5 Simple Steps To Your Dream Job

Have you been in your position for a while and are ready to move? Maybe you feel stalled out in your current role and want to move up or are just looking for a change. My goal with this post is to give some tips for those of you looking to move around and have a stable position currently.

Research

Your first step in this process is to figure out what your next job is.  I personally would take a blue sky approach to this task and really think about your dream job.  Don’t hold back!  Come up with a handful of jobs that you might be interested in doing.

Conduct Interviews

Once you’ve nailed down a handful of dream jobs you need to start conducting informational interviews with potential employers.  The point of these interviews are for you to learn about how different jobs are treated at a potential employer.

I would recommend using your friends & family as well as social media networks like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter to quickly identify people that are working in your dream jobs.  When you are connecting to them you’ll want to make it very clear that you aspire to work in that role and would like to learn from them about it

There are many good resources on the internet for how to conduct an “Informational Interview” which I would recommend reading through before starting.  You don’t have to make this into a big deal.  You’re simply trying to learn from them and see if the “dream job” is all it’s cracked up to be.

Choose a Position

Now that you’ve learned all about your dream job inside different organizations your next step is to choose one.  Think long and hard about what you’ve learned and which one will be the best fit for you.  You’ve already made some in-roads with people at these organizations so you’re one step closer!

You should now start assessing gaps in your skills.  You need to identify key areas where you are lacking so you can either address them using your current position or be sure to re-work your resume to cover these gaps effectively.

Monitor

In many cases your dream job will not be available and you’ll need to monitor job boards like HotJobs and Monster to see when your dream job pops up.  Luckily you’ve already refined the search so it should be pretty easy to allow these sites to do the work for you.  This will ensure that you don’t end up with a slew of garbage jobs in your email box every morning.

Apply

Now that your dream job is available you should again tap into your social networks and gather some initial information about the job.  I would recommend using everything you’re able to find out about the job to ensure that you’re able to customize your resume to the position as well as nail the interview.
As you can see it just takes a little connection building, research and friendly talking to be able to nail your dream job!

Have you had success with processes like this in your career already?

New Year’s Resolutions

I can’t remember a year in the past where I ever came up with resolutions, but for some reason this year feels different. I feel like there are some things that I should be better about this year and in the future. I’ve also been debating as to whether I should share these publicly or not.   I decided that my friends and family that happen to see this can help hold me to these.

So here are the items I came up with:

1) More time for family – I know that I am a total work-a-holic and need to find better ways to balance my work and home life. I’ve definitely done a better job of this over the last few months and I plan to continue the trend and make sure that I’m not missing out on any birthday parties, family events or small get-togethers unless there is a dire emergency that requires my attention.

2) Get my home businesses moving – Both of these businesses are moving much more slowly than I would like. Maria and I have had good intentions for moving these along more quickly, but I would like to kick these into high gear so we can get ourselves debt free and increase our freedom. Initially I am working to get Maria up to speed on the details for both businesses and we are going to try to introduce 1 new person to either business every day which we feel should be a good start. We’ll see where they go from there.

3) Drop 15 pounds – I did a good job of sticking to my workout plan until right before I left for Mexico. Since then it’s gone completely to crap and I’m still about 15 pounds heavier than I would like. I’m going to get back on my exercise plan and try to get those other 437 miles of walking / running / jogging out of the way before Miranda’s summer break. If I can average 15 miles of exercise per week I can make this goal by June at some point.

4) Increase my Spanish skills – I have the perfect opportunity to get good at this. With my girlfriend and her daughter speaking Spanish fluently I would be dumb to pass up this chance to learn the language and have many opportunities to practice it. I’m thinking that I might try to get into an evening class or something similar to jump-start this. If any of you reading this can recommend someone, I’m happy to listen to suggestions.

I guess since I took the time to put this together I should probably do some follow-ups throughout the year to see how I am tracking against these goals. More later…