From Guest Blogger Dr. Rick Jacobs: Industrial psychologists have a technique, job analysis, that helps to drive a variety of human resources programs from selection of new employees, to efficient training strategies to performance management initiatives. Basically job analysis is pretty much what you would think; we analyze jobs to better understand what the job requires in terms of specific tasks and underlying skills and abilities. I have done 100’s of job analyses studying positions as diverse as firefighter and police officer to executive recruiter and pharmaceutical sales professional. Each time I learn something about people, their jobs and how interesting work settings can be. In some instances it helps me to enhance my work and the way I think about what I do.

You don’t have to be a job analyst to get the benefit of knowing more about the work of others. We all have friends and acquaintances who are engaged in interesting work. Talk to them and find out more about what they do. Ask them about a typical day at their office or workplace. Many will start their answer with a simple statement, “there are no typical days where I work.” That’s a good opening. Listen and ask questions. Find out more about the environment that surrounds them, the people they interact with and the challenges they face as they try to get their work done.

Think about how your work compares to theirs and how you can take some of the facets of their job you find fascinating and incorporate them into yours. When I worked with the pharma sales folks I was amazed that they had to sell their wares in such a short time. Doctors don’t give them a lot of time so they have to present their case in less than 90 seconds. The more I thought about this the more I realized sometimes I talk too much. It was a great exercise perfecting some of my messages so they were more efficient. Firefighters spend a lot of time preparing even though, thankfully, they don’t have to do what they do best, too often. Preparation like that taught me a good lesson when it comes to my work. I found knowing more about the work of others actually enriched the way I thought about my work and how I approached various aspects of my job.

You can also learn a lot about jobs by doing a little bit of research. In recent blogs Paula talked about exploring competency models to learn more about different occupations and about looking at the best companies to identify what they look for in their new hires. You find out quite a bit by just spending a little time on the internet. Another great source of information about jobs is O*Net where you can look up almost any occupation and find out a world of information including tasks performed, required areas of knowledge, skills and abilities to perform the job, and the context of the work. You can search by job, by jobs that are similar to your target job and/or by specific skills you have so you can identify jobs that require that particular set of skills. It is informative and a lot of fun.

Sometimes jobs are just not going to get better no matter how hard you try. I believe knowing more about the work of others is a great way to identify jobs and job types that might be a better fit for you. If we take the job analytic approach, talk with friends who have interesting work we can better identify viable options for where we might go next on our career journey. If you are thinking about a job change remember it is almost as important to know what you don’t want to do as to know what is right for you. By talking with people in a variety of jobs you can learn a lot about the tasks and responsibilities you would be performing and the people and environment that make up that work. Talking to people about their work is almost always fun and relatively easy. Give it a try.