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created by its designers, which explained what it did, and how it worked. She was also given a sample of the application to explore and test, and a description of the target end user. Jenny first digested the technical report. Second, she studied the sample product itself. Third, she analyzed the needs and wants of the intended end user. Jenny then finished by preparing a manuscript that put the product’s features and capabilities into a form that made it comprehensible and useful to the end user. Jenny and I then worked on getting past the language and terminology of the computer business. After focusing on the verbs she used, we came up with the following job description: “I gather, analyze, and digest complex information and then translate and present it in a form that meets the needs of a particular audience.”
    Go through your notes on your activities, removing jargon, and focusing on the verbs. Refine the language as much as possible, the goal being reducing it to a single sentence. Now, rewrite this sentence in ALL CAPITAL LETTERS at the bottom of the page you labeled Job Description.
2. Give Yourself a Performance Review
    When you’re not in charge of your work life, all the parameters by which you’re measured and then rewarded, in both the present and the future, are determined by your boss. What are you paid? Your boss decides what the pay range should be for your position, and whether or not you’re worthy of a salary in the upper part of the range. Your boss sets the standards by which you’ll be measured to see whether or not you qualify for an increase. The skills you acquire and hone, the achievements you strive for, and the pace with which you progress are all based on your boss’s decisions.
    As long as you work for this person, you’ll need to make sure you take his or her decisions into account. But if that’s all you do, you’ll find it’s hard to move into the job of your dreams. Just as you need to develop your own job description, you need also to conduct your own performance review.
    Start by becoming an expert, not just on your company or your industry, but on the job market in general. Using your new, self-created job description, research what other individuals who fit that description earn in salary and benefits. That means expanding your reading of the classified ads, perhaps by checking business journals at your local library, and spending some time searching for salary surveys on the Internet. While you’re at it, contact your college’s career office and see if the counselors there can provide any comparative information. In addition to noting compensation packages, pay attention to the skills that are stressed in these other fields. What achievements seem to be valued? How much and what type of past experience do these other fields require? Take notes on your findings, writing them on the page you’ve labeled Performance Review.
    Paul Derschinsky, my news photographer client, went through this exercise recently. Rather than just looking at how much other photographers at his newspaper, or news photographers in general, were paid, Paul started researching the salary and benefit packages of magazine photographers, photography teachers, camera-store managers, corporate photographers, and even photographers who worked for the government. He spent one Saturday in the reference room of a university library near his home, and the next day doing online research at home. Paul discovered that while his salary was about average for a newspaper or magazine photographer with his skills and experience, it was a bit higher than the salary of a product manager for a photo-equipment company, a camera-store manager, or a photography teacher. But corporate and wedding photographers earned more, and seemed to require less experience to move up to more lucrative positions. For obvious reasons, those hiring and assessing corporate and wedding photographers placed more emphasis on portrait and