Dick Bolles Changed My Life

Richard Nelson Bolles died a couple of weeks ago. I can never repay the debt I owe him, because he helped me to discover the career that has sustained me for most of my adult life. By chance, that career led me to work in the same field as he did—career development—and because of that outcome, he became aware of my work and contacted me. Thus I was able to thank him personally.

In the late 1970s, I realized I would have to give up my goal of becoming an English professor. Once I had earned my PhD in English, I actually got fewer job interviews than I had snagged while holding only a master’s degree. I had taught part-time for a while, then full-time on a temporary basis, and now was again reduced to teaching part-time—as an adjust instructor shuttling among various colleges in the Delaware Valley. At the 1978 conference of the Modern Language Association, where I hoped to get interviews that would lead to full-time, permanent work, I actually got none. So I attended a couple of workshops with titles such as “Alternative Careers for English Majors,” trying to learn how else I might spend my working life.

Not once, but twice I heard references to a useful self-help book called What Color Is Your Parachute? The book was rather new at that time but evidently was well-known in circles where underemployed people congregate, such as the MLA conference. I borrowed it from the library as soon as I got home, and I dutifully did the exercises.

For me, the most useful exercise of all was one that, ironically, Dick Bolles later dropped from the book; I don’t find it in the 2014 edition, which Dick mailed to me when it came out. What I found so  helpful was a skills-clarification exercise that went something like this:

1. Take a sheet of lined paper and draw two vertical lines to divide it into three columns.
2. In the leftmost column, write examples of work you’ve done (paid or otherwise) that gave you the most enjoyment and that you handled the most skillfully. You may want to skip a few lines between each example.
3. In the middle column, for each kind of work, identify the specific tasks that were central to the work—i.e., that determined your success.
4. In the rightmost column, for each task, deduce the transferable skills that you used to accomplish the task.
5. Look for skills that occur most often, and then start looking for jobs that use those skills.

After I did this exercise, I realized that I should be pursuing jobs that involved not teaching but researching and writing. The research work I had done, especially on my dissertation, had given me the greatest satisfaction, and I had earned high grades for my writing ever since high school. And so I started looking for jobs that involved researching and writing.

I was thinking in terms of journalism or speechwriting, but in the meantime my wife, who was working at Educational Testing Service, was showing me postings for job openings at ETS. I rejected two of these out of hand because they did not involve my two favorite activities, but I was intrigued when she showed me one for a job that consisted of researching and writing career information. The fact that the information was to be used for delivery by a computer-based system (SIGI) did not make the job either more or less interesting to me; in those days, I had no expectation that computers would become ubiquitous in the workplace.

This lowly research assistant job not only allowed me to use my researching and writing skills; it also gave me the opportunity to learn the principles of career development from Martin R. Katz, the developer of SIGI, who later received an Eminent Career Award from the National Career Development Association. And although I was at first shielded from the computers that ran SIGI—in those days, only a highly trained operator was capable of inputting the career information that I was developing—as computers became more interactive and even personal, I found I had a knack for understanding how databases work. I figured out how to use the primitive 64-bit Scripsit word processor to mock up screens for the SIGI PLUS program that we were developing. So what started out as a researching and writing job turned into something much more complex.

In retrospect, I realize that when I did Dick Bolles’s three-column skills-clarification exercise at age 30, I neglected to include one leisure activity that became a central part of my work: collecting. As a child growing up on the Jersey shore, I was an avid collector of seashells. Later I started to collect rocks, and for a while I also collected stamps. I realize now that a database is simply another kind of collection, and so the work I do assembling databases and finding useful ways to query them is giving me many of the same satisfactions I got from organizing my collections of mollusks and minerals.

I know that I am one of probably tens of thousands of people whose lives were changed by Dick Bolles’s work. I’m especially grateful that I had the opportunity to thank him personally.

A Three-Angle View on Your Career

When you think about how to improve your career, it helps to view it from several different angles. I find it useful to employ the approach called tagmemics. Please let me define this term for you before it scares you away, and then you’ll start to see its usefulness.

The idea of tagmemics is that any unit of human experience can be viewed in three forms: as a particle, as a wave, and as a field. This approach was originated by a linguist, Kenneth Pike, so it may or may not be very sound as physics, but I find it very useful for achieving insights into ideas such as the one I’m discussing here: improving your career.

First, let’s look at your career as a particle—as a static entity. To do that, you need to move away from the word career (which implies development over time) and focus instead on the word job. (If you’re still in school, consider that your job.) Ask yourself these questions about your job as it is right now:

• Does your job have a title that you’re happy with?
• During the workday, do you find the work tasks interesting and engaging, or do they involve knowledge or tasks that don’t interest you?
• Are your skills a good match for the job, or do you feel overwhelmed (or unchallenged)?
• Is the stress level one that is comfortable to you?
• Are you satisfied with the physical requirements of your job?
• Is the amount of structure in your job too loose or too confining?
• Do you enjoy the level of creativity in your work?
• At the end of a typical workday, do you have a feeling of satisfaction?
• Do you have a way of assessing your work and therefore taking pride in what you have accomplished?
• When you’re not working, is your job providing a sufficiently comfortable lifestyle and amount of leisure?

If some of your answers indicate a situation that is not totally satisfactory, this may be an indication that you need to make some changes to your job. But first, you need to consider the wave and field perspectives on your career.

Your career is a wave in that it is a dynamic process. It is unfolding over time; it has a past and a future. Here are some questions that reflect on this dynamic nature:

• Over the course of time—whether it’s a day or a year of work—does your job offer a level of variety in tasks, locations, or people that you find satisfactory?
• Do you make career choices by planning, by seizing opportunities, or by following the path of least resistance?
• Are your past career preparation and experiences a good match for your present job, or would they be a better match for something else?
• Does your job provide opportunities for advancement?
• Are you knowledgeable about future developments in your career field and the job opportunities (or threats to job security) that they will create?
• What have you done or are willing to do to prepare for these job opportunities or to counteract any threats?
• Will your career allow you to deal adequately with future changes in your lifestyle, such as marriage, child-rearing, or retirement?
• If you’re still in school, will you be able to get through the program?

Your answers to this second set of questions (wave-based) may help you plan for ways to remedy shortcomings revealed by your answers to the first set (particle-based). But you should also consider the field aspect of your career, which has implications for both your current situation and your plans.

Your career is a field in that it involves relationships. It occurs in a spatial and interpersonal context. Answer these questions:

• Is your job allowing you to live in a community that satisfies you?
• How do you feel about your workday commute and the amount of travel?
• Do you enjoy the physical setting of your work?
• How comfortable are you with your boss, your co-workers, and members of the public whom you deal with?
• Are you satisfied with the job’s ratio of solitary work to working with or dealing with other people?
• Do you desire more or fewer opportunities for leadership in your job?
• Are you knowledgeable about your industry, not just your job?
• Do you have credentials that have value in your industry (or another industry)?
• Are you known to people in your industry (or another industry) and, if not, do you know how to make yourself known?
• Do you feel good about the extent to which your work contributes to the well-being of other people, of animals, or of the natural environment?
• Do you worry about the possible impact of an on-the-job error on your organization or on other people?
• Does your work create stress between you and your family or community?
• Are you satisfied with the level of prestige that your work confers on you?

If you have read this far, I hope that you understand that you usually need to consider all three aspects of your career to solve any problems that you have detected in it. For example, if your work is too stressful (a particle issue), you need to think about what is causing this stress. It might be another particle issue, such as the necessity of following a restrictive rulebook, but it could also be a wave issue, such as a feeling of being in a dead-end job or worry about future threats to job security. It could also be a field issue, such as concern about making decisions that could bankrupt your employer or the perception that your long hours at work are making you lose touch with your family.

When you evaluate a possible change to your career, be sure to consider the change from the perspectives of all three aspects. For example, if you decide to get a degree or certification to improve your future employability (which you may think of as a wave-related change because it happens over time), consider the particle issues that this will raise, such as how well your skills and aptitudes will match the demands of the program. Consider also such wave issues as how the program’s demands on your time will affect your family relationships or how you can leverage your new credentials to achieve greater recognition in your industry.

Your career affects so many aspects of your life that you need to be multidimensional in your thinking when you assess your satisfaction or make plans for improving your situation. Tagmemics can provide a structure to help you expand your thinking.

My Generic Career Decision-Making Advice

Every so often, I get an unsolicited e-mail from a total stranger, asking me for advice with career decision making.  Following is my response to such messages. If you know someone who is facing a career decision (maybe you), the following suggestions may be helpful:

Thank you for your interest in my work. I’m not a counselor, but I can recommend the exercise that I personally used 35+ years ago when I needed to make a career change. (The exercise is modified from one that was in What Color Is Your Parachute? in the late 1970s.) Set aside about an hour for this exercise.

On a piece of lined paper, draw three vertical lines to create three columns. In the leftmost column, list any role you have played that is at all like work. This can include academic programs and hobbies, because they involve some work tasks. In the middle column, list the major tasks for each role that you played. Put a star next to each task that you enjoyed and were good at. Then, in the rightmost column, try to identify the skills that were required for each starred task. You should start to see patterns emerging: skills that you’ll want to use in your work.

This list of skills may already suggest certain occupations that are worth investigating. But you may also want to visit http://www.myskillsmyfuture.org/. Although it asks you to enter an occupation name, it also works well if you enter the name of a skill. It will suggest occupations to explore. On the other hand, you may want to keep your options open and not narrow down your thinking to an occupation title. Perhaps there’s a niche job out there that isn’t listed in any reference book. I didn’t know there was such a thing as occupational information expert, but that’s what I became.

There are many excellent books and websites, such as the Occupational Outlook Handbook, for exploring occupations and for learning where the economy is growing. However, once you start getting a clearer idea of your goals, there is no substitute for speaking with actual working people. Ask them what a good day is like on the job and what a bad day is like. Ask them how they got into their field and what they would recommend for someone starting now. Ask them where their field is offering the best opportunities.

A lot of career advice also is available from education and training providers, but you must be wary of recruitment pitches, which may be deceptive. Working people can steer you toward the best entry routes and away from the programs that run up debt with little payoff.

If you are shy or introverted, it can be difficult to do the networking that I am suggesting, but you must force yourself to overcome your hesitation. Set a goal of x number of contacts per day. If you make it clear that you are only after information, not a job opening, people will usually be very open and helpful.

Good luck with your career decision making. I hope you’ll write back sometime in the future, when you have made some progress.

Cheers,
Laurence Shatkin, PhD

A Third Look at My Predictions

In 2012, I did a retrospective analysis of predictions I made in 2009. Three years later, it’s now time to take yet another look. The original predictions consisted of occupations that I selected to include in the book called Great Jobs in the President’sStimulus Plan (JIST, 2009). My goal was to identify occupations that were likely to benefit from the proposed economic stimulus and that would do well once the economic recovery built up steam. It turns out that many of my recommendations were poor advice for the short term, but on balance my picks were good advice for the long term. And I’m okay with that. Occupational choice (as opposed to job choice) should be a long-term decision.

Understand that at the time I wrote Great Jobs in the President’s Stimulus Plan, I had access to only an incomplete picture of what would be in the stimulus plan that eventually became law as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. President Obama had not even been sworn in when I delivered the manuscript to the editor. During the subsequent months that it took ARRA to work its way through Congress, political horse-trading resulted in considerable changes to the plans originally outlined by the president-elect’s economic advisors—the plans that I used in researching the book. In the introduction to the book, I warned about the limitations of my predictions.

But I also noted that the stimulus plan was designed to do more than just reopen the jobs that had been lost.  One important goal was to create jobs in sectors of the economy that would anticipate the directions where the American economy needed to go to remain competitive in a global job market. Therefore, the promise of these “great jobs” was not just a matter of short-term employment but also the potential to be good long-term choices. And when measured for the long term, based on the most recent job-market projections, my recommendations still hold the promise of success.

Let’s look at the record in detail, measuring my predictions against actual changes in the workforce between May 2009 and May 2014. (The BLS issues estimates of workforce size for May of each year. May 2009 was the latest May before the stimulus could start to influence the economy; May 2014 is the latest May for which figures are available.)

In Great Jobs in the President’s Stimulus Plan, I selected eight industries that the ARRA was designed to promote: construction; education; energy; health care; management, scientific, and technical consulting services; manufacturing; scientific research and development services; and wholesale trade. I identified 300 occupations that are important in these industries and that had reasonably good outlook projections. This set of 300 included some occupations (such as Technical Writers, Sales Engineers, and Industrial Truck and Tractor Operators) that are not closely linked to any of the eight industries but are important across industries. These 300 occupations, taken from the O*NET-SOC taxonomy, represent 267 unique SOC occupations for which it is possible to obtain workforce statistics.

Now let’s look at the scorecard of how my picks performed during the recovery. The baseline for comparison is 3.4 percent. That is, the workforce of all occupations grew by 3.4 percent between May 2009 and May 2014. My set of 267 SOC occupations, the “great jobs,” grew by an overall average of only 2.5 percent—in other words, did a bit worse than the workforce as a whole.

It’s interesting to note which industries grew better than others. The jobs I picked from the management, scientific, and technical consulting services sector actually shrank by an average of 1.2 percent. The education jobs grew by only 1.6 percent; the construction jobs by 2.5 percent; and the wholesale trade jobs by 3.4 percent. The other industry groupings of jobs in the book grew faster than the workforce-wide average of 3.4 percent. Most notably, the energy jobs grew by 7.8 percent and the manufacturing jobs by 8.2 percent.

But recall what I said earlier about how the stimulus plan was designed to boost the sectors of the economy with the best prospects for long-term growth, and about how occupational choice should be based on long-term prospects. For the long term, the baseline is 10.8 percent—that’s how much the workforce as a whole is projected to grow between 2012 and 2022, the latest forecast available from the BLS. Against this baseline, the occupations I chose for the book score much better. The 267 unique occupations in the book have average projected growth of 13.6 percent over this long term.

In fact, of all the industries into which I grouped the occupations, only one is projected to fare worse than the average for all occupations: wholesale trade. The occupations that I chose from this sector are projected to grow 10.7 percent (one tenth of a percent slower than the baseline). My picks in all the other industry groupings are projected to grow faster. The occupations I picked in two industry groupings have especially rosy outlooks: In scientific research and development services, the occupations are projected to have 20.1 percent growth; in health care, 25.2 percent.

One lesson to take away is that it can take many years for an economic stimulus policy to take full effect, and it can also take many years before an individual’s career choice turns out to be a good one. Before making a choice, learn about the long-term economic trends for the occupation. And while you’re at it, don’t look only at the economic trends. Also consider the trends in work conditions.

The Hookup Economy

You hear a lot about the “sharing economy” these days, but I think I’ve found a better term: the hookup economy. A job used to be like a relatively stable relationship between two parties, but nowadays many work arrangements are more like a hookup. The matches between employers and workers are made on the fly, there’s zero commitment from either party, and the connection is fleeting.

It’s hard to criticize Uber and Lyft on this account, because the relationship between a conventional taxi driver and a passenger was always ad hoc and short-lived. The same might be said about ZTailors, launched this week by George Zimmer (who used to tell you that “You’re going to like the way you look—I guarantee it”), which hooks up tailors with customers. But each week brings another Tinder-like app that matches up employers and workers, and some of these are meant to arrange work that used to be done by full-time payroll employees.

For example, Universal Avenue, a Swedish startup, helps businesses recruit salesworkers who work as freelancers. UpWork, Freelancer.com, and Guru.com are matchmakers for workers of many kinds, including designers, writers, engineers, and programmers. TaskRabbit lets you find workers for tasks that may not even fit comfortably into any occupation title, such as assembling IKEA furniture.

In favor of this trend, one might argue that the freelancers who work this way get paid for their time and (where relevant) skills, and they can have a flexible work schedule.

On the other hand, there are legal protections that one expects in an employer-employee relationship that are missing in these hookup work situations. Compared to a payroll employee, a hookup worker has much less legal protection from sexual harassment, racial or age discrimination, or a hazardous work environment (when the work is done on-site).

Listed on one’s resume, this kind of work also does not make much of an impression. This is less of a liability for designers, writers, and other workers who tend to display their output in a portfolio. But for most workers, a spell of doing hookup projects can look like unemployment on a resume.

Of course, doing this kind of work is better than having no income. And in today’s economy, this may be the only kind of work that some people can find. People who are downsized in their 50s or early 60s often have a particularly hard time finding an employer willing to take them on for a payroll job. So I think that hookup work is here to stay.

A Tribute to Martin R. Katz

As I was growing up, I often thought of making a career in writing, but it never occurred to me to write about careers. This career path, which has been so rewarding to me, I owe to Marty Katz. He died March 17, age 98.

In 1979, he hired me to develop career information for the SIGI program at Educational Testing Service. The System of Interactive Guidance and Information was his brainchild and was one of the pioneering systems in the early days of computer-based career development. His ideas were so far ahead of his time that, initially, the available computers were incapable of storing the amount of information necessary to make the system work. He proposed using a carousel of slides to display the fixed information (such as occupational descriptions) so that the computer’s limited storage would be freed up for the interactive textual elements. He also conceived a radical layout for the display, making it a mosaic of text blocks rather than a solid page of text.

But SIGI was more than a technological breakthrough. It also was the implementation of his unique values-based approach to career development. Instead of basing career choice on a single domain, such as interests or skills, or encouraging birds of a feather to flock together, he posited that people choose careers in order to obtain rewards that they value. These rewards could be extrinsic, such as high income or prestige, or intrinsic, such as helping others or the opportunity to work in a field in which one has a strong interest. He did considerable research to identify which values are most widely held and most readily understood. In fact, by recording user interactions, he was able to employ SIGI itself as a research tool to gather statistics on values preferences. Besides confirming his selection of values for the system, it enabled him to study values differences between the sexes.

His values-based philosophy of career development represented a break with the theories that were the legacy of the Second World War, a time when national mobilization was more important than individual self-actualization. He also emphasized self-assessment, as opposed to testing—ironically, his employer’s main line of business. His approach was perfectly in tune with the 1960s decade of self-exploration and the 1970s “me decade.”

I did not know or understand any of these ideas when he hired me. Until then, my education had been in English literature and my work experience had been mostly in teaching English composition. I had learned a tiny bit about career development from trying to get my own career started, and especially from reading (and doing all the exercises in) What Color Is Your Parachute? From one of these exercises (a self-assessment), I discovered that I derived the greatest satisfaction and feelings of competence from research and writing. So when Marty advertised a job opening for someone to research and write career information, I applied and submitted a writing sample. He liked my writing and, when I said I hadn’t yet given up on a career as an English professor, he asked me whether I would give the SIGI job three years before moving on. I agreed. Thirty-five years have passed, and in a way I have not moved on yet.

Marty recognized potential in me and served as a valuable mentor. Although for the first two years my work for SIGI was focused almost entirely on researching salaries—using primary sources, such as the salary surveys of professional organizations, and following well-established procedures—in the following year Marty entrusted a new research project to me: developing descriptions of college majors. In its field test, SIGI had asked each college to provide descriptions of the majors they offered. This was a powerful way to help career decision makers with their planning, but the institution-specific information proved to be too costly for subsequent institutional subscribers to develop and maintain. SIGI needed generic descriptions of college majors, a kind of information that—compared to occupational information—was (and still is) very scarce. Marty assigned me a two-year research and development project that not only created a new module for SIGI but also laid the groundwork for the R&D strategies I have used in more recent years for several books—such as my next book for Meyer & Meyer Publishing, Choose Your College Major in a Day. Marty also entrusted me to key in the large amount of text that I was developing. A new text-entry program allowed relatively unskilled workers like me to enter and edit text, if only one line at a time.

In the obituary that ran in The Times of Trenton, you can read a lot more about his achievements, including the 1992 Eminent Career Award from the National Career Development Association. He probably would have achieved greater recognition in his field if he had done more self-promotion, but he seldom spoke at conferences because he was very hard of hearing as long as I have known him. And when he retired, he walked away from all involvement in the field.

He once remarked that he had taught college-level statistics although he had never taken a course in statistics. He said, “Most of what I’ve done has been without special training. I live by my wits.” This statement, with its tone of self-deprecation masking well-earned pride, strikes me as very characteristic of his personality.

Is “Breaking Bad” a Skill?

This blog was inspired by the very last episode of the popular television drama “Breaking Bad” [spoiler alert!]. Walter White, once a milquetoast chemistry teacher and now a ruthless drug baron, confesses to his wife that he did not persist in his life of crime for his purported reason, which was to acquire a nest egg for his family to live on after his death. “I did it for me. I liked it. I was good at it. And I was really—I was alive.” Setting aside the matter of his enjoyment—which, in career development, would fall into the category of interest—let’s consider what it means to be good at crime. Is criminality a skill?

If we consider what it means for criminality to be a career—which means setting aside crimes of passion—we see it takes several forms. It includes such illegal pursuits as armed robbery, counterfeiting, selling illegal drugs, confidence rackets, and identity theft, among others. However, it also includes crimes that some people commit as part of what otherwise would be a law-abiding career—for example, securities traders using insider information or oligarchs conspiring to strangle competition.

Both kinds of criminals need to be skilled at the particular type of crime that they commit. For example, the counterfeiter has to be good at producing a realistic imitation of genuine currency. The drug dealer needs to be good at making connections with buyers. The identity thief needs to have skills with computers or with some other way of obtaining personal information about victims. These skills therefore are highly specific to each kind of criminal enterprise. White-collar lawbreakers need to have the skills that establish them in the law-abiding careers from which they veer into criminality—again, highly specific skills that can’t be summarized as a skill at criminality.

All kinds of career criminals also need to be skilled at escaping detection by the authorities. Here again, the skills are specific: The counterfeiter has to be skilled at passing funny money in ways that will escape notice, at least in the short term. The drug dealer needs to know how to operate stealthily. The securities trader who makes a killing based on insider information has to be skilled at manipulating the source of information to keep quiet. Any of these criminals might also corrupt law enforcement by using interpersonal skills, in addition to bribes.

Although these various criminals have highly diverse skills, one skill that many criminals have in common is the ability to use violence. Violence can help the criminal escape detection—silencing potential informers by threats, mayhem, or extermination. It can also fend off competition and theft. After all, someone who, like Walter White, is earning money from a criminal enterprise cannot expect the law enforcement authorities to protect his assets. Other outlaws understand this and will victimize the criminal who does not defend himself and his loot. White-collar criminals are mostly unlikely to resort to violence, but it is one skill that cuts across a broad swath of criminals.

However, even violence is not a single skill. One criminal may be talented at personally using a gun or fists, whereas another may be skilled at identifying and recruiting thugs. (That is Walter White’s strong suit.)

The skill that perhaps is to be found most universally among criminals is the ability to live with themselves, knowing what crimes they have committed. True, some criminals don’t need this skill because they are sociopaths, without empathy and incapable of feeling guilt for their actions. But criminologists say that these people are rare. Most criminals understand that they are doing wrong and have to deal with that understanding.

Generally, they adopt defense mechanisms: I’m doing this for my family (that’s Walter White’s). I’m doing this because society has conspired against me and I’ll never succeed in the straight world. I’m doing this to sustain a great company that employs thousands of people. I give a lot of money to widows and orphans. I get a lot of respect (from some people). One more big score, and then I’ll retire and go straight. Everybody does it.

Ultimately, this skill amounts to an ability to rationalize. Or you might call it hypocrisy, which Francois de La Rochefoucauld called “the homage vice pays to virtue.” It’s not a skill to be proud of; criminality is not something to be proud of. It is often regarded as a weakness, but I maintain that it functions like a skill to the extent that it allows people to pursue one kind of career: crime.

Am I Using a Credential Fraudulently?

You may notice the “PhD” following my name on some of my book covers. I do hold a doctor of philosophy degree (earned, not honorary), but my use of these letters brings up an interesting question of when it is—and is not—appropriate to use work-related credentials. This issue is particularly timely because so many people are now working (or seek work) in fields that they did not prepare for formally.

What raised this issue for me was a question in “The Ethicist” column of last Sunday’s New York Times Magazine. The query, posed by someone whose name was withheld, was this: “A Pilates-certification-program teacher uses the credentials ‘Ph.D.’ after her name in connection with the course description on the studio’s website. However, her degree is in finance, which is never mentioned on the site. Is this acceptable?” The core of the answer from columnist Chuck Klosterman was, “Anyone who includes an academic designation alongside the description of a class she’s teaching is implying that these things have a material connection. She is actively trying to make people misinterpret what she has to offer.”

I admire Chuck Klosterman for his often subtle parsings of ethical issues, and I believe he was correct in making this judgment. So after reading this column, I had to ask myself whether I am using my PhD credential ethically. And as I thought about how to answer this question, I realized that many people deal with a similar issue. Because of my interest in careers, I often ask people how they got into the line of work they presently are doing, and a great many of them describe a crooked career path that did not include the “appropriate” academic training.

As for me, it’s true that I am not teaching Pilates or any other course, but it could still be argued that my use of “PhD” on my books implies what Klosterman calls “a material connection” between my education and the contents of my books. And the fact is that although my books are about careers, none of my degrees is in economics, counseling, psychology, or education. My degrees are all in English literature. (In case you’re curious, my specialization was pre-Shakespearean drama, and my dissertation was about morality plays.) But the particular focus of my academic work, literature, doesn’t really matter. What’s important is that in preparing for and writing my dissertation, I learned how to do research and write about it, and these skills do have a material connection to the work I do now.

You might argue that research and writing skills are necessary but not sufficient qualifications to write about careers; the writer should also be well-informed about career development issues. I often joke that getting a degree in English guarantees that you’ll become informed about career development issues, and in my case there was some truth to this statement. Not long after I got my degree, it became obvious that I was not going to find a permanent job teaching at a university, so I had to decide what else I was going to do with my life. I read What Color Is Your Parachute? and did all the exercises. From my self-assessment, I realized that teaching was not what I liked or was especially good at; instead it was researching and writing, as I had done for my dissertation. The first opportunity that came my way for a job involving these tasks was developing career information for Educational Testing Service. This job led to a 19-year stint. During that time, I engaged in what amounted to an apprenticeship in career development theory, with Martin R. Katz as my mentor. In that setting, the world’s biggest testing organization, it was also inevitable that I would learn a lot about assessment. At Trenton State College (now The College of New Jersey), I took three graduate courses from the counseling master’s program: an introduction to counseling and two educational statistics courses.

Therefore, the credentials I bring to my work are a combination of formal education (mostly the PhD) and on-the-job training (my apprenticeship at ETS), and I try to mention both of these elements on my book covers: The “PhD” appears on the front cover after my name, and on the back cover is a statement that I have been working in the field of career information for more than 30 years.

Many people, like me, are working in fields where their credentials consist, at least in part, of informal on-the-job learning. But most people present their credentials to the world mostly through a business card, which does not accommodate as much text as the back cover of a book. People who work in fields where certification is available as a credential have the chance to put certain relevant initials after their name on the card, but this is not an option in most fields.

If you are working in a field where you do not have formal credentials—perhaps because they do not exist—I would advise you to be hesitant about putting a degree after your name. But I would give you a lot of leeway for arguing (as I do here) that your degree really is relevant to your qualifications.

Best Jobs for Your Personality

Among the books I’ve written, one of the best-sellers is 50 Best Jobs for Your Personality, now in its third edition. For this blog, I thought it would be useful to update the lists in the book to reflect more recent occupational information from the Department of Labor.

Note that the following set of lists does not replace the book, because it covers only the top 20 occupations for each personality type, it offers only 6 lists (as opposed to the 131 lists in the book), and it is not accompanied by occupational descriptions. It also lacks an explanation and quick assessment of RIASEC types for those unfamiliar with this approach to career development.

I constructed these six lists using the same approach I used in the book, and I suggest you consult the introduction to that book for a full explanation. However, in brief, what I did here was to sort the occupations three times: on annual earnings, on projected growth, and on projected annual openings. Each time, I ranked the occupations, and then I summed the rankings to determine the best occupations on all three measures combined. The set of occupations excludes (a) any for which annual earnings data is not available and (b) any with both negative growth and fewer than 500 projected openings per year. Because of the small size of the pool of occupations with Artistic as their primary RIASEC code, I augmented this pool with occupations that have Artistic as their secondary code.

Everyone seems to love lists, so I hope you find these interesting.

Realistic

	Occupation	Annual Earnings	Projected Growth	Projected Annual Openings	RIASEC Code(s)
1.	Civil Engineers	$80,770	19.7%	12,010	RIC
2.	Electricians	$50,510	19.7%	22,460	RCI
3.	Plumbers, Pipefitters, and Steamfitters	$50,180	21.3%	13,050	RC
4.	Radiologic Technologists	$55,200	20.8%	6,960	RS
5.	Computer User Support Specialists	$46,620	20.2%	19,690	RCI
6.	Industrial Machinery Mechanics	$47,910	18.9%	15,250	RIC
7.	Carpenters	$40,500	24.2%	32,920	RCI
8.	Heating, Air Conditioning, and Refrigeration Mechanics and Installers	$43,880	20.9%	12,370	RC
9.	Brickmasons and Blockmasons	$46,610	35.5%	3,280	RCI
10.	Operating Engineers and Other Construction Equipment Operators	$42,540	18.9%	14,440	RCI
11.	Surgical Technologists	$42,720	29.8%	3,910	RSC
12.	Medical Equipment Repairers	$44,180	30.3%	2,460	RIC
13.	Structural Iron and Steel Workers	$46,520	21.8%	3,150	RCI
14.	Service Unit Operators, Oil, Gas, and Mining	$42,790	20.9%	3,640	RCI
15.	Captains, Mates, and Pilots of Water Vessels	$69,920	13.8%	2,130	REC
16.	Electrical Power-Line Installers and Repairers	$64,170	8.9%	4,990	RIC
17.	Health Technologists and Technicians, All Other	$40,900	26.7%	3,310	RCI
18.	Construction and Building Inspectors	$54,450	12.2%	3,670	RCI
19.	Magnetic Resonance Imaging Technologists	$66,050	23.6%	1,130	RCS
20.	Cement Masons and Concrete Finishers	$36,130	29.1%	5,720	RE

Investigative

	Occupation	Annual Earnings	Projected Growth	Projected Annual Openings	RIASEC Code(s)
1.	Physicians and Surgeons, All Other	$187,999+	18.7%	15,260	ISR
2.	Surgeons	$187,999+	23.2%	2,310	IRS
3.	Software Developers, Applications	$92,660	22.8%	21,850	IRC
4.	Software Developers, Systems Software	$101,410	20.4%	13,470	ICR
5.	Dentists, General	$146,340	16.3%	5,120	IRS
6.	Anesthesiologists	$187,999+	24.4%	1,670	IRS
7.	Petroleum Engineers	$132,320	25.5%	1,960	IRC
8.	Computer Systems Analysts	$81,190	24.5%	20,960	IC
9.	Pharmacists	$119,280	14.5%	10,980	ICS
10.	Family and General Practitioners	$176,530	14.6%	4,920	IS
11.	Nurse Anesthetists	$151,090	24.9%	1,560	IRS
12.	Management Analysts	$79,870	18.6%	24,520	IEC
13.	Optometrists	$101,290	24.4%	1,770	ISR
14.	Market Research Analysts and Marketing Specialists	$60,800	31.6%	18,850	IEC
15.	Operations Research Analysts	$74,630	26.7%	3,600	ICE
16.	Internists, General	$186,850	14.1%	2,010	ISR
17.	Pediatricians, General	$157,610	15.7%	1,410	IS
18.	Psychiatrists	$178,950	16.2%	1,120	ISA
19.	Diagnostic Medical Sonographers	$66,410	46.0%	3,530	ISR
20.	Biomedical Engineers	$88,670	26.6%	1,010	IR

Artistic

	Occupation	Annual Earnings	Projected Growth	Projected Annual Openings	RIASEC Code(s)
1.	Architects, Except Landscape and Naval	$74,110	17.3%	4,410	AI
2.	Training and Development Specialists	$56,850	15.5%	7,720	SAC
3.	Art, Drama, and Music Teachers, Postsecondary	$62,830	16.0%	3,550	SA
4.	Medical Scientists, Except Epidemiologists	$79,840	13.3%	3,550	IAR
5.	Biochemists and Biophysicists	$84,320	18.6%	1,370	IAR
6.	Technical Writers	$67,900	14.8%	2,260	AIC
7.	Public Relations and Fundraising Managers	$98,700	12.9%	2,130	EA
8.	Philosophy and Religion Teachers, Postsecondary	$65,540	19.3%	1,060	SAI
9.	Education Teachers, Postsecondary	$60,170	14.6%	2,350	SAI
10.	Elementary School Teachers, Except Special Education	$53,590	12.3%	46,740	SAC
11.	Middle School Teachers, Except Special and Career/Technical Education	$53,940	12.4%	21,120	SA
12.	Substance Abuse and Behavioral Disorder Counselors	$38,620	31.4%	4,720	SAI
13.	Interpreters and Translators	$42,420	46.1%	3,810	AS
14.	Political Scientists	$100,920	21.3%	250	IAS
15.	Kindergarten Teachers, Except Special Education	$50,230	13.0%	6,510	SA
16.	Public Relations Specialists	$54,940	12.0%	5,880	EAS
17.	Secondary School Teachers, Except Special and Career/Technical Education	$55,360	5.5%	31,260	SAE
18.	English Language and Literature Teachers, Postsecondary	$60,920	12.2%	2,360	SAI
19.	Foreign Language and Literature Teachers, Postsecondary	$58,620	15.3%	1,080	SAI
20.	Preschool Teachers, Except Special Education	$27,570	17.4%	19,940	SA

Social

	Occupation	Annual Earnings	Projected Growth	Projected Annual Openings	RIASEC Code(s)
1.	Physical Therapists	$81,030	36.0%	12,370	SIR
2.	Health Specialties Teachers, Postsecondary	$85,030	36.1%	9,720	SI
3.	Physician Assistants	$92,970	38.4%	4,890	SIR
4.	Nurse Practitioners	$92,670	33.7%	5,850	SIR
5.	Dental Hygienists	$71,110	33.3%	11,350	SRC
6.	Registered Nurses	$66,220	19.4%	105,260	SI
7.	Occupational Therapists	$76,940	29.0%	4,820	SI
8.	Nursing Instructors and Teachers, Postsecondary	$65,940	35.4%	3,420	SI
9.	Speech-Language Pathologists	$70,810	19.4%	4,620	SIA
10.	Physical Therapist Assistants	$53,360	41.0%	4,510	SRI
11.	Biological Science Teachers, Postsecondary	$75,740	19.5%	2,120	SI
12.	Healthcare Social Workers	$50,820	26.8%	7,020	SI
13.	Licensed Practical and Licensed Vocational Nurses	$41,920	24.8%	36,310	SR
14.	Personal Care Aides	$20,100	48.8%	66,600	SRC
15.	Radiation Therapists	$79,140	23.5%	840	SRC
16.	Home Health Aides	$21,020	48.5%	59,070	SR
17.	Business Teachers, Postsecondary	$75,120	14.7%	3,070	SEI
18.	Occupational Therapy Assistants	$55,270	42.6%	2,050	SR
19.	Training and Development Specialists	$56,850	15.5%	7,720	SAC
20.	Nurse Midwives	$92,290	28.6%	290	SI

Enterprising

	Occupation	Annual Earnings	Projected Growth	Projected Annual Openings	RIASEC Code(s)
1.	Computer and Information Systems Managers	$123,950	15.3%	9,710	ECI
2.	General and Operations Managers	$96,430	12.4%	61,310	ECS
3.	Medical and Health Services Managers	$90,940	23.2%	14,990	ECS
4.	Construction Managers	$84,410	16.1%	15,460	ERC
5.	Lawyers	$114,300	9.8%	19,650	EI
6.	Personal Financial Advisors	$75,320	27.0%	9,640	ECS
7.	First-Line Supervisors of Construction Trades and Extraction Workers	$60,380	23.5%	18,710	ERC
8.	Marketing Managers	$123,220	12.7%	6,170	EC
9.	Financial Managers	$112,700	8.9%	14,690	EC
10.	Education Administrators, Postsecondary	$87,410	14.5%	6,650	ECS
11.	Sales Representatives, Services, All Other	$51,030	15.7%	30,200	EC
12.	Human Resources Managers	$100,800	13.2%	4,060	ESC
13.	Computer Network Architects	$95,380	14.6%	4,350	ERC
14.	Sales Managers	$108,540	8.3%	10,690	EC
15.	Administrative Services Managers	$82,310	12.2%	7,990	EC
16.	Managers, All Other	$103,530	5.9%	24,910	EC
17.	Securities, Commodities, and Financial Services Sales Agents	$72,640	11.2%	12,260	EC
18.	First-Line Supervisors of Office and Administrative Support Workers	$50,190	12.1%	50,800	ECS
19.	Sales Representatives, Wholesale and Manufacturing, Technical and Scientific Products	$74,520	9.7%	11,180	EC
20.	Social and Community Service Managers	$61,160	20.8%	5,510	ES

Conventional

	Occupation	Annual Earnings	Projected Growth	Projected Annual Openings	RIASEC Code(s)
1.	Accountants and Auditors	$65,080	13.1%	54,420	CEI
2.	Cost Estimators	$59,460	26.2%	11,800	CE
3.	Financial Analysts	$78,380	15.5%	10,090	CIE
4.	Information Security Analysts	$88,590	36.5%	3,920	CIR
5.	Logisticians	$73,400	21.9%	4,220	CEI
6.	Web Developers	$63,160	20.1%	5,070	CIR
7.	Database Administrators	$78,520	15.1%	4,030	CI
8.	Paralegals and Legal Assistants	$47,570	16.7%	9,120	CIE
9.	Sales Representatives, Wholesale and Manufacturing, Except Technical and Scientific Products	$54,410	8.9%	42,070	CE
10.	Medical Secretaries	$31,890	36.0%	25,250	CS
11.	Statisticians	$79,290	26.7%	1,610	CI
12.	Dental Assistants	$34,900	24.5%	13,720	CRS
13.	Medical Assistants	$29,610	29.0%	26,990	CSR
14.	Actuaries	$94,340	26.1%	1,320	CIE
15.	Billing and Posting Clerks	$33,820	18.1%	18,780	CE
16.	Medical Records and Health Information Technicians	$34,970	22.1%	9,040	CE
17.	Bookkeeping, Accounting, and Auditing Clerks	$35,730	11.4%	37,000	CE
18.	Secretaries and Administrative Assistants, Except Legal, Medical, and Executive	$32,840	13.2%	58,760	CE
19.	Loan Officers	$61,420	7.7%	7,720	CES
20.	Social and Human Service Assistants	$29,230	21.8%	17,870	CSE