College Students
• Discover Where You’ll Do Best,
• Triple Resume Responses and
• Use Monster.com Smarter.
CASH THAT FIRST PAYCHECK IN 90 DAYS!
Gary Sutton
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2008 Gary Sutton
Second Edition
The copyright 2008, is Gary Sutton’s, a resident of La Jolla, California.
LAUNCH! and WAYA are trademarked.
The test concepts used are covered by pending patents.
“This
may be the most
important book a college
senior ever reads.”
Dr. Linda Charles, clinical psychologist
“The networking tactics are superb. This is exactly how careers develop.”
John DeWitt, Vice President, Lee Hecht Harrison
“That WAYA profiler rocks…”
Shannon Smedstad, HR consultant to GEICO
“LAUNCH! is the ultimate reality check. Students learn who they are, from money to ethics. Wow!”
Amanda Shettlesworth, Indiana University
“LAUNCH! breaks new ground. It’s politically incorrect and funny. I laughed out loud while reading it during a flight. Yet the advice is spot-on for college grads.”
Sue
Hansen, past President,
National Association of Colleges and
Employers
“No one has ever written such a helpful book for young job seekers. Read it.”
Alan
Shaw, CEO, Multiple Sclerosis Society,
Pacific South Coast
Chapter
“The test is fun and gives insight as to how personality differences contribute to job selection and satisfaction. I see this as extremely helpful to entrance level employees. The book contains a multitude of useful strategies for finding and obtaining the job of your dreams. This could be the most important book a college senior ever reads,”
Dr. Linda Charles, clinical psychologist
Preface
Compare your career skills to other college seniors. Learn what your differences suggest for the future. Discover what makes you unique, how Monster.com and Craigslist can waste applicants’ time, how to triple your resume responses and why networking gets you better jobs quicker. See how a weekend project converts you into the number one job candidate.
Pathetic, isn’t it? Here you are, a college senior, supposedly ready for a career after years upon years of study. But you’re lost. And nobody’s telling you how to snag that first job.
Try LAUNCH! and you could be cashing a decent paycheck within three months. Doing work you enjoy. Really. This isn’t an iron-clad promise, but with a bit of effort, LAUNCH! does give you an unfair advantage.
The problem’s basic. College spoon-fed us all with too many lectures and books, training everybody to be passive. Now you need a job, which means extending yourself, getting assertive.
Well, sorry, you probably made one mistake already.
Campus counselors from Bowdoin in Maine to Chaminade University of Honolulu and Alaska Pacific University…from MIT, the University of California, Texas A&M, Temple, Indiana University, University of Maryland, Virginia State…and over one hundred others all told me the same thing.
“Seniors wait too long,” they chanted in a chorus.
“When they finally start, they don’t network. It’s avoidance. They spend too much time on internet searches and mass mailing resumes.”
Some seniors will do anything to avoid personal rejection.
“Too many never pick up the phone,” they said. “And they don’t follow-up, so they lose out.”
Easy for them, huh? While you’re waiting tables, can’t get that last class scheduled, your roommate flaked and what? You’re supposed to be focused on a job search? LAUNCH! tries to help, dear senior, and the stuff suggested here does happen to work, but it also sucks up serious time; sorry.
Welcome to life.
After mentoring students at Harvard, UCSD, Iowa State, Berkeley and San Diego State, it struck me that tenured professors can’t help a lot. The last time they applied for a job is a fuzzy memory. Maybe they handed you a tattered book on how to write a resume. (LAUNCH! reveals everything you need to know about resumes, by the way, and you don’t need to know all that much.)
If any college ever gave their career guidance centers half the payroll, authority and incentives that they lavish upon their coaching staffs, that school would accomplish its ultimate mission. And you would be joyously employed right after graduation, if you chose to. But schools aren’t going to change that much within this ice age, so let’s move on.
Maybe an advisor handed you several annual reports from huge corporations or sent you to some giant employer websites. There are two humongous problems with that:
1) Big companies have been downsizing for three decades. The total employment of the Fortune 500 today is less than it was in 1980. And the larger outfits don’t come on campus and recruit like they used to, since many are struggling. The world changed more than most of them have.
2) Some people fit comfortably in big organizations. Others don’t. Understanding this is more critical to your satisfaction than finding the perfect industry, a great location or maybe even the size of your paycheck.
Should your last name be Rockefeller, Trump or Gates you hardly need LAUNCH! But since you’re still reading, you’re probably not loaded and wouldn’t be offended by a decent salary.
As graduation approaches, getting the right career is more serious than a heart attack. A coronary, you see, can merely kill you one day, far in the future, let’s hope. But with bad jobs you’ll have hardly enjoyed any life at all.
Okay, sure, of course, relationships and hobbies matter. A lot. But if your work is misery and the pay makes you eligible for food stamps, can you afford outside interests? Well, maybe your leisure time could be spent walking through parks that don’t charge entrance fees; wearing a pair of hiking boots that you snagged from the Salvation Army.
Perhaps other days you’ll take a bus to the public library. But won’t friends and even family avoid you when you’re depressed from working at some crap job?
When work is fun, you don’t drag others down.
To grasp how important your life’s work will be, try this: add up all the weekends and holidays and vacation hours between now and retirement. Subtract some time for shopping, washing, haircuts, buying gas and sleep. Now total the time for a normal job, including commuting and lunches.
See? You spend more time working than you do at leisure. So picking the right career matters.
With no job offers and graduation creeping up, perhaps your stomach is churning. It may be a wee bit tough to believe that any book can guide you to where you fit, tell you how to get there and start receiving money for your efforts. But if you can read and buy into half of what follows, maybe, just maybe, you’ll be blissfully surprised. For sure you’ll be bothered by realizing how much effort lies ahead. There are no apologies for that. This is non-fiction. Look for higher sugar content and simpler answers elsewhere.
Finding work is work. If you’re not just a little scared and nervous, you’ll fail. Your self-esteem will evaporate a little more every week, as no opportunities magically appear, whittling you down to nothing, you’ll become bitter and could even spend the rest of your life wondering what went wrong, ultimately becoming convinced that you’re a loser.
I’ve been there.
No moment sticks in my memory more vividly than my first college interview, months before graduating from Iowa State. General Electric was recruiting for their advertising program. This was my dream, a way to write without starving. My school didn’t have an advertising degree, so I patched one together by majoring in journalism with minors in business and psychology. I wrote a paid column for the campus paper, wrestled without any distinction on a championship squad and was Vice President of the Interfraternity Council.
And talk about internships. The previous summer I had worked as the advance publicity guy for a car racing group. I hit each town a week before the event, wrote news releases and entertained sports writers, get this, with an expense account that covered all entertainment, including drinks and meals. My alcohol expense was covered! As a college kid! And I worked in the pits on race days. Pretty decent experience for a student, I thought.
I arrived fifteen minutes early for that GE interview and sat waiting on a wooden chair in the hall, trying not to squirm. When the previous student left, I wiped my palms dry, entered the room, the recruiter rose, we shook hands and he sat with his back to a window. The GE man wore a gray suit, white shirt and a subdued red and blue tie. I can shut my eyes and still see that exact pattern today.
I perched on a chair across the table, trying to look eager but not frantic. My blue blazer, button-down collar, gray slacks and red striped tie seemed about right.
“Coffee?” he asked.
“Sure, thank you.” He filled two Styrofoam cups.
“May I see your transcript?” I slid it across the table. He scanned it without comment, pursing his lips when he got down to my grades.
“I’ve also prepared a resume,” I said. “Would you like a copy?” The recruiter tilted back in the chair, his head rustling the Venetian blinds. He turned and glanced down the street.
“Do you think it’s going to rain?” he asked.
“It sure could,” I replied. “But if you don’t like the weather here, just wait fifteen minutes.”
I chuckled. He didn’t.
The man studied his wristwatch and adjusted it.
“Do you want my resume?”
“That won’t be necessary,” he said, gulping the coffee. The guy tore the lip from the cup and began tossing pieces into the wastebasket. He tried to stifle a yawn. My life crumbled before me.
The problem was that my grade point was a 2.06 on a 4.0 system. GE, like IBM and AT&T, only wanted 3.5 GPA candidates or above. That was 1964, ancient history, but a few things remain the same.
(One thing’s changed. Classified ads way back then were a sure way to find “unattainable jobs.” Today it’s Monster.com and Craigslist that are convenient ways to discover many openings; not one of which you can hope for. You’ll learn why in LAUNCH! It’s not just these two; all online matching services are treacherous sinkholes for your time, dreams and effort.)
Back then, GE hired a busload of advertising students every spring. A minimum grade point was their easy way to filter out those who were less likely to fit. Just as the massive employers do today. (But LAUNCH! shows you how to beat that system.)
The recruiter was polite. He commented that the “Yankees didn’t always have the best spring training.” I stared blankly at my shoes. “Some students do better in the world of work than in the classroom.” I nodded in appreciation, felt faint, and tried to smile but couldn’t.
GE’s recruiting policy was to only make offers for the better scholars since they couldn’t hire everybody. By the time he finished explaining, he’d shredded the cup, covering the wastebasket bottom.
My four years of college tuition, room and board had come down to this. Styrofoam confetti, damp with coffee. I had two more interviews ahead. Neither sounded half as interesting as GE’s advertising department.
What I couldn’t grasp then was that it would have been tragic had GE, in a weak moment, recruited me. I was a round peg. They were filling square holes. It couldn’t have worked for either of us.
Advisors rarely think about the biggest factor in job satisfaction. That’s whether you belong in a large organization or a small outfit.
As high school seniors, they gave us the Kuder Preference Test. This took a couple hours. After weeks of processing, our results came back by mail. Mine announced that I should become a pharmacist. For an instant, as a rattled youth, I embraced their guidance.
Then I started to think. If I became a pharmacist in Eagle Grove, Iowa, a village where I’d lived, a typical week might mean patching the drugstore roof on a Monday, helping the Kiwanis host pancake days Tuesday, explaining, again, to the local priest every Wednesday afternoon why we sold condoms, straightening and dusting the shelves Thursdays and filling a handful of prescriptions every Friday. Learning to make vanilla and chocolate shakes could be part of the drill. But if I got lucky and made the big time, Des Moines, and became a pharmacist at Katz Drugs, I’d stand behind a glass window in a starched white jacket, filling hundreds of prescriptions every day. Soft-soled shoes might be smart there.
Same career?
Hardly. But both would be “pharmacists.”
No career test gets that. And too few understand that change is constant. Within a few years, learning how to process insurance forms would become more important to pharmacy than understanding chemistry. Or suppose, God forbid, that a pharmacist performs well and gets promoted. (Watch out, this can actually happen.) Then that pharmacist becomes a manager, dealing with people more than pills.
Four decades later, as trustee of a small west coast college, I took their vocational guidance tests. I was curious to see if anything had improved. The quiz took an hour. There was no delay in the answers. This was done on a PC with “sophisticated” software. Their program told me I should become a social worker.
Huh?
In the prior twenty years, I had taken control of seven troubled businesses and saved five. This involved a lot of taking names, twisting arms and escorting others out the back door. It struck me that a turnaround CEO, which I was, fit social work about as comfortably as a fascist alligator with an abscessed tooth.
The folks making up that test probably assumed that social workers go around doing nice things and caring for people all day. Sure, there’s plenty of that. But social workers also live within structured organizations under rules upon rules. They face a mountain of paperwork piled daily on top of their shared steel grey desks, so an ability to handle routine forms, for which I lack the temperament, matters.
Those social workers who stick with their careers develop selective memories. Mostly they deal with people who cannot cope and never will. The occasional success sustains them. Myself, I need more frequent victories to stay interested. So this advice baffled me in many ways.
Years later, after retiring, I went back on campus and tried their latest test. This one suggested I become a photographer.
That’s strike three against vocational testing.
Kuder, those folks who suggest I try pharmacy fifty years before, wisely moved away from specific titles and were among the first to start career guidance based on general areas. Great going, Kuder!
Yes, I enjoyed photography as a hobby. In my first job as a copywriter, I would also end up managing the photo studio. That was great. I dabbled with cameras and didn’t starve. Many years later I landed a job advertising Pentax cameras. So without spending half my day in a darkroom, or shooting weddings every weekend while soothing nervous brides and their mothers, or retouching pimples on high school portraits, we lived comfortably. There’s no reason that you, too, should not find ways to work in areas that interest you, without scrimping. But you could be alongside that passion, not plunked directly into it.
Maybe this is why most career tests mislead. They suggest specific jobs, without understanding the true tasks.
Flawed as all these tests are, the black art continues. Our species has paid fortune tellers throughout history…bestselling books tell you how to eat all you want and lose weight…Elvis was spotted in Europe recently…and vocational guidance tests shall always be with us. As long as people want to believe the next year is predictable and that one perfect career exists for everyone, others will sell them “answers.”
Any test that suggests the exact job title for you is a fraud. Most do. Who am I to judge, you ask?
Well, I sampled more work than most folks. My last two decades were as CEO of the largest printer in the west, a software company, garbage business, satellite telecommunications startup, a retail advertising outfit, an aerospace manufacturer, burglar alarm firm and a data storage business. I even chaired a private college. Before turning thirty I had negotiated contracts in Tokyo and a decade later ran a factory in Tijuana.
In my youth I was the dishwasher for a couple of restaurants, had several paper routes, swept out stadiums, weeded bean fields and baled hay. I worked as a TV model in high school, got paid as a nuclear research assistant back then and even did standup comedy for $10 a night. I taught a photo lab in college. So while I’m as biased as anybody and more than most, at least I tried all kinds of jobs.
I recruited and hired hundreds directly and thousands indirectly. I fired dozens directly and hundreds indirectly. The best times were recruiting star performers and watching some pass me by.
Most employees’ strengths became obvious with time. Success came to those who understood their weaknesses. And many winners didn’t bother compensating for their soft spots; they simply avoided the wrong jobs. So should you.
School Is Great.
College was a blur of all-nighters, beer and friendships that have lasted a lifetime. After college I took some weekend seminars and lived on a few campuses briefly at Denver University, the University of San Francisco, Wharton, Harvard, Berkeley and Oxford. What fun! How fascinating! And some of it even became relevant to the world of work.
Not much, of course. LAUNCH!, however, tries to give you nothing but relevance.
Surveys show that your degree probably means you’ll make more money in your life than those without a bachelor’s. Of course, those engineering majors with straight A’s skew the numbers up a bit, and they’re not reading this. They’re too busy sorting through job offers.
While there may even be a cause and effect deal going on between higher education and incomes, don’t get cocky. The trees moving don’t make the wind blow either. Maybe it’s simply that those with the stamina to finish college are also the type that would have done well anyway. But you probably will see more cash with a diploma, no matter what the reason. Just don’t brag about this to those impatient college dropouts Bill Gates or Michael Dell, the two wealthiest youths of our country’s history.
There’s some skinny evidence that you’ll be happier in your work than those without degrees, but it’s hardly compelling. I surveyed 10,000 random workers across the country and simply asked them how they liked their jobs and how much education they had. 135 answered. 59 had bachelor’s degrees or above and 76 didn’t have college degrees. Their addresses represented 36 states while 71 of them preferred not revealing a location, so there was a decent geographic spread in this small sample.
While 80% of those with college degrees “liked” or “loved” their jobs, 68% of those without the advantage of a college education also “liked” or “loved” their work.
This falls short of a huge difference. Why weren’t the college grads, presumably higher paid, much happier? I cannot begin to guess. Does college falsely raise expectations for too many? Or does college not adequately prepare students for the world of work?
At least the grads in this skimpy sample showed modestly higher satisfaction, but LAUNCH! intends to boost your job satisfaction beyond that.
Most colleges fail to prepare students for the world of work. LAUNCH! tries to compensate. Guidance tests are generally useless or worse and LAUNCH! also attempts to fix this. You can, and should, find career happiness with the tactics that follow.
Contents
5. Deciding Or Dawdling Makes The Difference
11. Different Attitudes Go Different Places
12. Jobs For The Shy Exist (well, a few)
13. Some Like Things, Others Prefer People
14. We Praise Ethics, We Act Less Saintly
15. Status Seeking Sucks Us In
16. Managing Or Doing, Which Is More Fun?
17. Love Of Structure Makes You Crazy
18. Independence Runs Bone Deep
19. Risk Junkies Find Special Work
22. “Self-Disciplinarians” Move Up
31. Create Your Friendly Circle
33. Write The Resume That Opens Doors
35. Be Your Own (Subtle) Cheerleader
38. Some Stuff Just Didn’t Fit Elsewhere
39. Twelve Weeks To A Great Job
Who Are You Anyway?
This teeny-tiny chapter claims that too many people struggle through dreary jobs. Duh. Skim this section if you doubt that. After a few pages, you’ll be introduced to the WAYA quiz, (trademarked, copyrighted, patent pending and pronounced “way-uh.” It’s short for Who Are You Anyway?) The WAYA analysis reveals how you differ from other college seniors. That starts a process that reveals where you’ll be happiest and do best. Before getting to that, the first part of this section tells you why putting some extra effort into your job plan is a huge deal to your future. Huge.
Grab your Yellow Pages. Look at all those insurance agents and real estate brokers. In my directory there are 35 pages of insurance agents and 20 pages of realtors. That’s three percent of the entire book.
There are a million realtors and insurance agents nationwide. Do you think all of those people grew up dreaming of the day they’d peddle real estate or push insurance? Me neither. It’s a rare, strange kid who sits around imagining the day when he or she will finally become a realtor or insurance agent. But there they are, a million people doing stuff they never set out to.
Yes, there are agents and realtors who love their business. Many are friends. I can tell they’re stoked and several do quite well. For those social types who love dealing with a variety of people, it’s nirvana.
But I’ve got other friends who struggled through dreary careers, half-happy at best, all their lives. One was a jazz trumpeter in high school. Her combo played gigs every weekend. She was good, but maybe not great enough for the big time. I wish she had at least found a position within a musical instrument company or some recording studio. Had she been more independent, booking talent might have fit her. At least she’d be working with music; her passion.
She became a medical insurance underwriter, one of three hundred middle managers shuffling papers. I sent her birthday cards to mail station 405-B, floor fifteen at Aetna and imagined her sitting within an ocean of desks. She probably wore a name badge. She’s retired now, always sounds a little down and says she never experienced a single day when she looked forward to work. She felt fortunate that her job rarely required more than an eight hour day.
Is that tragic or what?
There’s one life wasted in mind-dulling boredom. Ninety days of LAUNCH! might have salvaged her. And made this woman, who had been an energized youth, fun to be around forever.
The turnover rate in real estate and insurance hits about 25% per year. If it takes the average employee in these industries four years to get fed up enough to quit, that suggests there are around eight hundred thousand miserable Americans grinding out their days in real estate or insurance right now.
How about those who love it? I admire them. Yet I wonder if there wasn’t another career, something that intertwined a little more with their natural interests. Could they have enjoyed another job even more?
Maybe. Maybe not.
Once you become engrossed with what you’re doing, whether it was love at first sight or an acquired taste, everything clicks. Attitude overcomes all. My first job out of college was writing about furnaces. After a few years of that, I became PR Manager of Learjet, which was one of the first private jets. Which job was more fun?
Writing about furnaces beat promoting the glamorous airplanes, hands down. If the atmosphere and your attitude are right, you can get enthused about anything.
So if you partied hearty through school, majored in Ethnic Basket Weaving and have no concept about what to do next, just keep reading. We’ll get you there. But if you end up with only offers to sell insurance or real estate, guess what?
Do it.
Do it with a vengeance. Nothing’s forever. And some of that cold calling and prospecting, things most graduates scorn, are critical skills. The President of the United States is one of the more powerful people on earth. Yet every day, the President shakes hands, cheerfully telephones and smiles at people he may not always like, soliciting votes and donations. Most star athletes walk into crowds, signing autographs. Some Oscar winners still hustle directors and plead for choice parts. If you like money or freedom, and money buys noticeably more freedom than poverty, you’ll learn to reach out to many people. Holding back and staying aloof is phony independence. It’s more like isolation. That leads to minimum wages. And lack of money robs you of choices.
Now, you may not stay with insurance or real estate forever, but the skills you pick up will help no matter where you go.
(Okay, okay, when walking through a college placement office recently I scanned their bulletin board, and happened to see a job opening. It was for a sign spinner. You know, holding up a sign and waving it from the curb. Don’t even think about that. Spend more time on your search. There are limits.)
Speaking of insurance, to test a theory, I registered a fictitious resume on Monster.com. The person I faked had a Hispanic surname and a Harvard MBA. His undergraduate degree was posted as electrical engineering. I listed his desire as being a project manager in a technology company, with a salary request that was probably $30,000 below the average. I said he had no geographic restrictions.
Resulting inquiries?
One.
What was that employer seeking?
Somebody to sell insurance. So yes, you can probably land a job selling insurance.
The larger point here is that I tested a theory. That theory is that the Internet is a perfectly awful place to find a job. The Internet appears to be as ineffective as classified ads used to be. But that’s another story, and will be explained later in LAUNCH!.
First, let’s introduce you to yourself.
Having bad-mouthed career tests, here comes the WAYA profiler. It’s several miles ahead of every vocational quiz, methinks, but you’re the ultimate judge. The WAYA analysis wasn’t written by an academic. And relax; it’s not a fuzzy spiritual exercise. “WAYA” is simply an acronym for Who Are You Anyway? This quick probe wasn’t created by folks who majored in psychology as a failed attempt to understand their own problems, or a sick desire to pry into other minds. The WAYA analysis emerged from decades of recruiting and firing and promoting. These questions came from the joys of great job connections and the agonies of poor fits.
The WAYA analysis tells you something critical about yourself…it reveals how you differ from other college seniors.
No other test does that.
Best of all, instead of spending hundreds of dollars, you get some real world guidance, no extra charge, in the next section. Heck of a deal, eh? But be warned! Scoring this test, in the printed version, is tedious. You can go to www.WhoAreYouAnyway.com for an automated version of the WAYA profiler, which scores automatically. But that’ll cost you a few extra bucks. And, the online quiz doesn’t have all the job hunt tactics this printed edition gives. So while taking this test in the printed version is a pain to score, you get those extra job hunt tips with it, plus, a peek at every trait being scored. Even though many of them won’t apply to you, it’s still interesting to see where you’re mainstream.
Once you’ve finished, we’ll dive into the job market. This WAYA analysis works best if you keep it to yourself. Nobody else needs to see it. Therefore, do yourself a great favor and answer honestly. There are no right or wrong responses. Nothing should embarrass you. You’ll probably finish in less than an hour. But it works best if done in one sitting. Therefore, schedule some uninterrupted time. Go hide in the library or lock your door and put out a “do not disturb” sign. Turn off your phone. Start the test and don’t stop until you’re finished. Do not start reading the next page until you’re ready to finish it. Have your pen and a flat surface to write on. Does this sound a bit out of the box? Good. Because the WAYA analysis is no ordinary exercise, and if you can follow these simple directions, your career shall LAUNCH!
It’s tragic that so many people waste their lifetimes in dismal jobs. Online job services are terrific for employers but competitive hell for job seekers. The WAYA analysis shows which of your job traits are noticeably different from other college seniors. This matters.
Discover The True You
Here’s your WAYA analysis. It gives killer insights if you answer each question, without jumping ahead. Explanations do follow, some of which are guaranteed to cure insomnia, but, do yourself a favor by blasting through the following questions first, non-stop.
Well okay, if you hear sirens and see flames licking under the doorway, take a break. Otherwise, ignore all interruptions that are less urgent than the building burning. Turn off your phone and finish these questions in one sitting.
Some of these may seem strange. That’s because they are. You’ll understand later.
There are only 135 questions. All but two need “yes” or “no” or “don’t know” answers. Put a “Y” or “N” or “D” next to each. The other two are fill-in-the-blank quickies. A few are long but most are short. Here goes.
The WAYA Analysis
1. You are now star ting the best career assessment test you’ll ever take. What time is it? (This is one of the only two questions that require more than a “yes,” “no” or “don’t know” mark. Not too tough so far, eh?
2. In the last month, did you get over six hours sleep most nights?
3. You need to cancel an appointment next week. You have the person’s phone number and e-mail address. Would you phone first?
4. Lowes, a fast-growing home improvement chain, hired two of you to start the same day. You showed up first and got your choice of training jobs. You can handle customer returns or stock inventor y. Do you prefer stocking inventor y?
5. A student down the hall majors in Nutritional Science. This person needs volunteers for a class project. Participants get $100 and taste five teaspoons of pureed insects, spread over a flat bread, well-cooked, seasoned with organic herbs and the portions are supposedly iron-rich. Volunteers are asked to react after each sample. You are busy and have a huge test tomorrow. But you could use some cash and the Nutritional Science project only takes fifteen minutes per volunteer. Gag. Eeuw. But $100? Would you avoid doing this?
(C’mon, you were warned that this quiz wasn’t an everyday conventional, boring, predictable and totally irrelevant test. Hang in, nervous campus creatures, the findings just might fascinate you.)
6. You’re flying from Chicago to Dallas. The woman seated next to you looks like a Supreme Court Justice. She avoids eye contact. Before takeoff, the woman pulls out a notebook with the title “Issues Before the Court,” puts on a headset and begins scribbling notes. It must be her. Would you say something during the flight?
7. Two companies offer you a job. One of your professors likes your offer from “Company A” while another professor guesses you’d be thrilled working for “Company B.” You respect both teachers. Does this difference of opinion bother you?
8. You’re riding a bus across Pennsylvania. The guy sitting across the aisle shuffles a deck of cards, and asks if you’d care to make a bet. He hands you the deck. You riffle through them and can see that it’s a standard set. He asks you to shuffle and cut the cards. You do. He explains that he’ll now flip over the top card and you’ll turn over the next card. High card wins $20. He turns over a 5. Aces are low. Would you bet?
9. As strange as some of these questions seem, after taking this test and reading the analysis, you pick up a thought or two that could alter your career plan. Some of what you’ve done for the last four years appears to have been headed in a wrong direction. What you learn from the WAYA exercise makes you suspect that. But your prior advice seemed to make good sense. Do you consider shifting plans a bit?
10. You’ve been engaged for a month. The wedding is four months away. As part of a research project, you get confidential access to the campus medical center’s records. You need to look at a sample of the patient histories to help determine the side effects of a new drug. Not all patients received the medicine. While leafing through the files, you’re surprised to see your fiancé’s name. Your fiancé didn’t take the drug, so that’s a file you’re not supposed to look into, but, nobody can possibly know if you do. Would you peek?
11. A successful businessman likes your resume. He suggests you meet for lunch at the Palm Beach Yacht Club. You fly into Miami. Hertz has a sub-compact Festiva with stick shift for $29 a day, no mid-size vehicles and a Lincoln Continental for $79. You owe $20,000 in student loans but suspect an offer from this fellow might help you pay off that in a couple of years, while your other prospects are unknown. Do you save the $50 and take the cheaper car?
12. Have you lost a textbook, mobile phone, keys or umbrella recently?
13. You’re on a late night flight from Dallas to Seattle. Ever y seat is full. You’re tired. Do you tilt your seat all the way back after takeoff?
14. Have you run out of gas or missed a flight?
15. Given the choice, would you rather ride than drive?
16. You pull into the gas station, fill the tank and step inside to use the restroom. There’s both a men’s room and a women’s in the back. Yours is locked. There are no other customers inside and one cashier near the front door plus two other cars filling up outside. You really have to go. Would you use the other restroom, even though it’s marked for the opposite sex?
17. Chinese food sounds good one night. You call. It’s forty minutes for free deliver y. It’s a twenty-five minute walk to the restaurant. Do you walk?
18. Do you regularly wake up with ideas?
19. Would you spend an extra $400 for more airbags in a car?
20. A high school senior is the younger sibling of a friend of yours, but you’ve never met. The kid visits your school next week and you’re the host. Your friend suggests that she or he will be just fine if given a bed, breakfast and left alone. Would you contact your guest to find out what he or she hopes to see and advise him or her on what to wear?
21. If the pay and work conditions were the same, would you prefer teaching to doing research?
22. You have a choice of jobs. One means working for a multi-millionaire. The other means working for a Nobel Prize winner, doing similar tasks. Do you choose the Nobel Prize winner?
23. Does your calendar let you schedule things out more than 90 days in advance, and do you?
24. When you check voice messages and find none, and next look at email and, aside from some spam, see no new messages, is that kind of a relief?
25. You’re spending a week in Hawaii. Your hotel sponsors a short afternoon race in the surf. You can paddle an outrigger with nine other guests, in one race, or compete by yourself, paddling a kayak. Do you try it alone?
26. It was a good interview and you like the company, but they offer you 10% less than you hoped for. You must accept or reject the offer in two weeks. You have five more inter views a month later, but no idea as to how those may go. Do you take the offer?
27. You feel like a workout to help you wake up. The gym downstairs has a nice treadmill but it’s decent weather outside so you could just jog across the campus instead. Would you prefer the treadmill?
28. You’re hiring a concierge for the Ritz Carlton. The first person looks good but stutters badly. Would you encourage this candidate?
29. A laboratory wants to hire you to help them on a contract for Merck. They think they’ve found a drug to control Multiple Sclerosis but need to run several more years of tests. It’s a secret project, and all results from the research will belong to Merck. But an upcoming music group also wants to hire you, they have concerts booked for the next few months, and you’ll be listed as one of several “producers.” Would you prefer the “producer” position?
30. An expert says stock prices will go down 10%, on average, over the next two years, giving some reasons, but this year is already up 5%. Do you agree with the forecast?
31. You’re driving into a crowded parking lot. There are no empty spots on your side, to the right. You see a vacant space to the left. A car is approaching from that lane, but it’s forty meters away and there’s no telling whether it’s coming or leaving. Do you cut across the center line and take the empty parking spot?
32. If it wasn’t available for free, would you pay $19 a month for caller ID on your phone?
33. A club you joined decides to spend a weekend working at “Habitat for Humanity.” You have a choice of painting interior walls or showing the applicants how to fill out their qualifying forms. Would you paint?
34. Are your socks paired in your drawer, right side out?
35. Europeans typically get two weeks of vacation through the year, plus an extra month off in the summer, and rarely put in as much as a 38 hour week. They can’t be fired without getting almost a year of severance pay. Their living standards are lower than ours, but there’s an old world charm to their days. Taxes are high. Advancing out of your social class is difficult, but the welfare system takes decent, if undignified, care of the poor. Does this sound bad?
36. You have a flat tire. The spare in the trunk is good. But there’s a gas station one mile ahead on your side of the road. Do you walk to the station and ask for help?
37. Do you pack for trips a day or more ahead of time?
38. Do you push the elevator button only once?
39. Long before your time, there were two Presidential candidates who lost by landslides. Barr y Goldwater, a conservative Republican Senator and Fritz Mondale, a liberal Democrat Senator both spoke their minds in separate elections. Each said what they believed. Both were trounced. Their opponents gained broad control of the government. Therefore, the ideals both men favored were lost. Do you admire their honesty?
40. To help a charity drive, a local farmer donated two acres of his tomato field. You volunteered to help. Your choice is to stoop over and pick tomatoes under a hot sun, or, to stand all afternoon under a tin roof, bagging tomatoes and making change for customers. Would you prefer the picking in the field?
41. Most of us work for just over 40 years. Once employed, there will be times of hard work and other moments when it’s possible to coast a bit. Since you’re putting in the time anyway, it’s smarter to work extra hard, contantly, getting a chance for more money, promotions and future choices instead of ever relaxing. Do you agree?
42. If students must either live in private apartments with kitchens, or, in dormitories with cafeterias, does the apartment choice sound better?
43. Imagine a country that’s populated and run by dogs. The majority, who hold most of the better jobs, are covered with a yellow fur. They’re called, no surprise, the YellowDogs. One minority group, called the RedDogs, are generally employed in lower-paying jobs but are working their way up. As their name suggests, have different coloring. A second minority, the GreenDogs, have higher unemployment and are twice as likely to be in jail. The GreenDogs want more government assistance, arguing that that these statistics prove they’re victims. Is it possible that the GreenDogs should take more responsibility for their own behavior?
44. A few friends are coming over to watch a movie. You can have the deli down the street prepare appetizers or whip up something yourself. The deli’s been dependable. You sometimes prepare things that dazzle guests but have also created some memorable failures. Do you put the snacks together yourself?
45. Birthdays, weddings, graduations, funerals and holidays must all be observed. These events add tradition, rhythm and proof that there’s meaning to life, right?
46. You’re sitting alone. A menu lies in front of you. When you pick it up, there’s a dollar under it. Do you keep the dollar?
47. You got job offers from Google and Waste Management, a garbage business. You’d be doing the same thing for either company. The Waste Management job is in a town you think you’d like while the Google position is in a more depressing city. Do you take the garbage job?
48. Your new super visor is bright but speaks broken English; is that kind of fun for you both?
49. Your milk container says “Best if served before July 15.” It’s July 15. Do you dump it?
50. Is your GPA higher than you deserve?
51. Your new employer gets all the new hires together once a month for a one hour meeting. It’s a half hour drive to the offices where they meet, or, you can attend by video from your desktop PC. Do you prefer attending personally, despite losing the hour of commute time?
52. You have a choice of listening to a string quartet or jazz. Do you pick jazz?
53. Clarence and Tim grew up in Great Falls, Montana. Clarence’s career keeps him on the move; he stops by his Milwaukee apartment once a month for mail and to relax, but mostly lives in hotels. Tim’s only been out of Montana once. Does Tim have the better life?
54. Your new employer serves international customers. The company pays for language lessons. If you’ll devote one afternoon a week, they’ll hire a personal instructor. Current choices are Spanish or Mandarin Chinese. Your boss encourages you to take one, but doesn’t care which. Do you take Mandarin?
55. You have a breakfast meeting on a trip. You set your travel alarm for 7 am. Do you also ask for a wakeup call from the hotel operator?
56. You’re scheduled to pour orange juice for students after they give blood for a Red Cross campaign. A personal emergency takes you out of town. Your roommate promises to take your turn at the Red Cross and tells you not to worry about it. Do you call your roommate the night before with a reminder?
57. Have you received a traffic ticket for a moving violation?
58. Ten years from now you land a new job and buy a house 400 miles away. The climate seems similar with a bit more precipitation. Your new place is landscaped but you’d like some bushes in front. A gardener from the next block offers to select and plant a local variety. He shows you pictures, they look nice but you’ve never seen any of them. Would you give him the go-ahead?
59. Do you sometimes run yellow lights?
60. Do you know what your friends fear most, where they’d like to live and which public figures they admire?
61. Amalgamated Energy has two plants that need your skills. Their Iceland facility pays $82,500 per year and flies you home for a couple of weeks, four times each year. That’s a two year assignment, after which you transfer to their Houston plant, with at least the same salary. Or, you can star t out at the Houston facility, handling the same job for $48,300 per year, with probable merit increases each year. Do you take the Houston job?
62. The National Park Service offers you a choice of two star ting careers. One is in an observation tower inside the Rocky Mountain Park, watching for fires. The other would be meeting campers at the park entrance, checking their tickets and advising them which trails are best, depending on the weather and season. Do you take the tower job?
63. Your professor suggests you write a report about either Bill Gates or Mahatma Gandhi. Do you pick Gates?
64. Did you raise your hand in class last month?
65. Did you both get a few A’s and fail or drop a couple classes?
66. Is paying for extended warrantees a rip-off?
67. Do you try the daily specials in a restaurant?
68. The movie’s over. You get up and notice a $5 bill in the aisle. Do you pocket it?
69. A promising musician needs help setting up performances and managing crowds for several shows in the next few years. You could manage the details, staying quiet and in the background, so the musician’s reputation grows. But a shy scientist also wants to hire you to run his project, attempting to develop a diabetes pill. This pill would replace shots. This bashful scientist prefers staying in the background. You would handle the details and public contacts, speaking for the scientist and you would be titled the Project Manager. Would you prefer working for the musician?
70. Is there a chance that the threat from global warming is overstated?
71. You’re driving on a narrow, two lane road after dark. You approach the crest of a hill, and a bicycle is just ahead on the right side of your lane. Do you edge over and straddle the center line while passing, giving the biker more room?
72. Do you normally feel better when a doctor gives you a prescription?
73. When traveling, do you like to have a few maps?
74. Can you sleep well in strange beds?
75. Did your parents work too hard?
76. When you miss a class, but borrow someone else’s notes, do you often score just as well on the next exam?
77. Our income tax has become so complicated that the total cost of hiring tax preparers is running at almost 2% of the money generated. Lawyers, advisors and CPAs get those dollars, which are deducted from payments. If our tax rules were simplified to one page, the average taxpayer would get to keep $200 more and the government would receive $200 extra, due to savings from eliminating preparation expenses. Thousands of tax preparers nationwide would then need to find other jobs. Should we keep things as they are?
78. Some people say they’d rather “rust out than burn out,” meaning they avoid stress when they can. Is this a sensible attitude?
79. Do you smile and laugh more than others?
80. There are jobs that pay well, are competitive and require some weekend and evening work. Other jobs pay less, but pay adequately, yet hardly ever intrude into the employees’ evenings or weekends. Is sacrificing some income worth it for this extra freedom?
81. One tangible measure of your worth is how much money you’ve made. This isn’t the most important measure; there are things like helping others and being comfortable within yourself. While cash may not buy happiness, poverty almost certainly does not. The amount of money you’re paid at least shows how one part of the world values you. Is this perspective a little offensive?
82. It’s Sunday afternoon, nothing’s going on, you find a DVD about Darwin and his “Origin of Species.” It’s got two tracks, each one is an hour and you’re meeting friends at a tavern in 90 minutes. One track is about Darwin’s life as a student and scientist. The other track explains his theory of evolution. You’ve got nothing else to do, so would you select the track about Darwin’s personal life?
83. When classes required team projects, and you didn’t agree with the conclusions of your group, did that get real uncomfortable? Or would it if this happened?
84. Have you recently excused yourself early from the table?
85. Some of the students in your dorm are leaving spoiled food in the rec room refrigerator. You’re on the housing council. You could bring it up in your weekly meeting, or, you could put up signs. Do you put up signs?
86. This new employer is unusual. All the recent hires are taken to a mountain resort for a weekend retreat. At the first meeting, everybody is assigned a part in a play, and if you’re a female, you might get a tuxedo and mustache for your costume. If you’re male, you could be handed a wig and a long dress to squeeze into. The skit is actually kind of funny when you read it but you’ve never met any of these people before. Do you go with it and have a good time?
87. You hop in the cab. It’s a ten minute ride. Two parts of a newspaper are on the seat next to you; the travel section and current events. Do you read the travel section?
88. Will you get any help from your parents or professors in finding a job?
89. The September 11 attack on the World Trade Center, killing 3000 civilians, was unprecedented in American history. It changed how we will live. Some of our freedoms may be cur tailed to stop suicidal mass murderers. But Ben Franklin once warned that “Those who would trade liberty for security deserve neither.” Are these new restrictions okay?
90. Do your friends like the same music, food, politics and clothing?
91. You import Playtex baby bottles, and one out of twenty samples tested showed an unacceptable level of nitrosamines. The test is known to give inconsistent results, but, you don’t have time to test more samples. Would you reject the shipment of 1000 bottles?
92. Do you use anti-virus protection in your PC?
93. You need a blue blazer. A discounter has a cashmere coat for under $170 while Brooks Brothers has an identical jacket for $210. The Brooks Brothers coat has their distinctive “BB” gold buttons on the sleeve. The discounter uses polished brass buttons. Other than that, you cannot see or feel a difference. Do you buy the $170 coat?
94. Your life will be better than your parents, in material comforts. Your childrens’ lives, if you have them, will enjoy a brighter future than yours. Do you agree?
95. When you work out in a gym, do you wipe off the equipment after using each device?
96. The pin for the hinge on your room’s door is working loose. The building has a maintenance super visor who handles these items, changes bulbs, fixes stuck windows, etc. But this looks like a simple matter of hammering the pin back in, maybe with a thick book or by borrowing a weight from the athlete next door. Do you call the super visor anyway?
97. Is it fun to get a buzz from alcohol?
98. Life insurance statistics show that both men and women of all economic classes are living longer now, on average, than they were twenty years ago. These same statistics prove that women and men, on average, lived longer twenty years ago than they did forty years ago. Average incomes are up. Technologies and drugs are better. So do we have a healthcare crisis?
99. If you could somehow learn when and how you’ll die, would you choose to know?
100. Did you have a few paid jobs as a junior high and high school student?
101. Somebody that’s been doing a task for ten years is less effective than someone who’s been at the same job for only three. True?
102. Do you shine your shoes or sew loose buttons back on yourself?
103. The cool thing about working hard and fast is that you finish quicker, make more pay and the workday flies by faster, right?
104. Would you like to bungee jump, hang glide or scuba?
105. Does tenure reduce professors’ motivation?
106. If you become an executive, would you prefer that an assistant book your appointments?
107. Abraham Lincoln lost more elections than he won, but kept on campaigning. Both Presidents Nixon and Clinton were defeated in attempts to govern their states, but they kept going. Others, many more others, do the same and never succeed, but we don’t read about them. Harold Stassen, for one example, ran for President nine, yes, nine times and never came close. Are many of these people just stupid?
108. Can you run a mile?
109. You want to change the school’s mascot. You wonder about presenting the idea to the student council. You could get on the agenda and submit a written proposal that explains your suggestion. Or, you could talk with each council member separately, hoping to get their individual approvals beforehand. You don’t have time to do both, so would you be inclined to submit the written proposal?
110. Your company is developing a new video game. Ten adolescent “gamers” will try it out this Saturday. You can take a sample home and run it yourself that Saturday, or, you could go into the office and observe these kids trying it out. Would you more likely go into the office and watch the kids try it out?
111. Have you gone to a movie alone?
112. A short detour comes up, directing you through parts of a town you’ve never been through. Is this frustrating?
113. Your employer offers you a choice in your retirement fund. You can have your allocation put in a bond fund, with a guaranteed but modest return. Or you can put it in a stock fund. The stock fund has shown both gains and losses over the years, averaging better growth than the bond fund. Do you prefer the bond fund?
114. Your company makes stuffed animals. A competitor seems to have the Disney World account locked up, but their buyer suggested that if you hosted him on a fishing trip, he might be able to stock some of your merchandise. Do you take him fishing?
115. For convenience to O’Hare Airport, you lease an apartment nearby. You have a choice of addresses. The “Box 478-Q, O’Hare, Illinois” address comes free with your apartment. A “Two Lakeshore Drive, Illinois” address gets mail to you just as quick, but costs an extra $15 per month. Do you pay the extra?
116. Was your school below average in several categories?
117. You’ve got a long weekend coming up. You could go to a nearby lake where your roommate’s parents have a cabin. Or does chilling out in your room with a book and watching a movie on TV sound better?
118. The meeting is on the second floor. There’s a staircase next to the elevator. Do you normally take the elevator?
119. You’re strolling through a museum. It’s filled with paintings, mostly portraits and landscapes. Do you study many of the portraits?
120. A salesman was fired for cheating on his expense account. Seven weeks later, an order he sold earlier is found in a stack of misplaced mail. Apparently everybody forgot it. He is owed a small commission on that sale. Should he be located and the commission paid?
121. Your worldly cousin calls from Manhattan. He’ll visit you in Berkeley next week. Chez Panisse, a superb restaurant, has a table for two available. The restaurant, however, cannot tell you what meal will be served, since the freshest market items determine each evening’s menu. All patrons receive the same dinner. There are other great restaurants in town. None are as interesting as Chez Panisse, but at least you have a menu choice elsewhere. Do you book Chez Panisse?
122. One job offer includes a company-paid membership to a country club and first class travel. Does that sway you?
123. When watching TV with someone, do you hand them the remote control?
124. Have you had more than your share of luck?
125. You finished your last exam before noon. Now you could catch up on sleep. Or you might hit the road and head home right away. Would you sleep first?
126. Does a fixed salary appeal more to you than a 10% lower salary with decent shot at making a 30% bonus for achieving reasonable objectives?
127. One summer you worked as a house cleaner. The company had two super visors. Ms. Martha Meticulous inspected every few minutes, reminding you how to sweep and where. Mr. Billy Broadstrokes tended to point to a room and walk away to do another area of the house himself. Did you prefer working for Martha?
128. Are you polite when someone angers you?
129. Some organizations can’t guess what you might be doing for them next year. Is that okay?