Are You Addicted to Career Advice?

Whether you're unemployed and looking for work or just poking around to see what opportunities are out there, one thing is for certain: the abundance of job-related advice articles is staggering. In fact, every day it seems that the major search engines and news channels posts at least one if not multiple new articles on how to change careers or find a job.

Most of them include an interesting twist -- the introduction to a job you never considered (i.e., elevator repair work), news about high paying careers that only require limited education (i.e., technical jobs that you may qualify for with a 2-year degree or 18-month certificate), jobs with a twist (i.e., telecommuting, developing industries, stimulus-related opportunities), or career moves that appeal to your own special interests (i.e., jobs in sports, creative jobs, green jobs, event jobs were you can shop or play video games and earn money.)

What's great about these articles is that they can open your horizons to something you may not have previously known about or considered. But in all fairness, most of them don't actually tell you who's hiring for these positions beyond a generalized reference (schools, hospitals, government agencies, etc.) or provide a step-by-step guide for getting from where you are to where you want to be. And ultimately, for career advice to be genuinely helpful, it needs to go beyond simply informational.

I enjoy these articles as much as anyone -- and I enjoy the writers who pen them. Many of them are colleagues who regularly call and quote me. If you're looking for inspiration or someone to give you a fresh idea, these articles are the best! But if you're serious about making a change, challenge yourself to take a genuine career assessment such as the Green Light Scoring Model and then begin investigating industry-specific career resources that can help you go from dreaming about your ideal job to actually obtaining it.

Did you know the 2010 Creating Job Security Resource Guide includes more than 130 industry-specific resources? It includes the Green Light Scoring Model. And it's available online and in a bookstore near you. www.CreatingJobSecurity.com