Chapter 6
Strengths, Not Job Slots
“What do you want to be when you grow up?”
I hated this question as a child. I felt ignorant of my occupational options, of which I only really understood doctor, lawyer, teacher, and astronaut. It’s like an Eskimo asking someone from Florida what type of snow she likes the best. First, it doesn’t snow in Florida; second, there’s more than one kind?!
The notion of career counseling in high school is laughable, in my opinion. In my personal experience, it consisted of taking a test that narrowed down a list of occupations for which I might be suited. I stared at the final list blankly. I had no idea what most of the jobs were, and had even less of an idea how to learn more about them. I remember my career counselor gushing about the job of an actuary, part of her honorable attempt to entice me with lesser-known occupations: “If you like math, you’ll love this job!” Hmmm. . .what kind of math? And why would I like this? I had visions of doing math homework all day, every day; and though I liked math, I simply couldn’t muster any enthusiasm for the prospect of working at an insurance company, crunching numbers.
Hiring individuals in the workplace, no matter the profession or business, has tended to follow the same line of reasoning, and is just as fraught with meaninglessness as career counseling. It goes something like this:
1. Write a laundry list of job tasks and responsibilities to define a job slot, for which you are given headcount to fill. ...
