Are you happy in your job/career? If not, do you want to know why? Want to know how to find the right job/career for you? I’ve got a time tested, proven method for doing just that, and it’s free here.
What if I could show you how to create a rigorous description of yourself? What if along the way, you learned how to be an effective leader? Consider this:
Career Success is a function of goodness of fit
between who you habitually are and the demands of a job/career.
How well do you know yourself? Do you have an accurate description on paper that you can use to assess job options? The Career Option Workbook (COW) below gives you that.
I learned the Finding FIT process at the Harvard Business School from the founders: John Kotter, Victor Faux and Charles McArthur. I taught the course for 3 years at HBS and then 33 years at the Darden Business School at UVA. It was an honor to be asked to do the 2nd and 3rd editions of their textbook.
The SACD process is very powerful. One develops serious MANAGERIAL SKILLS by generating multiple pools of (personal) data, scanning them for recurring patterns or themes, drawing conclusions, and then making high stakes (career) decisions based on those conclusions. The SACD course is one of the best ways to hone one’s managerial inductive logic skills. At Harvard Business School and Darden Business School these were semester-long courses involving ~20 self-assessment tools and two major papers; a Self-Assessment Paper and a Career Development Paper. Success comes from the best fit between who a person habitually and enduringly is and the persistent demands of a job or career. Some students would say “I can’t afford a semester-long class on navel-gazing” and I’d counsel “You can’t afford NOT to take this course because the trial-and-error method is way more costly in time, money and effort AND after two jobs, you STILL may not know what’s a good fit for you.” I had one student who had already accepted a high paying job after his summer internship, took the course, realized the job and career were not for him, gave back his signing bonus and pursued another avenue. Smart man. What he learned was that success is measured by the goodness of fit between who he was and the demands of a job/career.
FindingFIT is not just about one’s professional life. There are at least fifteen “—AL” aspects of life including Professional, Financial, Material, Professional Associations, Physical, Intellectual, Emotional, Recreational, Familial, Marital, Parental, Social, Neighborhood, Ecclesiastical, Societal and Political. You can add other dimensions if you wish (eg sexual). I’ve created a small Excel file in which you can rate what you have vs. what you want. This is a measure of contentment with your life.
Download the simple BALANCING YOUR LIFE Excel file.
The COW: A One Stop Repository for all your Career Information
I also developed a Career Option Workbook (COW) in Excel that connects you a dozen or more self-assessment tools, and guides you through the analysis of the data.
With the COW you can create a detailed personal description to use in evaluating any job option. You can download the COW for free here. Career Option Workbook
A good familiarity with Excel is recommended.
The COW will help you list your enduring Life Themes (habits) and then rate the fit with the job demands of multiple job options which will give you an expected value for each option.
If the COW by itself is not clear enough, there is a pdf book, FindingFIT, with links to the self-assessment tools and more that also leads one through the SACD process available for $7 at Darden Business Publishing. Here is that link: FindingFIT
Job Search Process PPTX A PowerPoint deck describing the FindingFit process.
Self-Assessment and Career Development Third Edition PDF file of the entire text.
