What makes for a dream job?
Maybe your dream job is being a chocolate taster, or the body double for the on-screen partner of George Clooney or Beyoncé but, well, I doubt it. Your dream job shouldn’t be a fantasy exercise; it should be real and realizable.
Your dream job is the one that’s a great match with your special, unique talents and, especially, your competencies (more on that soon). The dream job is the one that’s perfectly fitted to you.
We all know how the perfect pair of jeans fit. They hug us in just the right places, stretch where we need a little extra, reach the right height on our waist and our ankles, make our butts smaller and our legs longer. Maybe for you it’s Slim Fit, or Classic Fit, or Relaxed Fit. Whichever it is, it’s the best fit for you.
When you’re wearing the perfect jeans, nobody wows at the jeans. They wow at you.
Jobs are like jeans. Get the right one and nobody thinks, What a great job he or she got. They think, What a great performer he is she is. And, just like jeans, jobs can be fitted. Here’s what you can do:
1. Forget the fripperies. Nobody cares about seam finishings on jeans. Or the zipper fastening style. No amount of concierge services, bring-your-pet-to-work, or enhanced 401K plans can make up for a job that doesn’t play to your strengths. Don’t sweat the small stuff, or let it distract you from what matters.
2. Focus on fundamentals. Lots of very clever and hardworking scientists have gone gray, and made a lot of money, researching what makes the difference in how well people do at work. Learn from their findings and make your career decisions on the truly relevant factors, the factors that predict performance (and therefore satisfaction, excitement, reward) at work.
3. Fit the facts. Don’t try to squeeze into a job two sizes too small, or get lost in one that could envelope three of you. Know yourself and go for the right size and shape of job for you.
What are these fundamental factors that predict performance in a job? How can you separate them from the fripperies?
There is a lot to say in answer to these questions – we could talk about this subject for hours, and maybe one day we will. In its details it’s a long story. After all, it took decades of work on the part of all those very clever and hardworking scientists to get the answers.
Here’s a very short summary of the fundamental factors that predict on-the-job performance:
It’s not what you do, it’s how you do it. Skills, knowledge and education take you only so far. What really makes the difference between so-so performers and shining stars at work is the way in which they work, their behaviors on the job, their competencies (that word again). Getting results at work, for most of us, usually requires a great deal more than technical skill or specific knowledge, rarely involves only one right answer, and almost always demands that we work with others. In other words, how we work predicts performance more accurately – much more accurately, it turns out – than the skills we employ in doing the work.
This statement has been demonstrated scientifically and repeatedly, and matches (reassuringly) with what we all sense and observe.
Of course, every job has different fundamental factors, different behaviors and different specifics required in the way, for example, that the jobholder must work with others. Further, each of us has a unique combination of talents, traits and preferences that represent an ideal match with some jobs’ factors and represent a disastrous mis-match with other jobs’ factors.
In my career so far, I think I have done really well at leading companies with complex people-centric solutions and I know I did really badly at staffing a Congressional committee.
Luckily, there are ways to know what combination and level of factors matter in each job, and what kind of person is likely to excel in it. You can know this. It’s what we do at Matchpoint Careers, Inc.
Don’t settle for ill-fitting jeans because you really need a new pair of jeans. Get it right. The result will be wow.
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