Targeting the Right Employer

How to Avoid a Life of Unnecessary Desperation

Copyright 2003-2010 G. A. Puleo

How do you define your ideal job?  Although Americans spend the majority of our waking hours working, many never take the time to enunciate their professional ideal or pinnacle. 

Studs Terkel said in Working, "80% of Americans are dissatisfied with their jobs and lead lives of unnecessary desperation...[because] they remain unskilled at looking for new opportunities."  If you never identify your ideal job, many potentially lucrative, exciting and challenging job opportunities will continue to be lost on your radar. 

How to Describe Your Ideal Job

First remove any barriers to brainstorming your answer to the following questions.  No holds barred, let your imagination run wild. 

1. Where do I want to work:  at a Fortune 500 corporation, an innovative start-up or my own business? 
   
2. What am I responsible for:  major strategic decisions, training and mentoring staff or directly impacting the lives of clients or patients? 
   
3. How do I work:  autonomously or as part of a team? 
   
4. What is the working environment:  traditional business attire or business casual?  Highly driven or laid back? 
   
5. How long is my work week:  40 hours with weekends off, 40 hours with work on the weekends or over 50 hours with work and personal lives interwoven? 
   

Your answers to these questions are important because, to paraphrase, if you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there.  Your answers define the key characteristics of your ideal work environment with a new employer. 

Your Career Autopsy

Successful job searches start by criticalling evaluating your career to date.  Ask yourself two fundamental questions: 

• In what environments do I excel? 
  
• In what situation am I uncomfortable? 
  

Be candid in order to create your personal "Must Haves and Can't Stands" list.  This list specifies what empowers, annoyws, challenges, motivates and impedes your progress on the job.  By understanding the requirements for your professional satisfaction, you can actively and intelligently focus your job campaign on employment opportunities and companies that fit your ideal job profile. 

Industry Trends

Things are constantly changing.  Where is your industry going?  Are your "Must Haves and Can't Stands" realistic or unrealistic?  For example, if your ideal job is a set 9-to-5 schedule and your field requires workers to rotate shifts, then you'll need to be flexible on this demand OR change fields or industries.  But don't be too rigid:  if a job provides other important characteristics of your ideal job, then you may choose to accept the offer even if you must initially sacrific your desired seet schedule. 

Your "Must Haves and Can't Stands" will help you determine which characteristics are critical to your successful job performance AND whether they are reasonable expectations of a given potential employer. 

Transferable Skills

In today's tight employment market, you may as a job candidate find that there seems to be no positions available in your ideal work environment.  You have two options:  1) cease your job search altogether if you can financially afford it (althugh, from a career perspecitve, large gaps in employment may undermine future job offers) or 2) expand your job search into areas outside the 'normal' hiring places in your field or industry. 

Don't forget that your skills are often highly transferable to different environments and industries.  For example, nurses do not only work in hospitals, but also for corporations in the healthcare industry.  By knowing your industry, keeping abreast of trends and networking, you can usually find a position that offers many of the characteristics of your ideal job in a very different market from what you were originally targeting. You may even be able to satisfy some of the "must haves" that your current industry doesn't support.

Getting the Desired Qualifications

Although your ideal job is derived from evaluating your career history and incorporating your professional aspirations, you obviously have to meet at least the minimum qualifications for this job.  Nearly all jobs have barriers to entry that must be met before a job candidate will even be considered for an initial interview.  Attempts to rationalize your way around this qualification deficit will usually be met with recruiter resistance -- which can lead to negative feedback in your network. 

Fortunately, you can get the qualifications that you need.  Specifically identify the skills, education or licenses to be acquired.  Then seek out employment opportunities that will enable you to develop these skills.  You can also take a sabbatical or attend nontraditional classes in order to acquire the education on your own. 

Turning your ideal job into reality takes sacrifice:  if you're not willing to pay your dues, perhaps you should re-evaluate whether your job search is realistic.  Success demands sacrifice, patience and perseverance, but finding your ideal job is a surefire antidote to a life of unnecessary desperation.

Click here for A User's Guide to Managing Your Career -- our 90-minute webinar to help you take charge of your career path.