What are you passionate about..and are you any good at it?

I am not sure why I am stuck on this employment kick but I seem to be having far too many conversations about people looking for work or getting laid off so job searching and helping people search for jobs seems to be on my mind constantly.

When ever I enter in these conversations I always ask that magical question "What are you passionate about?"

This question is obvious to me since every time I have been in a hiring position I look for one main characteristic in any candidate...and that is passion.

Passion is the one thing you cant teach people, and yet it is the most important thing to have.

Without passion for what you do I don't think you can be successful in the long term. Passion will get you to think harder and hustle more. Passion and Pride (the ultimate combination) will force you to make any situation work no mater how frustrating and this (again) is something you can't teach.

The other part of my qualifying question is the "are you any good at it?" part and I am always amazed at how many people assume their skills are still as sharp as they were in the past.

Uninspiring jobs can make you lazy and when you get lazy your skills get rusty. If you are considering making a job change, or even bigger a career change one thing to do is make sure the skills you think you have are still in fact there.

I considered using this part of the blog post to explain how I went to batting cage yesterday to see if I still had the skills that I had in my youth and somehow tie it all into this post/thought but it doesn't really apply except to say that I checked to see if I still had the skills that my mind was assuring me that I had and in this case I did.

...and I really only wanted to use this example as a reason to post this video...because it was the actual inspiration for most of this post :)

Keeping my skill sharp. from saulcolt on Vimeo.