Unless you’ve been living under a digital rock, you’ve heard about Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude. These software tools allow you to write “prompts,” suggestions for actions you want the software to take (“Write me a Christmas carol in the style of Beyonce:), and they will type out something that resembles your suggestion. (Well, ChatGPT will, but Claude won’t, because it refuses to copy someone’s style or work.)

These tools can be a tremendous help for many steps in a career change or job search, from offering resume tweaks to generating cover letters. But one especially helpful activity can be to use these “Generative AI” programs to suggest ideas for work options once you have done some of your personal self-inventory.

Here’s how it works. Once you have taken the eParachute Flower Course, you will have a wide range of different information about yourself, including your transferable skills, your special knowledges, and your preferred people environment. You can paste all of this information into Claude or ChatGPT, and then ask the software a series of questions.

• - What are ten different jobs I might be interested in?
• - I really want to make sure I can use my favorite skills in my ideal job. How would that change that list of jobs?
• - I’m interested in learning more about the first job in the list of suggestions. What are the top five tasks that someone in that job performs?
• - Of the ten jobs suggested, which one takes the least amount of formal training before someone can start that work?
• - My three top special knowledges are (for example) Engineering, Agriculture, and Space. What kinds of jobs would use that intersection of knowledges? (The tractor company John Deere has an autonomous tractor guided by satellites. I’m sure they’d want to talk to you.

(The eParachute.com app can give you ideas for jobs after a short exercise using cards, but the list is based on the O*NET Database, which lists 1,000 jobs. By doing the eParachute Flower Course, you will have more information about yourself, and therefore you can get more options for jobs by using one of the GenAI tools.)

These tools are not a replacement for an actual human career coach, who can help support you with empathy and creative strategies. But think of GenAI programs as an additional tool in your toolkit for a job search or career change.

Once someone who is looking for work has done their personal self-inventory, and it’s time to shift into information-gathering mode, their greatest single asset is their network. And as a coach or career adviser, the best way you can help a seeker is to teach them to be nimble, proactive – and, especially, appropriate - users of social media.

 

The good news is that tools like LinkedIn can do a great job of connecting you to people you know, and who (hopefully) know you. But using these systems effectively takes some practice, and many people seeking work don’t use them appropriately.

 

Here are some of the rules I try to follow.

. Try to focus as much as possible on one “platform,” as social networks are often called. LinkedIn is the most obvious for professional connections. But many people use Facebook, WhatsApp, or one of many other options. Scattering connections through a lot of platforms makes it much more difficult to groom a network.

. Be intentional about sending out connection requests. Don’t simply shotgun invitations to anyone that the social platforms suggest. Think about the kinds of connections that could be most useful, and try to develop them on an ongoing basis, not just when you’re looking for work.

. Have some guidelines when you accept requests from people who want to connect. I invariably accept when I’ve met someone, or been introduced by a mutual acquaintance. I’ll also commonly accept an invitation when I’ve had some email or messaging exchange with them.

. Have some guidelines when you refuse or ignore requests. If I haven’t met someone, or if they clearly have a business development role and probably want to sell me something, I often won’t accept connection requests. Whatever your guidelines, try to be consistent, but allow yourself to make exceptions.

 

But the most important strategy for managing your social network connections when you’re looking for work is:

. Give more than you get. Suggest new connections to people in your network, offering to introduce them to others they don’t know. Offer information or ideas to people who have helped you. Remember that these aren’t assets in some bank: They’re people, and they have their own goals and needs. Think of yourself as a connection enabler, and you’ll build up a bundle of goodwill that will be helpful to you when you need it.

“[They] love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise.”

No, that’s not the complaint of a corporate manager about Millennials. That’s a quote attributed to Socrates, talking about the children of his time.

I get a lot of work-related questions about Millennials, or GenX, or GenY, or just about young people in general. The common perspective is that young people have gotten the memo about doing what you love, but not necessarily the memo on working hard. Young people change work more often, I’m told, they have less loyalty to their organizations, and they want to run the company the day after they start their jobs.

I have three suggestions.

My first suggestion is to filter any comments through the lens of yesterday. If someone your age could have said the same thing about someone their age a few hundred or a few thousand years ago, it’s likely you’re pointing to an immutable human condition. Older people always criticize young people for not being as industrious. Young people always tick off older people. And you probably did exactly the same when you were their age.

My second suggestion is to filter through the lens of today. You didn’t have to grow up in a time when mobile technology was ubiquitous, when information assaulted you from all sides, when the rules of work had changed so dramatically. Young people today are often making rational decisions related to their work choices. The average corporation is far less loyal to employees than in the past, with less of a commitment toward long-term employment and benefits.

And the world is far more expensive. Compared to the 1980's, it costs 39% more today to buy a house, 46% more for rent, 129% more for an undergrad private degree, and 213% more for an undergrad public degree. And compared to the 1960’s, it costs 50% more for car insurance, and 800% more for health insurance.

My third suggestion is to filter through the lens of tomorrow. The pace of change is accelerating, and that’s going to mean that young people today will need to rapidly adapt to a range of new work-related challenges and opportunities. They will need to be lifelong learners, so they can continually learn new skills. And they will need to fix a range of issues created by those of us who came before them. Many of us haven’t needed to do that.

So let’s focus on ways we can help younger people to quickly learn the new rules of work. That way, we can help them continually adapt as our world changes around them, so they can solve greater and greater problems. And so that one day, they can complain about young people, too.

I’m not going to say that jobs - and therefore the “job search” - are dead. But you’re going to increasingly find that the work opportunities you discover (or that discover you) may not look like a traditional job. So here are five thoughts on how those alternatives might affect your search for work.

Thought 1: You’re most likely to be more successful in your work search if you remain open to a variety of options. Hirers are always testing new ways to make sure there’s a good fit with a worker and their potential work, so you may be offered the chance to do a “tryout” or short-term project. If your situation allows you to do that, it could be a good way for you to test out a work opportunity, too.

Thought 2: Instead of finding a job opening, you may actually be catalyzing work, more than actually finding work. (This is what “Parachute” author Dick Bolles called “the hidden job market,” but which we probably have to update to “the hidden work market.”)

I think of this as finding problems that don’t yet have a problem-solver attached to them. For example, years ago I had lunch with a friend who was starting a magazine, and who couldn’t find enough tech-knowledgeable freelance writers. So I offered to draft an article, and if he didn’t like it, he didn’t need to pay me. I ended up writing twice the requested word count - and getting paid for two articles.

Thought 3: Just as with a traditional job search, you’ll succeed the most at catalyzing new work for yourself if you 1) know your own skills well, and can clearly describe the kinds of problems you’re best at solving, 2) are using your contacts network to reach people before work opportunities are listed online, and 3) have done your homework so you know that the people you’re talking to have the kinds of problems you’re good at solving.

Thought 4: You’re the one who determines how happy you would be with something less than a full-time, long-term job, if that’s the work you find, or that finds you. You might like the flexibility of part-time or project work, or you may hate the uncertainty. You might enjoy the variety of doing multiple projects at once, or it might stress you out. Sometimes you’ll need to take whatever work you can find, and at other times you’ll be able to hold out for something more ideal. As always, the more options you can generate for yourself, the more you’ll be in a position to choose what works best.

Thought 5: Remember that alternative work arrangements may have the potential to lead to more. After I wrote that freelance article, that friend asked if I wanted to join his staff. Then, if I wanted to run the reviews section. And finally, after he departed, the publisher asked me to be the editor-in-chief.

Try to continually envision what kind of work alternatives might work for you, and test out those alternatives so you can see if they fit. We’re in a brave new world of a digital work economy, and the more flexible you can be, the more alternatives can be available to you. We’ll explore these and other options in our free Webinar, Wednesday May 9th at 10am PT - "The 6 Best Job Search Strategies For Today".

The takeaway: You need to consider new strategies to stay current in the brave new world of work. Come to our rapid-fire webinar to learn some of the most useful ideas, like this one.

In the past, you had a traditional job. Maybe you even have a job today.

But you may also be doing some part-time work, like driving in the evening. (Some people call this a “side hustle.” That phrase can die a noisy death, as far as I’m concerned.) Or you could be working on a small project for a customer. Or you could be apprenticing yourself to learn a new trade. Or you could be selling crafts online.

Or you could be doing all the above, at the same time.

Put all of those things together, and you have what I call a Portfolio of Work. Think of it like an investment portfolio. Some work in your portfolio should be reliable and steady - income you can depend on. But some work you do can be a little risky, experimenting with a new opportunity or interest. And as traditional jobs become less common, or don’t pay the rent, it’s likely that a portfolio of work is somewhere in your future - if you don’t already have one today.

The good news: A portfolio of work can mean you have tremendous variety, let you do work that fascinates you, and allow you to constantly develop new skills. But there can be challenges, like having a stable income, paying for benefits like healthcare, and managing a variety of different activities.

So here are five strategies for staying on top of your portfolio of work.

1. Try to avoid having too many small projects. Juggling lots of completely separate work activities can be challenging, and - unless you’re extremely organized - things can fall through the cracks. It can also lead to a “feast or famine” style of income. It’s a good idea to between 40% and 60% of your income from a single employer, customer or client, so you can keep to a minimum the number of people you need to make happy.

2. Make sure your portfolio includes a project or two that are new for you. Not only will this keep you fresh, it will give you the chance to experiment with new business opportunities. Take in-person or online classes. Work with someone you respect who has a skillset you don’t - and whom you can learn from. Who knows: One of these new projects may turn into your core work in the future.

3. Always be on the lookout for new business. That’s hard when your plate is full and you’re overwhelmed with work. But if business suddenly slows down, you’ll wish you had put the time into developing new opportunities.

4. Having a portfolio of work can be lonely, especially if you do a lot of your work online. If you’re mostly working on your own, find other people you can involve. Even if it’s a monthly lunch with other “portfolio workers,” it’s important to have people who can support you - and whom you can support. Even if you have a home office, work out of a co-working facility a day or two a week, just to keep yourself around others. And it can help build your network, which can bring in new business.

5. Do a regular check - once a quarter, once a year - to review how your portfolio is changing, and to make sure you’re happy with how things are going. Some people like to have “alternating rhythms” in their lives - managing a portfolio of work for a few years, then getting a full-time job, then going back to a portfolio. But others may have a portfolio of work out of necessity, because they can’t find full-time work.

If that’s the case, you need to be proactive about making a change. Do the exercises on eParachute.com to get some ideas for new kinds of work you might like to do. Read (and do the exercises) in “What Color Is Your Parachute?” Ask for help from a coach or career counselor, so you can build the right approach to your work situation.

Having a portfolio of work can be challenging, but rewarding. And in a constantly-changing world of work, it’s the way that more and more people will be managing their work.

You hear a lot about the future of work nowadays. I’m one of the sources. I think it’s deeply important that we all prepare ourselves for a constantly changing world of work. And the way we will do that is through our transferable skills.

Remember that there are essentially two kinds of skills: What you know, and what you can do. We call what you know “special knowledges,” and what you can do “transferable skills.” Your knowledges are often rooted, or anchored, in a particular field or arena. And your transferable skills can be used in a variety of different situations.

For example, the knowledge of brain surgery won’t help you to fix a car engine, and vice versa. But communicating, or helping, or persuading - those skills are useful in a wide variety of situations. That’s why problem-solving is a transferable skill. And in the near future, you need to develop three important transferable skills.

1. Since work at its most basic is solving problems, you need to use your problem-solving skills. But not just any kind of problem-solving: Creative problem-solving. You’re going to encounter an increasing number of problems that will be new, to you and to those you work with. So you’ll need to approach those problems as creatively as possible.

2. You need to use your adaptive skills. Studies show this may be the most important transferable skill of all, in a rapidly-changing world. You’re going to need to continually adapt as you’re asked to solve new problems. So, when your work changes, you’ll need to change with it. The more adaptive you are, the more you’ll be able to continually find new work opportunities.

3. You need to use your transferable skill of being pro-active. As traditional jobs become less common, and project work becomes more frequent, you’ll need to step forward to solve new problems. And as you change, you’ll need to make your work change, too.

So those are your top transferable skills for the future: Proactive, adaptive, creative problem-solver.

Now, this doesn’t mean that you won’t need special knowledges. Far from it. You will constantly need to learn new bodies of information. And you’ll find that there will be many ways to learn that information more quickly.

But your top three transferable skills are going to be the most critical for you, as the world of work changes. And you’ll need to practice them, frequently, so you can continually improve them. Find as many opportunities as you can to use your transferable skills in a variety of situations, and you’ll become a proactive, adaptive, creative problem-solver who can continually find and create new work opportunities.

Come learn more about the future of your work, in a free webinar. Click here to learn more.

End of the year. Start of a new one.

In the new year, your doctor will want you to come in for an annual physical. But who’s going to suggest you should do your annual Career Checkup?

We are.

Now, in some years, your doctor will want you to do an exhaustive set of tests, helping to ensure that you’re healthy in every way. In other years, it’s okay to do a set of simple checks, like your blood pressure and weight, just to make sure your major parts are functioning well.

So, if this is a year when you just need some basics checked out, here are three simple questions. (Well, maybe three and a half.)

1. What do you love most about your work?

2. If you could change one thing about your work, what would it be?

3. Do you dream of doing something completely different? If so, what?

If you have no difficulty answering number 1, number 2 is a little challenging, and the answer to number 3 is “no,” then congratulations: The doctor says your work is healthy.

But if you had a hard time answering number 1, you have a long list in answer to number 2, and your answer to number 3 without hesitating is Yes, then it’s like having slightly elevated blood pressure: The doctor wants a few more answers.

So, just as with those more-extensive annual checkups, we need to dig a little deeper.

4. Do you feel that the changes you want to make in your work are doable? If yes, then you might want to spend some time over the holidays planning how to make those changes, starting in January.

If the answer is No, then:

5. If you could do any other kind of work that you’d enjoy, within your current organization, or with your current client or clients, do you feel that change is doable? Again, if yes, then this period is a good time to start planning.

If No, then the doctor is going to suggest a fuller battery of self-inventory. That can be done in a few minutes (using eParachute’s JUMP), or a few hours (using eParachute’s Flower course on Udemy), or a few days (reading the latest version of What Color Is Your Parachute?

But don’t wait. Just as your doctor wouldn’t want you to simply ignore potential physical challenges, let’s not ignore any career issues, either. Get the information you need to make sure you have the best possible career health.

It’s just what the doctor ordered.

If you haven’t yet taken eParachute’s JUMP self-inventory, you may not realize that you don’t just have one or two skills - you have dozens and dozens of skills. But while you may readily see the skills of other people, you’re probably blind to your own unique skills.

So why is that? It’s because you’re a garden. A skills garden.

Think of skills as the fundamental building blocks of all your activities. You use a skill whenever you perform a task. You use your skills with information, with people, and with things. You build a skill - even a small part of a skill - whenever you learn something. Even thinking is a skill.

As I said, you were born with dozens and dozens and dozens of skills. You just don’t necessarily know what all of them are, yet. Think of your skills as seeds, lying dormant inside you. But just by being alive, and reaching your current age, you’ve already used a huge number of skills. You just didn’t necessarily know you were doing it. To you, they were hidden, under the ground.

In a real garden, what does it take for seeds to thrive? Four things: Good soil. Sunlight. Water. And enough space to grow. A good gardener knows how to make sure all of these are available, to have a healthy garden.

So that’s what seeds need to grow. What does it take for you to grow your skills?

The soil is your Environment. Wherever you’re given the chance to start experimenting with the kinds of things you’re interested in, and to find out if you enjoy doing them, that’s your skills environment.

Now, sometimes having poor soil - a poor environment for your skills - just means you have to work harder to learn a new skill. But a good environment, good soil, is really helpful to begin growing your skills.

What else do you need in your garden? Support from other people. Having permission and encouragement from others is crucial for many people, to understand and to grow their skills.

When someone you care about encourages you, when someone sees what you’re doing and compliments you on the awesome job you’re doing, that can help your love of a particular skill to grow.

But if someone close to you doesn’t give you permission, or doesn’t think you can learn, then you’re not in a supportive environment for learning. And you probably need to go find better soil.

When you discover that you’re curious about something, or you find a topic that looks cool, or you read an article or a book on a new subject, or someone explains something really interesting to you, then you’ve had light shed on that subject or skill.

Suppose you’ve always been curious about a subject, but never had the chance to learn more. Suddenly, you read an article, or take a short course.

Now you know enough to be dangerous on the topic. Sunlight comes pouring in, and your interest has the chance to grow.

Or, let’s say you’re given the chance to do something you’ve never done before, like draw a cartoon, or make something with a 3D printer, or lead a project. Think of that as having light shed on a subject, as well.

Now even if a seed has good soil, and sunlight, it usually can’t grow without water. Think of water as the love of using a particular skill.

When you’re learning about something that you love to do, you’re giving that subject the water it needs to grow.

The more you love using that skill, the more you’ll want to keep using it, and the more it will grow.

Having Space to grow is - well, having space to grow. You need the time and circumstances that allow you to develop your skills. If your time is crowded with work and with the distractions of everyday life, you’ll find it far more difficult to grow the skills you most love using.

Even with encouragement, and exposure to new ideas, and a love of a particular skill, the other tangled plants and weeds of your daily activities can choke any new opportunity for developing a skill before it has the chance to grow. You have to give yourself the space you need to learn and grow.

So. To grow your skills garden, it’s really helpful to have all four of these things - support for learning your skills, exposure to new ideas and topics, a love of the skills you’re using, and the space in your busy schedule to learn and grow.

And if you haven’t already used JUMP, give it a try. You’ll probably find skills in your garden that you never knew about.

In all of the discussion about the future of work, and whether robots and software will or won’t eat all of our jobs, there’s one fundamental question that I don’t hear asked very often.

What’s “Work”?

Your first thought might be about what you feel Work is, personally. You might think that Work is Obligation: just a job, with joy optional. You might believe Work is Challenge: a set of obstacles to be overcome. You might feel that Work is Livelihood: The way you’re compensated, so you can have the lifestyle you want. Or, you might believe that Work is Purpose, or Meaning, or Mission: The thing or things you’re meant to do.

But to understand how Work is changing, it’s important for us all to have a completely objective definition of Work. There is one, and it’s pretty simple.

Work is: We use our Skills to perform Tasks to solve Problems.

Let’s start with the end of that equation. What do we mean by Problems?

A dirty floor is a problem. An old, tired product strategy is a problem. In every Work situation, there’s a problem to be solved. As workers, we are hired to solve problems for someone.

How do you solve problems? You perform tasks.

Sweeping a floor is a task. Devising a product strategy is a task - or, more accurately, a set of tasks. The better you are at certain tasks, the better you solve specific problems.

How do you perform tasks? You use your skills.

Think of your skills as “human energy applied to a task.” Just as it’s important to have an objective definition of Work, we need a common language for skills. You actually have three kinds of skills, Knowledges, Transferables, and Traits. More on this in another post.

Again: Work is using our Skills to perform Tasks to solve Problems and create Value.

So why, when robots and software are seen as reducing the need for human labor, is it so necessary for us to define Work? Because robots and software don’t eat jobs. They perform tasks. It’s usually a manager’s decision if that means a job goes away, once technology can perform a certain amount of a worker’s tasks.

But this four-step definition of Work is also the formula for success in your current and future work.  You are a Problem-Solver who uses your Skills to perform important Tasks. Whether you’re doing that in a Job, or in a small project, your ability to solve problems on an ongoing basis that will be your greatest asset - even when software and robots are around.

Of course, Work isn’t a Job. In the iconic career manual, What Color Is Your Parachute?, author Dick Bolles defines seven characteristics of a Job. We’ll be exploring all seven of them, at our workshop in Long Beach, Calif, Oct. 3 & 4. Learn more and sign up here.

How many skills do you have?

If you think that a skill is a profession, like being an engineer or a lawyer, you might think you have one or two.

If you think that a skill is a big chunk of information, like knowing how to perform brain surgery, or repairing an engine, you might think you have four or five.

But you actually have dozens and dozens of skills. And in an era where robots and software are conspiring with globalization to transform the worlds of work and learning, it’s more important than ever that you know your skills (and especially the skills you love the most).

As Richard Bolles, author of What Color of Your Parachute?, was fond of saying, we need a way of thinking that allows us to break skills down into much smaller elements, so we can assemble them into groupings that resonate with each of us as individuals.

Happily, we have a definition of Skills that goes back more than 70 years, guided by a marvelous man named Sidney Fine, whom I considered an honorary uncle. The research by Sidney’s team showed that there are actually three kinds of Skills: What you Know, what you Do, and How you do it.

What You Know. (Career counselors sometimes call these Special Knowledges, or Rooted, or Work Content skills. But let’s just call them Knowledges) These are your skills that are anchored in a particular field or industry or domain. Like brain surgery, or car engine repair, or website design. Your knowledges are bodies of expertise that don’t transfer well to other arenas: For example, because you know how to perform brain surgery, you can’t automatically design a website. (Not even if it’s a website about brain surgery.) Your Knowledges range from very basic (you read something somewhere sometime), to expert (people read what you wrote on the subject).

What You Do. (These are often called Transferable skills.) Transferable skills can be used in a variety of situations. If you are intuitive about people when you are driving a taxi, you are probably intuitive about people when you’re running a strategy consulting project. Transferable skills allow you to function in a new situation without necessarily knowing everything ahead of time, because you have enough experience from other, analogous situations. Without transferable skills, you would be like an amnesiac, having to figure out most things from scratch. With transferable skills, you’re an adaptation machine.

How You Do Things. (Career counselors call them Self-Management skills; you probably call them Traits.) These are skills that you apply to you, like being punctual, managing frustration, and finishing tasks. Think of these as skills focused on yourself. Traits run from undeveloped (you’re not very practiced at it yet) to high function (nailed it, every time).

How does Experience fit in, you ask? (At least, I thought I heard you ask.) Think of experience as practice using your skills. Experience gives you Knowledges about what actually works - which, stunningly, isn’t always what we learned in school. If you’re good at a particular Transferable skill, like Analyzing, or Communicating, then experience helps you keep on improving. Same with Traits: Practice makes perfect. (Well, at least, practice makes you better, if not perfect, at something.)

You have an absolutely unique combination of skills. Nobody on the planet has the exact same combination as you. And the way you learn what that unique combination is, is to do a skills inventory.

You can learn about your skills by using eParachute, or by doing exercises from “What Color Is Your Parachute?” But if you’re really intent on learning about your skills, we’re doing a two-day workshop in Long Beach on October 3-4. You can learn more here.