For those of you “just tuning in” we thought we’d recap the steps towards success in your career that we’ve been talking about.

First, Decide What YOU Want.

Get out a sheet of paper, write down all of the things you like. That’s right: Just start scribbling. Don’t even write in straight lines if you don’t want to, just get ideas down on paper.

If you get up everyday and you love what you do for a living, you can’t wait to get to work, and you are so excited about what your day holds for you, then AMEN. That is the way work should be.

But if you’re not there, if you aren’t really sure why you even go to work, then you need to spend some time here.

Second, Do a Reverse Interview

The reverse interview is one of the most powerful methods I have found to find a new job. It is also a very powerful tool for uncovering new business opportunities. Read here for a detailed outline of how to perform a Reverse Interview, but the nuts and bolts are this:

• Decide where you want to be in a few years.
• Find people who are where you want to be – from step 1.Who is already doing what you want to be doing.
• When you meet with them, remember you are interviewing them, and not them interviewing you.
• DO NOT TAKE A RESUME. DO NOT TALK ABOUT YOURSELF AT ALL except to explain why you are there.
• Listen, ask questions, and finish on time. In the end ask them who else they would suggest you talk to. Follow up with a thank you note or email.

You have moved from the person who is looking for anything to the person who is intentionally looking for the right thing. Before you take a job, do this a number of times. I suggest at least ten times. When you get a job, keep doing this to learn new things. Never hate work again!

Third, Learn How to Network, then DO it.

The methods I was taught in college about how to get a job often had limited success. After many years of “playing the game” in job searches and having many jobs I have made some other observations.

• There are more opportunities than you can chase.
• People with a network have more opportunities. Let me state that again People with a network have more opportunities.

• People hire people – not resumes.

• Resumes are an after thought for many companies. My last few “jobs” did not really require a resume. In fact, more than once it came up that the resume was needed from me AFTER the decision was made to hire me. One company told me to forward my resume to HR since they needed on file – weeks after I was hired.

• Networking is a skill most people do NOT have. Perhaps this is why my professors never taught me how to do it – they did not know either.

So, here are your marching orders:

1 ) Decide what you want, 2) use your contacts from the Reverse Interview, and 3) Take Action!

Dr. Dale Callahan is the IEM Program Director for the Information Engineering and Management Program at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and a contributing writer for the IEM Blog. His thoughts here represent the types of topics covered in the Entrepreneurial courses he teaches the clients of the IEM Program at UAB.

Thanks to DaleCallahan.com for this article.