Introducing “Career Building from the Inside Out”

by Trevor Calton

From Homeless Youth to Seasoned Professionals

When I was 25 years old, I started volunteering with homeless youth at a local nonprofit, helping with job-readiness training. Most of the youth had never worked before, and our goal was to help them find employment. 

After completing the training, we sent them out into the job market, cautiously optimistic. 

A month later, none of them had a job. 

I asked them, "How are you looking for a job? What are you doing for your job search?" 

They all had the exact same answer: Looking on the internet, emailing resumes, and filling out applications.

I asked, ”What else are you doing?”

With a puzzled look, they said, "What are you talking about?"

I realized at that moment, the job training doesn’t cover how to look for a job, not to mention how to build a career. So when the time comes to go job hunting, almost everyone intuitively does the same thing.

But I had unique experience with job hunting, some perspectives to share, and my own personal ‘system’. So I invited them to come back in for another training session where I gave them some tips that might be helpful.

A month later, all of them had jobs. 

One of them even landed a management position, as his very first job, at his favorite retail store. Needless to say, we were super excited with the results, so we turned my ‘tips’ into a workshop and made it part of the job training program.

Then, something unexpected happened.

Over time, several of the managers and staff who worked at the nonprofit started coming to me and saying, "I really liked your workshop. I tried some of your techniques and I found my dream job. That never would have happened without your advice." 

I started hearing this over and over, and I realized that my tips worked well, not just for the young people, but also for professionals. I had a system that could be used by anyone, at any stage in their career, and the effectiveness was remarkable.

I didn’t know it at the time, but 25 years later, I’m still being asked to share the same tips (and more) because the system still works. 

Making Job Hunting a Game

From an early age, if I wanted money, I needed to work. An allowance wasn’t a thing. My first job was a paper route when I was 12. In high school, I started working in restaurants (for the tips), and I continued working full-time as I put myself through college. 

I also moved around A LOT when I was growing up. I lost count of how many times I’ve moved in my life, but I changed schools over a dozen times, including three middle schools, four high schools, and five different colleges, all by age 23.

By the time I finished college, I had so much experience job hunting, it felt like a game to me. I would consider it a challenge to set my sights on a company, and say, "I'm going to get a job there." 

I had a system, and it worked.

3 Elements of Career Building from the Inside Out

Building your career from the inside out consists of three elements:

The first element is self-awareness, looking within, and identifying our thoughts, our talents, our interests, our priorities, and doing soul searching and figuring out what is our best use of our skills and our talents. We use this as the guiding principle as the centerpiece for going out and identifying career opportunities that are going to be a great fit for you.

The second element is creating a mindset, and that is starting to look at both your job search and your career in a different way. This sets the stage for you to use your guiding principles of your own core skills and talents to go out and create opportunities. 

And then finally, we talk about reaching out in new and creative ways. People often start from the outside and try to get within an organization. But we're going to show how effectively start within various organizations to uncover opportunities that we didn't know about. 

What to Expect  

So what can you expect?  Well, the first thing is…

Don't expect instant results. Expect better results. 

I want you to find that you are uncovering opportunities that you didn't know existed, or that you never would have been aware of had you not used some of these techniques.

This method is not as much about finding a specific job, as it is letting lots of great jobs that would be a good fit for you, find you.

Love What You Do and Have Fun

The ancient Chinese philosopher Confucius said, "Do what you love, and you'll never work another day in your life." 

I fully subscribe to that saying, and that is going to be a core value of this workshop. We're going to do our best to uncover jobs and opportunities that you're going to love.

The next thing we're going to learn is how to make this whole process FUN! 

This is your job. This is your career. This is your life. It can and should be enjoyable. And the process for building your career and job hunting should be no different. 

We're going to uncover some things that will help you enjoy this process and have fun while building a truly fulfilling career.

The next thing we're going to learn is how to get people to think of you when they hear about a great job opportunity that might be a good fit for you. In other words, we're going to show you ways to uncover opportunities that you didn't even know existed or were not even advertised.

We're also going to learn about ways to be memorable using your personality and to get people to think of you more often.

And overall, we're going to learn how to use your own natural skills, abilities, your personality, to attract jobs that are going to be a great fit for you.

Why Am I Doing This?

I found through experience that this method really works. People who had no formal job hunting training, put some of these techniques in place and got amazing results. 

I've heard the words "Dream job!" 

"Happy!" 

"Never want to move again!"

 I've heard all sorts of great feedback because these techniques are different than what most people are doing, and they are more effective.

I also want to help people. I get a lot of fulfillment out of giving someone ideas or new techniques that they can use, and then having them go out, put those into practice, and then come back and tell me, 

"Wow, you really changed my life. That one piece of advice changed the entire course of my career."

It’s very exciting and very fulfilling to hear that kind feedback. 

A lot of career building books, training programs, and sales tactics out there are based on tricks or some sort of manipulation. 

This is not that. 

Career Building from the Inside Out is based on authenticity, and that is what will get you the best results.