Oh the lazy days of summer, whiling away the afternoon at the pool or attending a picnic, early evenings enjoying a cool drink at the café, taking a night class, or out and about doing anything at all that you enjoy in the glorious weather.

Imagine really enjoying your summer and working on your career search all at the same time. Skeptical? Hear me out.

Take a moment and think back on how you got into your first career or second or perhaps you are on a third. I bet you chose the career you wanted, trained for it, and then went to the classifieds, applied for a job, got it and started getting your paycheck. Right? Probably, so wrong!

If you are like most of us, you found your career rather circuitously or rather as I like to say serendipitously.  I love the sound of the word, serendipity, it sounds so light and oh so, summery. I looked up the word and found the following Wikkipedia definition:

Serendipity is the effect by which one accidentally discovers something fortunate, especially while looking for something else entirely.

Examples of serendipitous scientific, medical discoveries and inventions abound. Where would be without:

• X-rays, Penicillin, Viagra, retin-a, the pill

• Scotch guard, rayon, cello-phane, ink-jet printers

• Safety glass, gravity, North America

• Chocolate chip cookies were invented accidentally by Ruth Wakefield. She did not have the required chocolate for her chocolate drop cookies, so she broke up a candy bar and voila chocolate chips were born.

So if so many significant and important discoveries were made while looking for something else, surely we can apply the principle of serendipity to our careers. 

So, just to prove my point, I went out grocery shopped, bought inserts for my shoes, ran into the pharmacy, hardware store and, while I was at it, interviewed everyone I met while waiting in line etc. I asked different people how they got into their current or a past profession. The answers I got were interesting and so serendipitous.

Serendipitous Career Paths:

Pharmacy technician:

Trina applied for short term work at the local drugstore. She was hired as a general cashier. She impressed the manager and was asked to help out in the pharmacy. She found that she really enjoyed pharmacy work. She then found out she could become grandfathered in as a pharmacy tech. With her interest in medical professions piqued she has recently entered nursing school. Who knows what interesting career discovery awaits her next.

Interior Designer/Colorist

Joyce went to work at the paint store, in customer service. Her desk was right next to the paint color samples. Because she was sitting right there, people would ask her opinion on the color samples for their homes. She found that she had a natural eye for color. She became the paint store’s resident color expert. She now also runs a successful home based color and design business,

Career/Life Coach

Susan left corporate high tech Organizational Development/Staffing after 15 years in the management.  She went back to school, while in her 40s, and chose to study Creativity and Consciousness. She had no real plan in mind, just loved her field of study. One of the courses required hours in personal therapy. One day while waiting in her therapist’s office, Susan happened upon a magazine with an article about Coaching-we are talking 15 years ago, when the field was virtually unheard of. She became so fascinated by the article that she enrolled in a coaching certification program and has been a career/life coach for over 14 years.

I am the Susan in the last example. I also got into high tech OD/Staffing by way of amazing serendipity.  But, I digress. My point is that most of us that are in the careers we enjoy did not get them by some straight logical path. We allowed the space for serendipity to show us the way.

If you are considering a career reinvention, it almost doesn’t matter how you get started: just get out of the house and get started!

So here’s how you can easily and enjoyably tap in to your own summer of serendipity.

• First get clear on your goal. I love how Louis Pasteur said, “Chance favors only the prepared mind”. If you want serendipity to go to work for you most quickly and easily, get focused on what you are after. Recently I got clear that my goal was to determine a new niche for my coaching. A serendipitous encounter brought me the new direction within the week.

• Take advantage of the long, lazy days of summer to get out of your house as much as possible, including in the evening- We have three additional hours of daylight times at least ninety days of summer. That is an astonishing 6.5 weeks of extra daylight just between mid June and mid September to be out attracting serendipitous events.

• Get out and go anywhere-remember serendipity happens when you are looking for something else, so it hardly matters what you are out doing. Just be sure and get out of the house each day.

• Do your social networking in real live social places - actually talk to your new internet contacts on the on the phone or better yet go out and meet your internet contacts for coffee or tea. No worries if it doesn’t seem at first glance to be a fruitful use of time, remember we are talking about serendipity here.

• Think of your excursions as office time- go out and explore what you might enjoy such as having coffee in a different place each day-think of it as career search time. Clock as many of these hours as possible each week.

• Take a new job or assignment- whether to earn money or because you are drawn to a new line of work: it may not matter what you choose as we have seen in the above examples. Being in new environments with new people creates new ideas and opportunities.

Experts say that we should research and contact at least 2 new companies a day while we are in job search mode. Take advantage of the summer of serendipity and in addition to researching and contacting companies, go ahead follow your nose and do things you enjoy or just go about your day. While you are out and about be sure and talk to at least two new people a day. Have your calling/business cards with you.

Life is full of surprises. Take advantage of what appears when you least expect it. Be open and receptive to new possibilities. Trying to figure everything out can shut off the opportunity for serendipity to work its magic.

Gotta go. I am off to Trader Joe’s and the pool to do some career research. Let the summer of serendipity begin!