It’s important to pick an occupation you love and have sufficient talent to do well enough to make a living. You need to find your “calling”. Our primary responsibility is to ourselves to be self-supporting. We are here to work for our food and shelter and have a great time in the process.
I urge you to view the
commencement speech by my old friend Mike Peters.
Many of our current college course offerings have few job openings and generally don’t pay well unless you started early and can get your own customers.
Students and those who don’t love their jobs should take some time to identify what they are good at and like to do. SIMA was the best test available. https://peoplemanagementsmd.com/whatissima.html SIMA required writing what I did well and enjoyed doing at ages 4 to 6, 7 to 10, 11 to 14, 15 to 20 etc. I urge everyone to do this.
In the 1970s and 1980s I used Associated Personnel Technicians APT Test for employee development. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3626111.
Students should take
occupational interest tests. I used the Kudor and Strong Campbell occupational
interest tests.
I used the DISC Personality
test in the 1970s and 1980s
I used the Myers-Briggs Personality test in the 1970s and 1980s. It measured extravert vs infrovert, judging vs perceiving, thinking vs feeling and intuiting. My pattern was ENTJ, Extrovert, Intuitive, Thinking and Judging.
I used Inner-directed vs
other-directed. My pattern was Inner-directed.
Inner-directed people tended to be more rigid and confident; they embodied certain Protestant ethic values and were motivated by individual aspiration and ambitions. The other-directed personality type aspired to be loved rather than esteemed. They wanted to feel in harmony with the opinions around them.
I used Transactional Analysis to reveal self-limiting behaviors. I read the book Games People Play, studied TA and taught TA.
I used personality styles in
the 1980s to identify the strong achiever, friendly helper and logical thinker
personalities. My pattern was Strong Achiever.
https://www.hiresuccess.com/help/understanding-the-4-personality-types
Students should take several tests and identify their best skills and interests before entering college
My own journey to doing what I loved to do came in 2 chapters, music and personnel.
I had musical talent that I used to pay my high school and college tuition. I was self-taught. I attended St. Louis University that offered a “classical education”.
When I was age 10, I recognized that our US business were infested with Mafia-dominated Unions and needed to remove the unions and develop employee teams and make antagonistic unions unnecessary. That became my “calling”. I had to understand people.
I wasn’t alone. Management Consultants like Deming and Psychologists like Abraham Maslow, Art Miller and others were developing models that worked. Companies were looking for college grads to join their Personnel Departments to develop teams.
Minors in Theology and Philosophy were required at St. Louis U. I majored in Psychology and minored in English. I had Physics and Chemistry in Hight School and repeated Chemistry and Math in college. I took Pre-Med courses and Graduate Seminars in Psychology. Most of my tests were essay tests. I viewed myself through school as a customer. In 1985, I completed a 2 year online Fellowship in Strategic Studies with WBSI.
The
following Philosophers identified successful principles in establishing
governments. These were my favorites:
Francis
Bacon – scientific method and self knowledge 1561-1626
John
Locke – natural rights 1632-1704
Montesquieu
- separation of powers 1689-1755
Voltaire
- free speech and religious freedom 1694-1778
Jean-Jacques
Rousseau - human nature 1712-1778
Adam Smith - capitalism economics 1723-1790
I also agreed with some more recent writers like Ranph Waldo Emerson self-reliance 1803-1882
I entered Personnel in 1967 and worked for 50 years until I retired in 2017. In the first 25 years I led the Personnel function for several companies. In the last 25 years I ran my own Consulting Practice.
My world-view in Personnel supported the US Constitution as originally written. The Constitution supported citizen property rights, free market capitalism and personal freedom under the rule of law. It required limited government. prices set by supply and demand. a meritocracy and a free private sector. In my career I supported continuous improvement, increased productivity through automation, high speed manufacturing, lean manufacturing, team development, profitable growth and individual employee development through testing and coaching. We need to return to these principles.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
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