Tip Dude thinks that getting your dream job is actually a possibility. Of course, dreams occur at multiple levels; Tip Dude doesn’t have advice on how to become the President of the United States, a Chief Executive of a Multinational Corporation, a Rock Star with Many Chart-Toppers, a Housewife Working From Home and Grossing A Million Dollars Annually, or the Crime Boss in Charge of All Organized Crime in Northern California and Nevada. For that kind of advice, look to Mary Poppins. But Tip Dude can give you some tips on how to advance your career and move towards your actual dream job:

• Define Your Dream Job - It’s amazing how many people don’t actually know much about their dream job. Know your dreams, and they will come true. A dream job is beyond a job title. If your dream job is to attain certain job title, then it’s very easy to have your lawyers create a shell corporation and list your name as chief executive, general manager, or whatever. If it’s all about the money, then you just need to win the lottery. Instead of considering titles or compensation, you should define your dream job in terms of what you want to accomplish, what kind of responsibilities you would like to have, and what kind of qualities you would want in your team members. It might also be helpful to think about what kind of sector you’re interested in working in: is it government, utilities, academic, financial, non-profit, environmental, consulting, retail, service or something else? It helps not to be too specific about which particular company or geographical area you’re interested in. Building a dream career will likely involve multiple employers, some hard times, and lots of relocation.
• Assess and Improve Your Training and Background - The first thing to do is to understand how your current training and background relate to your dream job. Typically, your dream would be somewhat connected to your background - but even if that’s not the case, that’s OK. If you have all the training and experience you need to get your dream job, just start applying. But if you’re like Tip Dude back in his early 20s, you wouldn’t have all the experience you need. You should assess your background realistically and identify gaps that you might be able to fill. Do you need to go back to school? Do you need to find some training classes to take in your spare time? Does your current employer offer training that would move you in the direction you want to go? Are there some union sponsored programs you can enroll in?
• Create An Action Plan - You should begin by plotting a path between your current position and the dream. This might involve some training (Tip 2), but it can also entail finding jobs that serve as ‘intermediary’ - a place for you to earn some money while moving towards the field you’re interested in. Do you need to get out of what you’re doing right now so that you can work in a job that is more connected with your dream? If you need to get out, what would be the job you need to get so you’re moving at least into a field similar to the one you want to end up in? Do you need to switch companies within the same field to gain access to resources and people who might put you closer to your dream? Plot these thoughts out in a series of steps: from the current job, to the next one (that you could easily obtain with your current qualifications), then to the one after that, and so on, until you reach your desired area. This will form the basis of how you’re going to begin. Of course, it’s only a plan, and it is going to change as you continue to build your career. But you need a plan, so you know roughly where you’re going (and so you can tell if you’ve temporarily lost your way.)
• Think About Your Dream Often - If you’re anything like Tip Dude, you’re too busy dealing with realities of everyday life all the time to have time to contemplate your future. Tip Dude understands the difficulty, but the future is an important thing. If you never think about your future, it’s very easy to end up in a dead-end job doing the “40/40/40 plan”. Once in a while (say, every time you get a paycheck), ask your self, what have I done in this pay period to move myself towards the dream? It might be something as small as updating your resume and looking up position postings in the newspapers or on company websites. It might be asking your cohorts in the industry if they know of any openings in your dream area. It might be doing two job applications during a weekend and following up a few weeks later. These are sure small steps, but they add up to something big. The only way to keep yourself taking these small strides forward is to ask yourself periodically: what have I done recently?
• Be Persistent, And Don’t Despair - Pursuing a dream is very exhausting. Time after time after time you will come up against ‘career roadblocks.’ A roadblock might be a difficult personality, a difficult monetary situation or just random events that occur to frustrate your progress. It is easy for Tip Dude to say that it happens to everyone, but the only ones that succeed are the ones who overcome the frustration through sheer persistence. Despair, of course, helps no one except your competitors.
• Don’t Take No For An Answer - With a roadblock that keeps saying “no” to you, you usually have a choice of action to take: you can bang your head against it, you can go around it or you can just decide to do something else. Sometimes, sheer head banging can work - an acquaintance of Tip Dude’s got hired as a railroad engineer by flooding the crew office with letters and resume. Sometimes, you can wait it out, wait for the annoying guy to quit or retire. If those alternatives don’t work, there might be some way for you to get hired without banging your head against a bureaucratic system or a difficult personality - a loophole of some kind, usually through training or personal connections. If this position you’re trying to get is part of your overall ‘plan’, it might not be worth bothering with it - in most cases, other positions that will serve the same purpose will open up if you stepped back and considered what you really need from this ‘intermediary’ job, and consider options you hadn’t considered before, such as a different company or a geographical relocation. Change your action plan - remember, it is a living document.
• Try a Lower Level, Embrace Lateral Moves - If you keep getting rejection letters from your ‘next step’ job, you’re stretching too far. You’re simply not qualified for that job. What you need to do is to break the ‘next step’ into several smaller steps. For example, let’s say you’re a Payroll Clerk and you really want to be the Human Resources Director, and you figure your next step might be to apply for promotion to your boss’s equivalent position, Payroll Manager, when he or she either retires or get promoted. But you’ve already been passed for promotion twice. Why? Maybe they were looking for someone with budgetary experience and keep hiring from outside. Maybe they really want someone with an accounting degree to be the Payroll Manager, and you don’t have the money to get it. Either way, you are getting nowhere. But there is nothing stopping you from applying to be a Budget Analyst Assistant, or a Marketing Coordinator. Maybe you have skills besides running payroll that would allow you to sidestep this problem by making a lateral move. Moving from Payroll Clerk to Budget Analyst Assistant isn’t exactly a promotion, but it’ll get you the budget experience you need. In a few years, you might end up with a promotion to Budget Analyst or even Manager of Budgets. If you’re not happy there, it wouldn’t be too late to take another lateral move back into H.R.
• Never Say No to a Challenge, And Take Advantage of Opportunities - You have a plan. But opportunities don’t always arise consistently with your plan. When you are asked to take on a more challenging position, don’t say no. The reason why someone in a position of authority would ask you to apply for or consider taking a challenging position is because they are either trying to cover their own behind, or they truly believe in your abilities. Even if you don’t believe you can do it, clearly your superiors do - and that’s good enough. Take it. You can always figure out how to charge them later; and if it’s a bust you will have ways to recover gracefully. Yes, this will sometimes mean no-merit promotions, increased responsibility without increased pay. While Tip Dude generally advises against this for the fear of being exploited, it has to be understood that building a career entails allowing oneself to be exploited under controlled circumstances. In return for moving you up, of course they’d want something back, and usually that something back is a discount on your salary. Once you take the position and gain some experience, if they don’t give you a merit increase, there’s always that company next door who will be very interested in all the new skills you’ve learned at this new higher position you have been asked to assume. Oh, and what if it’s a bust? Yes, you might become a scapegoat and get demoted or fired for it. But there’s always that company next door…
• Use Your Network Effectively - This is kind of a hard one. Different professions demand different approach to networking. In some disciplines, it is absolutely crucial. In some cases, networking does absolutely nothing for you and just consume critical resources that you could spend much more fruitfully building your career in other ways. Understand how to use your network and where that is leading you. Use your network to gather industry news, find out about new position openings, and particularly gather intelligence on large industry changes that might be forthcoming. Use your network to connect to people who may be in a position to offer you a ‘next step’ job. Check out Tip Diva’s Top Ten Tips on effective networking. On the other hand, if you feel like certain areas of your network isn’t delivering anything, feel free to forget to return their calls once in a while. Remember, your time is valuable. You’re looking for information about your ‘next step’ job and you’re not in the business of just chit-chatting on the phone.
• Enjoy The Breathtaking View From The Ridge - So you’ve just accomplished a series of promotions, changed jobs a few times, and you’re closer to your dream job than you were five years ago. You’re not quite there yet, but you still have a plan (which by now has changed 20,000 times because you’ve gotten around roadblocks, taken advantage of unexpected opportunities and got a job at a competitor because your boss wouldn’t give you a pay raise). In between thinking about what you’ve done in the last pay period to advance yourself, stop for a minute and: appreciate what you have accomplished; thank all of those people who have helped you get where you are; take the time to look at the next generation of budding careerists and give them a hand in moving up; and just look around and check out the scenery. Ask yourself if your goals are still your goals. Redefine your dream job if your requirements have changed. Revise your plan if you have found a better way towards what you want. Relax a little and get ready for the assault on the next summit. It probably won’t be what you expect, nor what you planned to conquer. But it’ll be taking you somewhere.

How did you accomplish your dream job?

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• Top Ten Tips - Preparing For A Job Interview (3)
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