How to Land Your Dream Job: part two

Part one of this post was partly a defense of the good old 9 to 5, so I won’t go there today.  Today I’m going to assume that if you are reading this you are either excited or resigned about the need to get a J.O.B.  as opposed to becoming an entrepreneur, at least for now.  It also dealt with getting the right training or education to set yourself up in a high paid career.  But today I’m going to talk about picking a dream job as your first job, or your next one. 

You have already gotten the training you need to qualify for a career that you can excel in, because as I said in part one, you don’t try to fulfill your passion with a job.  You find a job you can excel in and as you become world class you grow a passion for that job, in the classic virtuous cycle manner.  Michael Jordan wasn’t the greatest basketball player of his day because he loved basketball, his love for basketball grew as he mastered it and only because he could master it.  Your work is going to be like that too.  No matter how much you want to be something, if you pick something you can’t gain mastery in you will not find fulfillment in it.  The world is full of untalented and unhappy actors and singers who just don’t have the skills and talents to succeed at their “passion”.  Leave any passion that doesn’t fit your talents in the hobby closet. 

So you know what you are good at and you’ve gotten equipped to start doing it.  What’s left to do?  Just selecting the place to work and the entry job that will let you start on the path to excellence.  First, and this is huge, do not go to work anywhere where the top guys, the guys in the C-suite, aren’t older versions of you.  I was a chemical engineer so I looked exclusively at oil and chemical companies because their top leadership included a lot of chemical engineers.  I could have worked at an insurance company or a firm that built integrated circuits and computers but those companies were managed by finance majors, accountants or electrical engineers.  There is a simple reason for limiting your consideration to companies run by people with your credentials.  Prejudice!  Not in the sense of the evil racial , gender or ethnic kind.  This is the simple business preference that everyone considers their own qualifications to be the best ones, all the way up to the CEO.  And they will always promote people with the same qualifications as their own over people who are, in their subconscious opinions, misfits or less qualified.  That probably isn’t fair and it might even be an evil kind of prejudice but it is reality and you can make it work for you or against you. 

Next, realize that you may have some strong preferences about lifestyle yourself and do not pick a job that will compromise them unless you do it as a great adventure.  In my case I was engaged when I graduated from college and my wife was from a rural farm literally  in the middle of nowhere.  She had less than twenty people in her high school class.  Neither of us liked big cities and our hobbies of tennis, fishing, hunting and hiking and our dislike of crowded conditions meant that I chose a job in Arkansas over Chicago, Houston, Tulsa or Dallas.  I also chose a job where I could probably stay put without hurting my career advancement or transfer to Colorado if I wanted to (we both love to ski!).  I had interned at this company while in college and noticed that many of the top leadership had stayed in the same rural location for most or all of their careers, so that was a plus for me.  Had I not been about to marry I might have taken the Chicago job because it was a very elite offer and after a couple of years stint there I would have been on the international team working all over the world.  That might have been fun for a single guy but not for my wife and keeping her happy is a top priority.  In the same way think hard about how much travel you would have to do in a job and if that works for you.  The job I took had me on the corporate jet from my very first year of work and that’s an amazing and fun way to travel!

Make sure that the pay and benefits are not the only things you consider.  In my case the pay for Arkansas was exactly equal to what Chicago offered me so that was not an issue.  In fact it was a plus because the cost of living in Arkansas is very low, and big city wages in tiny town really let you ramp up your savings rate without extreme frugality.  Besides pay and benefits find out about the biggest benefit of all, how fast can you grow your skills in that job?  As an intern I was already getting a chance to do senior engineer work and I had not even gotten my degree.  It was obvious that I could advance as fast as I was capable, and there were mentors galore in that location that just loved to teach newbies.  Plus it seemed like everyone there was constantly being sent off to industry leading training seminars all over the country.  Week long, very expensive training was provided to everyone every year, sometimes several times a year.  Being a fairly small company in an industry dominated by  giants, our management realized they had to train hard to compete.  The company spent over $200,000 training me across my career, adjusted for inflation the number is probably closer to $500,000 in today’s currency.

Pick your boss.  When you consider a job consider your supervisor.  Again as an intern I got to know the players and it was easy to see that the person who would be my boss if I took the job was on his way up the corporate ladder.  He was a genuine genius full of money making ideas for the company and it stood to reason that if I worked for him and became his right hand guy, then as he rose, I’d rise.  That is exactly what happened.  If you take a job working for someone who isn’t progressing then don’t expect to either.  He will likely have realized his career is stuck in the mud and will not be very productive.  And his reputation will rub off on you despite your best efforts.  Don’t take a job unless you are going to be managed by a thoroughbred, if you are hitched to a mule you better get used to going slow. 

Finally, pick your competition.  That was a big reason I ended up at a smaller company.  I had offers from huge corporations but they had something I preferred to avoid if at all possible, strong competition.  The small company I chose was beginning to flourish but they had seen some hard times for the previous decade so they had not hired any new engineers during that period.  That meant there was a ten year gap between me and the next youngest worker.  They had plans to hire a lot of people and I was going to be the first of several.  Being the first guy in and being someone who had modern skills they lacked when it came to computerization and coding let me establish my reputation (in their minds) as a rocket scientist, so that when the next dozen engineers were hired they just had no chance of competing with me.  It is unlikely you can find a field quite that fertile but the principle is still valid.  Given a choice, pick a place where you do not have strong competition.  If you are the fourth one hired into a team and the others are brilliant and have a year or two experience advantage on you you’ll spend your entire career working for them and will have to change companies to get ahead.  I saw that happen to most of the people hired in after me. Whenever that next great promotion came up it always came to me first. 

So that’s what I learned during my 9 to 5 days, which blessedly are almost three years to the day behind me now.  Now I work a day a week consulting for entertainment and money I don’t need, I volunteer a couple of days because it helps people in need and I blog and pursue a bunch of outdoor activities for fun.  I credit having had an exciting career that was one of my favorite hobbies for three decades, to my selecting the right career and the right company. And I credit that to my using the thinking I put in this post and the previous one (part one).  At least I can say it worked for me. 

If you’d like to make a comment just go to the top of this post and click on the title!

What about you?  Do you agree with these tips ?

What has worked for you in landing a dream job?