to and improving your skills result in a big payoff.

3 Reasons to be Optimistic

1. People want to help you. Family, teachers, counselors, community volunteers, religious leaders, and workers want to help. You just need to ask.  Ask them about their jobs, the skills they use, and people they know.  If you don’t ask, no one can help you.

2. Learning requires action – and the good news is taking action is under your control. If you don’t do anything, you won’t improve and nothing will change.

3. Each activity you do, each week, you will improve.  You will feel more confident and have something to show for your work.

In case you need more motivation to improve your skills, take a look at median pay for these occupations with different skill levels:

Unskilled 

(High School Diploma or Less)

Amusement & Recreation Attendant $18,650

Cashier $18,820

Food Service Workers $19,270

Driver/Sales Worker $22,770

Medium Skilled 

(on the job training, vocational school or associate’s degree)

Acute Care Nurses  $65,950

Barbers $24,190

Chefs, Head Cooks $42,350

Diagnostic Medical Sonographers  $65,210

Plumbers  $47,750

Source: O*NET Job Zones 1, 3 data, 2012

I could list pay for highly skilled jobs but you get the picture.  It doesn’t take a huge jump in education and skills to make a big difference in wages.

Up Next Week... Part 2: (Not So) Basic Skills.  Practical ways to improve your Reading, Writing, Mathematics, Speaking and Listening Skills.
Part 3: Improving Your Thinking Skills
Part 4: Improving Your People Skills

*If you would like to purchase a license to use the Foundation Job Skills commercially (or financially support our public service work), visit our eBookstore to purchase these handouts and e-books you can print:

Advice and Actions for Making Smart Career Decisions; and 

How Parents Can Help Their Children's Career Development

6 Critical Teamwork Job Skills and How to Develop Them

Teamwork job skills are necessary to getting hired, according to almost 80 percent of employers in the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) Job Outlook 2012 survey. You need them, whether or not you are a “people person” and regardless of your career choice. The trick is to pick group activities you like with people holding similar interests to you. (Sound familiar? Think of people, leisure interests and work environments associated with your strongest Holland personality types)

So what are Teamwork Skills and how do you develop and use them in your career and job search?

First, read our quick overview of Foundation Skills and understand generally what they all are. You can download a free PDF of the 17 Foundation Skills for non-commercial use.   

In particular, look at the People Skills and the six “Teamwork” skills:

1. Working cooperatively with others;
2. Contributing to a group with ideas and effort;
3. Doing your own share of work;
4. Encouraging team members;
5. Resolving differences for the benefit of the team; and
6. Responsibly challenging existing procedures, policies, or authorities.

What kind of activities could you do to develop teamwork skills? Think about getting involved (if you aren’t already) in the community, a business, or in a school group. Here are some ideas to spark your creativity:

• Business: Organize a small business – it could be baby-sitting, yardwork, or a website selling custom T-shirts.  Working in a business with someone else, no matter how small, requires all the teamwork skills.
• Church: Participate in a team-oriented volunteer project in the community, help organize and put on holiday events, help supervise a donation drive (toys, food, diapers, etc).
• Hobbies: If you like building (or the idea of) legos or robots, find a local group – sometimes sponsored by a large local employer, and join in to participate and help with contests and exhibitions, organize a scrapbook accessories exchange at a local scrapbooking store, join another bike fanatic/mechanic to organize a spring "DIY Bike Fix Up" clinic.
• Sports: Get a group together for a charity run or walk, Serve as a volunteer coach for kids’ sports, help organize meets and games, fundraise for a charity league, participate in a school or master’s level sport.
• Music: Form a band, organize and give (free, fundraising) concerts or help musicians do so, volunteer for a music therapy program.
• School: Do a group project - either as a class assignment or create one, get involved in student government, start a new club, participate in service learning or volunteer groups, join a peer mentoring or tutoring group.
• Obstacle course or Outward Bound-type program.

BONUS: Many of these activities also help you develop other Foundation People Skills like Social, Negotiation, Leadership, and Cultural Diversity skills.

Once you develop teamwork skills, learn how to talk about them in a job or internship interview using the “PAR” method. Practice with another person or in front of a mirror how you would talk about your skills with an interviewer.

For more job skills help at The Career Key website, visit these articles:

Identify Your Skills

The Free Agent Outlook on Work

Top 4 Free Career Development Downloads from Career Key and Career Key Canada

Looking for free, high quality career development resources for yourself or a group?  This is the first in a 4 part series highlighting Career Key's most popular, low-cost downloads and articles. Some you may already know about - others may be new to you. First, a little Q & A:

Why do we do we charge so little? We want to make professional-quality career development available to everyone. Reading Career Key author Lawrence K. Jones's personal story, our mission, and our donations to charity give a little context.

Why isn’t everything free, like The Career Key test, Career Key Canada test, and Match Up! to College Majors? We need to support our websites and we decided:

• not to show ads,
• not to mine/sell your personal data (via registration requirement), and
• to subsidize and offer counselors & non-profits low cost group discounts for scientifically valid career assessments and ePublications.

Crazy? Maybe. But retiring in the Bahamas was never our goal...

Here are Career Key and Career Key Canada’s websites’ top 4 most popular free downloads - and where you can find them. Please link to them (without framing) and share the links with others!

1.  “Foundation Skills - Job Skills all Workers Need for the 21st Century”
Foundation Job Skills at The Career Key website
Foundation Job Skills at The Career Key Canada website
Good for: individuals, discussion groups, workshops, classrooms
PDF, free for non-commercial use.  If you want to purchase a license to make copies (and help support us), go to our eBookstore and pay only $5.95 to make 25 copies of “Advice and Actions for Making Smart Career Decisions” - a 25 page collection of our most popular web articles, including this “Foundation Skills” handout.


2.  Choosing a College Major Based on Your Personality: What does the research say? (Canadian version)Describes Holland's Theory of Career Choice, the supporting research for using it to choose a college major, and 5 strategies for making a good college major match.
Good for: students, parents, counselors and educators
Find the article here:
Choosing a College Major at The Career Key website
Choosing a College Major in Canada at The Career Key Canada website

3.  Choosing a Career Cluster, Field, or Pathways?  Download our free, Career Key Career Clusters and Career Pathways Map. You can use it to match your Holland personality with Career Clusters and Pathways.
Good for: students, parents, school counselors, and educators
Find the PDF and the "Choose a Career Cluster, Field or Pathway" article at The Career Key website

4.  Guide to Using The Career Key to Meet the ASCA (American School Counselors Association) National Model Competencies
Good for: school counselors interested in affordable ways to fulfill student competencies in career development (part of the ASCA National Model).
Find the article at The Career Key website
Find the article at The Career Key Canada website

Next post.... Our top free Holland personality match website articles...

Refocus Your Career Development: The Power of Connecting In Person

Are you reading the same career networking and “personal branding” advice over and over again - it’s all about your Internet presence and your appearance to others. Blog! Tweet! Update your Facebook/LinkedIn/(fill in the blank here) status. Welcome to 21st century narcissism. That all being said, I appreciate Facebook for keeping up with friends and enjoy writing this blog. But it’s only part, maybe a smaller part than you think, of your career development.

What’s truly important are our connections we make with people, particularly in person. That's true for career networking - meeting people who you can help and who can help you, be successful in a career path.

Think back to the people in your life who have given you the most joy, the most fun, and sparked the most rewarding work.  How did you meet them?  How did you connect with them? Chances are, even if you met through the Internet, your relationship didn’t really gel until you talked by phone or met in person.

Recently, I got out of the office to meet my former Career Development Facilitator (CDF) instructor at a local lakeside walk.  After spending more time than I had anticipated with her, I got back to my office, energized.  New ideas were flowing. Talking with someone outside of my employer but in my same field was invaluable - I needed to escape some tunnel vision.  Plus, she’s a really great person - that positive feeling stayed with me for days.

I honestly never feel like that when I connect with people online - by email or via networking services like LinkedIn.  I’m pleased to establish online relationships, sometimes excited, but I just don’t get the same warm feeling unless I talk by phone or meet someone in person.  Maybe I’m just unusual, but I doubt it.

Here are some ways to refocus on “in person” connections (I’m doing them too):

1. Who on your contacts list haven’t you talked or met with in awhile that you miss?
2. Are there some people you only call when you need something?  Try calling just to say “hello” - maybe you can offer to help them with something. If you sense their hesitation when you call, you know you’ve outworn the welcome mat and you need to redeem yourself.
3. Is your list of contacts a mile wide and an inch deep? Maybe you need to spend more time on more rewarding connections - people you really like or want to get to know.
4. Are you having lunch/coffee with the same people over and over again?  Is there much new to talk about or learn? Maybe it’s time to meet new people.
5. Are you having trouble picking up the phone? Making the time for an in person meeting? It's easy to sit in front of a computer - sometimes hard to write an email that expresses what really want to say.  But it's definitely more of a challenge, especially for the less outgoing, to talk to people. Consider it practice for improving your communication skills - one of the 17 Foundation Skills.

Maybe you need to spend a little less time on social media (like I have), and more time setting up coffee “dates” LOL, and OMG picking up the telephone!

P.S. If you need convincing (or a reminder) about the power of that in person connection... I recently got hooked on the BBC’s The Choir, a series about a choirmaster who starts a community choir in South Oxhey, a place north of London that’s seen better times.  It’s moving and inspirational.  It makes you think about the power of community - and the power of personal connections between people.  If you can get it on Netflix or see it on cable OnDemand, I highly recommend it.

Career Choices in an Uncertain Economy: Placing Your Bets

Job Outlook for...
High Skilled Careers? Good. 
Low-Skilled Careers? Good.
Middle-Skilled Careers? Not so good.

If you look at job boards and reports from economists and the U.S. Labor Department (read this interesting Wall Street Journal article last week about employers who can't fill jobs), it looks like you find the best job outlook in careers at either end of the skills spectrum: highly specialized, high-skilled jobs or low-skilled jobs.

If you’re concerned about ending up in the “middle-skilled” group now suffering the worst unemployment (a situation likely to continue into the near future), several articles at our website can help you make your next career decision.

Knowing Yourself

• Activities to help you find out what Job Satisfaction means to you;
• Activities to Identify Your Skills, including your motivated skills;
• Foundation Job Skills: Job Skills all Workers Need; and
• The Free Agent Outlook on Work

Include what you learn from these activities, along with your Career Key test results, to help narrow down your options as part of the 4 step ACIP decision making process.

Considering Further Education & Training
If you’re weighing your options for a college major, going back to school or taking on an expensive post-secondary training program, start by planning out what you want to gain from it.

Some may object this approach as dreaded “careerism” or too much focus too soon, but no one says this path can’t be fun and exploratory. Even a narrowly tracked engineering degree will allow for some broader classes like literature and writing, which you should take anyway to learn needed Foundation Skills.

No one says you have to have your one future job title picked out when you enroll, but you need to know why you’re studying what you’re studying.

See our recommendations on how to Choose a College Major or Training Program, including some food for thought on choosing a program in the Liberal Arts, Humanities & General Studies.

While you don’t have to choose between becoming a research microbiologist or a Quickie Mart attendant via your next career move, the jobs data clearly shows that a lack of specialization and focus - regardless of skill level - will lead to a lack of opportunity now and in the foreseeable future.  That's a sure bet. 

Afraid to Choose a Career with a Narrow Focus? 6 Thoughts on Highly Specialized Career Choices

How do you choose a career when some occupations are so narrowly focused or specialized? What if a recession or technology change renders your career choice obsolete or less attractive?  It’s hard enough to decide on a career path, even if you know it is just one choice of many you’ll make throughout your life. Add to that the fear of being stuck with a degree or training that is no longer needed or has few job openings - it’s intimidating.

Education is becoming more specialized
Specialization is on my mind because we just finished matching the Career Key to all the new majors, training & instructional programs added in 2010 to the U.S. and Canadian government’s database of post-secondary programs. (Our Education Key e-Book will be updated this summer) This is the first update since 2000, and the specialization trend in education is striking. Here are a few examples:

• Medicine and Health Care fields, both for professionals and technicians, are continuing to become more specialized. 
• For example, Nursing is now subdivided into four categories (registered nursing, administration, research & clinical nursing, and practical nursing) with multiple programs for each.
• Interdisciplinary studies are growing. You need to be an expert in more than one field - which may make it more interesting for you, but more challenging. 
• As an example, see this recent NYT blog “Can ‘Neuro Lit Crit’ Save the Humanities”

Careers are becoming more specialized
My software engineer husband and I were talking recently about how in his field, job openings are often driven by one particular language and one platform.  Windows or Linux? C++ or Ruby on Rails? (whatever that means - you get the picture) Companies may say they want a “jack [programmer] of all trades [languages]” but really they want someone to know exactly the specific language and code they’ve got and what to do with it. And there are a lot of languages - more being invented all the time (like the new D language at DigitalMars).

Anecdotal evidence aside, 2010 changes in the U.S. government’s organization system for occupations (the Standard Occupational Classification or SOC) reflect many more focused career paths in technology and health care. The number of occupations in some industries are shrinking (like printing and photograph processing) while others are expanding (information technology and nursing).

So what does all this mean for choosing a career right now?

Here are my 6 thoughts on making a more specialized career choice:

1. Remind yourself that your current career choice, whether it’s your first or you think it’s your last, is probably not your permanent, final one. Embrace the cliche that “change is the only constant.” See #6 below.
2. Focus on what you have control over. You can control and improve your adaptability to change, by:
• building your support system (family, friends), 
• paying attention to the health and progress of your newly chosen field, 
• staying up to date with your certifications and education, and networking with other people.  
• You can’t control (among other things) technology advances (unless you’re an inventor), economic recessions, or age discrimination. 
3. Learn about Holland’s Theory of Career Choice and how to use it to narrow your options to compatible groups of careers. Take a close look at the careers and education programs that match your top two personality types. If you’re interested in a career field with a lot of narrowly focused, specialized jobs, like medicine (Investigative), therapy (Social), and engineering technicians (Realistic), use what you know about your personality types through Holland’s Theory to combine your interests in one field.  
• For example, if you score high in Social and your second highest score is Enterprising, you can see how choosing a Social occupation that may allow you to operate your own business (like physical therapy or clinical psychology) would be a compatible choice. You’d want to do informational interviews with self-employed practitioners to learn more about those options. See other suggested ways to learn more about the careers that interest you.
4. Take the time to identify and write out a list of your motivated skills, skills you enjoy using, are good at, and are proud of. Our article “Identify Your Skills” will help you do that, along with the other activities in “Learn More About Yourself.” You can use these exercises to develop a list of transferable skills, which can help you find related, compatible careers if you need to.
5. Specialization does not necessarily mean more risky career choices. Some well-paid, rewarding and specialized jobs are not going to disappear unless robots from The Terminator take over the planet. (And then career choice will be the least of your problems). Maintaining and installing utility lines (utility company lineworkers), helping people through knee replacement rehabilitation (physical therapy), and gatekeepers (financial auditors) are not going away anytime soon. Careers that work directly with computer hardware or software? Be prepared for big changes as devices become more mobile and smaller.
6. Follow the 6 principles of the Free Agent Worker described at The Career Key website. I also wrote a series of blog posts on them.

The beauty of relying your Holland personality types and interests as a career compass is that you should have little trouble staying up to date on a career field that interests you. Apply a little thoughtful creativity and your goal of being adaptable to changes in the world of work will be within your grasp.

Giving Thanks for Your Motivated Skills - Help Others Learn About Theirs

Take a few moments to identify your motivated skills - and ask a friend or family member to do the same for themselves. Ask yourself, what 2-5 "good experiences" in or outside of work have you had where:

1. you feel you did something well,
2. you enjoyed doing it, and
3. feel proud of it.

And for each one, ask yourself:

1. what did you do?
   
2. how did you do it?
3. what happened?

Voila! You now have a practical list of your motivated skills - for use anywhere - at home, at work, on your resume. And be thankful for your unique gifts.

Were you surprised when you realized there were skills you do well, feel proud of, but don't enjoy? It might steer you in some different directions - at home or at work. Please feel free share this positive, useful activity with everyone you know.

And for such a positive contribution to career development, thank Drs. Bernard and Jean Haldane and Dr. Jerald Forster for their work with Dependable Strengths, on which this activity is based. I just ordered Dr. Forster's new book, "Articulating Strengths Together" and will be reviewing it on the blog next month.

Happy Thanksgiving!

3 Principles for Helping You Learn a New Career or Job Skill

We all know career success is linked to lifelong learning. To remain competitive and adaptable, we have to be constantly learning new skills and knowledge. It’s the only job security we have. But how do we learn? What can science tell us about the best, easiest way for us to absorb and become proficient in a new career field or skill?

I’ve been fascinated by a new book, "Why Don’t Students Like School?” that offers some answers. In it, cognitive psychologist Daniel Willingham looks at what techniques help students and adults think and learn effectively. I adapted some of his findings for people choosing or changing careers.

If you’re concerned about entering a new career or learning a new skill, keep these 3 principles in mind:

1. The Snowball Effect of Knowledge: Gain basic background knowledge of your subject or skill and it will become easier for you to learn more about it and practice it (see next step). Just dive in and start reading and talking to people who are experts in it.

2. “Sustained, Long Term Practice”: Practice your new skills so many times they become automatic. That means go beyond just mastering the skill. 3 strategies Willingham recommends (my examples):

• Getting informative feedback (from peers, friends, supervisor);
• Doing other activities that will improve your skill (like Toastmasters to improve public speaking); and
  
• Consciously trying to improve (make a plan, set goals, ask for support).
  

3. Intelligence is nature (genes) AND nurture (environment) – so get to work. You can improve your intelligence – you need to believe you can improve and work on actually doing it. The fact your father was not a rocket scientist doesn’t mean you can’t be one. I wish I had known this about math and maybe I would have become an oceanographer instead of a lawyer.

To gain more knowledge and information about your career choice or a skill that will be required for a new job, several activities at The Career Key website will help:
Information Interviewing
Learn More About the Jobs That Interest Me
Identify My Skills
Free Agent Outlook on Work

This all just reinforces the fact that you are in the driver's seat when it comes to improving your career prospects and options. More work for the weary!

4 Positive Actions to Make Your Ideal Career a Reality

If you’re choosing a career or making a career change, infusing your decision-making with a positive approach will help you move forward. What are you doing right? And how can you choose a career direction that uses more of what works for you? Here are 4 actions to take in your positive approach:

1. Find what “works” within yourself; each person has something that works.
2. Focus on what you want your reality to be. Your focus = your reality.
3. When making a decision about your future, take with you what was best about the past. You will be more confident and secure making a future career move when you take parts of the past with you. Even past disappointments can showcase your strengths like persistence, integrity, adaptability, etc.
   
4. Use positive, forward-looking language about your decision; the language you use creates your reality.
   

I made this list based on the 8 assumptions of Appreciative Inquiry in The Thin Book of Appreciative Inquiry by Sue Annis Hammond. Appreciative Inquiry is an “organizational change philosophy” that looks at what works with an organization to make future plans and decisions.

If you’re interested in discovering what “works” about you, please try the activities in our Career Key article “Identify Your Skills,” in particular the “motivated skills” section. The activities in “Learn More About Yourself” will also help you.

If a strengths-based approach to your career appeals to you, we highly recommend the Dependable Strengths workshops; learn more at this non-profit's website: Dependable Strengths. As always, we do not get paid for recommending other resources.

Sometimes focusing on the obstacles that stand in your way is too de-motivating, resulting in discouragement and inaction. Try a more positive approach and see what happens – it can’t be worse than “I can’t do it!”

5 Ways to Spark Your Creativity In Choosing a Career

If you want to be creative when choosing your career and consider what truly makes you happy, try these 5 ways to spark your creativity:

1. Explore roadtripnation.com and watch episodes of this inspiring PBS documentary series. In a big green RV, students go on a roadtrip meeting new people and talking with them about their life and work. This series is fun and thought-provoking to watch, whatever your age.
2. Watch Elizabeth Gilbert, author of the bestselling book "Eat, Pray, Love," talk on TED about creativity and nurturing the “genius” in each of us. She’s funny and original.
3. “Identify Your Skills” at The Career Key website, paying special attention to “Motivated Skills,” those skills you enjoy using. Often people make the mistake of only focusing what they know how to do, instead of what they enjoy doing.
4. Read Yes! Magazine’s “10 Things Science Says Will Make You Happy.” Most of these strategies are directly related to what you choose to do for a living. What do you truly "need" to make you happy? You may find self-employment or rewarding, meaningful work makes you a living you can afford after all.
   
5. Do one activity this weekend that is outside your normal pattern. For example, go have a coffee or meal at a place or part of town you would not normally go to. Go to a park you’ve never visited before. Attend a community event you would normally not attend. What kinds of people did you see? What did you learn about yourself and what you enjoy doing? Can you do something similarly “out of the box” related to work that interests you? Call someone up for coffee or an information interview you might not normally approach.
   

Do you have other suggestions for jump starting your creativity when it comes to choosing your work?