What Color Is Your Parachute? (28 page)

The brilliant social media diva Patti Wilson gives online classes on how to use social networking sites in your job search:
www.pattiwilson.com/consulting/social-networking/
.

Follow twentysomething personal branding and social networking expert Dan Schawbel on Twitter: @danschawbel.

Penelope Trunk has created both a blog about career and life issues and a social network to help young people manage their careers. You can find both at
http://blog.penelopetrunk.com
.

For a delightfully irreverent take on our dependence on technology see
www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6IQ_FOCE6I
.

Here’s a Harvard Business piece, “How Twitter and Crowdsourcing Are Reshaping Recruiting”:
http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/cs/2009/09/how_twitter_and_crowdsourcing.html
.

Try this list of popular social networking sites:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_websites
.

Follow a hundred career blogs (you’ll never lack for advice):
www.careerrocketeer.com/2009/07/100-career-blogs-all-professionals-must.html
.

This article gives an overview to the use of social networking sites for job search and offers an example of one man’s success:
www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1903083,00.html
.

7 Secrets to Getting Your Next Job Using Social Media:
http://mashable.com/2009/01/05/job-search-secrets/
.

This article gives some guidance on how to use LinkedIn to research companies (the site has a similar article on using Twitter):
www.cio.com/article/480610/How_to_Use_LinkedIn_Company_Profiles_For_Job_Hunt_Networking_
.

Here are twenty social networking sites for business professionals:
www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2009/07/28/social-networking-sites-for-business/
.

Find lists of companies that can help people get jobs through Twitter:

http://TweetMyJobs.com

www.TwitJobSearch.com

Learn Twitter lingo:
http://twitterwatchdog.com/2009/10/10/learn-the-twitter-lingo/
.

From marketing genius Guy Kawasaki, a different take on using social networking:
www.openforum.com/idea-hub/topics/the-world/article/how-to-go-on-the-offensive-with-facebook-guy-kawasaki
.

ARE
you ready to learn how to land your dream job? A job that will help you get the experience you need to go after your dream job? Or work that will bring you great satisfaction and help you afford the life you want? Great! All the work you’ve done in the earlier chapters of this book provides a foundation for this next important step. In
part 1
, you became a detective in your own life, finding clues that revealed your dream job (or field) by identifying your interests, best skills, favorite types of people, and ideal work environment. In
part 2
, you explored ways to continue the journey toward your dream job by making the most of high school and higher education, and using tools like goal setting and social networking.

Now we’ll dive into the depths of job hunting. First, we explore concrete ways to make your job hunt more efficient, effective, and successful (
chapter 9
). Then we look at the top ten mistakes job hunters make—and how you can avoid them (
chapter 10
). Since many of you will find success in careers not yet imagined, next we use green careers to show you the importance of tracking career trends (
chapter 11
). Finally, we put the search for your dream job in the larger context of your whole life (
chapter 12
). We invite you to consider who you want to be, what you most want to do in life, and how you can use your talents to make the world a better place to live.

9

How to Search For—and Find—Your Dream Job

Job hunting is both exciting and scary, and probably a few other things as well! But if you’ve carefully prepared your parachute—named your interests, skills, preferred people and work environments, and ideal salary—you’ll be far ahead of most people beginning the job search. Because you’ve started cultivating your awareness of the work world and developing job-search skills (such as information interviews) in high school, you have a good springboard for diving into the actual job hunt—and finding your dream job.

Good Job versus Dream Job

FOUR STEPS TO YOUR DREAM JOB

Step 1:
Conduct information interviews.

Step 2:
Cultivate contacts and create networks.

Step 3:
Research organizations of interest.

Step 4:
Begin your campaign to get the job you want.

Let’s consider, just for a moment, the difference between a “good job” and a “dream job.” A good job is a job that you enjoy most days, that pays well (given your level of skill and the going rate in the marketplace), and that uses many of your best skills. A dream job, on the other hand, is one that you love. It feels like learning, work, and play all rolled into one. You’d do it even if they didn’t pay you well. But in a dream job, the pay is good (again, considering both your
skills and the marketplace). The job uses at least 75 percent of your best skills, incorporates your interests, and expresses your values. (The identification of these factors as vital to career satisfaction comes from longtime Parachute practitioner Deeta Lonergan.) At various times in your life, you’ll need to take a good job. It’s as hard to find a bad job (one that’s bad for you) as a good one. Go for a good one. You won’t work hard at a job you don’t like, and it’s those who do the equivalent of A- or B-level work who get promoted.

We are not using the term “dream job” to describe a fantasy job that you don’t have the skills or temperament for; for example, you dream of being a trauma surgeon but you can’t stand the sight of blood. We’re also not talking about unrealistic goals for which you do have some of the needed skills, but it would be nearly impossible to achieve your dream. Even if you excel in basketball, it’s very unlikely that you could sign with an NBA team when you’ve only completed the ninth grade—that’s something no basketball player has yet achieved.

A dream job is one that you
can get
—it may just take you a few years and some hard work. By planning, getting the right education or training, making contacts in the field, and with some luck, you can land your dream job—or get really close (which means the next job or two might be the “
Bingo!
”).

Steps to Your Dream Job

Let’s go through the steps—some of which you read about in earlier sections—that will help you land the job of your dreams.

Step 1: Conduct Information Interviews

Too many people make their job hunt harder by starting in the wrong place: they first try to get hiring interviews before they know their best skills, much about the job market, what jobs they want, or how to present themselves. If you don’t know three to five jobs in the local labor market that you could do with your skills and the different businesses or sectors of the marketplace (private for-profit, small business, private or public nonprofit) that might have those
jobs, you greatly limit your options and set yourself up to get very discouraged. Information interviews help you expand your options through research.

WHY DO INFORMATION INTERVIEWS?

Information interviews help you find and then get your dream job. Here are the five top reasons for doing information interviews when you’re actively seeking a job—and can immediately take advantage of what you gain from them:

  1. You confirm that a certain job is the one you want. An actual job can be quite different from a written job description.

  2. Information interviews take the terror out of hiring interviews because you learn how to talk with a professional about the job you’re interested in. (Counselors report that it takes teenagers approximately nine information interviews to become comfortable talking with adults about work.)

  3. You learn what parts of your experience, training, and education make you a strong job candidate. Knowing that, you can talk about yourself in a hiring interview in a way that will convince your interviewer that you’re the right person for the job.

  4. Doing information interviews lets an employer see that you’re willing to take initiative and responsibility. Both traits are highly valued by employers. (Because of your initiative—as well as your skills and interests—you may find yourself being considered for a job that wasn’t even advertised.)

  5. Information interviewing can provide you with knowledge—such as job jargon or industry issues—that offsets your lack of work experience.