How to be accountable in getting the career you need

Imagine that on the day you leave school you are told, "In 50 years, you are going to be held accountable for having chosen the career that is right for you." We're all hopeful upon receipt of any diploma, so you think, ‘No sweat’. A second thought might then emerge: ‘What happens if I don’t?’ For the first thought, well, this is the whole point. For the latter, however, the response is, sadly: Nothing.

Holding ourselves accountable for our actions is a whole lot more difficult than holding someone else accountable for theirs. While we don’t seem to have any problem demanding others live up to their word, potential, or expectations, we’re apt to excuse ourselves when we don’t live up to our word, potential, or expectations. A great article, “The Power of Personal Accountability”, by Sophie Chiche and Mark Samuel, at SelfGrowth.com, provides some great insight as to why people resist personal accountability and what you can do about it.

OK, you get it, but are probably wondering how this can be used to create the career you really need. The first thing you need to do is understand that accountability means you count. As we see others as has having an impact on what happens in our homes, workplace, government, and society, so do you have an impact. You’re part of this world. You came into this world with a specific set of skills and talents intended for you to use. Misapplying or not applying them at all, especially since you count, does not serve anyone, least of all, you.

The BIG question then is, knowing what you know about you, what career would you have right now?

If the answer is not what you are presently doing, then a plan of action to move in that direction is necessary. Yes, completely, totally, and unwaveringly necessary as the world is also counting on you.

How to outsource yourself and not be a consultant

In exploring the various RPOs (recruitment process outsourcing) and PEOs (professional employer organizations) that provide human resources services to third party companies, I got to wondering how individuals could do the same. Though, as that practice seems to be known as consulting, it doesn’t seem to be such a revolutionary concept. Or is it?

Is there a difference between consulting and self-outsourcing (or, SO, as I assign it an acronym)?

Using PEOs and RPOs as examples, after these companies assess the individual needs of prospective clients, the solutions they offer are usually established and proven. They don’t need to reinvent the wheel with each new customer. Their service delivery methods may vary from client to client, but because of customer and employee expectations, they often need to follow certain protocols to be effective and to make everyone happy.

A consultant, on the other hand, usually takes a wide berth in making recommendations and tailors their counsel for each situation they encounter. There is often no system.

What if, in SO, a person adopts the same approach that PEOs or RPOs take in applying routine methods to solve a company’s problem(s)? Take the sales process as an example. The sales process covers everything from business development to closing to relationship management. You can’t have one without the other if wanting to generate revenue and profit. And, every salesperson knows their strengths in the sales process, with some better at hunting then they are at closing or are great at identifying market opportunities but deplore initiating customer contacts. (You may tell an employer you excel at each, but you know if you’re telling the truth.)

Now, once honest with yourself, break down the very specific things you do in that very narrow area and package it. This is what you outsource. If you’re good at 2, 3, or more functions, great. Package those as well. Again using the sales process as an example, say your specialty is business development. You could include services such as conduct research, market analysis, letter writing to new prospects, trade show/networking event activities … any number of things that fall within the scope of that particular activity. With each new client you wish to promote your outsourcing services, your message will be anything but open-ended – as they might fear may be the case if presenting yourself as a consultant.

What can this do for you, especially if you are looking to craft your career? The benefits can range from getting your foot in the door with a company where you’d like to work or as a means to generate more income. However, the most important benefit of being an SO is that it forces you to confront the things you do best and enjoy the most.

Personal branding: Stand out from the crowd

Marketers of products and services (well, at the least the good ones anyway) know all too well the importance of branding. I cannot even begin to stress what an understatement this is.

Branding allows the product or service being marketed to stand out from the crowd and to appeal to an audience that absolutely craves what is being sold. And while savvy business people and entrepreneurs appreciate that branding their goods and services is synonymous with success, few job hunters take advantage of this all too important strategy when marketing (yes, that’s exactly what you’re doing) themselves.

Click here for a great blog on tips and techniques to effectively create your own brand image.

Do you really want to achieve that goal? Then set a date.

Yesterday, in yet another deep discussion about goal setting, I had a light bulb moment. It is not that people cannot set goals; they do it all the time. Why a goal is sometimes not achieved is often because the goal was never given an ‘achieve by’ date for its attainment.

I was not remiss in asking why is it important to set an “achieve by” date for reaching a goal. In fact, I did ask; several times. When met with silence, another light bulb. I then asked, why not set a due date to achieve a goal? Interestingly, that question seemed to elicit hope. After all, in ‘why not?’ there is a whole lot less pressure, as in, why not go to Las Vegas? Though there may be a number of (truly) valid reasons for not going to Las Vegas (though, off hand, I can’t think of any), when the question of going is posed in terms of ‘why not’, your mind has no choice but to actively seek rationale to support the reasons why it is a good idea.

Of course, there is an upside to never establishing an ‘achieve by’ date for goals: You can forever maintain the illusion of still having the goal even if you never achieve it. In my opinion, not a good strategy, especially if you do want to achieve a goal.

How to intend your career: One extremely, inordinately simple formula

I want to focus a little more on “intending” your career. This is not a recent revelation, the idea of intending a career, but something I have known about for quite awhile. It is just that I forget that it is always possible; especially when there appears to be so many different career choices when a person is intrigued by many things. So, if you’re flailing about, wondering what you really should be doing with your work life, consider, perhaps, that the plan has already been decided.

I am aware that sounds a little (OK, a lot) fatalistic but I read somewhere, a long time ago, that the things we did as children, things that interested us, are an indication of our purpose for being. This is supposedly because, as children, we were still close to our originating source so that it was easy to remember our reason for being born in the first place.

As a kid, I loved to find better solutions to problems and fascinated why other people had difficulty or no interest in devising strategies for solving problems. The most dramatic example of this was when I was in the first grade. It was close to Christmas and the project was to make a glitter angel with glue, paper, and glitter. This was not a particularly challenging project. As my classmates lovingly sprinkled glitter over each millimeter of glue to produce an angel, I found their method to be too elementary (I am aware of the irony) and time-consuming. Yes, even at the age of seven I was looking for ways to consolidate activities to make people, myself in particular, more productive. So, after drawing my glue outline, I dumped the entire bottle of glitter onto the paper, my rationale being to gently fold the paper in two, and allowing the excess glitter to fall back into the bottle. Voilà, glitter angel. Let’s move onto the next project.

Unfortunately, this is where I learned my first lesson that some people are more interested in preserving their comfort zone or schedule than they are in innovative production techniques. My teacher, Mrs. Sheets, stopped me the moment I had dumped the entire contents of the glitter bottle onto the paper. She appeared mortified and proceeded to chastise me in front of the entire class for being wasteful and a “glutton”. A 7 year-old glitter glutton. I do not jest. She then had me dump the glitter back into the bottle so that I could start over even though after returning the glitter to the bottle I had my angel! Go figure. It took me many (adult) years to realize my teacher was annoyed because my quicker method to completing the project meant she would then have to alter her plans to accommodate my now free time and she was obviously not prepared for that.

As they say, I regress. At an early age, my aptitude, competencies, talent, and interests were clear. The problem was that this all seemed too broad. It would have been easier had I a love affair with insects, toy trucks, or the violin. Passion in those areas would substantially narrow the career choices. When your abilities are broad-based, however, suddenly there are too many paths from which to choose. But, if you look closely, what you should be doing is there, buried beneath what others think you should be doing (unless, of course, everyone keeps pointing out a specific talent you should be honing) or what you have resigned yourself to doing because it was available at the time you were looking. Neither is a good choice.

It’s not too late. It’s never too late. You can shift course, you can refine, you can choose. And you will be totally, completely, awestruck by the results. Your first step to getting to this is becoming single-minded in what you wish to achieve. Fear and doubt fall away when you see your goal.

I wish it were more complicated than this because then we would have an excuse for not having done it sooner.