So I write sleep eat and think about careers..sounds kind of crazy ..hey it's a passion..amongst others..this little corner of the universe is about conversations that I am having with interesting people along my own journey and, as a career coach.

Thursday, March 17, 2005

How To Avoid A Career Crash

I was watching television footage of the flight 111 crash that happened outside Halifax. Did you know that most crashes occur because of pilot error? The documentary was fascinating for many reasons. The investigators spent 4 years researching, gathering data and actually rebuilding a plane from the bottom of the sea floor. They brought in the world's largest vacuum cleaner to suck everything off of the floor in an attempt to find clues. They had to pay attention to every single piece that may have been from the airplane, it was like looking for a needle in a haystack.

One of the things that I have noticed in almost every single career assessment that I have done is the common errors people make in their career choices. They don't hear what is said and they don't see what is often in front of them. I have often heard a client say either they noticed a warning sign and ignored it, or in retrospect they should have paid more attention or done more research when it came to making a career decision.

How much research did you do when you bought your last car?? How much research did you do on the career or company that you were interested in? The Canadian Flight Safety Board spent 35 million dollars and 4 years to determine the issues involved with the crash and ended up making 22 recommendations on best practices. In this case, paying attention to the details led to important changes. It is no different when it comes to our careers. At CareerJoy, we are investigators of career crashes and have developed methodologies and sophisticated tools to look at what has worked and what has not worked and everyday we make a number of key findings and recommendations to our clients to help them avoid further incidents and to increase the likelihood of success.