Maturity                                               Volume 1 Number 14

            Works     Newsletter        March 2004

maturityworksvictoria@canada.com                           http://maturityworksvictoria.50megs.com                 

 

Maturity Works Society is dedicated to support and inform all persons over 40 years of age concerned with employment and career options in our rapidly transforming socio-economic society.

 

Some Things You May Already Know

(Or May At One Time Have Known)

About Looking For Work,

 

But Which You Could Use A Reminder About

 

Information Interviews

By Tom Oak

 

So, you are looking for work or thinking that you want a better job.  How to begin?  A relatively benign way to get started and keep going on a job search is to set out to talk to people.  The information interview is a tried and truly effective way of making productive contacts in the vast and seemingly unknowable working world beyond your narrow personal experience.  Effective Job-hunting is a contact sport.

 

Most of us have a host of vague ideas that run through our heads about kinds of work, or sorts of workplaces, where we might like to work.  These thoughts generally run through our brains and scurry on away because we do nothing about them.  We don’t know where even to begin.  We fear that these are just pipe dreams, possibilities that are beyond us, and therefore not worth paying attention to.

 

And then, when you mention your dissatisfaction about your work – or lack of it -to a friend and they ask you, “What would you like to work at?” or “What is it that you really enjoy doing?” you stare back at them blankly.   You, it seems, have no idea.  No wonder, you allowed your ideas to scurry away!

 

When you get an intriguing idea grab it by asking some questions.  Who do you know who might know something about the electrical trade?  Teaching in a community college?  Starting an internet business?  Or gaining admission to a university?   Who, even, might know someone who might know something about this idea you have?  Seek out people who can supply you with answers.   This is what an information interview is all about.  Many times you may find that you have hit upon a dead end – it turns out that you are not qualified at this point (how would you get these qualifications?) or it may be that by talking to someone in, say, the electrical trade, you learn that that is not something you would enjoy doing.

 

Whether you encounter green, yellow, or red lights with your questioning you will, by having made a real contact, grabbed onto an idea.  Like climbing a wrung on a ladder, this will advance you one clear step forward in your job quest.  You will know something.  You will know more about where to go next.  You will have said to yourself, and to the world, “I have begun my journey to a better place!”

 

Next:

 

How to set up information interviews.

 

 

 

On the lighter side….

 

George Carlin's View on Aging

Do you realize that the only time in our lives when we like to get
old is when we're kids? If you're less than 10 years old, you're so
excited about aging that you think in fractions. " How old are you?" "I'm four and a half!" You're never thirty-six and a half. You're four and a half, going on five! That's the key.

You get into your teens, now they can't hold you back. You jump to
the next number, or even a few ahead. "How old are you?" "I'm gonna be 16!" You could be 13, but hey, you're gonna be 16!

And then the greatest day of your life . . . you become 21.  Even the words sound like a ceremony . . . YOU BECOME 21...

YESSSS!!!

But then you turn 30. Oooohh, what happened there? Makes you sound like bad milk. He TURNED; we had to throw him out. There's no fun now, you're just a sour-dumpling. What's wrong? What's changed?

You BECOME 21, you TURN 30, then you're PUSHING 40. Whoa! Put on the brakes, it's all slipping away! Before you know it, you REACH 50 . . . and your dreams are gone but  wait!!! You MAKE it to 60. You didn't think you would!  So you BECOME 21, TURN 30, PUSH 40, REACH 50 and MAKE it to 60.

You've built up so much speed that you HIT 70! After that it's a
day-by-day thing; you HIT Wednesday!  You get into your 80s and every day is a complete cycle; you HIT  lunch; you TURN

4:30; you REACH bedtime. And it doesn't end there. Into the 90s, you start going backwards; "I was JUST 92."

 

Then a strange thing happens. If you make it over 100, you become a little kid again. "I'm 100 and a half!"  May you all make it to a healthy 100 and a half!!