What did you want to be when you grew up?

A simple question, right? It should have been, but when Maureen Anderson asked me during a recent guest appearance on her Career Clinic radio show, I didn’t really have an answer. I asked my mom, my aunt, and I also racked my brain to come up with an answer.

Of course, I also got caught up in what age would be my point of reference. I drew a blank when I defined the range from zero to 10 years old. At around 10, I remember setting up a little table in the front yard to sell apples (I grew up on a small apple farm in case you were wondering where I was getting the apples). Our deal was pretty simple…I pick the apples and sell them, I keep the proceeds.

As a teen, I still wasn’t able to articulate what I wanted to do when I grew up. No wanting to be a doctor, a lawyer, a fireman, or a policeman. But I did learn a lot about what I didn’t want to do. I worked as a day laborer for a monument company where I shuttled wheel barrels full of cement to grave sights so they could install tombstones—it was a great workout, but definitely hard labor. Cross that one off the list. Then I spent a day working in quality control at an aluminum can manufacturer. And that’s where I learned that, after staring at cans for a few hours, I was completely incapable of noticing defects. Obviously that didn’t work out. Then there was my stint working at a car wash. The job didn’t require much skill or thought—I just had to dry off the cars and make sure they didn’t plow into the building as they left the track. That job last two summers. Not glamorous, but we did get minimum wage plus tips so it wasn’t all bad.

And then there were the jobs I told my mom I was going to do when I was ready to quit school during my first semester of college because I was having a hard time adjusting to life on campus—bus driver, garbage truck driver, cook at McDonald’s. Not that any of those jobs did or didn’t require a college education, but rather they were just the first jobs that came to mind as I was stressing out over a microeconomics exam.

Thinking more about it, I realized I chose most of my jobs like I chose my undergraduate major. I didn’t go after something because I was really passionate about it or because it was something I was really interested in, I chose the lesser of two evils. When I chose my major, I didn’t chose economics because I wanted to be an economist, I chose my major because it was “not science.” So that ruled out biology, chemistry, environmental science, neuroscience, and physics. I also didn’t fancy myself as an anthropologist or a sociologist either.  So, since I thought economics was fairly similar to business (my declared major), I went with that. And looking back, when it came to work the same thing held true. I chose jobs (or left jobs) because I didn’t like them (see the pouring cement in cemeteries reference I made earlier).

I know one thing is for sure, if you were to randomly sample 1000 people, asking them what they wanted to be when they grew up, career counselor likely wouldn’t make the top five. And that was obviously the case for me—because I didn’t know about it. Yet, more than 10 years later, here I am working as a career counselor.

I figured out what I wanted to do when I grew up by process of elimination and a little luck. How about you? Did you know were you’d end up when you were five? Are you still trying to figure it out? And did you have any off-the-wall jobs along the way?

If You Want to be More Enterprising, Think Plural!

This is a guest post by Ian Sanders, a business & marketing consultant based in the UK. Ian is the author of “Juggle! Rethink Work, Reclaim Your Life” and “Leap! Ditch Your Job, Start Your Own Business & Set Yourself Free.”

How do you answer that dinner party question ‘what do you do?’ Do you have a simple one word answer or do you find it difficult summing up your job, because you do more than one thing?

Many of us are carving out plural work lives where we juggle more than one role. Whether you work for yourself, for an employer or you’re seeking a career change, jugglers are busting the old myth that specialism rules!

Throughout our education we were always encouraged to do one thing, to specialise in a narrow range of subjects and choose a singular trade or profession. I never liked that. So when I left school, I relished the ability to mix things up, working at a radio station, for a music business and taking a class in photography all at the same time. That gap year before I went to university was when I learnt to juggle and throughout my life, both working for organisations and for myself I have continued thinking and acting plural, juggling writing books with running a business. Working for a fashion brand one day, a rock band the next.

If you carve out a work life that reflects your multi-dimensional talents you can be more fulfilled and also more enterprising. My book ‘Juggle! Rethink Work, Reclaim Your Life’ advocates that we bust those myths about what you should or shouldn’t do so that we can go beyond a fixed job title to create a role juggling our talents and passions. Kevin Roberts features in my book. Kevin is CEO Worldwide of Saatchi & Saatchi, one of the world’s largest creative organisations, but he also blogs, writes, sits on the boards of other companies and guest lectures at business schools. He’s carved out a unique role driven by his passions – the ‘Work Kevin’ is the ‘Real Kevin’. And that juggling philosophy informs the company’s approach to recruitment:

“This whole notion of specialization vs. generalization I believe is a crock. It limits people. In my experience, people are much more capable than their specialty might suggest. Indeed to only focus on specialization leaves a good deal of man’s potential unrealized”

But juggling is not only for successful CEOs. Jan is an HR manager 3 days a week and makes handmade jewellery the rest of the week. Dave juggles being a photographer with working in a camera store. Sam is a sales executive working for a media company, but has a web-based hobby business he runs in his spare time. In a recession, juggling can prove to be a good survival strategy; if you have more skills to offer the job market or an employer, you can be more of an asset.

So if you’re stuck in a job you don’t like, try juggling; start by reframing your role to take on a new responsibility or task. Or if you have a desire to start your own business, a recession might not be the best time to quit your job, so try a hobby business in your spare-time.

Here are 5 tips to creating a Juggle-based career:

1. Be Flexible: Forget a rigid career plan, be flexible to embrace opportunities that fit with your talents and desires. Change your mindset and start thinking plural.

2. Stay Focused: being a good juggler is not about being a ‘jack of all trades and master of none’. It’s about being committed and dedicated in all you do. Manage time well to deliver on all fronts.

3. Shout about your talents: develop a personal brand and use social media to communicate your talents to clients, recruiters and employers.

4. Be Passionate: put passion at the heart of all you do. If you love what you do, work is less of a chore.

5. Go beyond a job title: carve out a unique you-role. Do it your way, be authentic. Let the Work You be The Real You!

Happy Juggling!

Ian Sanders is ‘Chief-Juggler.’ He’s a writer, ideas-producer and business & marketing consultant based in the UK. He’s author of ‘Juggle! Rethink Work, Reclaim Your Life’ and ‘Leap! Ditch Your Job, Start Your Own Business & Set Yourself Free’. Follow him on Twitter @iansanders Videos, blog and links http://www.iansanders.com/ Video of him talking about Juggle http://tinyurl.com/ianjuggle Change This ‘Juggle’ Manifesto http://changethis.com/55.01.JuggleLife

Guest appearance on Get Involved! Pittsburgh

Last week, I was a guest on Get Involved! Pittsburgh, a community access program that’s the brain child of Tom Baker, president of Baker Leadership and author of Get Involved! Making the Most of Your 20s and 30s.

Other guests included local entrepreneurs Frank Tigano of Superior Sign Service, Mike Rethage of Wider Image, and Luke Skurman, CEO and Co-Founder of College Prowler; Luke was recently named one of Inc. Magazine’s “30 under 30: America’s Coolest Young Entrepreneurs.”

Our show will be up soon, but until then check out past interviews of Get Involved! Pittsburgh.

Personal Branding vs. Personal Grooming

This is a guest post by Chris Perry, founder of  Career Rocketeer, the Career Search and Personal Branding Blog.

It has always been said that you should not judge a book by its cover.  Appearance isn’t everything, or at least, it shouldn’t be.  In your career search and development, the substance of your personal brand and the promise of the unique and differentiating value you consistently deliver in any given situation are inevitably most important. 

However, presentation can make or break your personal brand and can be one of the deciding factors in your career progression.   The following results from a recent survey of over 500 HR professionals (commissioned by Gillette and conducted by Harris Interactive®) on the topic of personal grooming among male job candidates and male employees provide some valuable personal branding insights for all job seekers, both men and women:

• Nearly two-thirds (66%) of HR professionals believe that a candidate’s physical appearance is very important or important in distinguishing them from other job candidates.
• More than 9 in 10 (92%) HR professionals agree that a candidate who takes the time to be well-groomed exudes confidence.
• Nearly 9 in 10 (87%) HR professionals agree that the more well-groomed the job candidate, the better impression they get of him.
• More than 8 in 10 (81%) HR professionals agree that they take special note of job candidates who are well-groomed.
• A majority of HR professionals (52%) believe that being clean-shaven is an extremely important or important aspect of personal grooming in making a good first impression when meeting a job candidate for the first time.
• Other aspects of grooming—besides a clean shave—that are also extremely important or important to most HR professionals, include the absence of body odor (91%) and hair that is well-cut and styled (60%).
• One in four (25%) HR professionals believe facial stubble is one of the biggest red flags when meeting a job candidate for the first time.
• Other red flags, according to a majority of HR professionals, include body odor or sweat stains (93%) and wrinkled, ill-fitting, or inappropriate clothing (73%). 
• The top three aspects of physical appearance that men often neglect, according to HR professionals, are their fingernails (59%), clothing (27%), and shaving/body odor (23%).   
• If a candidate comes to a job interview unkempt, 71% of HR professionals conclude that he is unprofessional and more than half (55%) conclude that he is not seriously interested in the position.

The results from this survey should not deter any of you from keeping your facial hair or from creating and developing your own unique style or look to go with your personal brand.  I would not recommend to anyone that they change the essence of who they are by altering how they want to look in front of others.  We were not all made from the same cookie cutter, and thus, we should not all have to conform to looking exactly the same to achieve career success.

However, keeping yourself well-groomed and maintaining higher levels of personal hygiene should not limit the evolution of your own unique personal brand and look.  In the end, whether you know it or not, a clean shave, a good hair cut and clothes that fit not only make you look good, but feel good, too.  This leads to a subconscious confidence that will come across in your interviews and networking and help enhance your personal brand.

It’s also important to present yourself well once you have your job, too.  According to the survey, more than 8 in 10 HR professionals (84%) agree that well-groomed male employees climb the corporate ladder faster than those who are not well-groomed and two-thirds of HR professionals (66%) conclude that an employee is not professional if he regularly comes to work looking unkempt.

Don’t change who you are; just build your personal brand to be the best and most effective it can be!

Chris Perry is a Gen Y Brand and Marketing Generator, a Career Search and Personal Branding Expert and the Founder of Career Rocketeer, the Career Search and Personal Branding Blog.

Brazen Careerist Launch: Twitter meets Facebook meets LinkedIn meets Gen Y…and it’s about time.

The folks at Brazen Careerist realize college students and young professionals aren’t always able to pull from years of previous work experience when marketing themselves to potential employers. And that often puts them at a competitive disadvantage. So, instead of sticking with the status quo, they decided to turn existing traditional online career management tools on their ear.

With the launch of the new Brazen community, members can now showcase their intellectual horsepower (or potential) through their ideas…ideas that can lead to creative solutions to complex problems. And if there’s one word that describes today’s business landscape, it’s complexity.

But it’s not just about individual success. Brazen was founded by a team of bloggers. Collaboration was, and is, at the core of what they do. The new site encourages collaborative career management through the use of fan and idea feeds. Members of the Brazen community can now keep up with recent blog posts and status updates of their fellow Brazenites with a clean, colorful, easy to scan dashboard—a great way to exchange ideas and information with other young professionals.  

As someone who works in the career management space on a college campus, I know I have benefited greatly from the Brazen community. From keeping tabs on Dan Schawbel (which is no small feat given the fact that he’s a super nova of information), to having a chance to write a duet blog post with Ryan Paugh, Brazen’s Community Manager extraordinaire, the site keeps me continuously up to date on the challenges faced by today’s young professionals.