Career Anchors Reimagined, 5th Edition

5The Career Interview

Dr. Seuss:

“All Alone?

Whether you like it or not,

Alone will be something

You'll be quite a lot.”

We can almost hear Dr. Seuss saying, “Except when you are not.” The career interview, whether conducted with a friend or partner or with yourself and a recording device, helps you to move beyond that feeling of being alone. It helps to be heard, as you describe your job history.

As noted, the best way to get useful insights into your own career anchor issues is to review that work history before you take the online survey. This chapter will lead you through a formal way of collecting this information about yourself.

Learning from Your Career Story

This interview is an important exercise in developing a personal narrative, an individual story, of your career to date. It may take a few hours, and those who have done this exercise invariably report learning a lot about themselves as a result.

While it is not required that you do this with another person, it can be very useful to explain your journey, to make your story clear, to a friend or partner. As you go through the questions below, your partner can play the active role of interviewer. Alternatively, the partner can be the active listener to you, reinforcing your explanation of the career journey by following along and interjecting questions for clarification.

The purpose of this interview phase is to understand the through‐line, to highlight when and where you opted one way or another. A partner can ...