Peter Storr - Get that Job in 7 simple steps

Think about the things you will take away from Step 1and how you will implement them.

‘There is no such thing as a career path. There is only crazy paving and you have to lay it yourself.’ — Sir Dominic Cadbury, former chairman of Cadbury, the chocolate manufacturer

Think about where you would like to get to in the longer term.

Identify what interests you and how this may relate to jobs.

Determine your core values and what this means.

Clarify what would really motivate you at work.

Remember that work does not have to fulfil all your needs.

Never spend time thinking about your future.

Assume that work is what you do, not who you are.

Wait for that perfect job that is the answer to everything.

Make work and getting a job just about the money.

Don’t believe that work can be enjoyable.

Identifying your interests, values and motivation

There is an ancient Chinese saying: ‘A thousand mile journey begins with a single step.’ In Step 1we looked at how your job hunting journey starts with understanding the world of work and at the importance of taking control of the job hunting process so you can meet it head on. The next stage is to work out what you want by looking at your interests and values and what motivates you. This is based on a very simple premise: we do best what we most enjoy. If we enjoy something, we try harder and are more motivated, which leads to higher performance. And higher performance leads to more possibilities – and more probability – of promotion. All of this leads to expanding our potential avenues for work and futures we never even dreamed of. It all starts with being good at whatever you do – whatever it is you are doing – because you never know where it might lead you.

Performing well and keeping motivation up are not always easy, especially if you’re currently doing a job which you don’t particularly enjoy or you feel is beneath you. Remember that resilience is a key – and learnable – skill; one of the most transferable!

So, at this stage in your job search, what is it that you want? Is it a job or a career? What is the difference? Indeed, is there a difference any more?

Back in the distant past when I applied for that first banking role, there most definitely was a difference. A job was something you did that did not necessarily lead to anything else apart from a salary and work experience. A career was meant to be for life, and had qualifications and a career path and there was usually just one way of getting there: steady progression up the chain of command.

It would be ridiculous to say that the career is dead, but it is nowhere near as rigid a concept as 30 years ago. It was a very limiting concept – you ‘were’ a banker or an accountant or a member of the Armed Forces, and once you were, that’s what you stayed. Being asked at 18: ‘What do you want to do for the rest of your working life?’ sounds like nonsense, but many people still feel forced into coming up with something.

If we take the idea of the portfolio of transferable skills we mentioned in Step 1, we increase our options and create our own future, mixing and matching a varied sequence of interlinked careers. Every job or mini-career has a set of transferable skills and experiences which can lead to a multitude of futures – futures that we construct ourselves. In the end, the job or career question becomes redundant.

We said earlier that we tend to be good at what we enjoy. The same is true of what interests us. What interests us and what we’re good at aren’t quite the same, however: we can be good at ‘things’ but are interested in an idea or a particular discipline or sector. For example, you may be fascinated by the world of accounting and finance; this may relate to being good with numbers, but it’s not necessarily the same thing.

If you are fortunate enough to have a clear interest or desire to work in a particular area, then you are indeed very lucky. You may have to be flexible and creative in how you break into that sector if you’re not in it already, but knowing that you want to get there is a great start. It makes your targeting of that sector more simple and elegant, and when we come to Step 3(Know your skills and strengths) you will be able to ensure they reflect the sector you have aspirations to join or progress in. We’ll mention this again later, but a great principle to live by is: ‘Begin with the end in mind’ – work out what you want to achieve and work backwards.

I mentioned at the start of this book that I began my professional working life as a bank clerk. I hadn’t been particularly happy in this role for a couple of years, but – sensibly, some might argue – I didn’t feel that I could leave until I knew what I wanted to leave to . It took a while for me to go from ‘banking isn’t it’ to ‘studying psychology is ’. Once I had a good idea of where I wanted to go, it was far easier to take the plunge!

Many of us, however, are not clear about what we ultimately want. It’s important not to get demoralised by this. Not many people wake up when they’re 15 and say to themselves: ‘I want to be a doctor’ and then follow through on the ten-year plan to get there. Those that do are usually successful (as the ‘Begin with the end in mind’ principle would suggest), but it doesn’t happen for most of us.

If you have clear interests career-wise, then so much the better. If not, what then? Well, to start with, the links between our interests and the world of work are not always obvious – and indeed, we may have separated them in our head: ‘ This is what I’m interested in, and this is what I will do for a living …’ . It’s a useful exercise to occasionally question the assumptions we have allowed ourselves to believe.

You may think that it’s obvious to you what your interests are. But it’s worth going through this exercise because many of us don’t make the link between our interests and the world of work. They don’t have to be the same (you may have an interest in the natural world but don’t necessarily want a career in it), but it may prompt some ideas. And if you can work in an area where you have a personal interest, it won’t feel as much like work.

Ask yourself these questions and write the answers down:

What do you find yourself drawn to when you read a newspaper?

What non-fiction books do you read for fun?

What do your friends think you are particularly knowledgeable about?

What particularly interested you at school?

What are your main hobbies?