Seek Your Dream Career and Hit the Apply Button

You spend most of your life at work so its best to find something you enjoy. Hence I am always interested to know how people got their dream job. Over the past fifteen years I have had jobs that helped me get through study, had the graduate jobs, and I have also been fired from a few (or in other words where I did not culturally fit).

Recently I was asked for my advice on how to get that DREAM JOB and this is my practise in action:

• Do an online career assessment. One of the best ones I have seen is based on the theme ‘Fish for your career’, this career test assesses your interest in over 170 occupations to determine the career and area of study that best suits you. [ad#Grober Career text ad]

Take control of your career and put it into action every day.

Set up daily FREE email searches on Seek.com.au

This is how. Set up an account with seek.com.au (Australia’s no 1 job search engine or find equivalent overseas) and list all the dream job titles you want in the keywords. This strategy is not necessarily to apply for the jobs but to research and read the advertisements.

What it teaches you is:

• Where the jobs are (interstate, local, overseas etc).
• What is the demand for these jobs or skills? For an example is there a high need for people with these skills (represented by a lot of advertisements) or only a few?
• Are they permanent roles or cyclical, more casual and part-time or contract or consultancy preferred.
• What companies recruit these people? So you can do research on the companies, and even approach them for work experience? Get to know the companies! Especially for industry knowledge and competition in the market and if you ever meet people from these companies you will have something to talk about.
• What are the salary scales for junior entry to senior roles.
• Selection criteria! What do I need to do to get the skills required for these kinds of roles? And then integrate them into your career plan. If you are lacking in one key skill that a lot of advertisement ask for you know that is what you have to do so you can apply.

This is not a quick fix as it takes time to understand a particular job and industry market. I have been doing this for years since I worked in recruitment back in 2003.

Even though I have a good job now I still receive the Seek emails every day for keywords I am interested in like technology commercialisation and business development. It is always good to be up-to date in the market and know who is employing who. Keep your network up to date so you know where people leave jobs and where they are going too (i.e. Linked-in is good for that).  It will take some time but worth the effort.