OG Tuesday Issue #177

Start your morning with this affirmation:

Today’s checklist: Switch jobs without going back to school, keep conversations solution-oriented, rate the fairness of your salary, and celebrate Galentine’s Day.

Prediction: You’ll have around 12 different jobs in your lifetime.

Maybe. It’s not a completely random guess, but it is based on data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, which factors in only the oldest employees in the labor market.

If you were born after 1970, you could easily have more than 12 different jobs as the employment market has become infinitely more fluid and flexible in recent decades.

Case in point: You’ll probably have a lot of different jobs before you retire.

That’s the end of the story though. Many of you have been wondering how to go about landing those different jobs, especially those of you who’ve been in the same job for years.

Challenge: Switch to doing something completely different without going back to school.

Your Game Plan

Test the waters by sending in applications ASAP.

A job’s write-up may ask for a master’s degree in psychology and over a decade of experience in hospitality, for example, but the write-up does not make hiring decisions. Many hiring managers admit they’re probably looking for someone who meets about 80% of the listed requirements.

• If you land a job you feel less than 100% qualified for, don’t worry. According to the 70:20:10 learning and development theory, 70% of what you need to know will come from on-the-job experiences.

Think deeply about why the education requirement exists and what commensurate and demonstrable experience, knowledge, and skills you possess.

If it helps focus your thoughts, frame your brainstorm as an argument, weighing a bulleted list of your personal strengths against the benefits of specified education and training requirements.

Save everything you come up with for cover letters and interviews.

Gather compelling recommendations, even if they’re not requested.

No education can prepare you for everything one specific job demands. Education listed on a resume validates you possess certain core skills. An endorsement from a colleague or boss can serve a similar function.

Work your network.

An inside referral could help you land the interview, even if you fall short of some job requirements.

Pursue and or highlight your existing alternative education and training, including conferences, webinars, online courses, and professional certifications.

According to the Society for Human Resource Management, most companies will consider candidates who don’t meet education requirements, especially when the candidates have recognized certifications.

Volunteer to build real-world skills.

Try to find roles in positions with functions or within fields relevant to your job search. Volunteering helps you build experience and meet people, and unlike school, it costs nothing but your time.

Before you go …

Remember where we started. Workers in the past have switched jobs 12 times before retirement.

We can’t say for sure, but we can confidently guess they didn’t all go back to school before making the switch. If they can do it, you can too.

Do you organize the baby shower and birthday gifts at the office?

Maybe you’re the Room Parent and organize teacher gifts from the whole class?

You need to try GroupTogether! It’s the easiest way to collect money for a gift and create a gorgeous group card all-in-one 😍.

Just share a link and everyone can chip in and sign the card online. Then choose from 150+ eGift Cards, or give the AnyCard and let the recipient choose.

It’s SO easy. And it’s free. No school or company sign-up needed.

👉 Try GroupTogether Today.

Your work team ran into a little problem. Okay, a big problem. It was no one person’s fault that an event registration message went out with the wrong date and no one caught the error until one week before the event. You’re a team.

Everyone shares responsibility for owning the problem and finding a solution. You’ve got an event to save. You’ve got confused registered attendees with messed up travel plans to answer to.

Now, it’s more important than ever to collaborate on a solution and avoid creating more problems. You need to keep the dialogue solution oriented.

Basic principle: Focus on solutions instead of the problems that caused you to seek solutions.

• Extra credit: The idea of solution-focused dialogue is an offshoot of Solution-Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT), developed by psychotherapists Steve de Shazer and Insoo Kim Berg.

What to do IRL

Use intentional questions to lead solution-focused conversations. Luckily, experts have already established an effective framework anyone can borrow and steal. Flip the script as needed to fit your unique problem.

Start with miracle questions, which establish the shared, desired outcome.

• Let’s imagine a miracle solved our problem for us:
  • How will we know our problem has been solved?
  • What changes would indicate our problem has been solved?
  • What would look different?
  • What would feel different?
  • What would we all be doing differently?

Move on to exception questions, which help you envision how to achieve the desired outcome.

• Let’s think about times when this problem didn’t happen or when things were generally working well:
  • How was “then” different from “now?”
  • How did we keep things working well?
  • When will we feel like things are working well again?

End with scaling questions, which produce the actionable roadmap toward the desired outcome.

• On a scale from 1 – 100 miles, how far are we from our desired outcome?
• What would we need to do to get 25 miles closer by the end of the month?
• How can we accomplish this?
• What support can we count on?

What changes can we make right now?

Celebrate Valentine’s Day with your team tomorrow and grab this free Valentine’s Day Ad-Libs Template.

The Ad-Libs template includes:

No way. We both know you’re priceless. But are you getting paid what your skills and experience are worth in your particular labor market?

If you’re like the roughly 70% of workers surveyed in 2022, you might suspect you’re being paid unfairly.

Here’s a go-to research checklist for anyone just checking in, thinking about asking for a raise, or wondering what to ask for when that job offer comes in.

• If you don’t already know, ask for the salary range for your position. Where do you land on the scale? Recent pay transparency laws require employers in certain states to disclose this info when requested, but many others in the U.S. have simply adopted this as a best practice.
• Rank your overall package as an employee using some common compensation-determining factors below. Use any scale you want. The key is to get a rough numerical score you can weigh against your position’s pay range. For example, if you score 30 out of 30, and your salary falls in the middle of the range, something might be off.
• Experience
• Education
• Managerial history
• Job responsibilities
• Specific expertise
• Specific skills
• Ask HR what specific factors your company or org uses to calculate compensation. They could say “no” of course, but it never hurts to ask. Many companies use detailed criteria to ensure fair pay. While recent demands for more pay transparency cover only salary ranges, some companies may choose to offer transparency in other areas as well.
• Do comparative research on your role, then layer your industry and your location into your analysis. Gather information from multiple sources to validate your numbers and calculate representative averages.

Some helpful tools include:

• Pave. While technically designed for HR professionals, Pave’s free account provides access to compensation benchmarking data from public and private companies.
• Job Seekers Salary Calculator from Educate to Career, Inc.
• The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics website, which lists data based on tons of metrics, including geographic regions.
• Salary.com
• Job search platforms. Search your title and find listings with compensation data.
• Comparably
• Payscale
• Total Jobs salary checker
• Salary Expert

Last step: Look at all the information and averages you’ve gathered against your overall compensation package, factoring in the estimated value of less quantifiable benefits, such as vacation and flexible schedules.

Take a break. Look at the numbers again.

If the picture looks unbalanced, you can turn all your research into your data-based justification for requesting a salary review.

It’s February 13, a.k.a. Galentine’s Day, first inspired by the 2010 episode of Parks and Recreation of the same title.

Here are some ways to celebrate your favorite ladies:

• Organize a brunch this weekend. As Amy Poehler’s character says, “It’s like Lilith Fair, minus the angst. Plus, frittatas!”
• Send them some on-theme crystal shaped sweets from female-founded Misaky Tokyo.
• Host a pajama party/candy potluck.
• Simply text them and tell them everything you love and admire about them.
• Send them this inexpensive marriage of chocolate and a bouquet of flowers from Zotter Chocolate.

🍿 Upgraded goes beyond your classic romcom plot — it’s also about forging your own path, making bold decisions to level up your career (albeit in a very outrageous way), and facing difficult colleagues and work challenges head on.

🏆 If you’ve ever watched Family Feud and thought to yourself, “I would crush the competition at this game,” then consider playing Virtual Family Feud with your team! Nothing like some friendly competition to get your team fired up for the week.

📝 We’ve all seen those “This could have been an email” memes, but if you’re actually thinking this on a regular basis, it might be time to implement something like this free Meeting Agenda Template with your team — quit wasting time in meetings, and keep your team focused and productive.

🧥 If comfort is what you seek, check out the Skims Classic Straight Leg Pant. Make it a complete set and grab the Classic Hoodie while you’re at it.

❗Know of any job openings? Share it with our community here.