I wrote a post about portfolio careers a couple of weeks ago and now I have finally finished a report on the subject. I’ve included a lot of information about setting up your own home based business and also links to articles on careers.

There are plenty of ideas for businesses, both on line and offline and links to useful resources which you might like to invest in once you have decided which direction is right for your portfolio. It does take a bit of time and organization, but it will be worth it in the end.

You can download the report free (no sign up required).

To read the report online go to: Portfolio Career

If you would like to download the report, you can do so here: Download Portfolio Career

Look for Direct Download on the right and click on the Adobe Acrobat link.

hope you enjoy it.

Waller

Does your job fit your lifestyle? Or should it be the other way around, with your lifestyle fitting your job?

 Ideally the two should go together, but how realistic is that? If you want a big house, expensive holidays and the freedom to buy what you want when you want, you aren’t likely to be able to do that on a nurse’s salary or that of a teacher.

When you are planning your career, it’s important to consider the lifestyle you eventually want to enjoy. This doesn’t necessarily mean that you will need to earn large amounts of money – it could be that you want flexibility so that you can spend time with friends and family or to follow your interests. You might want the freedom to take time off whenever you want or to travel frequently.

 If you are thinking of changing careers, it’s important to look at where you want to be in 5, 10 or 20 years, especiallyif you have definite ideas about your preferred future.

 But of course, you might change your mind and so any plans should allow room for flexibility.

We are used to thinking of our careers as straight lines, moving steadily up the ladder, but these days the reality can be quite different.

 So you should be open minded and prepared to continue learning and gaining new skills to deal with the unstable economy and your own lifestyle changes.

Did you know that there is a very disturbing trend in the developed countries? One which threatens to eradicate the hard-earning savings of many parents? In fact, you may already have one or two kippers lurking in the kitchen late at night, eating the last piece of cake and leaving a stack of unwashed dishes in the sink. And if it hasn’t already happened – beware, there could be a potential kipper innocently doing his homework as you read this.

In the UK alone, over seven million adults are still living at home with Mum and Dad: and believe it or not, 2 million of them are over 30, and yet another million are close to 40. They have a very fishy name – Kippers – Kids in Parents’ Pockets Eroding Retirement Savings. And the Kipper phenomenon is emerging in all first world countries, especially Japan, where these young people have an even more derogatory name – parasite singles. What’s going on?

More young people are going to university than ever before and they are leaving education with huge debts and finding it difficult to get suitable employment. With no job and house prices soaring, their chances of getting on the property ladder are non-existent.

But why is it so difficult for them to get jobs – after all, they’ve all got degrees? Well, the government is encouraging school leavers to stay in education, allegedly to raise the level of skills in the community. Think back to the 80s, when 13% of Britain’s teenagers went to university. Fast forward to today and that figure has shot up to 41.5%, but have large companies increased the number of graduate jobs or training schemes on offer by more than 25% in that timeframe? Of course not – and competition for a place on graduate training schemes has always been tough.

So, despite reports to the contrary, many young people are experiencing serious difficulties and are struggling to get a foothold in their chosen fields, even if they opt to accumulate even more debt by doing a postgraduate course.

This creates big problems, not only for Kippers but also for parents. Retirement savings are being eaten into and parents are looking at having to stay at work even longer or go back to work in order to support kids they had expected to be independent. Not good for anyone’s morale.

What can parents do get rid of their kippers and ensure that their younger siblings don’t grow up just like them? There are some simple steps you can take: encourage them to increase their transferable skills. The main skills which employers are looking for are:

Good literacy skills – you’d be surprised how many graduates don’t have them

Communication skills, both oral and written.

The ability to work as part of a team.

Adaptability and Flexibility

Good timekeeping

The ability to work on one’s own initiative.

These skills can be gained in part-time jobs, summer jobs or by doing voluntary work. If your child has already graduated, get her to look carefully at the career she wishes to follow and list the skills needed, choose one or two which she doesn’t have or needs to develop and then concentrate on getting them. So rather than being depressed about having to take a short-term job they don’t really want , Kippers should look at it as an opportunity to gain skills which will lead to their dream job later.

If you want to invest a small amount of money in your children’s future, the Jobseekers’ Success Kit will help them get a good job and save you money in the long run. (Works for parents too!)

Not many people are born knowing which career to follow and if you aren’t one of them, a portfolio career could be the answer. You may feel jealous of the lucky few who decide at an early age, follow through on that childhood decision and are happy in their jobs.

However, if you aren’t among them, you are in the majority. It’s a different story for most of us – we end up in a job either by chance – the opportunity arose and we took it. Or perhaps we followed the advice of an influential adult, taking up a career because a teacher or parent thought we would be good at. Or take up a particular subject because we find it easy and then drift from school into college, studying the same easy subject and then whatever job most graduates in the field choose, even if it isn’t what we really want to do .

Even if you did make a more conscious career choice, you may find in a year or two that you are not really enjoying your job. This isn’t an unusual situation and arises because each of us has a unique personality. Like everyone else, you have your own package of skills, preferences and knowledge. This is where the problem lies – jobs just aren’t created to fit individuals, it’s the individuals who are expected to fit into the jobs.

So it’s not surprising if you can’t find everything you are looking for in one job. Whilst that may not be important when you are just starting out in your career – when everything is new and your pay cheque is a novelty – once the job becomes familiar, you may start getting itchy feet. This situation can sometimes lead to job-hopping, if you find yourself in one boring job after another.

If this has happened to you, take a look at your personal definition of job satisfaction. Write down everything you want to get out of a job and all the skills you’d like to use. If you need some help with this, Design Your Ideal Career, the first module of the Jobseekers’ Success Kit goes through this process in detail.

Once you’ve decided which skills and activities are important to you, it may be worth considering a portfolio career, which simply means earning your living by doing several different things, each on a part-time basis. This is not the same thing as holding down two or three badly paid jobs to make ends meet. Your portfolio could consist of several highly skilled jobs, and could involve a mixture of employment and self-employment.

Once you’ve got the ideas for your portfolio, you’ll have to develop it over a number of years, continuing your full-time job for a while in most cases. But if you find that in 5 years’ time your job satisfaction has increased to 80-90% compared with 30 or 40% now, it will have been well worth it.

And since experts are predicting the death of the “job for life,” if you have more than one method of earning a living, you’ll be building your own insurance against redundancy or unemployment. Should one source of income dry up, you’ll be able to fall back on several others. And the flexibility you’ll have developed in the meantime will help you overcome the ups and downs of the economy. Career change can be gradual and can be successful at any age.

Careers are not what they used to be and the jobs we love to hate are rapidly disappearing, at least in the format in which we expect them to show up.

Previous generations expected to graduate from college or high school and start out in a job or career in which they stayed for life. Most people expected to progress in the firm, or perhaps move to a company in the same industry, but although many gained promotions and pay increases, it was unlikely they would move too far from the starting point in terms of location and industry.

Things have changed – dramatically. Young people starting out today can expect to re-train around seven times over the course of their working lives. Yes, re-train for a new career, not just update skills or move to a different job in the same field.

Of course, some of the professions, like medicine, law or teaching still have a considerable number of jobs for life, but even in these careers, things are changing and with redundancies, downsizing, the collapse of pension funds and so on, no-one is really secure.

The result is that we need to look at work in a different way – society expects us to do it, but with so many cutbacks, certainly doesn’t make it easy.

How do we plan for successful careers for ourselves and our children, in the face of so many barriers? The answer is to take control of our own futures, to plan ahead and to think creatively.

The positive side of the changing trends in employment is that many practices which would have previously been frowned upon, have now become acceptable. For example, it is now ok to have several part-time sources of income, that is, to be a portfolio worker. In the past this type of situation was usually associated with people with low skills, who had to take several badly paid part-time jobs to make ends meet. Although unfortunately this situation is still the reality for some, more and more people are combining part-time employment and self-employment to make a lucrative income.

The internet has also provided opportunities for anyone to make money from home. This is creating solutions for mothers or fathers who stay at home to look after their kids, people who have been made redundant or are unemployed, those with disabilities and people who need to supplement their pensions.

And it’s also more acceptable to change directions completely, allowing those who feel they have either made a mistake, changed their priorities or simply want to start something new to make radical changes without fear of marginalisation.

Over the next few days, we’ll take a look at these trends in more detail.

If you buy through the link on this page, I will receive a commission.