Scouting Your Talents for Employment Potential

A realistic assessment of your aptitudes can help land a new job
By Eve Tahmincioglu, MSNBC.com careers contributor

You’ve all heard it before. Find what you’re good at and build a career around it.

It’s advice that makes sense, but not always. Not every talent can necessarily translate easily into a career.

Case in point. I got a letter from a reader named Karina from Hong Kong recently and her comments crystallize what I’m talking about:

“I'm very good at guessing a movie's storyline and my husband agrees that any movie that keeps me guessing to the end is one of the best movies we've ever seen. Are there any jobs out there that can utilize this ‘talent’ of mine?”

We all probably have a long list of these types of “talents,” but thinking you can get these abilities off the couch and into a great job might be a bit naive. I’m not saying it’s impossible. I’m just recommending that you keep your reality check meter on high.

When you’re deciding what career path to take, be realistic about how what you’re good at can actually translate into a job that pays the bills and makes you happy. That means taking time to research professions and companies that may be able to utilize your unique abilities and talking to people that are doing what you envision yourself doing.

It’s not always something obvious, and it can even seem absurd on the surface.

Take Irina Patterson. Three years ago, she discovered she was good at making balloon art and left a career as a PR professional to become a balloon-blowing entrepreneur selling her creations on street corners.

This Miami resident is now charging up to $300 an hour for her “balloon art entertainment” and boasts luxury hotels and rich families as her clients.

“I twist balloon art effortlessly, without even looking at my hands. And people see it, admire it, tell their friends. I don't have to think where my next booking will come from. It will come from word of mouth. It always does,” she explains.

Steve Runge, a former construction business owner from Bellingham, Wash., had a knack for languages, especially biblical languages. He decided to go to seminary school part time to study languages while still running his business and after seven years was able to graduate.

Last year, at the age of 40, he landed a job as Scholar-In-Residence at Logos Bible Software, that makes products to help pastors and consumers study the bible.

Runge said he spent a lot of time trying to figure out how his talents could segue into a new career and interacting with people in the field at conferences and over the phone. “This was a 13-year process for me, and at times I got impatient,” he admits. “But it was worth it.”

Tori Johnson, the CEO of Women for Hire, believes: “It's almost impossible to learn passion, but it's rarely impossible to build a business based on an existing passion.”

She offered a few examples of individuals who turned passions into careers.

“I found a woman who loves to sew — and most people would say you can't make money on that. Wrong. She teaches sewing lessons to kids and adults — group and private — and sells handbags and accessories she makes,” Johnson explains.

And a California woman who was a compulsive organizer, she adds, made “big bucks helping other people to declutter offices, garages and more."

If you’re not sure what your passion is, Tevis Gales, founder of workplace consulting firm Balance Integrations, offers these five questions to ask yourself:

• What projects have you done in the past year that have absorbed or delighted you?
• What did you love to do as a kid? What was your favorite game? Not sure? Ask people who knew you then.
• If you walk into a bookstore for no reason, what sections attract you?
• If you had three months to live, what would you spend the next three months doing?
• If you had been born someone you truly admire, who would you be and why?

Since Karina from Hong Kong already knows movie sleuth is her thing, I wondered what the heck she could do with a gift that seems to me to be a career non-starter.

I decided to post Karina’s question on my blog, http://www.CareerDiva.net, and asked readers and career experts to offer her some advice and their take on the topic.

Here’s a sampling:
“The woman from Hong Kong has a unique talent, guessing the endings to movies.She could go to work for a movie studio and read screenplays to tell whether or not the endings are too obvious.She could do the same for television weekly mystery shows. She could enhance their stories by making the ending less obvious. She could work on ‘Desperate Housewives’ for example.She could do the same for writers of mystery novels.She could be a mystery novel writer.”— Dan Coughlin, Dan Coughlin’s Daily Acceleration Blog

“Talent agents, creative agencies, and studios screen projects prior to sending them to their clients or affiliated talent to ensure the screenplay is high caliber enough to put in front of an actor or director. Perhaps you could work for an agency or a production house. Production houses option thousands of screenplays that never make it to production, so your knack for exposing weaker plot lines would be a value in the early stages of the film production process.”— Matt Dornic, 3 Dog Communications

“It is amazing how many people think their ‘talent’ can be a business. First of all, there has to be a demand for the talent. Just ’cause I think my talent is great doesn’t mean anyone else will, or there is a need. People often love their hobbies until they have to do it when they may or may not feel like it, and it becomes w-o-r-k.

To get ‘hired’ in a traditional sense I have to document the value I bring to a prospective employer.

Remember, my ability to do something is different than getting hired to do it.”— Anthony W. Beshara, Babich & Associates, a recruitment firm

“I love to read so much that in 5th grade I got in trouble for it. The school librarian and the principal of my elementary school called my mother (and me) into the office to say I was ‘mocking’ the librarian by checking out so many books.

I went on to become the Senior Publicist at HarperCollins Publishers in New York.”— Judy Safern, literary publicist, LeadingThinkers

10 Potential Negatives, Often Overlooked, to Consider When Selecting a Residential Development Site

By Anthony Seruga

Finding property to develop can be difficult. To complicate this even further, it’s even more difficult to find a piece of property large enough to develop into an entire residential community. It’s easy to want to jump and purchase the property immediately when you finally find it, but there are some negatives that you need to be aware of. These ten negatives can impact and impede and even destroy the development and eventual sale of your property.

#1) It’s extremely important that you have the soil tested when you are considering the property. There are all kinds of things that have one way or another made their way into the soil that would kill your deal before you’d ever made it. Land that has previously been used by industry could be land that has waste in it like oil, lead, or toxic waste. These kinds of things make the land not able to be developed. If you purchase land that ends up not able to be developed you will be stuck with the property. That means that you’ll be paying taxes on said property and not be able to do anything with it.

You may be able to clean up the land, but that will take additional investment and you additional time before the land will be able to be developed. If you already own the property and find that it does have these problems you may be able to hire someone to clean up the land by bringing in fresh dirt after turning over the polluted earth and taking it away. Again, this will probably be a long, arduous process which means that the land will not be able to begin the long development process before it is entirely cleaned up and completely free of all problems.

#2) If you are close to an area that has bad smells in the surrounding air you may have a problem selling your lots once the land has been developed. For example, a community was developed just outside of a landfill and that community took quite a long time to come up. Not many want to live in an area that will smell bad with each warm day when they go outside. This will make the land harder to sell and develop which may end up in the developer losing money in the long run.

#3) Another area that you would want to stay away from as a developer would be one that is near a loud location. An airport would be a good example. When planes come and go they are quite loud. If a residential neighborhood is developed too close to this, it will be hard to sell the lots and get people to live so close to such noise.

#4) Sites that have health hazards too close to them can be hard to determine but they can also be sites that will lose money for the developer as people will be concerned living so close to these hazardous things. Some examples are areas that are close to high power lines, a car manufacturing plant, or other plants that will emit toxic wastes. Not many would want their children exposed to such dangers and therefore would not want to purchase a lot in this area.

#5) If the land that you’re considering investing in is near or would provide a view of something sinister like a cemetery or something unpleasant and loud such as a string of bars, casinos, or a prison, use this reason to decide against the investment. Not many would want to look out onto a cemetery from their kitchen window. Those raising families traditionally would not like the noise and danger from things like bars, casinos, or a nearby prison.

#6) Land that may be considered unincorporated may be difficult to sell to consumers. This means that the properties will have well water instead of city water. Some will be willing to buy bottled water and still live in this area, but many will not. Another negative about this type of area is the fact that the people that purchase the lots will have to use septic tanks rather than city utilities. Again, many people will not want the extra hassle of dealing with septic tanks that have to be maintained and often clog.

#7) When you take a look at the land you’re considering for development be sure to see if it there are any wetlands within your acreage. Wetlands are extremely difficult to build on, if they can be built on at all. With wetlands your only hope for development would be to fill those lands in with earth that can absorb the water. In many cases these wetlands are protected by the government and will not be build able anyway.

#8) Certain soils are also hard to develop on as well. Rocky soils and soils that are not compatible with septic systems will not be able to be developed. This will again result in either additional money having to be spent to make the land able to be developed or additional taxes.

#9) Be sure to pay attention to local politics. If there are any political people that are not for development they could make your project difficult to do. If you have those kinds of problems you may never be able to develop the land.

#10) Be aware of any other local development. Other local development may make your development more difficult to sell. People that are looking to purchase property to build a home may not like other development that is coming up and this will make your properties harder to sell. Be sure you know all other nearby developments and how the community feels about them.

Developing land into a residential community can be a very profitable venture, but you have to be careful with your investment. As long as you are aware of the ten above negatives and are careful to avoid them, you are on your way to selecting a great development site.

Tony Seruga and Yolanda Bishop of Maverick Real Estate Investments, Inc. work with builders, developers and other players in the commercial real estate industry to acquire and develop properties. They use progressive investment strategies that have proved extremely profitable.
In addition to their own deals, they teach both seasoned and inexperienced investors how to be big players in the game. Visit the website for more info.