How to Find Your Dream Job – Follow the 4 W’s
Perhaps you recently graduated from college and need help choosing a career path. Or maybe you find yourself stuck in a rut after working a couple of years in your current field. Because professional and personal struggles at this age often go hand-in-hand, it’s important to take a comprehensive approach to finding your dream job. This article will help you plan how to find your dream job by answering the following questions:
- Who are you?
- What are your transferrable skills?
- Which careers fit your personality and skills profile?
- Where do you go from here?
Who are you?
Many career counselors agree that an in-depth personality assessment is crucial to finding your dream job. Personality assessment tests reveal your innate traits as well as the types of environments and people you value. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator test is perhaps the most popular test used by career counselors for decades. The MBTI tests for 16 different combinations of the following four dimensions of personality type:
- How you interact with the world and where you direct your energy,
- The kind of information you naturally notice,
- How you make decisions, and,
- Whether you prefer structure or spontaneity.
If you still have access to your university’s career services office, you can likely take the test there for free. Otherwise, you can take the MBTI online or find a list of counselors who administer the test in your area at The Myers & Briggs Foundation web site.
Tracie Thomas, assistant director of University Career Services at Northwestern University, suggests the Keirsey Temperament Sorter (KTS-II) as an alternative to the MBTI. “The Keirsey Temperament Sorter is very much like the MBTI, but it sorts people by four different temperament types,” says Thomas. These types include artisan, guardian, rationalist, and idealist. You can obtain a free temperament report by visiting the Keirsey web site.
Carefully consider your interests as well during this self-exploration stage. Author Michelle Goodman shares some simple interest inventory tests in her book, The Anti 9 to 5 Guide. Take a look at the books and magazines lying around your home. Imagine what type of dream job you would pursue if money, education, or time weren’t issues. Your subscription to Yoga Journal or your childhood dream of becoming a football player might not necessarily lead to a career as a yogi or NFL star. However, they might reveal an interest in the health and fitness sector, or simply an interest in staying as far away from a desk job as possible.
What are your transferrable skills?
After you determine who you are as a person, it’s time to identify your transferrable skills. “Think of the things that you have done in the past or currently do that take little to no effort on your part,” says Thomas. “Those are the skills you want to focus on while finding your dream job.” The U.S. Department of Labor, Employment & Training Administration’s O*NET web site provides an online skills search where users can check off their transferrable skills and find interesting career suggestions.
If coming up with even the most basic list of skills causes you to scratch your head, don’t fret – you aren’t alone. Most young adults, especially those with limited work experience, draw a blank when trying to figure out their transferrable skills. Fortunately, a multitude of skills assessment tests exist to help you. The Knowdell Motivated Skills Card Sort is a deck of cards that list 51 different transferrable skills that help reveal not only your strongest skills, but also the skills you prefer to use. “We don’t use all of our skills equally,” says Thomas. “For example, just because you are good at math doesn’t mean you like to do it. You want a career that uses your motivated skills.”
If you don’t have access to a career counselor, the Motivated Abilities and Skills Exercise (MAS) is an alternative test you can take on your own with a little help from a friend. First, write a different accomplishment on ten to fifteen sheets of paper and describe how you reached each one. Be as detailed as possible, and don’t forget to note how you felt after each accomplishment.
Later, ask a friend to take notes while interviewing you about these accomplishments. Your friend might notice a skill or two you didn’t realize you use quite often! After you collect all the information, note any patterns and group similar skills together. This exercise should help you discover not only what you do, but also what you like to do, best.
Which careers fit your personality and skills profile?
Once you complete one or two of the exercises above, you can explore careers that would be a good match for your skill set. The Princeton Review Careers After College page and the Occupational Outlook Handbook released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics are good places to explore careers. “The Occupational Outlook Handbook is like a dictionary of careers,” says Thomas. “It outlines everything you need to know about any particular job, such as salary, training, what the day-to-day duties are like, and occupational outlook. America’s Career InfoNet goes even further and breaks down career outlook by state.”
Blogs have even sprung up to assist recent college grads with their job search. Monday through Friday, One Day One Job highlights companies such as The Daily Beast and the Shedd Aquarium that have open entry-level positions. Each company profile also features links to LinkedIn or Facebook, where you can find employees within your online networks. (This could come especially in handy during the next stage.)
Where do you go from here?
After you narrow down your list of potential careers, it’s time to explore careers offline and talk with real people. “Identify those people in your fields of interest and do informational interviews,” says Thomas. “You need to find out if these jobs really reflect your interests and skills and if you are willing to do what it takes to get into that field.” Scour the Internet, your local yellow pages, and professional groups or associations for potential interviewees. Most people enjoy talking about themselves, so a brief e-mail or phone call offering to buy coffee in exchange for a 30-minute chat should do the trick. Ask your interviewees to describe their day-to-day duties, how they paid their dues, and what type of salary to expect in their occupation.
Informational interviews not only offer a peek into your dream job, but also provide valuable networking opportunities for finding your dream job. Your interviewees might later share job leads or, better yet, the contact information of those who make hiring decisions within their field. As you get closer to these decision makers, be prepared to sell yourself. “Call upon those transferrable skills,” says Thomas. “You will need them to think about how you will market yourself to your chosen field.”
Keep in mind that even if you follow each of the above steps, you might find yourself repeating them five, ten, or fifteen years down the road. This isn’t unusual, as most people will have more than one career in their lifetime. “Throughout each career, you learn something new, enabling you to apply that knowledge to your next career,” says Thomas. “I always say that you are never married to your job, you are always just dating it.”
By: Tanya Stanfield
10-29-2009
Tanya Rose Stanfield continues to navigate the post-college world in Chicago six years after graduating from the University of Wisconsin. She's a freelance writer and marketing communication expert who writes for athleticgals.com and keystoneclick.com.
