• StickK is a website that helps to set goals and hold yourself accountable for achieving them.  You choose from a list of goal categories (career is one of them), and set whether it’s a one-time or ongoing commitment. To hold yourself accountable you can “put your money where your mouth is” and assign dollar stakes for your goal.  You can also assign a “Referee” to report to each week, and get your friends involved to support you. Cost: Free!

• Strong Life Test for Women is based on the latest book by researcher Markus Buckingham of Now Discover Your Strengths. This quick quiz uncovers insights into the “role you were born to play.”  Though I haven’t read (and therefore can’t recommend) his new book Find Your Strongest Life, I found this quiz to be spot on in its pinpointing my “type.”  The downside to my pattern provided an “ouch” of recognition, and its recommendation for my smartest career move– though VERY general– was also on point.  Cost: Free!

• The Keirsey Temperament Sorter is for both men and women (unlike the Strong Life Test), and is basically a short-form version of the famous Myers-Briggs profiles (if you are familiar with MBTI, this quiz gives you the middle two letters).  When you get to the landing page after taking your quiz, you’ll see there are a bunch of paid options.  Be sure to click the ‘mini-quiz’ option to see your free results.  Bonus- the quiz is offered in multiple languages. Cost: Free!

• O-Net Online is the U.S. Dept of Labor’s online occupational database.  It contains a wealth of information about nearly a thousand occupations– and not just the boring bits!  Beyond a detailed task list, you’ll learn the skills, abilities and training you need (hello, Law 5), and what kind of work styles and values are essential for success in the job.  There’s even a designation for “Bright Outlook” jobs, so you’ll know which occupations are expected to be in demand over the next ten years.  A word of advice- though you can search by regular keyword, you’ll get a much more precise result if you use the O-Net Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) code.  Go here to see the SOC list.  Cost: Free!

• The Live Happy iPhone app is a positive psychology app developed in conjunction with one of the leaders of the movement, Dr. Sonja Lyubomirsky. Based on the set of activities outlined in her book (The How of Happiness, which I have read and can recommend) that have been scientifically proven to help people become happier, the app learns about you, your personality and preferences, and recommends happiness-building activities (e.g. sending gratitude notes) you can do right from your iPhone.  Cost: Nearly free! (99 cents)

The June 2010 issue of the McKinsey Quarterly contains an article about how to test your decision-making instincts.  Though the piece discusses the issue from the perspective of corporate leaders, their recommendations can also help you when making personal decisions.  Here are their four tests to know when you should trust your gut instincts, along with my analysis of how to use each one for your own career reinvention:

Test #1:  The familiarity test. In this test, you must ask yourself how often you have experienced identical or similar situations.  Familiarity is important because your subconscious relies on pattern recognition.  You need to have enough data to support a pattern, and to ensure that the previous experience referenced by your subconscious is correct!  The way you can judge this is by examining the “primary uncertainties” of a situation, and evaluating if you have enough experience to make an informed judgment call.  In career reinvention, the big question is often whether or not a career will be a good fit.  Perhaps your gut instinct is guiding you to become a coach.  If that intuition is based upon your years of informally coaching your friends, you probably have enough data.  If it’s based upon having a friend who’s a coach and loves it, you probably don’t.

Test #2:  The feedback test. Here, you want to make sure that your takeaways from your previous experiences are, in fact, correct.  As humans, our bias is to tag our decisions as good judgment, whether or not an independent assessment would support that.  I quit my first job on Wall Street because I was desperately unhappy.  At the time I thought it was a good decision—and it did, in the end, work out—but today I realize that it wasn’t so great (I was two months away from qualifying for a pension).  To run this test, have a conversation with a friend or colleague.  Tell them the experience your gut feelings are based on, and ask them for their honest feedback.

Test #3:  The measured-emotions test. Sometimes, your previous experiences are associated with highly charged emotions.  When that happens, you run the risk of making an unbalanced decision.  I had a client who was carrying baggage from a difficult experience with a former boss.  When her new boss once made a similar comment, her gut instinct told her she had run across another boss-zilla.  When you find yourself in these types of situations, you need help evaluating your emotions.  Ask yourself if you are overreacting, or speak to an objective friend about your feelings.

Test #4:  The independence test. Sometimes you have a personal interest in a particular outcome, and that bias will influence your gut feelings.  I see this often; aspiring Reinventors frequently fall in love with a particular company, and swear their instincts are leading them in that direction.  But many times the attachment is based upon other variables like an easier commute or friends who work at the firm.  If you find your gut irresistibly draws you to a single target, turn to a Native to test your assumptions and get a balanced viewpoint.

The McKinsey article cautions that if a situation fails even one of the four tests, you must strengthen your decision-making process to minimize the risk of a negative outcome.  If you find yourself in this situation, turn to friends or an informal advisory board for help vetting your career reinvention decision.

Q: Here’s my situation: I’m a 45 year old male.  Good paying job in a small computer company.  Thought of very highly at the company by the owner.  But I dread work pretty much every day.

I bought Pamela’s book but I am sort of stuck.  I don’t know what my ideal job even is to pursue.  I am also concerned if I had to take a major pay cut too.  I would prefer not to be miserable everyday going to work.

Recommendations?  Thoughts?

Signed, Sick of Software

A: I feel your pain.  Many people find themselves.  Many people find themselves in this situation; they believed that having a good job at a stable company was an automatic recipe for job satisfaction.  But you are living proof that this is a fairy tale.

No doubt the voices in your head (and maybe those in your world) say you should be happy for what you’ve got.  I agree that it is important to be grateful, not to create guilt but to encourage you to value your job as an asset you have at your disposal to launch your reinvention.

From your note, I notice two main traps of reinvention that are keeping you stuck:

1. Looking for an “ideal” job. One of the biggest points of my book, The 10 Laws of Career Reinvention, is that there are no ideal jobs.  There are downsides to every career, even if you love the work.  To get what you want, job-wise, you have to give.  This means that to find work that both excites you and satisfies most of your lifestyle needs, you will have to accept some tradeoffs.
2. Worrying about issues that may not be real. You are concerned about having to take a major pay cut, without knowing what you want to do next.  This is like worrying that your flight will crash before you’ve even made a reservation, much less bought the ticket.  Until you have targeted a new career and begun researching it, you cannot know whether or not lower pay is one of its tradeoffs.  (By the way, a TRI study back in 2006 showed that 25% of successful reinventors made more money in their new career).  Inventing barriers without actual data is a form of excuse-making, and as Law 3 says: Progress begins when you stop making excuses.

To move forward, you must shift your attention from what’s making you unhappy to what makes you happy.  I am certain that there are things about your current position that you enjoy or that work for you; write them down.  Do the brainstorming exercises in the book, especially the ones focusing on flow activities and inexhaustible interests.  If you need more help, there are a number of in-depth exercises in our new Brainstorming Your Reinvention Idea eKit to guide you.

Once you have a few workable ideas for what you would like to do next, see how your job can help you move towards your goal.  At the very least it will provide funding (aka ‘paycheck’) as you explore, but it could also provide a whole host of valuable assets for reinvention (contacts, opportunity to work on new projects and develop new skills, tuition reimbursement, etc.).  You may well find that what you hate ends up being a useful launching pad to what you love!

The article points out that job creation in the U.S. has been declining for decades, mostly due to the American focus on shareholder value which leads companies to continually reduce payroll to beef up profits.  This is a trend I noted in my book and one that, coupled with the deepest economic downturn since the Great Depression, calls for a different strategy of career management.

My heart goes out to Jean who at 57—an age when she should be happily contemplating retirement—is navigating the world of food stamps.  Before this downturn, she never struggled to find work.  Now she scans the listings; most require experience or software proficiency that she lacks.  Jean has found that having a great personality and presence is not enough to protect her from joblessness.

Hers is a cautionary tale for anyone who thinks they’re in a “safe” industry or “That couldn’t happen to me.”  The world of work has changed, and the ability to reinvent your career at any moment is the new—and only—form of job security.  Stories like Jean’s bring this truth into sharp relief: If you aren’t actively preparing yourself for career reinvention at all times, you are at risk.

Here’s what you can do to stay relevant and hire-able in the age of Reinvention:

1. Stay tuned into trends. Companies are being forced to continually reinvent their business models to stay viable, and anyone working must do the same.  Notice what is happening in the world around you and position yourself to move in the direction the market is heading.
2. Continually refresh your skill set. Scan job listings and pay attention to which skills are required.  Make sure you can demonstrate proficiency in the most commonly requested ones as well as any specialized skills that will give you an edge.
3. Put in the time. Don’t wait till you’re out of work to launch a reinvention plan.  Have an ongoing strategy to develop and position yourself for your next position.
4. Be prepared for it to take a while. Don’t expect to land a new position within three to six months; today, a year or more is not uncommon.  Know your Plan B—what you’ll do to bring in extra cash—in the event of an extended period of unemployment.

For a step-by-step manual for creating your own reinvention strategy, check out my new book The 10 Laws of Career Reinvention: Essential Survival Skills for Any Economy.

The 10 Laws of Career Reinvention is the first book to give you all the necessary tools for navigating the full arc of career change between different fields. In the book I guide you through the process of identifying your skill sets, repackaging your experience and thinking outside the box in order to manifest the very real potential you have to start anew.  I reveal the secrets behind a successful reinvention, and give you valuable advice that answers all your tactical questions about navigating the roadblocks, getting traction in a new industry, and managing your fears.  Clear-headed, calming, practical and thorough, The 10 Laws of Career Reinvention is the ideal guidebook to transforming your career and finding your way to a life you love.

I wish you a successful start to the New Year!

One of the gifts in the goodie bag was a postcard about my upcoming book, the 10 Laws of Career Reinvention.  We are just a few short months away from its release, and already there’s been lots of interest!  If you want to pre-order your copy, you can do so here and here.  And if this is your first time visiting us, you can learn more about our work at our main website here.

I opened a Facebook account several months ago to familiarize myself with the service and learn how it might be helpful to our work here at The Reinvention Institute.  Since I wasn’t ready to create an official TRI presence, I mostly limited my connections to family, personal friends, and the occasional ‘friend-colleague’ (these are people that I’ve met through work whom I’ve become personally friendly with).  Mindful of the fact that nothing posted online is ever truly private (even with Facebook’s highest privacy settings), I’ve chosen to be very selective with the information I share on the site.

Imagine my surprise when I went got a notification that I’d been tagged in a bunch of photos!  My sister had posted some family pictures, including a number of candid shots from my bridal shower and wedding.  Now in my sister’s defense, I actually had a few wedding pictures on my own Facebook profile (I knew that the longtime friends I was connecting with on the site would want to see them).  But what she didn’t know is that they were carefully edited to include only those I’d be comfortable showing the remotest of strangers or potential business colleagues.

Luckily all it took was a quick email to my sister to get the pictures taken down.  But it was a lesson learned that you must always stay on top of the image your online profile presents.

Tips for managing your online profile include doing an online search on yourself, setting up a ‘Google Alert’ to send you a notification anytime your name is mentioned online, or taking an objective look at your LinkedIn, Facebook or MySpace page.  For a more comprehensive sweep, download a great checklist from $100k+ job site, TheLadders.com.

This group will:

• Get you unstuck
• Help you find your niche
• Get you on the road to your new career
• Give you inspiration that you can reach your goal
• Connect you with a network of friends to assist you

You might be wondering how all this can be done in nine short weeks.  I’m going to be honest: if you’re looking for a ‘magic bullet’ easy street to reinvention, this isn’t the group for you.  But, if you want (or need) a new career and you’re willing to do the work and put in the effort, you will have RESULTS.

Will you have found your dream job by the end of the nine weeks?  Again, honesty is best: there’s a slight possibility, but most likely no.  This is because we don’t control WHEN opportunity shows up– only life does!  What can be controlled, though, through effort, is the chance of it showing up and how ready you are for it when it does.  This group gives you the strategies to MAXIMIZE your probability of opportunity and make sure that you’re ready to take full advantage of opportunity when it comes.

This is an intense, results-driven group with lots of personal attention.  Because of that, I only run one at a time.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, because of my book project I won’t do another one until the end of 2009.  I’ve also decided– since I’ll be juggling this group and the book at the same time– that I’m only going allow 3 more people in.

This is the FINAL note about the January group– so if you want one of the 3 spots, act now and sign up here.