Leave your dead end job…for good.Written by Max Stein
So here you are…stuck in a dead end job. Are you hitting glass ceiling in a job you once loved, but now can’t stand? Maybe hours are long. Maybe you can’t stand retail customers anymore. Maybe you’re like 70% of college students who didn’t earn a degree and you feel this is best job you can get without one. Take heart. There are a lot of great careers out there, especially for people who have some work experience. But how will you get trained and how can you go to school when you’re still working…after all you’ve got bills to pay, maybe kids, a car payment and a mortgage? A career college can train you and get you right certification to get into a better job and a better future. Career colleges offer relevant coursework, proper accreditation and flexible schedules to get you into a better career in medical, computer, paralegal or business fields. Usually there’s limited, or no waiting to take courses you need. Most programs take two years or less and some as little as six months! The fact that you’ve had some work experience, hopefully with increased responsibilities, will give you an advantage once you finish your schooling. Here are three occupational fields that are full of opportunity now and will continue to be over next decade.
| | The Mid-Life Challenge: Make a Plan to Re-ignite Vocational PassionWritten by Craig Nathanson
Nobody will stop you in hallway at work to ask if your career provides meaning and personal fulfillment. Recognizing that something’s missing in your vocational life and taking initiative to change must come from within. Serena Williamson found a way to turn her passion — helping writers hone their skills in order to get published — into catalyst for a new, more fulfilling life. Serena now runs her own small publishing house. Software engineer Bonnie Vining needed a new career that would value her warm personality, not suppress it. So she left high-tech world and opened Javalina’s Coffee and Friends. After Anita Flegg lost her engineering job, she embarked on a program of self-improvement. The journey led to personal discoveries and her calling: She provides information and support to those who, like her, suffer from hypoglycemia. I have found that many high achievers who lose enthusiasm for their work share common traits: - Their work has little connection to things they really care about. Work is a barrier rather than a path to fulfillment. - While they may be doing something they’re good at, it isn’t something they want to do. Unfulfilled professionals haven’t taken time to align their abilities with their interests. - They have never made a long-term plan to guide them toward a more fulfilling vocational life. They tend to set short-term goals, or set no goals at all. - As they reach mid-life and understand need for meaning, they turn to their current workplace as a source of what’s missing. Most organizations, though, are structurally incapable of providing nourishment for soul. So mid-life employee’s frustration grows. Mid-lifers like Serena, Bonnie, and Anita take stock of their lives and careers. They develop a plan to re-ignite their energy and enthusiasm for work. The process involves a number of steps, but common thread involves taking responsibility for making life changes. Here’s how: - Identify what’s most important to you, then develop and work a plan to get there. The plan should involve short-term goals that lead to a long-term objective. When Bonnie decided that engineering management was no longer for her, she applied discipline of corporate world to her new career: owning a gourmet coffee shop. Bonnie learned everything she could about specialty coffees and how to run a coffeehouse. She made good use of experts in field. She then moved quickly toward her goal of opening Javalina’s Coffee and Friends in Tucson, Ariz. The thorough approach increased her chance of success.
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