How to Start Your Dream Job Search
In our search for our dream job, our instinct is to start with some survey of the job-market out there, to find out what's "hot" and what's not. The job-market! Ai-yi-yi, that could take you years. No, this is a journey you're embarking on, not (yet) a destination.
So, it's useful to recall what travel experts teach about taking a journey: before you go, they say, lay out on your bed, two piles. In one pile, put all the clothes that you think you'll need to take. In the other pile, put all the money you think you'll need to take. Then, they say, pack only half the clothes, but twice the money.
By coincidence, the same kind of ratio occurs in this other journey, This Journey Toward Your Dream Job.
That is: for this journey, you will need only half the information you thought you would need about the job-market, but twice the amount of information you thought you would need about yourself.
So, mark this, and mark it well:
Most job-hunters who fail to find their dream job, fail not because they lack information about the job-market, but because they lack information about themselves.
Of course, being human, our first instinct is to protest that we already know loads of information about ourselves. -After all, we've lived with ourselves all these years. We surely know who we are, by now.
Well, let's test that premise.
- Take ten sheets of blank paper. Write, at the top of each one, the words: Who Am I?
- Then write, on each sheet in turn, one answer to that question. And only one.
- When you're done, go back over all ten sheets and expand now upon what you have written on each sheet. Looking at each answer, write below it, why you said that, and what turns you on about that answer.
- When finished with all ten sheets, go back over them and arrange them in order of priority. That is, which identity is the most important to you? That page goes on top. Then, which is next? That goes immediately underneath the top one. Continue arranging the rest of the sheets in -order, until the least important identity is at the bottom of the pile.
- Finally, go back over the ten sheets, in order, and look particularly at your answer, on each sheet, to What Turns Me On About This? See if there are any common denominators, or themes, among the ten answers you gave. If so, jot them down on a separate piece of paper.
Voilà! You have begun to put your finger on some things that your dream job or career, vocation, mission, or whatever, needs to give you if you are to feel truly excited, fulfilled, useful, effective, and operating at the height of your powers.
You are now ready to go on to solve the question of:
What Color Is Your Parachute?
