A little while back, I had an eye-opening experience during a coaching session with my Parenting Coach - Not only about parenting, but also about job search. My goal in hiring her was very measurable and explainable: Show me how to get my son to take responsibility in the morning, get dressed on his own, make his own breakfast, and get to the bus on time. I dreaded being the nagging mommy; the walking reminder who no longer engaged in conversation; the mommy who barked orders instead - "What do you mean you can’t find your socks!" I begged her to help me work myself out of a job in the morning! "Achievable?" I asked her. "You bet!" She assured me. And, during that grueling (and, in parts, enlightening) exchange in which I took lots of notes and shed a few tears (over all my previous mistakes), I had an out-of-body, “aha” kind of moment: I had to get out of my son’s way and let him do his job. I’m an enabler. Finally, I get it. Without knowing it consciously, my son relied on me to fill his lunchbox with a healthy mix of celery (not too much) and meringues (more than one), his cereal bowl with the perfect blend of Kix and Chex, and his backpack with his logs, goodies, and notes for the teacher. He trusted that I would get him to school on time, without letting him suffer any logical or natural consequences. The morning was inadvertently a team sport; we were mutually responsible for getting him out the door on time. And, I never let him down. In the midst of my realization, it occurred to me job seekers often view job search in a similar way: a team sport. We hand off the job of “making our lunch” (getting a job) to others who say they will:
- Circulate our resume.
- Submit our resume to their corporate website.
- Look around for open positions for us and let us know if they see anything that looks like it would be a good match.
