Seriously - Does the Fun-Forever Job Really Exist?

Since my book, In Search of the Fun-Forever Job, was published last year, I've received reviews and comments from readers who thought the title meant the book was going to inspire readers to find that elusive “fun-forever job.” Actually, the title was meant to be somewhat ironic.  

Why I Chose that Title
The title came from my daughter who, at age eight, wrote and illustrated a “book” called “When I Am Grownup.” I’m not sure most eight-year-olds would be concerned about professional choices or involved in much self-reflection, but she was the daughter of a career consultant and a psychoanalyst and could hardly avoid this type of thinking. It was genetically predetermined.

In her book, Hannah ruminated about her possibilities. She felt she’d want an “unushowoll” job “that I can do most anything I want in, something like the fun-forever job.” She worried such a job might not be available and considered other options (a headshrinker or a headhunter) but continued to feel concern about even those jobs working out.

The Wish
What was particularly striking to me was that so many of my clients and students have expressed a similar wish for a totally fulfilling career, as if they hoped to discover their perfect, passionate calling out there somewhere. 

The concept of a “fun-forever job” seems funny to me because most people—including, perhaps, Hannah at age eight—knows it’s probably unobtainable. This does not appear to prevent people from wanting it anyway.

Of course there are a few lucky people who seem to have found that fun-forever job, but the number of such people is most likely very small. I’ve only met a few over the years.  After all, a job means work, meaning on a daily basis, on most days of the week. Seeking consistent passion puts a heavy emphasis on something that is rarely achieved and often leads to disappointment and discontent at work. 

The Reality
Of course, it’s possible to love a job or be passionate about a career, but forever? Every day? That’s like looking for a lifetime soul mate who’s great-looking, rich, witty, sexy, and sensitive—someone you’ll feel excited about all the time for the entire relationship. I know too many people who think that way about relationships. Definitely not a fun-forever situation, either.    

To some degree, the search for the fun-forever job has continued for Hannah, as it has for many of my clients, although they refer to it in different terms. Sometimes, it’ll be “something totally exciting” or the frequent “all I need is challenge,” and other times it’s as basic as “something I won’t dread every day,” or “any job that won’t make me feel sick on Sunday evening.”  

What It Takes to Find a Job that Suits You
I believe career development should be a process that includes figuring out what works and doesn’t work, clarifying personal values, understanding personal style, and leveraging that knowledge moving forward. It doesn’t have to be a lifetime or permanent decision.  Do you hear that, recent graduates?  (Take a look at last week’s blog.)  

Sometimes it may mean that your job only needs to be reasonably good if it supports you and provides you with a salary, security, and benefits, and you can gain the passion part from what you do outside your job. Or you might turn your full-time job into a part-time one and work on several different activities and interests outside of your core job. 

There are many other permutations; the key is to not put the pressure of the Big Decision on yourself too early and to realize it may take some time to develop a career that works for you.  My core philosophy of career development is that you should focus on making the career fit your life, not the other way around.  

My own career path, as I explain early in the book, is a good example of the many twists and turns you may need to take to reach that point where you feel pretty good about your career choices. I’ve written about my own experience in the hope that others who find the career development process complicated or painful may understand better that it often involves a series of realizations and changes—sometimes even circling back to what you knew in the first place.

Ellis

For a quick course on networking, pick up my Ebook, Networking: How to Make the Connections You Need

If you're looking for more in-depth advice on your job search, In Search of the Fun-Forever Job: Career Strategies that Work is available in paperback and Ebook. 

Should New Graduates Have a Career Path?

While I’ve talked to students on many different occasions throughout the academic year, I’ve never been invited to give a commencement address. That hasn’t stopped me from thinking about what I would like to say, if asked. (I’d even be happy to wear a cap and gown.)

The Graduation Address I’d Like to Give if Only Someone Would Ask

What I want to say to you today is what I wish someone had said to me at my graduation. (Never mind that I didn’t attend. That’s another story.) 

Commencement season is much more than students protesting speakers and speakers telling graduates about the impact they can make on society.

It’s a time for celebration, yes. But underneath all the excitement, there’s a profound level of anxiety. Anxiety about what kind of job you should be looking for. Anxiety about whether you can afford to live on your own or will be moving back home. (My apologies to the parents for bringing this up, but I’ve seen statistics claiming anywhere from 53-85% of college graduates move back home.) Anxiety because now is the moment when you really have to decide what you want to be when you grow up.

But my question is this: should you really be asked to make a decision for life at 22?

I’ve been a career consultant for more than 25 years so I know that some of you will make bad career decisions just to avoid the anxiety of not making a decision at all. Sometimes that means law school, sometimes medical school, sometimes another professional graduate program. Or just any graduate school, in order to avoid any decisions and stay in a relatively safe place.  

I frequently joke to my graduate students--who carefully made their very expensive decision to go to business school after at least six or seven years in the workforce--I am grateful for all those who chose to go to law school right after graduation, because they will form a strong base of referrals for my private practice later on.  

Why? Because their decisions were usually based on all the wrong factors. Choosing a profession for life at 22 because of a need to make a decision, any decision, is a bad idea. 

Where bad decisions will take you

While I like getting the business from all those unhappy attorneys, at the same time I’m very sorry to see so many clients who are miserable in their careers as a result of faulty decision-making. And too often, they stick with those bad decisions for far too long.  

Why do they stick with those decisions? Because they worry about not knowing what they really want to do. A kind of infinite loop.  

I then end up working with many 40-45-year-old attorneys who will claim that they hated law school at orientation, but could never figure out how to extricate themselves from the security of a steady job and a good paycheck--the “golden handcuffs.” 

Or I work with the many doctors who have enrolled in the Executive MBA program, where I consult, because they’d never liked clinical work much, were not that interested in medicine to begin with, and wanted to do something much more business-oriented.  

Or I speak with information technology professionals from abroad who chose their careers because they saw those careers as the best possible shot at upward mobility in their countries, and then later realized that they were far more interested in the business end of things.  

When I meet students, like you, about to graduate from college who are thinking about the law school thing, I’ll ask them why. Their first inclination is to think of law as a safe, secure choice. Funny thing about that. It isn’t, anymore. 

But if they don’t have a substantive answer to why they’ve chosen law school, I will suggest that they try clerical or paralegal work in a law firm or other legal area for a year. Otherwise, they have no real idea whether or not the field is interesting. 

What kind of decision should you be making? 

First, let’s take the pressure off. It is not necessary to make a lifetime decision right after college graduation. Let’s take that even further. I’m a career advisor who doesn’t believe in long-term career planning. Yes, there are some who do have a vision; some of my students, at age 31, know exactly where they want to be in 30 years. Most don’t. 

I’ve never been able to figure out why making a lifetime decision is so important to so many people, and why it’s a normal expectation. Maybe it’s the result of so many parents and friends asking, “So what are you going to do? What’s your career goal?” I think that the 20’s are the perfect time for exploration and figuring things out. Lifetime planning for most of you is not feasible. More than that, it’s probably the cause of so many bad decisions.  

But what should a graduate do? If we’re talking about someone who, like the vast majority of graduates, doesn’t have a clue about what he or she wants in the long term, let’s start as I already said by taking the pressure off. 

The decision about that first job should be based on – 

• What do you find interesting? 

• What have you enjoyed doing to this point?  

• And what is important to you in terms of your personal values?  

• Then I’d ask you to think about what are the upsides of a first job?   

I suggest including the upsides to help you understand that this initial decision isn’t one that can never be altered. Or that if you make a mistake it’s a career killer (ridiculous). At your age, no job should be thought of as make or break. What this initial job should be is a skill builder, and an exploration.  

Let me give you an example.

A recent college graduate client was determined to get into advertising. He was a talented writer, and had a serious creative gift. But entry-level jobs in advertising are hard to find these days, in a seriously contracting and quickly evolving field. Thanks to his skill at building networks, he managed to find a job with a firm he soon realized was not a good fit for him. To put it mildly, he despised the people and the culture. But he stuck it out to gain experience. He left for an unpaid internship, which helped him clarify his interest in the creative end and helped him develop a strategy. The internship recently ended.  

He’s on search once again now, and is still angry about his initial experience. I pointed out the upsides-- both the first bad experience and the non-paying experience not only gave him skills to describe to prospective employers, but also helped him discover exactly what it was that he wanted to do in advertising. I also pointed out that everyone has terrible jobs, maybe a few of them, and it was just unlucky that his first one was such an unpleasant experience. But at 24, he now has a much better grasp on what he wants to do and the steps he’ll need to take.  

Most careers are not linear. What’s important to keep in mind is that you can make mistakes, you can choose wrong paths, you can be downsized or terminated, and you can still have a successful career.  

And when you start thinking about careers as an evolutionary process you begin to understand that there is no absolute decision to be made at a set time. I know lots of very successful people who made their defining career decisions in their 40s . . . or even 50s. 

Assess your interests and values
 
Once you understand that it’s not imperative to make the Big Decision at age 22, figuring out what your first steps should be is critical. Do a self-assessment of your interests, clarify your personal values, and research potential job markets--those are the key elements in starting. Learning as much as possible about the field you’ve chosen will help you become an insider even before you’ve landed a job. And it will set you apart from other job candidates.  

You don’t need to make a life decision, but you do need to have an initial target. As I point out in In Search of the Fun-Forever Job: Career Strategies That Work, targets are the first objective in any job search or career transition. You can’t just “cast the wide net,” and hope that something will just happen by chance. A targeted search, with a carefully crafted marketing plan will get things going.  

But before you begin, you need to take the pressure off. Aim for the first job, not the total career. Eliminating the anxiety will help the process immeasurably.  

By the way, congratulations on your graduation! 
Ellis

For a quick course on networking, pick up my Ebook, Networking: How to Make the Connections You Need

If you're looking for more in-depth advice on your job search, In Search of the Fun-Forever Job: Career Strategies that Work is available in paperback and Ebook. 

iStock/© CareyHope

Unintentional Behaviors Can Damage Your Personal Branding

Personal branding
When I teach classes in what we call “social intelligence” at Columbia Business School, we stress that a personal brand is not only what you present in networking or interviewing situations--it has an impact on many of your professional and personal interactions.  

We show a PowerPoint slide in several of those social intelligence classes that has a picture of Big Brother (is Watching YOU), from the novel 1984, with the flashing graphic, “Networking is Everywhere.” It’s not intended to create paranoia. 

Creating perceptions
The point of that slide is: Even if a student is trying to make an appointment for advising, the email request will immediately create a perception. While it’s not especially important for a student--or a client in my private practice--to make a good impression on an advisor, it certainly does create an initial framework for the interaction. The positive perception helps. The negative one sets the wrong tone. Here’s an example:

Ellis, I need an appointment tomorrow. I’m freaking out, because I’m about to graduate from the program, have never engaged with anyone in Career Management, and have no idea what I want to do. I’m available at noon.

There are so many things wrong with that brief communication. The tone is off-putting.  It has a demanding feel to it, especially the part about scheduling. It conveys that the writer hasn’t exactly been proactive in her career planning while in graduate school and is probably going to be complicated to work with. There is no opening courtesy or closing to the note--a necessary minimal courtesy, especially in a first communication.  There’s a sense of urgency, but the problem is a self-inflicted one--the student has waited until the last possible second to ask for assistance. The foundation for the interaction has been created, and while the perception can easily be changed, the start is not good.  

Thinking beyond yourself
I, of course, saw this student (but not at 12 the next day). We managed to get her going in her career planning. I pointed out to her that her style of communicating by email would not help her in her professional, and possibly her personal, life. It was a good opportunity to get her focused on how she was going to market herself during her next move. 

It was not her natural style to think of the person on “the other side of the desk,” and she understood that she was going to have to think of her interactions as two-way. She had to think about how the other person, in all communications, was going to perceive her. It wasn’t always about how well she presented her credentials; the real issue was thinking about how the other person would hear what she had to say. 

Starting off right
The following email sets a completely different tone. This was also from a student:

Ellis,
I have sat in on various programs that you have conducted and I have enjoyed them. I have made numerous changes to my resume that you have recommended to the group, including moving to two pages.  

I am not sure if you could comment on “at a distance” resume review via email within your department. Is that bad form? Do you review resumes like this? 
 
Thanks for your help.
Jamie Smith

This one sets up a meeting that starts right away with a positive tone. It actually made me want to meet this student. Trivial example, but a definite signal to me that this student was going to understand well the importance of interpersonal relations to her transition and her career. And it was nice to anticipate that she’d probably be pleasant to work with, too.  Setting the tone is critical.  

Getting it wrong
The two examples above are minor situations. I recently witnessed an example of a client whose general self-awareness in her transition showed poor social intelligence-- and may have ruined her chance of a job possibility.

The client was returning to the workforce after having taken ten years off to raise her two children. She was hoping for a part-time job with flexible hours. I always hate to tell clients that finding part-time jobs in professions like hers (media), and many others, is going to be difficult. Usually, the best way to get part-time jobs is to have a full-time job and then negotiate down after the job is secure. Otherwise, I frequently suggest to clients that they consult, which, while difficult to launch, might create the desired work/life balance.  

We began to work on a methodology for building a consulting practice. She had good skills, had stayed in touch with colleagues while staying home with her children, and had kept current in her industry.  

On the same day I met with her to discuss how she might build a consulting career, I heard from a former client who was looking to hire part-time experienced professionals --in media! Great timing. The work wasn’t exactly what my client was seeking, but it would be a great way for her to get back into the industry, and was close enough in its requirements for her to express interest.  

She hadn’t completed her resume yet, so I suggested she send me a brief bio by the end of the day, and I’d forward it to the former client.  

She didn’t send the bio.

I wrote to her the following day to ask why she hadn’t sent it, whether she was actually interested. She said she had been “too busy.” I was surprised by the response, and asked if she still wanted to pursue the opportunity, so I could tell the person who was hiring for the position. I had already written to him to say I had an excellent candidate.  

Think about the dynamic here. I was going out of my way to help a client, was conscious of maintaining a good relationship with the former client, and . . .  no bio. No follow-up whatsoever.  

When I wrote again, she spent a great deal of time explaining why she hadn’t sent the bio, and then . . .  still didn’t send it.  

It came two days later. I sent it to the contact, who wanted to know why my client hadn’t completed her LinkedIn profile, since she hadn’t yet done a resume. He also asked why the client had responded so slowly after my initial contact; did it mean my client wasn’t really interested?  

The client said she hadn’t had time. Maybe there were other factors about her life that could have interfered with her moving forward, but she wasn’t working and did say she had the time to engage in a job search, and did tell me to go ahead and make the contact.  

The damage had already been done. The job contact now had a negative initial impression because the transaction had taken days, which to him indicated that my client was not that interested.  

Missing opportunities
Fortunately, the hiring manager was interested, and asked that I have my client contact him directly.  

Two days later, my client hadn’t contacted the hiring manager.

The job opportunity disappeared for her because of that lack of response. This then became an issue in my interactions with the client about why she seemed to be fearful of moving ahead. It also introduced a new issue--how she could gain the confidence to launch her search.  

The bad perceptions ruined a perfectly good opportunity, a difficult one to find.

The importance of soft skills
It has become obvious to me over the years that these “soft skills” are more important than the actual professional skills themselves. The self-marketing and the perceptions created are critical--but most important, thinking about the other person is usually the key for a successful professional interaction.  

*POSTSCRIPT
I used to think that I’m usually aware of the importance of “the other side of the desk.” Or at least sensitive to others’ perceptions.

Turns out there have been times when I wasn't.  

Several years ago, I had an appointment with a doctor in a large medical facility. After I was done with that appointment, I ran into another doctor I had been seeing at that time.  

I said hello and immediately launched into a complicated question about something he had suggested to me a couple of weeks earlier.  

What I didn’t know on the other side of this particular desk was that the guy had no idea who I was. Not only that, he was not in his office, not seeing patients at that moment, and clearly irritated that this guy (me) had walked up to solicit  professional advice. He suggested I make an appointment.  

For about a minute, I was offended that he wouldn’t answer my question right then and there, but I soon realized he (1) did not know who I was, because he probably had hundreds of patients, and (2) it was completely inappropriate to ask those questions in that setting. He was absolutely right in asking me to make an appointment.  

This instance has stuck with me. A great illustration of not paying attention to the situation or the other person--and creating the wrong perception, too.  

Ellis 

For a quick course on networking, pick up my Ebook, Networking: How to Make the Connections You Need

If you're looking for more in-depth advice on your job search, In Search of the Fun-Forever Job: Career Strategies that Work is available in paperback and Ebook.