In this episode of Careers and Coffee, Liz and Dan discuss how to use your skills, personality tendencies, and passions to find a job that is going to suit you.  We published a worksheet during Career Week back in March which you can find here.

Liz shows the Future Ready Iowa Career Assessment which is a great resource for job seekers.

The book Dan mentions at the beginning is No More Dreaded Mondays by Dan Miller.

Check out this TEDx talk by Adam Leipzig, How to know your life purpose in 5 minutes on YouTube.

Full Transcript

Dan Holterhaus 0:01
Morning Liz, how are you?

Liz Kennedy 0:02
Hey, Dan. Good. How are you?

Dan Holterhaus 0:05
Good. This is careers and coffee number 10. I believe I don’t know, if you ever thought we’d make the double digits, but here we are.

Liz Kennedy 0:12
We have crossed the threshold.

Dan Holterhaus 0:14
All they say the average podcast I think makes it eight episodes.

Liz Kennedy 0:18
So yeah, yeah, I was on pins and needles if we would actually make it past eight. Now we’re here at 10. So I think we’re here to stay.

Dan Holterhaus 0:24
We made it. We made it. I got coffee going? I know it’s a little blurred out.

Liz Kennedy 0:30
Iced coffee here today.

Dan Holterhaus 0:32
Awesome. Awesome. Well, I know lately, we’ve been talking a lot about like opportunities in our area. And also, you know, job searching. But today, we wanted to actually touch on something we went over in career week, back in March, and talk a little bit about a step before that. So actually just finding out, you know, who you are as a person and what your tendencies are, and how to find opportunities based on you know, that are going to fit you. Yeah. So I want to talk about a book that I came across as this was, like 10 years ago, and the first thing that they talked about in that book is just having the skill and ability to do a job. So you want to touch on maybe what some of those skills or abilities might be that a person would have.

Liz Kennedy 1:25
Sure. So everybody’s got their own natural tendencies, right, like, so if you are very analytical by nature, that is a tendency. And it could be potentially a skill in a role. Like if, like, Dan, your case, your analysis is is key to your role here. Because that, so an analytical nature, or, you know, if you’re not analytical, that’s fine, too, because, like, whatever it is, that you’re you’re good at is, is something that you need to pay attention to. So if you’re really creative, or if you have great communication skills, those are all key to determining, okay, there, here’s how can I use these skills to find a role that would actually utilize them as strengths, and then put them to work? And that way, hopefully, you will feel much more satisfied by that role? Because you’re using things that you are confident in and, you know, have the capability of growing them even more in sharpening them?

Dan Holterhaus 2:27
Yeah, absolutely. And when I think about those skills and abilities, definitely, my my, you mentioned my analytical ability. That’s, yeah, something that’s innate to me. Right. And so you mentioned communication. Now, the other thing, so it’s kind of a little bit of a marriage, right? So you got to have not only the ability to do something you have to have, you have to find also an environment, like a work environment that fits your needs, right? So could you maybe touch on what some different work environments are that people might be interested in working in?

Liz Kennedy 3:06
Yes. So when you think about the working environment, right now, for many office workers, it might look like their house. And that may or may not be ideal for you, depending on the distractions, and you know, just the the workspace and then how much you’re interacting with other people. And a lot of companies are doing their return to work, you know, protocols right now. And I know The Gazette, we’re in the process of building that we’re not back yet, but we will be at some point this fall. And so when you think about that, like what kind of space is is most conducive to you being productive. So for instance, like, if you’re a developer or like a web, I think I always think about web developers for some reason, because we have we, that’s our team, we work with what digital tools, they like to be in a quiet space, with not a lot of interaction, not a lot of distractions, so that they can focus in and get to work. And for me, sometimes that works really well too. But I also really thrive when I’m interacting with others, and having conversations, um, having the opportunity to overhear things happening in the office that might make me think about, Oh, that’s a great idea. I should try that, you know, like I need, I need some of that interaction in order to continue to be creative and productive. And so when you think about yourself, you know, you think about “what environment do I do best in?” and it can really depend on the job. So I’m kind of focused on Office jobs and that is definitely not the only job one. I never thought as a kid I would have an office job I always thought I would be an outdoors type of person that would have an outdoor job. And there are plenty of those out there. I mean, lots of lands, you know, from landscaping and maintenance to scientific jobs, where you doing water testing and things like that there are a lot of different roles that allow you to be outdoors could be working at a golf course, you know. So if you really thrive in that type of environment you should consider, okay, what kind of roles would allow me to be in that kind of environment. And, you know, obviously, you’re going to consider other things like pay and salary and all that. But environment is a key thing, because it’s something you face every day. And so it can depend, it can affect your satisfaction. For a long time, if, if you’re don’t do well, in a in a cubicle, and you have to live there for most of your life. Most of your work life, you can be very unsatisfying. So.

Dan Holterhaus 5:44
Yeah, absolutely. That was, that was really good, you hit on a lot of things there and covered a wide variety of jobs. So the third thing that we’re going to marry up here is just, you know, your, your values and passions, really. So. You know, let us know, I’d like to hear from you, maybe what what some of your passions are, or maybe what some, you know, somebody that’s trying to figure out what a good job fit for them might be? What are some some dreams or passions that people might have?

Liz Kennedy 6:17
Okay, um, I wasn’t necessarily prepared for this question.

Dan Holterhaus 6:21
Well, you already talked about one of mine, right? So, golf is one of mine. Yeah, I love digital business and online marketing. So when I think about a job, I’ve worked in the golf industry for six or seven years before I now worked in kind of a digital marketing and business role. So when I think about some things that I just like to go do, by my self, I always have loved to golf or, you know, be in recreation, but then also, I had a tendency to always want to try to sell things online or working in a digital business, right, so kind of a side hustle and sell things on eBay, Amazon, those types of things. So those are very, just natural, like passions of mine, and things that I gravitate towards. And so I think that’s really the third leg of you know, marrying up, like, what, what a good job that is gonna be right. So you got to have the ability to do it, whether you know you’re communicating or being a developer, it has to be a good work environment. And then you also have to have some sort of passion or, you know, you know, a little bit of interest, right to be able to do the job.

Liz Kennedy 7:36
Yeah, I’m laughing because I recently watched a TED talk that was like, how to find your life purpose, in like five questions. And I’m looking because I did the exercise, and I’m looking at my phone, because I wrote it down. And it was basically like, what do you like to do? Could you do it for? Why do you do it? You know, and, you know, you kind of wrap that into a sentence. And mine was basically it focused on I like to use creativity to solve problems. I mean, growing up, I was always into art, and music and things like that. But really, underneath all of those passions was an interest in creativity and expression. And, though, and, you know, especially if, over time, if you if you shift gears from like one career path to another, like if I went because I went from music to marketing, and that was really tough choice for me, because I’m like, Oh, my failure as a musician, because I can’t do it, you know, it’s like, no, you’re just gravitating towards something else that you’re interested in. And you’re going to use those same creative skills. And when I first took a director position, we’ll manage our position with a team, I thought about how much I liked playing in an orchestra. And how playing in an orchestra prepared me well to manage a team or work in a team because we’re all playing different things. And they have to marry together. And we have to kind of follow direction in order to produce a result. That is something that anyone wants to listen to. That, that that’s it’s really hard to you and i a lot of people out there that may have started one path, and then they’ve shifted another path, and then they feel they look back in that previous path. And they feel a lot of guilt and shame that they didn’t potentially make it in that role, right. But life is a journey, right? Like, everything is a journey and it’s not you shouldn’t feel shame for for moving on from something over time. Because you have changed through that process. And you are not the same person that you were when you started that person because you grown hopefully, hopefully you’ve grown.

Dan Holterhaus 9:44
And learn more about yourself. Yeah,

Liz Kennedy 9:45
So we’re having like really basic, not any deep thoughts this morning.

Dan Holterhaus 9:55
Yeah, right.

Liz Kennedy 9:55
You don’t know how long you’re gonna get. So

Dan Holterhaus 9:59
that’s right. Absolutely right. Well, that that’s all I had. I know those were those were very in depth questions, very in depth live questions today on Careers and Coffee. Did you have anything else you wanted to add? Liz before

Liz Kennedy 10:12
Yeah, I’m going to share my screen here, so we have some resources for you. So if you want to pose these deep questions to yourself, and your thinking, I have no idea where to start. Um, we have some resources for you. So Dan crafted this great worksheet that we can pull that up, that you can download from and we’ll put these in the show notes. share this with you. This is your skills, natural tendencies and passions just kind of gives you some, some room to work, you know, and to try to determine, okay, these are, these are some skills I have, and just kind of knocking them down. And, you know, understanding your natural tendencies, and so you kind of do a simple basic DISC profile. And then you kind of work it into kind of a storyline which you can kind of understand. If I, if money wasn’t an issue, what would you spend your time doing? And, you know, after a couple days on the beach, you probably would do something productive, right? So, um, and I love this one, what what did you enjoy as a child, but maybe didn’t think was realistic career path? Because there are so many things that didn’t exist when I was a kid. Like, the internet wasn’t a thing when I was a kid. I mean, it was sort of a thing, like with the DARPA program, you know, but it wasn’t like, you know, my kids don’t understand that I didn’t spend my days watching YouTube videos, because YouTube didn’t exist! This second one is this FutureReady Iowa, we love to, I love to use this resource a lot, that there’s some really great tools in here. And this is called theEMSI assessment. It’s cool, because you could be like, go deep, deep dive 60 questions, or you could do six questions. So if you don’t want to probe deep into your own psyche, and question everything, start with a six question questionnaire, it’s just a quick start. And, um, you know, they say, don’t worry about if you have enough education, or how much money you would make, they just just let’s just ask them questions like, Don’t Don’t, don’t skip ahead, right. And it’s really great, because it just talks about, like, what you like to do, do you do hands on, work and play outside, like I was talking about earlier, use your physical athletic abilities, you can say unsure. And you just go through this process, and you just kind of like the six kind of, you know, five answers, whether you’re unsure if you strongly agree, and that’ll give you a quick assessment of, of what might be a good path for you. And then if you want to come back, you can do more. And they also have a great resume builder. They’ll connect you with education and training. And there’s a ton of resources that we’ve talked about before on Careers and Coffee, educational resources that are free or low cost to people who want to work in certain industries. So don’t worry about what it’s going to cost you to get the skills you need or, or any of that stuff. Let’s just determine what you want to do. Because maybe you have everything you need already. And you don’t need additional things.

Dan Holterhaus 13:18
Yeah, absolutely. And that was FutureReady Iowa right? And then what was the website? Do you have it? I know we’ll link to it in our show notes.

Liz Kennedy 13:26
Oh, yes, it’s iowa.emsicc.com, and from there, you’ll be able to find the assessment.

Dan Holterhaus 13:33
Great. Okay, very cool. Yeah, that’s a very good, that’s a great resource. I know. I’ve done that a few times. And generally, it always comes back the same. So it reassures me that you know, depending on how you’re feeling on a certain day, you might get slightly different answers, which is Yeah, fine. So, alright, that’s gonna do it for us then.

Liz Kennedy 14:01
Great. Thanks for joining us.

Dan Holterhaus 14:03
We’ll see you next week. See you next week. Bye.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai