Peak Careers

Professional Development for Career Practitioners

chance

Intentional Serendipity Can Be Surprising

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I met a person the other day and we ended up talking about how people discover jobs by accident.  His face lit up, “that’s exactly what happened to me!  In high school, I was thinking about engineering or joining the military and then I discovered machine tool.” 30 years later he was the CEO of a large machine tool company and now is a consultant in that field.

While on my honeymoon, I met the Director of a high school technical center.  I had no idea what a Vocational – Technical school was, but four months later,  I was working for him and my life was transformed forever with an understanding and appreciation of all kinds of occupations.

We all have stories about chance events that changed the course of our careers.  Then why is it that students and other clients continue to come in and ask to take “one of those assessments that tells me what to do”. The longer I am in this business, the less assessments I use.

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Unexpected opportunities

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dscn1932

In August 2012,  I backpacked the John Muir Trail / Pacific Crest Trail in California, a 195 mile backpacking trip with 2 great friends.  We have now hiked around 1400 miles of the PCT over the past 31 years but this section was amazing!

As you look at this beautiful picture of the mountains we hiked in, try to find the trail that lies ahead of us.  Every day we looked ahead for the trail and we usually saw something that looked like this picture.  Is the trail going to go up this valley to the left?  Or is it going to go up and around the far side of that tall peak in the middle?  Or will it head into the valley and go right before that peak?  Often we did not know for sure.

As people head down their own career path, they all too often cannot KNOW where the path will go exactly.  They can choose a direction but the actual path appears in a serendipitous manner.   We need to help our clients embrace serendipity,  “discovering opportunities by accident”.  We need to help them be open to possibilities that lie ahead.  We can help our clients plan a path, but we need to be open to the possibility that it may not lead to exactly what we thought.  It may veer to the right or left, but I can say that it will take us somewhere.  And that “somewhere” may turn out to be even BETTER than the original path.

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