Practical Tips for Getting Ahead in Job Search

[zacgivegetwin]

Interesting Quote from Adam Saven on passion. Thoughts?

“ I often chat with current undergraduates about their careers and goals. Often times, they are considering going into investment banking. When I hear that, one of the first questions I ask is whether they read the Wall Street Journal or Financial Times in their free time. I didn’t, and, looking back, that was a strong indicator that I wouldn’t find the work interesting.”

Edited August 30, 2015 by fuzzylogician
Link removed

[juilletmercredi]

I see that this is essentially a stealth ad, but I'm going to answer it anyway.

I have several issues with that kind of statement, and his story as a whole.

1) I don't read academic journals in my free time. That doesn't mean I'm not a good researcher and that I don't like the work. I've got a friend who's a speech-language pathologist, but she doesn't do volunteer speech therapy on the weekends. Another friend does public health education work and she doesn't do that for free; most statisticians I know don't do analysis in their free time; nurses don't always help sick people or read nursing journals in their free time; accountants don't often do people's taxes for fun. In fact, none of the friends I know who are happy or content in their careers spend their precious free time on the career.

Work is work. It's something that you get paid to do so that you can have a roof over your head and eat food; what you do in your free time, and whether you'd enjoy doing what you do at work for free as a hobby, is irrelevant to whether a career path is right for you. (If so many people were willing to do it for free, then why would my job ever pay me money to do it?) In fact, only a very lucky few get to "do what they love" at work, and sometimes doing what you love burns you out on that passion.

2) I wish that we as a culture would get away from the idea of a "dream job", or at least that we would help college graduates understand that landing your dream job straight from college is rare. We've all got to pay our dues first. I also wish we'd get away from the idea that you can find what you love to do and get someone to pay you to do it. There are very few jobs out there like that, and the ones that do exist are highly competitive (and probably don't pay all that much, since they pay you in "passion").

There's no secret sauce for college graduates who are on a career trajectory that they don't like. You progress through your career much like other people - you work jobs, you figure out what you like and you don't like, and you make a series of career moves to get yourself into a good place where you like most (but not all) of what you do every day. You may never be passionate about the role that you play, but you might enjoy the work and your coworkers and appreciate the company and its benefits.

I love these Ask a Manager threads for that reason:
I feel "meh" about working
"Do what you love" is not great advice
Why you shouldn't follow your passion

I think this will actually make recent college graduates happier, because once they realize that they can be content doing a wide variety of things and they don't need to be consumed with passion every day at work, they'll settle in and find the good in what they do.

3) Not everyone has dreamed of starting their own company. I have not, not once. I like working for other people. I like the security of an established company with benefits and procedures for taking time off and some brand recognition. I like working essentially 9 to 5. I don't want to manage all of the business aspects of a new start-up; I just want to do my job. The vast majority of people are like that, and should be. There can only be so many companies; at some point, there need to be employees for these companies. Every company will, eventually, need an accountant and an HR department and IT.

What I don't like is the encouragement for nearly all college grads to start something themselves if they can't find a job. They hear all the sexy stories of Facebook, Snapchat, and these other billion-dollar former start-ups. They DON'T hear the stories of the failed start-ups that have left their founders poor. And not that failing is bad - it's okay to have a failed start-up, and being the CEO of a company can teach you a lot in a very short amount of time. But I think that kind of work should be left for the people who really, really want to do it - who don't mind living and breathing their work most of their waking hours, who have a deep craving to completely own and direct something of their own, who feel constrained and stifled by a normal 9-to-5 working environment (or its permutations - lots of jobs have flexible hours). There are a few recent grads who will be like that and the rest probably need to get a traditional job - or, at the least, work for someone else who is starting a start-up.

[TriVA]

I clicked to find practical tips for getting ahead and I found reality instead.

There's no secret sauce for college graduates who are on a career trajectory that they don't like. You progress through your career much like other people - you work jobs, you figure out what you like and you don't like, and you make a series of career moves to get yourself into a good place where you like most (but not all) of what you do every day. You may never be passionate about the role that you play, but you might enjoy the work and your coworkers and appreciate the company and its benefits.

At 35, BACK in graduate school, in program and job number whatever, I can attest that I've heard this advice about a million times but never really listened. Now I just know it as fact.