Dear Dorothy,I've been working at an entry level position for about two years. For the last 6 months, I feel as if I have outgrown my job and don't see any room for growth. I enjoy my job and the people I work with, but I feel like I need to make the next move in my career. How should I move forward?
Career Advice: How Do I Juggle Taking Care of a Parent and Job Search?
Hello Dorothy, I have been recently helping out taking care of my dad because his health isn’t good right now. What suggestions do you
Photo: Renjith Krishnan
have for how to manage my job search and help with my dad? How do you think I can juggle the two? It is imperative that I find a job soon because the job market is starting to pick up here in my town. My organization skills aren’t that great when it comes to managing my own life in terms of doing multiple things. You have great advice, so I value your expertise. –A-
A job search is a fairly time consuming activity as you know. It gets more difficult to manage when you have a job and if you are providing care and support to an aging parent, that’s just about as time demanding. What that means is that you are going to have to deploy some time management strategies. Below are some things you can do to help ensure you have carved out enough time to spend on your job search.
- If you have to take your parent to doctor or other appointments, you should then be the one doing the scheduling so you can control the details. I would pick a fairly consistent day of the week and time as much as possible. I’ve had to do this myself and unless it’s for testing or something else that has specific days, most of the time you can be the one dictating the schedule. My preference for you is Friday, as many people take that day off or are unwilling to conduct interviews that day. It would be even better if the appointments could be Friday afternoons.
- If you have other daily activities like dressing, bathing and feeding you need to make a schedule and keep that schedule as if it were a true job. Most of the time, those things are in the mornings, but make a schedule and stick to it.
- If the help you are giving your dad is not as routine, then you need to set some boundaries with him for your availability to help him. Those boundaries include your general availability, still based on a schedule. Of course there will be exceptions, but not everything should be ad hoc.
- Create daily time blocks, just like if you were working that you will use to conduct your job search. When you hear the adage “getting a job is a job”, most people don’t take that seriously. They allow their new found freedom of a schedule to get filled up, often with things that do nothing to help with the job search. The next thing you know, you have spent weeks doing almost nothing to get a job. If you create, and keep a schedule just as seriously as you would if you went to work, you would be able to spend time helping your dad and still make time for your job search.
Do you have a career question that Dorothy could help you with? Simply email her your question and she will return a response to you within 48 hours. Some questions and answers are periodically selected for publication. All personal information is kept confidential to ensure privacy. Write her at: dorothy@nextchapternewlife.com and her sites: www.nextchapternewlife.com and www.mbahighway.com
Posted: February 22nd, 2012 under career advice.