Dream Job

Let’s face it, all of us in the class want to improve our chances of getting our dream jobs. That’s why the following points I got from reading the following article on Businessweek.com are helpful to share. The title of the article, “Landing Your Dream Job” (http://www.businessweek.com/managing/content/feb2010/ca20100218_464850.htm), lists several helpful processes to get your dream job. Normally, when I think of getting a new job, it always starts with writing a resume following by job search either through headhunter(s) or on my own. Never in my mind had I thought of building a process to land my dream job. The writer, Martin, Zalewski, uses his personal professional career to lay out a process to help readers to achieve their professional goal. Below are four steps from the writer and the way I understand them.
• Think of the present opportunity as a springboard for the job ahead, whether it be with the same employer or with someone new. Personally, I like to do different tasks or jobs since I got bore pretty easily. But for some people, they just like to do one job that they feel comfortable and they do well. I understand that you may fail while do something that you don’t know very well, but the learning process is a valuable lesson for later. The more you learn, the better you are prepared for your dream job.
• What am I capable of achieving? A big part of testing what your capabilities are is to take a risk to find out. People tend to feel comfortable doing what they know best, but lack the courage to explore their own potentials. From the employees’ perspective, they don’t want to take the initiatives to manage their own professional life and leave it to the manager to plan out for them. From the managers’ perspective, they sometimes behave in a selfish way of hiding their best performing employees to themselves and won’t let their employees to realize their full potential.
• Where do I want to be? Monetary reward is a part of motivation for many people, but it is not the only element. Accomplishments are important for some people so getting recognition is very important to them as well. To answer the question, you need to find out what are the most important to you personally and setup your career goal towards accordingly.
• How am I going to get there? Today’s business world is changing ever so fast, especially in the information technology field. Technologies change every 3-5 years so it is important to keep up with the latest knowledge about technology in addition to learn new skills necessary to achieve personal dream instead of dreaming about personal dream. Another point I think write got it right is the mentoring aspect of the development. Having someone who already went through the process is very helpful and provide a short cut to avoid some of the mistakes.