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Know Thyself: Launch a Business Doing What You Love
June 18, 2010
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“Julie and Julia” and your career -Part One
June 17, 2010
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Know Thyself: and Then Forget What You Know
June 15, 2010
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Know Thyself: Feeling Gracious? Or is It Something Else?
June 11, 2010
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Know Thyself: Emotional Intelligence and Your Viability as a Job Candidate.
June 8, 2010
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Know Thyself: Put Your Best You Forward.
June 4, 2010
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Stop Waiting, Start netWORKING
June 26, 2008 | Author: Promise Phelon | Filed under: Musings
“Luck is what happens when preparedness meets opportunity and opportunity is there all the time.”—Earl Nightingale
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Is it realistic to hold out for the ideal job?
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And, if you did, would you really know what you were looking for?
Three steps you can take to start bringing your ideal to you…in 15 minutes.
People say that if you wait long enough, you’ll find the right partner and spouse. Hmmm…I disagree. I think it requires a knowing, good sense, some prioritization … as well as some luck. In a recent article by Tammy Erickson, published by Harvard, it’s said that you should wait for the right opportunity to come your way. Erickson talks about the importance of loving your work and the power of waiting for the right thing. I agree—people who love their work make incredible things happen. They’re inspiring, fulfilled and creating exponential results. However, most people don’t have the bank accounts or the professional courage to hold out.
Here’s an interesting takeaway from the article:
You certainly deserve to find work that you love. While I recognize that it often doesn’t seem possible given the practical realities of today’s job market, try expressing your genuine enthusiasm for working with an organization even if it doesn’t appear to have an opening…. Like the quest to find a great life partner—and the pity of settling for a lackluster marriage—don’t settle for a work relationship that is just so-so.
Tammy is a smart lady. I’ve read her work religiously. And I agree: we are best when the work situation is optimal for both parties. My fundamental challenge is two-fold: 1) waiting assumes that what you’re looking for is easily identifiable and 2) when what you’re waiting for comes around, would you actually recognize it and have the means to succeed at it?
Here are a few other questions I asked myself while reading her article, which you can digest for yourself here: Holding Out for the Ideal Job.
- Who can afford to wait? I don’t know about you, but we have these pesky little things called obligations in my household—they tend to come in the form of bills. In these times, creditors are more aggressive than ever. Can we afford in the near-term (pay the bills) or in long-term (“enjoyable retirement” or the option to retire at all) to ponder our options?
- What’s the real cost of waiting? If you wait in a job you don’t like, you’re not effective, doing your best work or growing in your current role. If you take time off to figure it out—first, will you really be in a better position to find “it”? Second, how will the gap in your employment affect how future employers, partners and investors view you? In my own hiring process, that gap is like a shiny red flag. Plus, who’s to say your waiting will be productive? One of my colleagues has been “waiting” in a senior sales role for almost four years. Nothing has come. She’s now acutely aware of the time that has passed and is, self-admittedly, pretty desperate. Do you want to find a job when you’re desperate? Not me!
- Why wait for the ideal job when you can get the job to come to you? I once heard the famous football player (turned child advocate, turned entrepreneur, turned man of the year) Ronnie Lott say that you have to “exhaust” life. Yes, waiting and boredom can be exhausting, but what about getting out there, experimenting and emulating others? What if, instead of waiting for the right job, you were thinking of how to get the right opportunities to come to you through your network?
- What if you have to invent something? “Waiting” assumes your options are finite—if you wait, you’ll realize that you want to be a nurse practitioner. What if what will actually make you happy is to leverage your great writing and marketing skills to become a renowned blogger and pundit on nursing and healthcare, where you’re making money on speaking opportunities and ads? And to make it more interesting, what if you worked part time in a convalescence home? Our professional choices are NO LONGER discrete. As a professional, you’re welcome to flavors in every imaginable combination. But waiting won’t get you there—discovery, modeling and experimenting will.
Now I can, however, buy into love at first sight. Attraction operates on a very visceral level. Hormones and so many unconscious factors play into our human quest to find a partner. But a job? True professional fulfillment? Intellectual stimulation? That’s something else. We’re not hard-wired to know what, professionally, will float our boat. Now, layer on to that the fact that you may have student loans, a family, fear or misinformation around certain roles, or lack of experience, and finding what you love gets more complicated. I don’t think the best way to do it is to sit around taking personality tests or meditating on the ideal job.
No—it’s pretty simple. What you need is peers and colleagues who love and care for you to give you reactions about your strengths, points in your career where you’ve excelled, things they would view as good options for you. Next you need to start forming, testing and “norming” your assumptions about those opportunities by connecting with people doing it or something close to it. At that point, you’re seeing the implications of your move and what you’ll need on the other side. Finally, you need to (quickly, I can tell you’re excited!) figure out how to transition to that new-new thing while strategically preparing your action plan for your first 100 days inside it.
If you’re serious about bringing your ideal to you rather than waiting for it, here are three things you can do right now to get the program underway:
1. Send a personal letter to your closest peers and colleagues. Tell them you’re seeking personal and professional development and ask them for their feedback about you: what you do well, what you need help with, which surprising (or not-so-surprising) job they could really envision you in, and if they know anyone who can help you propel your career forward.
2. Take that feedback—compile it, then rinse and repeat. Then try to identify people who are in that position or have been. Spend some energy finding and talking to people in your extended network who are doing what you’re considering, have done it or bring perspective about it.
3. Here where there’s risk—take that feedback and shape it into two or three opportunities that would be of interest and exciting to you. And, instead of looking for a job, seek out the right opportunity. Educate your network on what opportunity you’re looking to obtain, and keep “it”—the network—updated on your quest.
The strategy here is that people love a story and like the story when they’re part of writing it. Your network can help you define what you’re looking for, can bring opportunity to you and if engaged, can help you see opportunities that you might miss along the way. STOP WAITING.
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3 people have left comments
Waiting. Who does that anymore? There’s no more waiting. There’s only try, adjust and do. Same is true with networking. Get out and do it. Adjust and go do it again. Especially for those of us who work from home, NO prospect ever just showed up on my doorstep. I had to go to them. And looking back, my best long-term connections have come from networking.
This is definitely the website I will share with the management accorss different business groups in my company. When hiring, we don’t want people who are either too “green” or too “stale”. UpMo seems to be able to serve the need.
A good networker I am not. “Adequate” might better describe me - however, with that said, my confession is that every job I’ve gotten since 2001 has been through personal connections (and I’ve held more than my share). This was an uncomfortable realization, since when I think “networking” I get a queasy and unpleasant feeling in the pit of my being. To top things off, if I’m going to excell in my career I know I need to network and do it well.
So all that being said, this site reads smart, moreso than a lot of others I’ve seen. I’m looking forward to seeing what’s comming, and maybe becoming a little better and a little more comfortable at something that’s helped me so much, so far. Thanks.