Many people have a dream job in their minds, a job they get excited about, are satisfied in, and are stress-free. The majority of those people get settled in a job or industry that seemed like the safest bet when they left school or university. Given the recent announcements of layoffs across many job sectors and the uncertainty that may be growing in people’s minds, now is the time to take advantage of the ever-evolving job market and consider taking the chance of finding your dream job as you head into the new year.
“I learned many great lessons from my father, not the least of which was that you can fail at what you don’t want, so you might as well take a chance on doing what you love.”
– Jim Carrey
From his 8 years of industry experience, Director of Recruitment at TalentHub, Morgan Cummins, has designed a strategy that, when followed, will land you the job you have always dreamed of. According to Morgan, so many candidates that he speaks to always stick to the usual job-hunting checklist:
– Wait for a head-hunter, like him to reach out
– Update their LinkedIn profile
– Sign up for company or industry job alerts
So, what is the key to finding and locking in your dream role?
In Morgan’s professional opinion, the first thing is simple. You can start with extensive desk research and set yourself a target of identifying 4 to 5 industry verticals or sectors that interest you. Then dive deep into each vertical and set yourself a target of identifying 10 companies related to each of them.
Now that you have your personalised business development plan, what do you do next?
By the end of this exercise (it should take you a couple of hours per vertical), you will have at least 50 companies listed. Morgan likes to call it “your personal business development list”. However, he often sees people making a common mistake on their lists. They only go for the well-known brands and forget about the start-ups and challenger brands out there.
This is where qualitative research starts. Review your list and see who you know or could easily contact in each of these companies. This could be an old college friend, an old colleague or even a family member. The point of identifying these people is to:
A.
Investigate more and find out all you can about your company, the culture, its benefits, how they hire, and if in fact, it is a good place to work.
B.
To see if any of those new contacts can provide a warm introduction to someone working in those companies. Morgan recommends keeping it casual, and offer to meet for a coffee or lunch.
The story Morgan always references is, once, he was working with a real high achieving candidate from a large bank. He was on track to make COO, but it would take at least another 3-5 years for this to happen. His dream was to work in the FinTech industry, so he didn’t need to list 5 different verticals. His focus was solely on getting to work for a FinTech company. Morgan recalls that when he made his list, there were only 15 companies on it. The candidate scored and rated each of the top 100 FinTech companies against metrics like:
– The problem there were solving
– The leadership team, culture, growth and vision
– The brand’s proposition in the market
Then he acted and used his network to find out who would be “that person” in each of these organisations to reach out to have coffee with. When he got the names of these people, he didn’t just write them a cover note and attached his CV. He developed personal letters, congratulating them on their achievements so far, recognising problems they were solving and offered some advice from his own experience on what the future held for the industry.
Morgan confirmed that the candidate bought each of those 15 new contacts a coffee, by the end of the process, he had not only 1, but 3 offers on the table. As a result, the banker found his dream role in Fin Tech, getting to live out his purpose each day of his career.
If this simple strategy makes sense to you, and you have a few hours to spare a week to put into your research, ask yourself what is stopping you from starting the journey of finding your dream job.
If you need help figuring out your next step, Morgan and the team at TalentHub are here to offer advice and services in any way they can.
Morgan is an experienced marketer who has been lucky enough to work in markets like Australia, the Middle East and Ireland. After an 18-year (award-winning) career in advertising, He transferred his skills and knowledge of Industry into Recruitment. Morgan goes that extra mile by helping people identify the peak performance in their career and apply that to their next role.
Email: [email protected]
Watch the inspiring short video of Jim Carry sharing some wise words of wisdom during his commencement address here.
