Matching Your Talents Vs. Your Skills On The Job

IMG_5396, a photo by mhowry on Flickr.

Yes—everyone has natural talents; those innate responses to tasks at work that are performed with minimal effort. When you perform them for the first time you laugh to yourself, realizing these where the traits your parents said they watched you gravitate toward as a child. Your talents reflect who you are—and bring you so much satisfaction that you can’t wait to do them again.

In his popular book Now, Discover Your Strengths, Marcus Buckingham points out that our talents are intrinsic to our nature.  Our talents are in our DNA and we can’t change them. He states that we have to accept our talents, and instead of fighting against the tide we should refocus our work lives around them.

But your job, your bosses and your clients expect more from you than showcasing your natural-born talents when they hire you.  Specific skills are required to keep the machine running. You may excel at creating client presentations, for example, but you have to balance the department budget as well. Everyone in your finance team considers you an ace at spotting revenue streams and cost drivers, but they need you to crunch the data with accuracy as well.

So how much effort should you put into developing your skills, when your talents are screaming to be heard?

A lot. There are two things you need to remember:

These skills are necessary to your job survival, and they will always come harder than your talents will.

You start by acquiring rudimentary skills for your chosen profession at school. Over the years, you fill in the rest from your bosses and your colleagues. You take additional courses, attend seminars and read books. Since there’s little budget these days for on the job training, you add more skills on the fly. These skills are so important to keep your job, that the ones you’ve added in the past year are a key topic of discussion during your annual review. 

Developing your skill set is a requirement for not getting fired.

But it’s your underlying talent that makes you soar. It’s your natural aptitude that will give you the strength when you’re challenged with learning a difficult skill. Using your talent helps you find the fortitude to come back to work when you have a bad day, and gives you the courage to find partners and others whose talents complement the areas where you aren’t great.

Your personal talents combined with your skill set are an unstoppable partnership. And in those instances when you are good at what you do but you are miserable at work, one of two scenarios likely exists:

--You’ve developed your skills but you aren’t using your natural talents.

--You are using your talents but the environment and the mission of your company is not in line with your own.

When you get an opportunity to add to your skill set, always grab it. But the majority of your efforts should be spent on finding a role where your talents and your values align.

In recruiting, for example, the knack for sourcing hard-to-find candidates, a largely sought after talent that comes naturally to some but is a chore for others, might be lost in a large company that relies on strong branding to lure new candidates. In management consulting, your reputation for meeting client deliverables will offer you little personal satisfaction if you really prefer the mission of a non-profit organization.

Embrace your natural talents. Don’t try to change them because you can’t. Try to find the environment where they are welcome; even embraced. If that’s not an option in a narrow job market these days, then try to adjust your outlook and find a kernel of alignment within your company where your talents can shine and you can feel good about what you are doing.

How To Fall In Love With Your Career All Over Again.

Fall in love, a photo by ` TheDreamSky on Flickr.

The day may come when the weekly marching orders you get from your bosses start to sound more like nagging than directing. It will dawn on you that the aspects of your job that whispered accomplishment in your ear have suddenly stopped, and now sound like nails on a chalk board.

While this isn’t the inevitable outcome of a long career, it’s likely to happen at some point along the way.

Some of you might consider changing jobs. Others might decide to leverage your expertise and trade  bosses in for a set of your own clients in a consulting gig. But a career on your own, versus working for others, won’t make the problem of career malaise go away--not if you carry the same old problems with you.

All of us need to find ways to fall back in love with our work.

First, recognize what well-aligned work looks like.  You should feel liberated by the work you do, not confined by it. Work should feel natural and flow easily without feeling contrived. The nature of the work itself (as well as the people you work with) shouldn’t leave a knot in your stomach all the time, crippling you from doing your best.

Reconnecting to your work isn’t that hard. Here are a few things you can do:

--Slow your pace. Breathe. Take your time and put more thought into your key projects, instead of running on automatic pilot. Be more deliberate as you navigate through your day. You’ll appreciate how the job simply could not be finessed without the addition of your unique talents.

--Connect to others. Take the opportunity to nurture the novices in your field. This gives you the opportunity to deepen the lives of less-experienced people, with the added bonus of absorbing their enthusiasm.

--Stop competing. Let’s face it--there will always be someone smarter, faster, more charming or more politically savvy than you—it’s a vicious circle that you can’t escape. Any focus on besting coworkers or competitors in your field will zap your energy and your love of the role. Accept that your career is not a pissing contest. Instead, allow it to enrich your life while you’re earning a living.

Like the beginnings of a romantic relationship, the early infatuation you had with your career was intense but fleeting. What you want now is sustainable love; the kind that will last a lifetime. You may discover that rekindling a romance with your career isn’t about changing your job after all; it might be more about working through how you feel about it.

Time Management for The Employed Job Seeker

Time, a photo by John-Morgan on Flickr.

When you’re currently employed and looking for a new job, it’s important to learn how to mentally triage your efforts. Unlike the unemployed job seeker who absolutely should make their search a fulltime job by reading books, going after all possible leads and doing extensive internet research, you have to be more disciplined about how you spend your time.

Find quiet moments where you can mentally focus on your job search strategies. It’s hard to mentally switch off the initiatives you put into your current role and try to concentrate instead on a new job search. In fact, it’s very stressful. If you devote the contemplation of your job search strategies to the space when you are commuting to work for example, or on Saturday or Sunday mornings, you’ll have a clearer head about what tasks you need to complete.

First, figure out which tasks will yield the greatest result.  A job search often starts out with busy work. Spending hours applying online to Internet job postings and researching salary sites deludes you into believing you are actually being productive. When you overdo these exercises, you are performing the equivalent of reading about how to lose weight while nibbling on (what you swear) will be your last bag of Doritos. These are the time suckers that will sabotage your search—because it’s been proven that the percentage of job seekers hired from online job postings are minimal.

Networking is the best use of your time—but what exactly does that mean?  Okay, so networking is how most people find new jobs. But you are already employed for eight or more hours of your day and your current bosses own your time. Break down your networking activities into its greatest parts and schedule them into small blocks on your calendar:

·      In-person meetings

·      Phone conversations with decision makers

·      Informational interviews

·      Getting leads

·      Conversations with recruiters

It’s a given that your vacation days, your lunch hours and some of your evenings will be used for these networking activities and job interviews. It really isn’t ethical to do your job search while you are on your employer’s watch.

Don’t job hunt in a vacuum.  Everyone supports the efforts of someone who’s unemployed and looking for a job. But when you’re an employed job seeker you may feel like you’re leading a double life. After all, you should be grateful to be working at all, right? Stop feeling guilty and if you can, find a buddy who is also looking for a new job or sign up for a workshop or support group. Do it for feedback on your activities or for positive reinforcement. Do it to remind yourself you aren’t alone. Spouses, partners and families may be supportive, but no one can empathize with your job search and cheer you on better than someone already in the game.

Finding A Job When You Really Aren't Looking

stumble upon the dark mountains, a photo by cdrummbks on Flickr.

You’re finally in the zone at your job, perhaps for the first time ever. You’re engaged in the work you do and while you’re doing, it you’ve shed the old habits of clock watching and politicking because you’re---content.

But you should still be aware of new career opportunities around you. If you’re wondering why you should bother when you’re already happy, it’s because there are some opportunities around you that you don’t want to miss.

We’re in strange economic times. The truth is that everyone these days should be a passive job seeker. The amount of energy you invest in a mild job search will vary over the course of your career, but it behooves all of us to take these steps:

Update your resume within the first month of getting a new job.  This exercise does two things. It helps you discover your own definition of your new role. Don’t cheat by cutting and pasting the job description that was sent to you when you applied to your job. It’s your chance to put the sexiest parts of the role front and center on your resume. And if you find yourself in the unpleasant situation where you have to look for a new job, the important task of creating a resume is already completed.

Don’t network—have career “conversations”. Talk to leaders on other teams within your company and speak to outside organizations as well. Walk the fine line of passively job seeking by showing that you are intellectually curious about your industry and how you could best contribute.

Have these conversations with one or two trusted recruiters.  Don’t play games. Give the appropriate signals that there are specific roles and companies that you are passively open to.

If you do interview passively, be honest throughout the process.  Be clear about your level of interest and carefully answer the question about what it would take for you to make a change. Nothing will burn a bridge faster than giving clear signals you would accept an offer if the job was based at home, for example, and then declining the offer once they give you the telecommuter role you’ve asked for.

You might be surprised when a passive interview reveals a job you’d be truly interested in. You might find out that your current salary is worse than you thought. Or it might be better than you thought. You might even discover through the process that your current job is exactly where you should be.

Fighting For Your Work/Life Balance

balanced rock in arches state park utah, a photo by Tim Pearce, Los Gatos on Flickr.

Fighting for a Work/Life Balance

When I hate the job I’m in, I focus on my private life. And if things are awry at home, I seek the solace of immersing myself in my job.

The truth is—I want to love my job all the time. Over the years I’ve made incremental career moves that ticked off as many boxes on my happiness factor list as I could possibly muster. The key is knowing what your criteria are.

Opt for clear boundaries.  Most workers will say that doing stimulating work is their number one general goal when they look for work. You also have to finesse separating your work time from your personal time—and to do this, you have to set clear boundaries. Since we’re all electronically wired into our roles these days, it’s too easy to pick up the Blackberry at 8PM when we want to read our children to sleep. Challenge your boss’s expectations of you being on call 24/7.

Find a boss who cares about your results vs. your methods.  Does your manager care more about how many hours you put into the project, instead of the final results? Is she more concerned about face time in the office vs. how you successfully talked that new client off the ledge? If you’re good at what you do, the logistics should be secondary.

If you’re burnt out at your job, try cutting back five hours a week.  Monitor yourself. Did the quality of the work change? if not, adjust accordingly.

Allow your personal work style to compartmentalize your day.  Do the tasks that come easily to you in the morning, if you’re an early bird. For me, research flows better during the early, uninterrupted-by-phone calls hours of the day. For you, it might mean balancing your team budget in the evening. If you’re stressed when the work day is over, find peaceful moments in between the end of work and your arrival home. Listen to books in the car on a long commute home, or choose silence—a scarce commodity.

Your vocation can be separate from your personal interests. Like you, I have a lot of items on my bucket list. And I think it’s fine if they have nothing to do with my career. Many people (especially entrepreneurs) reach for the blend and refuse to settle for anything less than a hobby or personal talent that morphs into a paying career.

I’m okay with pursuing my writing and my art  after I leave the work day behind. It’s a personal choice and there’s no shame in enjoying a career that is just your career. 

Then, the rest of the time, you can explore what makes you human.