What Color Is Your Parachute 2018 by Richard N. Bolles copy

the next chapter.
6. If you are contemplating a career-change, maybe—after you
inventory yourself—you will see definitely what new career or
direction you want for your life. Often you can put together a new
career just using what you already know and what you already can do
—with much less training or retraining than you thought you would
have to do. I’m not talking about a dramatic change, like going from
salesperson to doctor: for that, you will need to start over. But most
career-changes are not that dramatic, as I will show you, in chapter
11. But first, please, please, inventory who you are and what you love
to do.
It may turn out that the knowledge you need to pick up can be
found in a vocational/technical school, or in a (one- or) two-year
college.
And sometimes, sometimes, it can be found simply by doing
enough informational interviewing (more about this in chapter 9).
Example: A job-hunter named Bill had worked for a number of years
in retail; now he was debating a career-change—working in the oil
industry. But he knew virtually nothing about that industry. However,
he went from person to person who worked at companies in that
industry, just seeking information about the industry. The more of
these “informational interviews” he conducted, the more he knew. In
fact, coming down the home stretch, just before he got hired in the
place of his dreams, he found he now knew more than the people he
was visiting, about their competitors and some aspects of the industry.
In other words, with certain kinds of career-change, there is more
than one way to pick up the knowledge you need.
7. Unemployment is an interruption, in most of our lives. And
interruptions are opportunities, to pause, to think, to assess where
we really want to go with our lives. Martin Luther King Jr. had
something to say about this:
The major problem of life is learning how to handle the costly
interruptions. The door that slams shut, the plan that got
sidetracked, the marriage that failed. Or that lovely poem that
didn’t get written because someone knocked on the door.
A self-inventory is just that type of thinking and assessing.The