12 Steps for Job Hunters

12 Steps for Job Hunters

By Rob Fleming

  The bookstore and library bookshelves are full of job-hunting guides, but they are all written for earth people. People in recovery have an extra set of tools waiting for them.

   The Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous may be the most powerful technique for personal transformation ever written. The Steps themselves are adapted from centuries-old traditions and techniques and can, themselves, be adapted to help you get a good job.

   The Steps aren’t the only tools that work. Just the idea of having multiple small, manageable steps arranged in a sequence, a program, is powerful. The Fellowship is just as important, because humans are pack animals and we need social reinforcement as much as we need food and drink (which may explain why social media is so addictive). That slogan on the back of your chip, “to your own self be true” tells you to know who you are and to find a job that fits, not just a job that pays. These too can help you get a good job.

   Richard Bolles is the Grand Guru of Job Hunting. His “What Color is Your Parachute?” is the gold standard of job-hunting manuals, but he has a new, smaller version titled “The Job Hunter’s Survival Guide”. In it, he lists 18 ways that people use to find jobs, most of them relatively unsuccessful. But two that do work will resonate with people in 12-Step programs: do a personal inventory and join a job club.

   The rest of the Steps can help, too. Here’s how (with apologies and thanks to Bill Wilson, a man with a lot of experience with job hunting):

1.    Admitted we were powerless over our job situation and that our careers had become unmanageable. 

2.    Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves will get us a better job

3.    Made a decision to turn our job hunt over to a program and a job club.

4.    Made a searching and fearless professional inventory of ourselves.

5.  Admitted to God, ourselves, and another human being, the exact nature of our skills, talents, and strengths.

6.    Were completely ready to exercise these skills, talents, and strengths.

7.   Humbly thanked God, and all who had helped us, for these gifts.

8.   Made a list of all persons (“corporations are people, too”) whom we could help with these skills, talents, and    strengths and became willing to make a direct approach to them all.

9.      Made a direct approach to such persons, with a résumé for backup.

10.  Continued to take personal inventory, and when we were right, put it down on our résumés.

11. Sought, through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God.

12. Having had a spiritual and professional awakening as the result of these Steps, continued to practice these principles in all our affairs and to help others find meaningful and satisfying employment.

   Many of us exclaimed, “What an order! I can’t go through with it!”. Job hunting is hard work, and it has never been easier to look for a job or harder to get one. The Great Recession has made employers leery of adding new workers. People who have jobs can crank out and send out résumés easily. Big firms and employment services can screen résumés electronically, kicking out the ones with the wrong buzzwords.

   But by breaking the process up into manageable steps, getting out of our own way to really look at what we have to offer and what employers really need, and with the support of our fellows in recovery, we can go through with it and prevail.

   There is more on each of these Steps, and more, on the pages that follow.

    This is a work-in-progress. Feel free to add your comments, below, but you might want to look at the following pages first.