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 help you in this process, with one caveat—the partner cannot be the one shaping the story. The greatest risk is that the partner's interpretation becomes your story. Any partner in this process should be helping you recall and not coaching you on what it means.

If it is not possible to go through this process with another person, consider simulating this dialogue process with a computer or smart phone. One approach that we favor is using the dictation and transcription features on a current PC, Mac, or IOS or Android device. Using a “Voice Note,” or “record and transcribe” app, your device can act as a partner, “listening” and transcribing what you say. In our experience, this will force you to be more complete, honest, and open about your career journey. Simply thinking about it will not force you to articulate it. So transcribe and, in any case, take notes and make connections to your sense of which anchors resonated and resonate with you.

The transcription is the reward for carefully articulating your story and will in turn reengage you with your journey. Is the transcription correct? Did I leave anything out? Does seeing it written out in this way help me see any patterns?

Whether with a partner interviewing or an app transcribing, your goal is to gain insight, perhaps even clarity, on where you have been with your career. You may also see patterns that suggest future directions. Still, the primary goal of this “interview” phase is to fully capture the past, before you get ahead of yourself into the future.

Questions for the “Interview”