Here’s the story of “Ben” who is making a critical, but common, mistake in is job search. It’s robbing him of the satisfaction and salary he deserves.
Ben called me asking if I could help him. He said he wanted a pharmaceutical sales job, but he had no experience in sales or health science.
When I asked him why he wanted to enter the field, he said he heard it was interesting work and, besides, his aunt and a cousin made good money at it.
Fine. But he said nothing about actually WANTING to do this job. When I pressed him further, he replied: “Everyone says I should give pharmaceutical sales a shot.”
Ben is setting himself up for misery by pursuing a job based on the “helpful” advice of others, as opposed to his own gut instincts.
Quick solution: go over to http://www.hotjobs.com or www.monster.com and search for jobs using the 3 skills you most enjoy using. Examples: sales, customer service, management … or training, writing, translation.
See how many advertised job listings pop up. Are the job titles you see similar to the jobs you’re hunting? Good – there’s a match between what you enjoy doing and what you want to do next.
If you don’t turn up jobs that match your 3 favorite skills, it’s time for some soul searching. You can refine your skills (change “training” to “teaching” for example) or search for jobs using entirely new ones.
Let these job boards tell you what the market demand is for your favored areas of expertise. But ultimately, you should decide to pursue a job based on what you LOVE to do, not what you SHOULD do.
Action Step: Unless you’re passionately committed to the job you seek, you won’t pursue it with enough gusto to be successful in the long run. Follow your passion. It will show.
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This job hunting post was adapted from content provided to by my good friends Kevin Donlin and David Perry, co-creators of the Guerrilla Job Search System.
Kevin and David have been interviewed by CNN, New York Times, Fortune magazine, and the Christian Science Monitor about their method to finding a job.
Get a free audio from Kevin and David on how to get your job search into high gear
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