Starting Your Job Search: Figure Out What You Like to Do

Then

“What do youwant to be when

you grow up?”

“What exactly do you want your day-to-day

job experience tobe like?”

Now

If you could choose your ideal job

(within reason, of course), what would

you actually be doing and under what

conditions would you be doing it?

Consider:

Big or small company?

By yourself or in a team?

In an office or on the road?

At a desk or outside?

Financial motivationor emotional motivation?

Animals? People? Kids?

To help you answer that question,

do the following 4-step exercise.

1. Develop a listof activities

Write down as many activities as

you can think of (job-related and

otherwise) that you have done

over the years. It doesn’t matter

whether you enjoyed the activity.

If you have had limited professional

work experience, don’t worry.

Write down leisure activities or

specific tasks that you performed

on your own or in an organization.

Examples:✔ Recruited and hired new waiters and waitresses

✔ Conducted training programs

✔ Greeted and seated guests

✔ Developed and wrote training manuals

✔ Sold ra� e tickets door to door

✔ Managed Little League baseball team

✔ Served food in homeless shelter

✔ Collected stamps

✔ Worked as a stage manager for an amateur theater group

✔ Did volunteer work in a hospital

✔ Headed PTA fundraising drive

Write down as many of these tasks

as possible. The more activities the

better this exercise works.

2. Measure yourlikes and dislikes

Assign a satisfaction/dissatisfaction

rating to each item on the list.

Don’t overthink.

Use a scale of –10 to +10.

Enjoyable tasks get a 9 or 10.

Unenjoyable tasks get a -9 or -10.

3. Analyze your list

Isolate tasks that come out on

opposite ends of the spectrum

(7 or above & -7 and below)

Think about each item and ask

yourself, “What about this activity

did I enjoy or find awful?”

4. Look for patterns

Read over and analyze your

answers to the preceding questions.

See if you can uncover certain

patterns and common threads.

If you find that a common

thread among the activities that

brought you satisfaction is people,

it’s a safe bet that you’re an extrovert.

If one of the common threads

is helping other people, your

tendencies are service-oriented.

But don’tstop there.

Narrow the “people” pattern down.

Do you like working with people as

part of a team, managing people,

training people?

Do the activities that you find

satisfying (or unsatisfying)

call for problem-solving skills or

creativity? Is there a competitive

aspect to those activities, or are

they cooperative?

The important thing about this

exercise is not to judge yourself.

Don’t think in terms of whether you

SHOULD OR SHOULDN’T FINDan activity satisfying.

If you list enough activities — 25 is

not an excessive amount to work

with — you should be able to find

some patterns.

DON’T RUSH THIS EXERCISE.

The more insights you gain from

this stage of job targeting, the easier

it will be for you to complete the other

stages of the job searching process.

Jump-start your job hunt with these For Dummies books:

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Content from Job Hunting for Dummies by Max Messmer.Learn more: http://bit.ly/JobHuntingFD