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Louri Boilard, Distinct Career, Manchester, NH

By Tony Deblauwe

 

According to Marci Alboher, author of One Person/Multiple Careers, the emerging profile for many job seekers looking to shake up their careers is to add a "slash" to their primary occupation. For instance, a financial analyst who, in her spare time, enjoys writing fiction, playing in a band, gardening, and gourmet cooking becomes an analyst/novelist/musician/horticulturist/chef. The approach is simple - instead of leaving one job that provides a steady income base, but is otherwise stalled, the slash approach allows people to create custom competencies and work skills without making risky leaps into new ventures. The benefit of this approach allows job seekers or career changers to evaluate all their options before making a move without the pressure of jumping from one job to another and abandoning personal growth, professional development, and a steady income. 

 

The concept of "slashing" is not new. In fact, The U.S. Labor Department reports that 7.9 million Americans hold multiple positions, however, the reason for it has shifted. Multiple careers were done primarily for financial necessity, but now people "slash" their career to embrace and pursue multiple facets of their personality. The concept of "do what you love and the money will follow," takes on a new meaning because now people can keep one foot in their core professional area, while the other foot, hand, or head is busy building up skills in other fields of interest while maintaining financial comfort. This new approach to leveraging both monetary and personal rewards through multiple careers creates challenges and opportunities for career service specialists who must provide a quality product or service amidst a potentially unstructured set of client needs.

 

In order to handle the slash career profile properly, a service provider has to tease out a client's intentions and purpose. Asking the right questions of your client will help you guide the conversation in the right direction whether you are a resume writer or coach. For instance, if your client feels stalled or bored, focus your client's thinking on how his or her different career interests integrate so that they can be leveraged into beneficial outcomes. The following questions provide a few examples of how to tap thoughtful touch points with your client:

 

· What is it about your current job or career that is not rewarding?

· What aspects of your professional role generate excitement and challenge?

· What activities do you engage in "on the side" that can be integrated into a work setting?

· What can you do to organize your multiple career attributes into professional and personal goals that have both short-term and long-term results? 

 

Addressing up-front where your client's professional goals end and personal interests start, clarifies your client's true aspirations. A slash career client must be guided to understand that success with a multiple career profile requires more than simply stringing together a hodgepodge of interests, but focusing and aligning those interests to create a solid job or career plan. The importance of identifying the thinking and process of slash careerists will ultimately help you give better customer service and stay on top of career trends.

 

Technology companies seem to embrace the slash trend more and more. Google, for example, prefers candidates whose resumes show a strong balance between career and personal achievements. Bucking traditional resume formats, Google often regards volunteer experience and hobbies as a higher commodity above technical skills. They want a holistic employee who is the grand sum of the parts since personality, as well as work achievements, drive innovation and creativity. 

 

Understanding what slash careerists want to achieve, and balancing their core needs with emerging talent trends, increases the stakes of what career service delivery personnel can offer. With new generations of workers not feeling bound to traditional job hunting or career advancement, the way of the slash careerist is fast becoming the modus operandi. Fortunately today's service providers play a key role in helping change the new job seeker paradigm, and in the process, add a slash or two to their toolkit.