Midlife transitions expert Steven Joiner advises creating your encore career instead of applying for listed job openings.

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If you’re having trouble finding your encore career, consider shifting your focus from filling jobs advertised by others to designing a job tailored to your unique strengths.

At a career development conference in 2009, Denise Bissonnette completely changed my view of career development. She said professionals in the work force need to stop thinking of the job search as merely seeing what is available. Instead, we need to bring an entrepreneurial spirit to our search, creating "employment proposals" while keeping an eye on emerging social trends and businesses.

Employment proposals can work for all kinds of career paths, from bookkeeping and technology to retail, service and construction. Denise told stories of clients who proposed creating a nighttime parking-lot security position at a hotel, a site preparation and cleanup position with a paint crew, and a range of other examples. All were people who said, "Here is a need that your company seems to have, here are the skills that I can use to fill that need and here is how it will give you a competitive advantage."

Job hunters vs. job developers

Some of the characteristics that define the beliefs and actions of the job hunter and the job developer are:

Job Hunters:

• Look only for what is available
• Think successful job searching is shooting resumes off into cyberspace
• Believe in the power of anonymity
• Believe in the "career caretaker"

Job Developers:

• Realize the work world is not fully formed
• Cultivate and grow
• Go online to get offline
• Believe in the power of connection
• Are self-leaders

Companies and organizations need sharp-eyed professionals to step up and help create the workplace of the future. Entrepreneurism and innovation are not solely the domain of the startups. Everyone has the ability to look at the workplace as it already exists and say, "I see a need here that can easily be filled if only ..."

Creating the employment proposal that Denise discusses in her presentation sounds a lot like what I called "creating intentional opportunities" when I worked for Idealist.org.

Know yourself and your set of skills; know the facts about the organization that you'd like to approach (including their strengths, areas of need and human and fiscal resource constraints); and then pitch them an idea heavy on your own initiative, heavy on deliverables that will have a long-term benefit to the organization and very light on staff time needed to manage you and your project. In other words, how can you give the organization as much as possible without asking too much of them in return?

This doesn’t mean you stop looking for what is available. You should put equal effort into applying for pre-existing jobs and creating the relationships where you can foster your ideal encore career.

How does it work?

At a career fair, I approached an educational nonprofit and said:

Hi there, my name’s Steven Joiner and I am a writer. I saw on your website that you just got your nonprofit status and you have 1.5 paid staff. I have a background in education and an interest in writing more grants. I was wondering if I could research possible funders for you and send you a weekly report of promising leads and such. Then, every two weeks or so, we can get together and decide on a few foundations to approach for funding. How does that sound?

Their answer was, “Can we have coffee tomorrow morning?” I did the heavy lifting of researching the organization, matching my skills to a need I saw (both those that I already had and those I wanted to develop), then crafting a “pitch” that was heavy on return and light on organizational time and resource investment.

Years later I got to enjoy the experience of being on the other side of the table. A 62-year-old student at Portland Community College approached me and said:

I am in my final year of the gerontology certification program, and I would like to explore national trends around careers in art and aging. I have a background in interior design and painting, and I would like to use my experience and my education to create a nonprofit that helps older adults tap into their creative side. I know you have a resource on your website that helps people research different careers and I was wondering if I could create some content for you around art and aging.

What do you think I said? I worked with that intern for a year, and I’m very proud to say that, at this year’s Positive Aging Summit in Los Angeles December 7 to 10, she is presenting on the topic of art and aging. She is doing so with a creative group of fellow students, all of whom I see all making an encore career of the opportunity.

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Steven Joiner is trainer, speaker and writer whose social-impact career is helping people fully live up to their potential. As a career transitions expert, he works with professionals of all ages to help them intentionally transition to new meaningful professional experiences. Steven is the former director of the Career Transitions Program at Idealist.org. He has contributed to The New York Times, NPR’s Marketplace and a range of local media. He is the author of The Idealist Guide to Nonprofit Careers for Sector Switchers and is a founder of the 21st Century Worklife project.