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Making Sense of Money

Can You Sum Up your Career in Six Words?

Can You Sum Up your Career in Six Words?

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Can you sum up your career in six words? Recently, I read an article in Fortune Magazine called “Your career, summed up in six words”.    There is something about the discipline of asking you to find the essence of something in very few words. 

In interviews, you are supposed to “Tell Me about Yourself” and people will judge you based on “How You Express Yourself?”    It is really hard to describe something as complex as your career in six words.  If your career is very short, is it any easier?  The length of a career is not the issue or is it?  Finding six words to represent anything meaningful is a challenge!  Many of you have had practice writing cryptic messages using texting and Twitter, although you can add more words.

The Problem

This article reminded me how it is difficult to keep people’s attention for very long. Some refer to this syndrome is a consequence of the MTV generation!  We are have lots of distractions such as cell phones, smart phones, iPods, MP3 players, computers, social media, computer games and other forms of entertainment.  It is amazing we can stay focused at all.

Now I am asking you to sum up your career in six words!  What is the problem?  Is it that you can write thousands of words or is it picking the right words?  People spend too much time on the phone, tweeting and texting and not expressing themselves concisely.  Let’s face it, there is no reason to be brief or is there?  Say something interesting and they want to hear more!  Give me six dynamite words that will get my attention!

The Solution

Words are part of your skill set!  How you express yourself is important.  Words can affect other people and their opinion of you.  In an interview, you are guiding the interviewer to the questions you want them to ask you.  In a social situation, you are judged on how well you can communicate.  If you are good, you will hold the other person’s attention.

How can you write about your career and keep everyone’s attention?  There are two ways to hold someone’s attention.  One would be using interesting well selected words or the other would use humor.  Some may even use a combination of humor and well selected words to express themselves. Just a few words, where do you start?

A lot of it is personal choice, but look for interesting words.  You want the reader to understand what your career entails and it won’t  hurt to show some personality.  Humor is another element that reveals your personality.  Sometimes it is easier to sum it up in one word.  For me, if I could only pick one word to describe myself, I would say “determined”.  What is your one word description?

Final Thoughts

Did you learn anything about yourself by going through this exercise?  Distilling your ideas about your career down to either one or six words can be difficult, but worthwhile.  It makes you chose word(s) carefully to express yourself.  You will be a more effective communicator going through this kind of exercise or maybe not.  This is not a cure for cancer, but it worthwhile to think about the words you use in describing yourself or your career.  Can you sum up your career in six words?

Photo by: jbcurio

Comments

  1. This is challenging task and wide open to misinterpretation since I am not offering any commentary, but here goes: successful, stressful, satisfying, risky, driven, challenging

    • Great choices although it could have been a sentence I suppose. Stressful is something you should work on though! Everyone feels pressure, pressure for deadlines or just to perform. That can be good, stress usually occurs when you feel you do not have control of the situation. I find I feel far less stressed when I can exert more control over the outcome. Good job!

  2. I can describe what I do in six words: “Freelance Journalist Specializing In Personal Finance.” Ta-Da!! 🙂

    • Pretty good! You could probably replace “in” since that word does not describe anything.

  3. This is a challenge.  I can more easily sum up my blog in 6 words as they are the slogan I have there:  Save Money; Cook Great; Have Fun!  To describe my career?  I’m retired.  Maybe:  Quirky adventurer, foodie, friend, family glue.  This is tough!  I’m going to keep thinking about this one!

    • I guess I achieved my goal of provoking some thought! As someone who retire again, I don’t want to think of myself of just achieving that. There is so much more to me and you as your bog may indicate.

      • Yes, and when you are retired it’s a dangerous thing to think of yourself only in terms of what you used to do!  That leads to depression.  To do retirement well you have to  think of yourself in new terms.  It helps if you have been developing interests before you retire to continue.  I used to be a teacher, but that doesn’t define me. 

  4. Communication has definitely changed a lot through the various mediums we have today such as texting and social media.  It’s amazing when a person sends a text to the person in the other room.  Great exercise 🙂

    • I have students in my classes who will text their friends versus having a conversation. This exercise is describe yourself or what you have done in 6 words.. It is hard to reduce ourselves in so few words.

  5. Very interesting. I have never tried to do this. Here is a try: Creating Change Cancer Care Managing Projects. Gosh this hard…..

    • Good point! In interviews, you asked to tell them about yourself in 60 seconds. It is different ways of summing up your career or life where you choose what is important.

  8. Here’s the funny thing about words… they’re a double edged sword. On the one hand, they are empowering. You can use words to sway people, change their opinions, and express whatever it is that you think is important (see? I’m doing it right now.) On the other hand, though, words are very limiting. No matter how many words you use, you can never fully describe something with 100% accuracy. In fact, the more words you do use, the more limited you are. 6 words is pretty limiting; it puts your career into a pretty specific little bracket. Though, depending on what kind of person you are, this might be a good thing. Interesting exercise, though. After all of that, I must admit, I LOVE words (and, of course, the absence of words.)

    • Interesting, you used all those words, but never stated your career in six words! I love words too, but there are times where a few words will do

  9. I wrote about this exact issue some time ago. The article was called “What Do You Need to Retire?” Part of the article discusses what you are going to do. I am working on the things I plan to do in retirement now six years before I do.

    • Good job! Most of your words are very positive and that’s good! Exhausting and frustrating not so positive. What did you learn about yourself? Are you happy with your career? If not, what changes are you making. In the interest of full disclosure, I am in my 7th career and and working on my 8th. I am probably not done!

      • Exhausting and frustrating are just to be honest.  They are elements to my job that are realities.  Exhausting is actually not that negative.  I actually like the feeling a large percentage of the time, it is just a fact that it takes up the majority of my effort and energy.  I would be remiss in saying that working with kids is not often frustrating, however this just makes the rewards that much better.

        • I tend to concentrate on the positives, it gets me through the difficult parts. I work with young people and I feel energized. One of the reasons I became a teacher (after 30+ years in business) was to influence the kids. I show them my enthusiasm and energy in the lessons.

  11. Determination is key in my life. Not letting anyone or anything stop me from my goal.

  12. Ha, my career is hardly a career.  It is a means to make money while I can still be home with the kids.  What my career is, and what I would like it to be are two totally different things unfortunately.  If I listed my six words, it would probably just be depressing…  However, I do just try and focus on the positive aspects, like flexibility.

    • If it is not a career, what is it? When our kids were small, my wife worked part time (RN). She was only away for two hours a week. She did a lot interesting things with e kids. You focus on the positives and the things you and the kids will remember.

      • Oh, if my career was raising kids, then I would have all kinds of wonderful words.  But regarding my paid job, I don’t have as many glowing adjectives…I appreciate being able to work from home and make decent money, but computer programming does not enthrall me in the least.

        • Many years ago I programmed in APL,so I understand. There were many times an error would take the program into an infinite loop. I never saw myself as a programmer either. Shortly after that, I changed careers.

  13. If you see big corporation have their punch line or vision statements in very few words. This CNN article was nothing new in that retrospective. You need to go micro only to find the most important aspects.

    • I bet you could find more descriptive words to sum up your career. Do it for yourself, it is important because it tells you something about you. I do like that you used a positive verb of “doer”. Just find three descriptive words instead of miscellaneous.

  15. This is definitely a bit more challenging than it seems! Here are some words that could describe my career and me: Focused, independent, motivated, creative, far-looking, and involved.