You’ll Know It When You See It…Or Will You?

What Do Finding a Job and Dating Have in Common?

Last month, over fifty people joined us at the Jobing.com Phoenix office for the workshop: Now What? Go from Thinking About a Career Change to Acting On It. One of the thoughts I shared with the group is that in many ways, looking for your ideal job closely resembles dating. Some groans from the crowd ensued. Nevertheless, creating a wish list of the characteristics of your ideal job (or ideal mate) does two things: 1) It clarifies what’s most important to you; 2) It enables you to more easily recognize that custom-fit opportunity when it presents itself.

Your 3-Column Wish List

To create a wish list of your ideal job, ideal mate, or some other ideal opportunity you’d like to manifest, make three columns on a sheet of paper with these headings: Must Have, Nice To Have, Deal Breaker. Then, start to fill in the details of your criteria under each column. The first two columns are the features of a job that you require or would like to be present. The third column’s deal breakers are those conditions or qualities of a job that you simply will not accept.

Two tips:

1. Don’t worry if you come up blank at first. Just start filling it out and more things will come to you over time.
2. If you’re looking for a job in the immediate future and you feel like it’s a stretch to consider the ideal right now, go ahead and make the list anyway. Even if you don’t get everything you want right away, you’ll be moving closer in the right direction.

Make Sure You’ll Recognize It

Many people think they’ll know it when they see it, yet two things often get in the way of recognizing a good opportunity: 1) Not taking the time to ponder things in your heart and consider what will make you happy; 2) Not keeping your eyes open or expecting good things to happen.

It’s a lot easier to spot the perfect thing once you’ve specified what would make the thing perfect! It’s not that you have to have the exact picture or every single detail figured out. You just need to have imagined enough so that when opportunities arise you can respond accordingly.

“What we see depends mainly on what we look for.”
— John Lubbock