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Retirement Jobs:Joe's Story - The Relevance of Personality to Job Search.In my Retirement Coaching practice I worked with a client - Joe - who told me he had spent his entire career at a job he didn’t like. At first I was surprised by this revelation, but as we talked I began to understand how this could happen. Further research informed me that a many people are unhappy with their jobs because they are incompatible with their personalities. How could this happen? Let me tell you Joe’s story as revealed to me. Joe’s career choice was strongly influenced by his parents; his father had a similar role. His excellent High School exam results qualified him for a prestigious university course. The earning potential was excellent in a high-status profession. Aided by his father’s contacts, and with coaching on interview techniques, Joe was admitted to the profession. “I wasn’t myself at the interview, I wasn’t authentic. I was playing a role to get a job that I would not fill in a way that was satisfactory to me or my employer. Putting on this mask lead to a career that was unsatisfying, often stressful and ineffective. Unfortunately, career coaching and psychometric testing was not common at that time and in consequence I spent a lot of my career feeling like a square peg on a round hole.” “One of my responsibilities was negotiating long-term contracts with key accounts. I found the adversarial nature of these discussions very stressful. I sometimes wondered if a particular buyer talked to his spouses, or his friends at the pub in such antagonistic tones! Or was he, like me, playing a role at work that was very different to his home and social life. Sometimes I suspected there was a fun-loving personality behind that serious guy! Joe’s story reminds me of two quotations from my schooldays: The first is the phrase “Know Thyself” which is said to have been inscribed on the entry porch of Apollo’s temple at Delphi. And secondly, Polonius advice to his son Laertes, in Shakespeare’s Hamlet:
I remember attending a class reunion in my mid forties and been surprised at how many former classmates nominated a different career to the one they were pursuing as their “ideal” career. The great thing about being young is that “If you had the chance to do it all again” you could! In retirement you are not so young anymore but you do have the freedom to do something you would love to do, really want to do.
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