Guilt shows up in some interesting places. This week, as I began a short-term contract position, I encountered what can be described as “The Employed Person’s Guilt Syndrome“. My graduate studies in psychology along with my career development training made identifying lively names for career-related syndromes inevitable. Holding both career and human developmental perspectives required that I also create a “treatment plan” for this identified classification! After engaging in a very pleasant conversation with one [...]

While using most four-letter words is not the best move on your career path, there are two terms that will require your professional attention. Two of the scariest four-letter words in career development lingo must be G-O-A-L and P-L-A-N. Unlike those other four-letter words that can invoke a sense of giddiness and empowerment, these two little words seem synonymous with killjoy terms like drag and bore. Coincidentally, setting career goals and making action plans have [...]

I kept hitting a wall. Every time I thought about creating a 3 to 5 year career plan, my mind would simply go blank. I had no idea where to start on such a project. In fact, the whole idea of a 3 to 5 year plan seemed like a total drag to me. How the heck was I, a 22 year old, supposed to know what I’d be doing in 3 to 5 years? [...]

How can you know what you want Till you get what you want And you see if you like it? — Steven Sondheim, Into the Woods “I really want to be a business systems analyst” or “I see myself as a consultant when I grow up” would have never emerged from my mouth as a child or even as a teenager. Of course, I had never heard of a business systems analyst position or even [...]