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A job that didn't fit
After a San Francisco interview for an entry-level analyst job, where a feeling like two hands around her throat set in halfway through, Dia Bondi spent a year working out what she did want. She had no job title for the qualities she was after, which made it hard to name.
Telling everyone
So she did a lot of informational interviews and talked to everybody about what she was up to, including her challenges and what she wanted present in her life. She treated the audiences she had as people worth being generous with.
The introduction
Through someone in a room she connected with a founder who ran a small consulting and coaching practice. That founder kickstarted the career she has had for 25 years. It would not have happened if she had kept the search to herself.
Why do people underestimate how willing others are to help?
Frank Flynn and Vanessa Lake tested this in a 2008 study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Participants asked strangers for small favors, such as borrowing a phone or filling out a questionnaire, and predicted how many would agree. The actual number of people who said yes was far higher than predicted, by as much as 50 percent in some of the experiments. Those asking focused on the awkwardness of the request, while those asked weighed the discomfort of saying no.
How do people figure out what job they want?
Organizational scholar Herminia Ibarra studied career changers and described the results in her 2003 book Working Identity. She found that people rarely discover a new direction by looking inward and planning. They learn it by trying things, meeting people in new fields, and noticing what fits. The pattern places action ahead of insight in a career change.