Retail Job Hunting Tip - Career Detour Success Strategies to Keep on Track

Since the beginning of the recession in December 2007, the U.S. retail industry has lost more than 800,000 jobs due to downsizing, liquidations, and massive budget cuts. At a time when starting or regaining a retail career is difficult or impossible, what is a retail job-hunter to do?

"Take a job," is the advice of Pablo Solomon, an internationally recognized artist who has known plenty of times in his life when working in his chosen career was difficult or impossible.

When working as an artist wasn't paying the rent, Pablo took plenty of career detours. He worked in oilfields, repaired diesel locomotives, trained commandos, taught dancing, leveled floors, washed dishes, cleaned boats, drove a dynamite truck, sold fossils, and repaired surfboards. Pablo also worked as a bouncer, a body guard, a rancher, a house painter, and a soap opera actor when art-related work was not readily available. From this huge number of career detour experiences, Pablo was able to develop success strategies that actually keep his career on track.

"I have learned something from every job that I ever had and from every person I have worked with," Pablo says. "I think that one reason for my success as an artist is that I have used my understanding of people and my knowledge of a lot of industrial processes to create my art."

Pablo's advice for retail job hunters who find they are taking an involuntary detour in their career path is to take any job, even if it is not in your chosen field, and see what you can learn from it. "Working maintains your dignity and your self-reliant mindset," Pablo says.

But while keeping yourself working is important, Pablo also recommends that you approach any work you do with a spirit of adventure and view it as a character-building opportunity. "The greatest survival skill of humans is their ability to adapt," Pablo says. "You cannot stay stuck in the past and hope to miraculously regain what you may have lost."

Even though Pablo Solomon is highly successful and well-recognized artist today, his career path was neither straight nor smooth. But according to Pablo, by keeping a positive and grateful attitude, every job and experience moved him forward in his chosen career in ways that he couldn't have imagined. Instead of seeing career detours as roadblocks, Pablo's experiences taught him that every job can be a valuable, expansive, and character-building experiences.

"I am convinced that to be a 'real' artist, you must live a 'real' life," Pablo says. "In many ways, my life has been my art."