Graduating this July? Some of you may be lucky to have secured your first job right before graduation. Others may still be looking out for your dream job. Yes, the dream job – it encompasses work-life balance, a work culture where you call your co-workers family and a salary that’s decent for you. Does a job that ticks all the boxes of your ideal job exist?
Yes and no. We were conditioned in our University years to keep a look out for that dream job. That your first job will definitely be related to your passion and your degree. For many of us, this is far from the truth. So you tell yourself “be patient, the one will come”. Will it? In fact, waiting for your dream job could be damaging to your career and here’s why:
1. It prevents you from grabbing opportunities
If you spend a lot of your time focusing and agonizing over that dream job, you might miss out on a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. This could be a new graduate studies program or even a potential job that could lead you to your dream job.
2. Your ‘Dream Job’ is made not given
Your ideal job probably does not exist. Which means you have to get out there and create it for yourself. This comes with gaining the experience along the way as well as growing your network in order to reach your passion. A lot of entrepreneurs today weren’t born for it. They had to work in the corporate environment before launching their own start-ups.
Maybe you’re inexperienced and unsure of how to MAKE your dream job. Going through a coaching program helps you to identify opportunities and find your potential within to make it happen.
3. Rise up the Pay Scale
Waiting for your dream job means when you do finally start work, your pay level compared to the peers who graduated in the same year as you, may be low. Since you spent all that time waiting for your dream job, you are unable to leverage on experience to help bolster your salary.
4. The Economic Environment
We can never control the economy. The economic cycle has its booms and dips. Sometimes the economic growth can last for more than 10 years, other times only a specific region or country will be affected. By the time you start your dream job, the economy could be in a recession.
This could affect the competitiveness of securing that dream job.
4. ‘Dream Job’ is more than the work itself
Upon graduating, you tend to gravitate to the kind of workplace you can see yourself in. Often, we don’t take into account the kind of co-workers we want to work with or if the company supports our growth.
5. Our idea of a ‘Dream Job’ changes over the years
You mature over the years and this means that your ideal job would change too. The last thing you want is to lock yourself into a specific career track with no way to switch out of when you want to.
6. Does not help you develop grit
In the working world, grit is important. It comes from learning things the hard way, by taking rejection. The process of working jobs, while keeping your eye on the prize, helps you to develop grit.
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Why are YOU waiting for your dream job? Share with us on the comments section below.
