If you’ve ever heard the advice to follow your bliss, or if you do what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life and wondered to yourself, “Yeah, but how?”, then you need to learn about My Career Design Studio.

It is possible to do work you love and live a meaningful and fulfilling and abundant life, it just needs your attention and dedication to a path that takes you there. It’s not so much about searching for a job but designing your right-fit career and creating it.

Let’s compare the two methods.

Method 1: The Job Search

The job search method is pretty simple. You go onto job boards and see what’s there. You look at different job descriptions and ask yourself, “Can I do this?” If the answer is yes, then you apply for the job and wait to see if you get an interview. If you get the interview and then the job, you cross your fingers that the organization and your boss and your co-workers are all great, or at least tolerable. If not, then it won’t take too long before you start the job search process over again.

Method 2: Career Design

The career design method has a few more steps but ends up in a totally different outcome. To understand the method, let’s imagine that instead of a job seeker, you’re a mosaic artist and instead of a career, you’re designing and creating your epic masterpiece.

First, you’ll start by analyzing your Raw Materials. Mosaic artists can use tiles, or glass, or found objects. Before they start their masterpiece, they look to see exactly what they have to work with.

Once they’ve analyzed their Raw Materials, they draw a Napkin Sketch of different designs. They start to choose which Raw Materials they want to include and what they don’t. They try out different combinations before they actually commit to anything. It’s much easier to erase a design done in pencil than it is once glue and tile cutters get involved!

After they’ve played around with the Napkin Sketch, mosaic artists create a Design. They double check that they have everything they need, they ask for help and collaboration, and then they commit to making it happen!

To make their Design happen, the mosaic artist will use their Tools to create their masterpiece. And once they’ve completed it, they will add it to their Portfolio.

If you follow this path, you’ll end up with a job you love that supports the kind of life you want to live. You’ll work at an organization that connects to your values and a community of people who support and help you at every step.

And you’re in control of the entire process! No more waiting around to see if anyone wants you. Instead, you’ll be identifying the people you want to work for and using your strengths and persistence to make it happen!

My Career Design Studio uses the metaphor of a mosaic artist to transform you from a job seeker to a Career Designer. So let’s see how following the process of a mosaic artist and leads you to your right-fit career.

RAW MATERIALS

With My Career Design Studio, you’ll start by analyzing your Raw Materials, YOU! And although this is the natural place to start (how can you find a job you love if you don’t know what you want?), most people think this is idealistic, naive, or impractical. We should start with what earns us the most money or job security, right? But what really gets us money or job security? Generally, it’s being really good at what you do.

And how do you get really good at what you do? By doing it over and over and over.

And what do people generally do over and over and over? What they enjoy!

In the book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell gave the example of Bill Gates. Very few people have more money or job security than Bill Gates, but does that mean that everyone who is a computer programmer will end up filthy rich? Of course not! But Bill Gates used to snatch up as much time as he could get his Lakeside High School computer lab when personal computers were barely a thing. Why did he do this? Because there was something about programming that was compelling to him. Programming fit who he was. He didn’t program because he had to but because he wanted to.

Being incredibly good at something, even if that is being a generalist, is what gets you money and job security.

Enjoying what you do is what gives you job satisfaction. And joy! And meaning!

If you are going to design a career, you want to design it around who you are. So spend some time examining your Raw Materials so you can do that.

YOUR NAPKIN SKETCH

Because you’ll spend a huge percentage of your time at your job and because you’ll often have to gain specialized (and expensive) skills or degrees, you’ll want to play around with a few different ideas before you commit. Your Napkin Sketch allows you to do that.

Instead of starting with job titles, you’ll start with your Career Design Priorities, those aspects of a job that are most important to you. You’ll explore different options to see what matches you the most.

YOUR CAREER DESIGN

Once mosaic artists have sketched out the different possibilities, they can actually design their masterpiece and plan for its creation. Likewise, once you’ve explored your options a bit, you can start assembling your ideas into an actual career by gaining more information, comparing different job titles to your career priorities, talking to people, committing to a career path (at least for now) and investigating which organizations employ people like you.

Most artists don’t work in a vacuum. They collaborate, get advice, trade skills, and talk to other like-minded artists. They don’t consider this to be networking, but the actions are almost identical.

It’s fairly well known that the most effective way to get a job is through your network. Your network can also be an effective way to get a job you don’t like if you’re not clear about what you want.

When you design your career, you can share your vision with people that you know and ask them if they know anyone who does what you want to do or works at a company where you want to work. You can also use a site like LinkedIn to identify those people directly. That way when a job comes up, you’ll already know someone at the organization who can recommend you.

Here are two little known facts about getting a job:

1. Most jobs that are fulfilled are NEVER posted. They are internal hires, people found through recommendations, or jobs created to address a pressing issue for a person who can solve that issue.
2. If a job is posted and 100 people apply for it, a person who is qualified AND has the recommendation of someone in the organization, the chances of getting an interview go from 1 out of 100 to almost 100%.

This means that any strategy needs to include some focused and targeted networking. In addition to the job postings that you find online, explore companies that hire people like you. See if you have connections within those companies and if you don’t, find a way to make that happen.

Just like mosaic artists, career designers need to plan, connect, and research their options to ensure that their masterpiece will be all they envision.

YOUR CAREER CREATION TOOLS

A mosaic artist has tiles (or “tesserae” if you want to get fancy!), tile cutters, sponges, adhesives, and grout to create a work of art. A career designer needs an elevator speech, list of strengths and accomplishments, cover letter templates, and resume or CV, salary information, and interview preparation to land that dream job. This is where all the previous work comes together into a beautiful whole.

YOUR PORTFOLIO

Finally, an artist keeps photos of past pieces to show people looking for their specific talent. A smart career designer keeps track of past accomplishments for performance reviews or for the next job.

MY CAREER DESIGN STUDIO

My Career Design Studio guides you step-by-step through each stage so that you can identify your right-fit career, design your job search strategy, and build your next job, even if there are no job postings for what you want to do. You’ll tap into your creativity to overcome obstacles and you’ll gain stars, medals, and points along the way to track your progress and keep you motivated.

No artist works alone or without guidance. Neither should you! Sign up for your 7-day free trial and walk into your virtual design studio today!