Career Opportunities with Douglas E. Welch

From "A Year of Opportunity" - Career Opportunities Podcast with Douglas E. Welch) Watch this entire presentation    Building a successful career in 2014 requires that we focus on 3 things this year, including: 1. Attracting Opportunity 2. Recognizing Opportunity 3. Accepting Opportunity Join Douglas E. Welch for deeper exploration of the Year of Opportunity and what it can bring for you! Thomas Edison is quoted as saying ""Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." This is still true today. Work that expands our lives and careers should be sought out and embraced, even if there is a bit of hard work involved. In fact, most opportunities worth pursuing require hard work of some sort. Life doesn't often give you gold simply for being you. You need to share your knowledge and show your worth and this often means some long hours, if not actual physical labor. Douglas is writer and host of Career Opportunities, a long running column and podcast dedicated to "Helping to Build the Career You Deserve!" Career Opportunities began in 1997 as a magazine column and expanded to a podcast in 2004. Douglas is also a New Media Consultant, Technology and Career Consultant with over 30 years experience in high-tech. You can find all of Douglas' work at DouglasEWelch.com. Follow CareerTips on Twitter Circle Career-Op on Google+ Like Career-Op on Facebook

  From "A Year of Opportunity" - Career Opportunities Podcast with Douglas E. Welch) Watch this entire presentation   Building a successful career in 2014 requires that we focus on 3 things this year, including: 1. Attracting Opportunity 2. Recognizing Opportunity 3. Accepting Opportunity Join Douglas E. Welch for deeper exploration of the Year of Opportunity and what it can bring for you! Thomas Edison is quoted as saying ""Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." This is still true today. Work that expands our lives and careers should be sought out and embraced, even if there is a bit of hard work involved. In fact, most opportunities worth pursuing require hard work of some sort. Life doesn't often give you gold simply for being you. You need to share your knowledge and show your worth and this often means some long hours, if not actual physical labor. Douglas is writer and host of Career Opportunities, a long running column and podcast dedicated to "Helping to Build the Career You Deserve!" Career Opportunities began in 1997 as a magazine column and expanded to a podcast in 2004. Douglas is also a New Media Consultant, Technology and Career Consultant with over 30 years experience in high-tech. You can find all of Douglas' work at DouglasEWelch.com. Follow CareerTips on TwitterCircle Career-Op on Google+Like Career-Op on Facebook

Get this entire series (and added content) in the Kindle book, "Cultivating Your Career Reputations"! You don't need a Kindle to buy or read. Kindle book are usable via web browser and Kindle apps for your computer, Android and iOS (iPhone/iPad) devices. Read and listen to the first column in this series, Cultivating Your Career Reputations. You may not think about it on a daily basis, but your life is filled with decisions, both large and small. You decide when to get up, what to eat, where you work, who you befriend and who you marry. Unfortunately, when it comes to work, we often spend a lot of our time avoiding important decisions. There are many reasons for this, but your lack of decision-making abilities can directly effect your overall reputation and your chances for success. Listen to this Podcast   Post a Job! $20 for 7 days Read the Kindle book using your Kindle, Computer or Mobile device!    Why is it so easy to avoid making decisions? Simply because, by avoiding decisions we think we are avoiding failure. If we never choose one project over another, we never have to explain why a project failed. If we never write the book, we don’t have to explain why it wasn’t better. We risk nothing because we never make even the simplest decisions. Of course, I am sure you can already see the fallacy behind the concept. If you fail to make any decisions, you are risking your entire job at a very fundamental level. Failing to make decisions can reduce your productivity to nearly zero as you waffle between one choice and another. You spend so much time thinking about your decisions that you never get anything done. The term “analysis paralysis” is often applied in these cases. You continue gathering more and more data, in hopes of making a decision, but all that data does is make your choice less clear. Like a dog, you chase your tail around and around without ever catching it. I see this frequently in technology workers and their corporate departments. They want to make the “perfect choice”, but the simple fact is, there is no such thing. We can only make the best choice of a computer, printer or digital camera in the present. Sure, a newer, better model might come out tomorrow, but if you are constantly waiting for the “next big thing” you will find yourself waiting forever. The biggest danger in avoiding decisions is that your peers and your boss will eventually start making decisions for you. They will refuse to have their productivity stunted by your lack of decisions. Then you will be saddled with decisions you might otherwise have avoided. In this case, your attempts to avoid a bad decision will place you in exactly the position you most dreaded. As I mentioned in my column a few weeks ago, you can either “do” or “have something done to you.” Failing to make a decision abdicates your role and allows others to do with you as they wish. You might not think of it, but your inability to make decisions effects far more than just you. No matter where you work, there are those around you who depend on your decisions. They are waiting on an answer so they can continue with their own work. Failing to make important decisions leaves them in a bad position with their management and their peers. If they are constantly telling their boss that they are waiting on information from you, their boss may come to think that their worker simply isn’t doing their job. While it may become clear, after a while, that you are the source of the information bottleneck, you will have already damaged someone else’s reputation with their manager. While you might eventually be fired for your inaction, chances are, you will also be risking the jobs and careers of those around you. If you want to move your career forward, you need to build a reputation for decision-making. This doesn’t mean you rush into decisions without considerable thought, only that you make the best decisions you can, based on the best information you have today.

Get this entire series (and added content) in the Kindle book, "Cultivating Your Career Reputations"! You don't need a Kindle to buy or read. Kindle book are usable via web browser and Kindle apps for your computer, Android and iOS (iPhone/iPad) devices. Read and listen to the first column in this series, Cultivating Your Career Reputations. There are many reputations that collectively make up your overall reputation. First in line for discussion is a reputation for fairness. What is fairness and how does it impact our work, our careers and our lives? Our usual introduction to fairness is as a child. You often hear younger children proclaiming, "That's not fair!" to parents and their friends when something doesn't go their way. As children, though, life is inherently unfair. We are under the control and guidance of adults and sometimes the only answer they can give for their actions is, "because I said so." As we grow older the concept of fairness grows. We know when someone is not playing fair. We can tell in the ways they act and talk. We learn that fairness is an important concept in interpersonal relationships, especially work, and those that transgress it are shunned, even though they might rise to high levels. While they might achieve great success in their work, they pay for their lack of fairness in other ways. Listen to this Podcast   Post a Job! $20 for 7 days Read the Kindle book using your Kindle, Computer or Mobile device!    How do you build a reputation for fairness? In some ways, what you don't do is as important as what you do. First, fairness means treating every person equally as an individual. We all have people we like and people we don't. We can find ways to gather people around us that we respect, but the moment we start denigrating others, solely to enhance our own position, we are failing a fundamental fairness test. Firing someone, or getting them fired, simply because we don't like them is wrong. If you can truthfully point to poor work performance or other behaviors that prevent them from doing their job, that is another issue. Too often, though, people will exaggerate issues or create them out of whole cloth, simply to remove someone they don't like. If we allow our favorites to break rules, while simultaneously punishing others for the same infractions, we are also no longer being fair. If we forgive the failings of our friends, but harshly condemn those same failings in our enemies, we are being hypocritical, as well. Transgressions are the same, no matter who commits them. To act otherwise shows a lack of fairness in how you deal with others.Don't punish others for thoughts, politics or culture that might be different from yours. I have often seen situations where a difference of opinion on a non-work related issue colors a work relationship. We cannot possibly agree on everything, but if those opinions do not effect work or the work environment, they must not be used to punish others. Taking responsibility for your own actions and mistakes is the epitome of fairness, If you are actively trying to blame your failures on others, or hiding your mistakes so that someone else takes the blame, you are not being fair. Yet, this happens all the time. Some of the worst examples are when people withhold the information that their part of a project is behind schedule or failing. It is only when others, who are depending on them, try to assemble the whole that your failings are discovered. The unfairness lies in the fact that your lack of openness has left your co-workers with no time to develop new options, no way to try and salvage the situation. You have truly abandoned them. Do you see yourself in any of these examples? All of us, from time to time can forget the importance of fairness in our work and in our lives, but I believe a reputation for fairness is one of the core elements that make up a great reputation. When you treat others fairly, they are more inclined to return the favor.

You spend a lot of your work time making people happy. You try to make customers happy with your products and services. You try to make your boss happy with your productivity, sales or designs. You try to keep your spouse and family happy. Throughout your day, you tend to focus on the happiness of everyone but the most important person in your life -- you. I know it can sound selfish, but it can be very difficult to make others happy if you are not   happy yourself. Constantly serving and pleasing others can be an ever diminishing well if you don’t do something for your own happiness on occasion. Since most of you are probably pretty good at pleasing others, let’s talk a little about how to build your own career and life happiness so you have more to give to others.  Listen to this Podcast One-To-One Career Consulting Now available exclusively to Career Opportunities readers and Listeners. Click for more information and pricing  Often in the past here at Career Opportunities I have talked about the concept of self-preservation. I am a firm believer that in order to help others, you need to be in a good place yourself. Thinking about yourself. Doing what you need. Building the life and career you deserve isn’t selfish, it is simply stoking the fires that will warm those around you. Anyone who spends their lives pleasing others only will eventually find themselves filled with resentment and anger and lacking the energy to do anything at all. I don’t want any of you to find yourself in this position. I want you to grow in both success and happiness. Schedule it! The first and perhaps most important task for you today is to establish scheduled times just for you. This might mean visiting a museum, dedicated time to read a book or listen to music, taking a class to expand your education. It matters little what it is, as long as it brings some happiness to you. Make these times inviolable. (Def: never to be broken, infringed or dishonored) I like the use of the word dishonored in this definition. I think is is dishonorable to deny yourself some small piece of happiness within your world. Tell your friends and family you going to church, the doctor, anywhere that will make them believe you are out of contact for a period of time. The fact is, you will be out of contact, just perhaps not in the way they think. Happiness has a way of being postponed unless we set aside time to embrace it. Life is too crazy, too harried, to full sometimes and it is easy to push our own needs to the background. Don’t do it. Get out your calendar -- right now -- and schedule a one hour date with yourself within the next 5 days. I know you can find the time, if you try. More importantly, I know you NEED the time, so do it. Discover There are times when life is so stressful that it can be difficult to even think of activities that might be fun. You can get so worn down that all you can seem to do it sit and think of nothing. It can be difficult to find enough motivation to even think of going anywhere, let alone taking the action necessary to do it. In these cases, you need to start small. Get dressed. Put on your shoes and simply walk outside. Walk around the block. Smell the air. Look at the trees, the buildings, the people. Moving is the most important aspect. Once moving, you tend to stay moving. The longer you sit in a chair, the more likely you will remain sitting. If you can get yourself up and out of your house, I find that new ideas, new thoughts and new activities will come to you. Maybe you could walk down to the new coffee shop on the corner, find a new shopping district you’ve never visited before, walk around the park that you never seem to visit, even though it is only 2 blocks away. Movement is the one small action you need to take in order to get the ball rolling. If you can do that, you can do almost anything. Take a few short moments out of each day to think about your own happiness and how you can find and enhance it.

Get this entire series (and added content) in the Kindle book, "Cultivating Your Career Reputations"! You don't need a Kindle to buy or read. Kindle book are usable via web browser and Kindle apps for your computer, Android and iOS (iPhone/iPad) devices. Today marks the beginning of a series of columns on what I consider a very important topic...your reputation. You will notice above though, that I use the plural form, reputations, in the title. While we often talk about one, monolithic, reputation, I believe that there are a series of reputations that make up the whole. Each column in this series will focus on one particular reputation that makes up your overriding reputation. By examining each one in detail, I hope to provide you specific areas where you can alter and improve your work, your actions and your thoughts so that your overall professional reputation grows. Listen to this Podcast //   Post a Job! $20 for 7 days Read the Kindle book using your Kindle, Computer or Mobile device!    It is often said that you can't "do" projects, you can only do the individual tasks that make up the project and achieve the desired result. The same can be said for reputation. You don't build your reputation as a whole, you cultivate the smaller reputations that create it. Each individual action builds your reputation in unique ways and each requires some thought in regards to how they relate to the whole. Over the next several weeks, I will be focusing on the following reputations, and perhaps more, as I am sure that each column will effect those that come after. That said, here are the major points I will be covering in the coming weeks. A Reputation for Fairness Do you deal fairly with those around you? Are your choices self-serving ones, driven by politics, fear and greed? Do you expect more from those around you than you yourself are willing to give? A Reputation for Honesty Do you tell the truth...all the time? Do you hide problems until it is too late? Do you face up to mistakes and are you prepared to correct them? Do you simply tell others what you think they want to hear? A Reputation for Decision-making Do you make decisions quickly or are you mired in the depths of analysis paralysis? Are you prepared to make mistakes, as everyone does, knowing it is a natural part of success? Are you prepared to decide, even when it means you might fail? A Reputation for Empathy Do you truly feel for those around you? Can you place yourself in their shoes when it is time to make tough decisions? Are you isolated, Marie Antoinette-style, from those around you, making decisions in a vacuum, where your only thought is how it effects you? A Reputation for Clear Thinking Is your thinking muddled and confused? Can you find your way through the confusing fog of conflicting goals, data and thinking? Do you allow others to tell you what to think instead of thinking yourself? Can you keep your head when all about you are losing theirs? A Reputation for Trustworthiness Can people trust you...all day...every day...no matter the temptations that you might face? Do you abuse people's trust while exhibiting little of your own? Are you a hard-bitten cynic who expects the worse from those around you? A Reputation for Helpfulness Are you ready to chip in and help someone, even if it isn't "your job?" Do you look for opportunities to help others, even when they might not realize they need help? Do you accept help from others easily? A Reputation for Clarity Do your co-workers understand your projects, your goals, your directions or is your work a constant litany of misunderstandings, recriminations and a struggle to make things clear? A Reputation for the Big Picture...and the small Are you able to see the Big Picture of a project and all the individual pieces that make up that project? Does your focus always fall on your area of strength, allowing other segments to falter and fail? A Reputation for Balancing Work and Self

As we develop our careers our focus narrows more and more over the years. We find our niche and develop it more and more carefully. We specialize in fewer and fewer skills until we have our career honed to a razor-like sharpness. This has long been the...

If you want to truly endear yourself to your family, your co-workers, your boss, you business partners, your investors, everyone -- endeavor to never ask the same question twice. When you ask a question of anyone, no matter who, make sure you capture the answer to that question for future reference. Even if you think you might never need that answer again, write it down. The fact is, you never know when or if a question is going to pop up again, so always err on the safer side and take notes so you never have to ask that question again.  Listen to this Podcast One-To-One Career Consulting Now available exclusively to Career Opportunities readers and Listeners. Click for more information and pricing  Why is asking the same question twice (more) such an issue? The problem doesn’t reside in the question itself but rather what it says about you as a person and your relationship with others. First, I think that asking the same question multiple times shows a lack of respect for those around you. You think it is easier to ask the person each time you need the answer instead of taking the time to learn the answer yourself. Instead of letting this person be a teacher or a mentor you are using them as the human equivalent of a filing cabinet. Even worse, your repetitive requests for the same answer impacts their work and takes their time away from solving the problems they need to solve. In some ways it shows that you think your time is worth more than theirs and that is simply rude. Second, asking the same question more than once exhibits poor organizational and work skills to those around you. In any work situation, you want to demonstrate that you have the ability to grow in your work. You want to show can learn new skills and grow as an employee. Constantly asking the same questions makes it appear you either can’t, or don’t want to learn. Either of these is deadly to your career. Your managers will begin to question your worth and your co-workers will start to shun you. In many ways, you’ll simply become too much of a burden to keep around. So, how do you retain and learn from all your questions? You first need to capture the questions and the answers you receive. I still carry a paper journal around for just such occasions. Even though I am big user of technology, it is often easier to jot down notes using pencil and paper than pulling out your smartphone or computer. Sure, you can enter the most important items into some computer system later, but capturing your questions and answers is always the first priority. Yes, it is easy to get wrapped up in solving a problem and forget to record the solution, but you are doing no one any favors when you do that. Help yourself and those around you by capturing this important information so you never have to ask for it again. You also want to think about the answers you receive and see what new knowledge you can gain from them. Often one answer has many different applications in our lives far outside the area of the original question. Too often we move so quickly through life that we don’t take a moment to actually learn something. We ask the question, get the answer we need and then dash off to the next problem in line. If we don’t take a moment to actually think about our life and work, take a moment to actually learn something, we condemn ourselves of an endless treadmill of one question after another. Ask questions in order to learn something, not just solve the problem at hand. I am sure we have all met, and even worked with, people who constantly ask you the same question again and again. We all know how frustrating that can become and yet we can sometimes do it ourselves, if only in smaller ways. Don’t ask the same question twice, if you can avoid it or unless you have a very good reason. Capture the answers you receive, put them to use and learn from them. If you do everyone will benefit - you, your coworkers, your business, your family. Most importantly,

It is rare for life to present you with a simple either/or situation. Normally, life is lived in shades of grey – an almost infinite set of possibilities. That said, while talking over career problems with some friends last night, we stumbled across a dichotomy that every careerist faces today. In your career, and in your life, you can either “do something” or have something done to you. You can either control your career or let someone else dictate what you do and when you do it. Listen to this Podcast Post a Job! $20 for 7 days Books by Douglas E. Welch    This dichotomy occurs whether you are working in a traditional corporate environment or for yourself. It doesn’t matter whether you are the most senior or the most junior member of the staff. We all have the power of “doing”, but if we fail to exercise that power, then we give up any chance of controlling our own career. As my friends and I talked last night, I noticed one important aspect to our conversation. From the very start, we were focusing on the externalities of the situation. This person, this company, this organization was causing these particular problems for us. Once I realized this, I tried to bring the conversation around to internal strengths, weaknesses and threats. In the end, we only truly have control over ourselves and our own actions. If we focus our attention there, we will always have more effect. This is true for one important reason – while it is very difficult to change ourselves, it is nearly impossible to change others. They have to come to their own decisions about their lives and careers. You can only provide a good example and show them how life can be different. You can’t force them to change; you can only show them a path. Sure, it can be very distressing to realize that you can’t have a direct impact on a situation that pains you greatly. We all see problems and injustices of varying levels, but they often require drastic or dangerous actions to effect them, if you can effect them at all. By focusing on ourselves and our actions, we can start the process moving in the best way possible. This also helps to prevent problems from devolving into acrimonious, personal battles that distract from the true problem at hand. Let me be clear, “doing it” has nothing to do with taking advantage of others or engaging in unethical or criminal behavior. You are not trying to gain advantage at someone else’s expense, you a simply trying to build the best career you possibly can. The fact is, others have the power of “doing” just like you do. If they decide to abdicate that role, and let life happen to them, there is little you can do to stop it. Neither should it stop you from taking those steps that are most important to you. Otherwise, we become a passive society, each waiting for someone else to tell us what to do. I only need point to history to show how dangerous such and environment can become. When the majority of the people are passive, there will always be those who will take advantage and turn the company, the corporation or the state to their own ends. So, what form does this “doing” take? If you are in a corporate environment, there are several ways you can take action. If you are happy with the company, then you can work to cement your position in the company by reinforcing and enhancing the company’s goals. Building the company builds your job and your career. Additionally, in order to protect yourself against unforeseen changes, you should also have several independent projects in the works. Perhaps you can take a hobby and find some way to build this into your own business, or act as a consultant to other, non-competing companies, or set yourself up as an expert in a particular field to bring you income and prestige in your industry. Regardless of the form it takes, like any good stock investor, you need to diversify your activities and find those places where you “do” on a regular basis. If you are already a freelancer,

  Building a successful career in 2014 requires that we focus on 3 things this year, including: 1. Attracting Opportunity 2. Recognizing Opportunity 3. Accepting Opportunity Join Douglas E. Welch for deeper exploration of the Year of Opportunity and what it can bring for you! Thomas Edison is quoted as saying ““Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.” This is still true today. Work that expands our lives and careers should be sought out and embraced, even if there is a bit of hard work involved. In fact, most opportunities worth pursuing require hard work of some sort. Life doesn’t often give you gold simply for being you. You need to share your knowledge and show your worth and this often means some long hours, if not actual physical labor.

The day has arrived. I can no longer pretend I am 25 anymore, even if my mental age seems stuck around that time. This weekend I turned 50 and while it certainly wasn’t unexpected, it can be a little challenging sometimes. This is especially true when ...

The world is changing as it always has and the work world is no exception. There are careers available today that have never existed before while careers that have been around for decades are rapidly disappearing. Today, though, I am seeing deeper chan...

As a long time career writer, I read a lot about careers. I follow career advisors and HR professionals on social media,  read their blogs, browse magazines and other sources. One common source of career advice are human resources (HR) professionals. T...

Over the course of any career, you are sure to have complaints both large and small. It is a simple fact of life that our work is not always perfect. That said, some people can fall into the role of the constant complainer – someone who always has a complaint at hand, ready to toss it into any conversation, whether appropriate or not. Worse still, these people can lead others down the wrong path and enable them to become a constant complainer, as well. Now, this is not to say that you will never have anything to complain about, but complaining without thinking or attempting to resolve your problems first is absolutely worthless. Complainers that rebut any attempt to help them out of their situation, or those that constantly find one problem after another, will soon find themselves outcast by both their co-workers and possible even their company. You need to make sure that if you have a complaint, you are the first one to offer up possible solutions to the problem. Your initial solutions might not work, but they pave the way for others to get involved and work on the problem with you. Constant complainers can sometimes get their problems resolved, but it is usually out of the frustration of others than any sincere attempt to solve the problem itself. Listen to this Podcast Post a Job! $20 for 7 days Books by Douglas E. Welch    Complaining can be dangerous to everyone in a company, as well. It has a way of spreading throughout a company if left unchecked. Even the smallest complaints can take on a life of their own, especially if there are some accomplished complainers to keep the issue alive. Complaining can also be dangerous to you individually, too. There have been times in my career when I have had to actively avoid some co-workers in order to remove myself from a bad situation. You have to be aware of what is happening and short circuit the complaint cycle if is becoming unproductive. Otherwise, you run the danger of being lumped together with the complainers when management decides to address the issue. The fact is, management could decide to remove the constant complainers rather than address the source of the complaints. Due to all these issues, it can be very helpful to have outside resources to discuss your career and work complaints. In this way, you can work towards resolving your issues without effecting your day-to-day reputation. I consider this the best of both worlds. In some cases, this might be your friends who work for other companies, your mentor or anyone with a kindly ear. I know I often call upon my friend, Sam, when I am facing a difficulty with a client. He knows me well enough to offer good advice and knows that I will accept that advice without reservation even if I can’t act on it, at the moment. Sometimes, the most important thing we need is simply someone to listen. To offer up another resource for discussing your career issues, I recently started a regular Career Complaints topic on the Career Opportunities forums at forums.friendsintech.com. Here you can discus your career issues, work issues, fears and wishes with a dedicated group completely disconnected from your workplace. I only have one stipulation for this forum, beyond the usual requests to be professional and polite. If you have a career complaint, you have to have one thought, one idea, one plan on how you can address the issue before you bring it up in the forum. I know, sometimes it can be difficult to see your way out of a problem when you are buried inside it, but by looking for one possible change, no matter how small, it forces you to think about your problem as unemotionally as possible. It is in this conscious thought that you find the beginning of a solution. This is as true for life as it is for your career. Don’t worry, though, I will respond to any posts to this forum area and your fellow Career Opportunities readers and listeners are sure to chime in, as well. You won’t be alone.

Even in this year of 2014, I still meet lots of people, either just entering college or just finishing, who think that their time in college was intended to just get them a job. Like following some class rubric, they put in the time, check the checkboxes and expect to be hired within weeks. While I don’t think a college degree ever necessarily worked this way in the past, I think it is even less true to today. You don’t go to college to get a job. You go to college to learn facts and skills that you can apply to any number of jobs when the time comes. You never can tell what curves you will be thrown in your life and trying to learn just those items you need to a specific job could leave you unemployed once you graduate.  Listen to this Podcast One-To-One Career Consulting Now available exclusively to Career Opportunities readers and Listeners. Click for more information and pricing    Books by Douglas E. Welch      If you want to make yourself most employable -- and who doesn’t -- you need to think about your career in a wider sense. You aren’t going to graduate to be an accountant. You are going to graduate to be someone who works with numbers in a business settings. The range of jobs outside the typical scope of “accountant” is far greater than within. If you focus too tightly or too closely on any specific job, you could be greatly limiting your opportunities. Even in a role as specific as an architect, there are an infinite number of gradations and colorations to the job you might eventually find. If you only have one idea of what it means to be an architect, you are going to find your job opportunities very limited. Even worse, your concept of what an architect “is” might not even exist by the time you reach the job market. Look at the changes that have occurred in all areas of work and you will see this is not that farfetched an idea. Entire swathes of jobs and careers have been virtually eliminated in the last 20 years. You must be aware of this and direct your education accordingly to provide for the greatest opportunity once you emerge. You need widely applicable skills No matter what your area of study, general or specific, scientific or artistic, high-tech or high-touch, you are best served by developing skills that are widely applicable to any number of jobs. Sure, if your interest lies in architecture or engineering there will be some very specific facts and skills you will need, but you also need to consider others. A few that come to mind include presentation skills and the ability to speak in front of others -- and do it persuasively. There isn’t one architect who doesn’t need these skills to help insure their projects get built and yet these same skills apply to any job you might seek. The fact is, the job and career you develop after you leave college often little resembles the career you might have envisioned. Life and reality have a way of pushing us about sometimes. Maybe you can’t or don’t want to move outside the area where you grew up. That puts immediate limits on the available jobs. Perhaps you discover during college you aren’t that fond of certain aspects of your chosen work. You are going to have to seek out jobs that better suit your wants and needs. This changes things yet again. By developing widely applicable skills, you gain the freedom to bob and weave your way through your life and career, just like an expert basketball or football player. When you have enough skill and education, you can zig one way while everyone else is zagging the other. This is what will allow you develop the career you deserve instead of settling for whatever life hands you. If college fills you with unneeded skills or skills for a particular type of work you dislike, it blocks you out of certain jobs and careers and can even leave you feeling trapped by decisions you made 4-6 years ago. While colleges, advisors, your friends and family, will often counsel you to focus on a very specific goal, job and career,