Building Habits

Have you ever thought about how many habits you have? The way you get up in the morning is a habit – do you press snooze, or jump right out of bed? The fact that you brush your teeth the way you do is a habit too – some people brush right after they get up, others after breakfast.

Maybe you are conscious of your many habits, but have you ever realized how much time and energy you save by following your habits? Think about how quickly and with so little effort it takes you to brush your teeth. When you compare this to the adventure of getting young children to brush theirs, you can see that creating a habit saves A LOT of time and energy!

A deer trail helps deer get to their destination faster. Something similar happens in your brain to make a habit

A habit begins in your brain: with neural pathways. This means information flows along certain synapses, creating a pathway. If you’ve ever found a deer or rabbit trail in the wilderness, you know what this means. When animals find the best way through brush or a forest, they take that path every time. The frequent use results in a discernable path. This discernable path is a habit.

When you react to a stimulus, think a certain thought, or behave in the same way multiple times, a little “deer path” is made in your brain. This makes that information easier to access. When you’re in that situation again, the same pathway is accessed. What does this mean for your memory?

Building Habits to Improve Memory

Building good habits in a smart way can free up a lot of brain space for you to learn new information and get more important work done. A habit the Career Profiler has established for herself is checking her email at the same time every day. She also encourages her clients to make all their phone calls at the same time – oftentimes, right after lunch is a good time to do this.

This is a memory tip in two ways:

1) Building habits creates brain space for memory, and

2) Habits help ensure important things don’t get lost in the fog. You can’t forget to answer an important email if you have a habit of taking care of emails every day at 9am!

Establishing simple habits for activities you have to do regularly helps you keep your life organized. In the same way that brushing your teeth takes next to no brain power, you can organize your unread messages and set aside the ones that need your immediate attention quickly and without effort.

“I’m done with forgetting appointments and making rookie mistakes!” We hope you are! Making habits can help you achieve this goal! If you need help establishing habits, get in touch the Career Profiler for a free consultation. She can walk you through the areas in your life that can use structures like habits. Building structures allows you free time and brain space to learn new things, start on new projects, or relax!

Do you have trouble setting goals? Or do people complain about you constantly staring off into space, dreaming about the future? Maybe, on the other hand, you are afraid of the future and try not to think about it at all.  These characteristics are all related to the aptitude Foresight. 

The Foresight aptitude basically answers the question, “How do I best set goals?” Your Foresight score can help you understand yourself. How do you think about the future, set goals, and take advantage of your strengths? Knowing the answer to these questions helps you find the job that you can perform best in – and the job you do well is the one that will make you happy! Foresight is one of the many abilities that determine happiness.

Knowing your Foresight score helps you make the most effective plans

Johnson O’Connor, a leading aptitude test researcher, says, “Those scoring high [in Foresight] should set long-term, challenging goals… Those scoring low seem to be more literal and immediate, good at getting things done in the here and now.”  

One of these descriptions may resonate with you immediately. It’s often easy to tell if someone loves dreaming about their 10-year plan or if they would rather just take it one step at a time.  

Testing for Foresight

No matter where on the spectrum you are, it’s important to take an aptitude test to be sure of your score. This is because it gives you more information and you can find out even more about yourself. For example, knowing your Foresight aptitude and your Ideaphoria score, you can find out your Divergent Thinking score. 

The Career Profiler most recommends The Highlands Ability Battery for finding out your aptitudes and abilities. The THAB calls Foresight “Time Frame Orientation.” They point out that depending on your score you may feel discouraged by working in an environment with no immediate payoff or reward. This puts you at serious risk of unhappiness and also keeps you from doing your best work. So take the test here today!

There are many reasons why someone looks for a new career. But regardless of the reason, one should always consider three main factors when looking for a new career.

1. Employment Projections

First of all, it is always prudent to consider employment projections for a potential new career. Look for a new career which is predicted to grow faster than the average. By doing so, you’ll improve your chances of getting hired, given that you have the right skills, experiences, and education or training. Check out the post on fastest growing industries in 2018. There’s also a post on the fastest growing jobs with low education requirements. The information here is a great place to get started to find data on growing industries.

Which new career is right for me?

However DO NOT choose a new career based on employment statistics alone. People who choose a new career solely on external factors such as employment projections often find that they are not well suited to their new career. As a result, it’s hard to succeed. They don’t get chosen for promotions, get a small bonus pay, and are often the poorest performers. In addition, when lay-offs come around, these employees are usually the first to go. Therefore, it is equally if not more important to consider personal, internal factors when deciding on a new career.

2. Career Interests

Secondly, finding out how your career interests (what you like) correlate to occupations is the best way to find a career you will enjoy and commit to in the long run. Most new career tests measure only interests. This is fine if you’re in the early stages of your career.  High school and college students should definitely complete at least one such test before choosing their college major. On the other hand, if you’re a working adult, an interest test can give you clues about where to begin the search for your new career. It is, however, typically inadequate as a stand-alone new career test. Why? Because no one chooses a new career based on “likes” alone. This is just a helpful starting point. There are plenty of other career tests that can help you find the best career for you. For example, the Bull’s Eye Career Program is a package of three tests that will give you almost everything you need to know about internal factors.

3. Internal Factors

Lastly, similar to the second point, your values, personality, and abilities or aptitudes play a large role as well. Let’s look at abilities or aptitudes first. Oftentimes we like careers for which we possess a natural ability. In other words, we enjoy work that we are naturally good at doing.

Maybe you’ve had a career that felt like an uphill battle, where you couldn’t master the techniques and nothing came easy. When this happens, it will be very difficult for you to be successful or happy. Therefore, it is useful to consider your abilities when choosing a new career. To find out why using aptitudes makes us happier, read this blog!

Many people have “demanding” abilities. These abilities unconsciously “demand” expression for themselves in a new career. If these abilities are not expressed, the worker will probably feel discontent or dissatisfied. Over time, this can slide into depression. Most people have at least one demanding ability. This is why it is absolutely imperative to take an ability career test before choosing a new career.

Personality

Your personality also plays a significant role in choosing a career. Personality career tests identify suitable careers based on more than your interests. They identify your career preferences. Career preferences account for the tendencies and predispositions of your working style. Therefore, your natural style of operating in a job is a crucial factor to consider when choosing a career.

Values play a subtle but powerful secondary role. What I mean by this is that you only notice how important your values are when you experience a career dilemma. The two most common career dilemmas are:

1. Feeling unsure about why a career does not sound perfect even though it should
2. When you can’t decide between two job opportunities.

Clarifying your values is the step that enables you to sort through the career dilemmas to reach a decision.

It’s a new year; I’m ready for a new career. What’s next?  

1. Get in touch with The Career Profiler to start your journey in understanding yourself. She will help you find the right tests to measure your abilities, personality, and interests. With all of this information we’ll make a career plan guaranteed to get you a job that makes you happy and successful. If you want to get a head start, take a new career test.
2. Find a career in which you can actually gain employment. Consult any of the blogs about finding a career in a growing industry. Don’t forget to combine the results of steps one and two. It is wisest to choose a job you will love and succeed in, as well as one where the likelihood of being hired is highest because it’s a growing industry.

The Importance of Growth Industries

If you’re looking for a new career or job, it’s easiest to find them in “growth industries.” An industry is a classification of work based on the company’s primary business activity. For example, an accounting company might have a consulting or litigation support practice, but their primary activity and source of revenue is from accounting practices. Therefore, “accounting practices” are their industry.

A growth industry is an industry that meets a certain percentage of growth criteria. This is based on percent of growth from one year to the next. This is a list of the fastest growing industries. 

The information presented here has been interpreted not by a journalist or newspaper editor, but by a career expert. Those seeking new careers in 2018 can use these employment forecast statistics as a guide in their new career exploration and decision-making. 

This ranking is based on the percentage of job growth; keep in mind that the percentage of growth is different than the number of new jobs. Some industries with greater percentage growth have less new jobs than industries with less percentage growth. You can expect to find the most jobs for your new career in the following sectors:

#1 Health Care and Social Services

#2 Construction

#3 Educational Services

#4 Professional and Business Services

#5 Transportation and Warehousing

How can I use this information?

It is best to seek a new career in an industry where there is both projected employment growth and a large number of new jobs over the next several years. These are only the top 5 industry sectors. You can use this information as only a part of the equation when seeking a new career. More information can be found here regarding 2020 employment projections.

The most important part of your job search is taking a reliable career test. There are many different types of tests that identify your best new career.  Just a few of these tests include:

• Personality Tests: The best Personality Tests when seeking your New Career. Personality Tests help you understand yourself and what kind of environment you need to work in.
• Interest Tests: The best Interest Tests for choosing a New Career. Interest Tests tell you what kinds of work you will find interesting and satisfying.
• Ability Tests: The best Ability Tests and Aptitude Test when you want a to find a New Career. An Ability or Aptitude Test tells you what your innate strengths are – this kind of test is vital to getting a job that makes you happy and successful.

Another thing you can do is continue on in the New Year, New Career series. If you are interested in making a large salary, read about the best paid growing careers!

Do you feel disinterested or lethargic? Never seem to find anything that holds your attention? Or maybe you’re a college student or wanting to go to college, but can’t settle on a major?  

If you’ve been keeping up with our blogs, you know by now that there are certain personal attributes and aptitudes that can lead to these feelings. Some of the solutions include expensive, complicated tests and consultations. But it doesn’t always have to be this hard! 

An Interest Test is one of the easiest, most straightforward ways of answering the question, “What do I want to do?” These tests are often used in schools, as early as middle school, to help students define their schooling.  But it’s not only for students.

Most often, people find that what they’re interested in is also what they’re good at. And chances are, if you’re good at something you have it as an aptitude! This is great news for you, no matter how old you are, because this has a lot to say about your career. 

Types of Interest Tests

Some Interest Tests generate a generic career list that most people with your interests are in. Others are more sophisticated and actually match you with a career. There are four major Interest Tests that The Career Profiler recommends:

1. Strong Interest Inventory: One of the most reliable interest tests. Helps you define and organize your interests, goals, and calling.
   

   Your Interest Test results can take the “shape” of the perfect career for you!

2. Campbell Interest Test: Specifically geared towards college students, this test gauges vocational interests and skills with the goal of making a career plan.
3. Career Occupational Preference System (COPS): This test clusters together different fields of study, careers, and activities. This helps people find the college major or career that’s right for them.
4. Self-Directed Search: Developed by John Holland, this test “matches your aspirations, activities, and talents to the career choices and educational opportunities that fit you best.”

The first two are the more sophisticated, thorough, and accurate tests. This means they are also more expensive. The second two are simpler and easier, as well as cheaper. Make an appointment with The Career Profiler to find out which one will best fit your needs.

Interest Tests organize your interests in a way that helps career direction emerge. For students, they help define course selection. Your results can also help you set goals and organize your time.  Whether you’re a teenager hoping to decide on a major or an octogenarian looking for a new hobby, an interest test might be the push in the right direction that you need!

Farmers are often portrayed in media as ignorant, dumb, or redneck. But, in fact, farmers are some of the most intelligent professionals in the world – though maybe not in the way you’re thinking.

Multiple Intelligences

Farming is a career that requires high scores in the innate Multiple Intelligences. If you are not familiar, multiple intelligences is a new model of intelligence assessment created by Harvard professor Howard Gardner. His 1983 publication “Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences” posited that rather than measuring intelligence through an IQ test, it is more accurate to measure seven different areas of intelligence: linguistic, mathematical, musical, visual-spatial, kinesthetic, intrapersonal, and interpersonal.

There is a more holistic way of measuring intelligence than an IQ score – these are the multiple intelligences

Gardner’s not the only one. Many other researchers agree with him, including Buzan and Keene who outlined ten different intelligences in “Buzan’s Book of Genius.” Johnson O’Conner, through his employer the General Electric Corp, pioneered the “human engineering project.” From that research, he was the first to document that certain “intelligences” are in fact innate.

The term “multiple intelligences” reflects what The Career Profiler understands as aptitudes or natural abilities. Knowing your aptitudes is NOT a useless piece of fluffy information! They actually determine what job will make you happy and successful!

When you really think about it, it’s not surprising that farmers need to be extremely capable of reasoning. The elements dictate their every move. No amount of education can prepare one for all those unexpected events. They must rely on their “common sense” or multiple intelligences to effectively deal with a host of novel twists they face every day. Farming is an extremely difficult, demanding job.

What does it have to do with me?

Finally, you may be wondering, “So what? I’m not a farmer!” But the theory of multiple intelligences show us that in every profession, the question is NOT “How smart am I?” but rather “HOW am I smart?”

Wondering HOW you’re smart? You can find out today! The short-cut: Take The Highlands Ability Battery. Or get a FREE consultation with the Career Profiler to find out what she’d recommend for your situation. There are a lot of options: a personality test, career test, interest test, or a combination! One of these might be the best way to find out HOW you are intelligent.

A word of caution: Testing helps you KNOW how you are smart. But individualized coaching can help you USE that knowledge to find the perfect career for you. Ready to be happy and successful in your career? Get in touch with The Career Profiler today.