Your 'Dream Job Checklist': Why You Need One And How To Build It
If you are clear about what you really want, you increase your chances of having the work you love.
One of the recent guests to my session had a problem many would dream to have: two competing job offers. Nice, isn't it? Don't envy too soon. The two jobs were quite different. Neither was "perfect". Each would easily beat the other on a distinct set of attractive features, and each had something that was missing... It felt like a dating dilemma: two smart guys, one handsome but not so funny, the other with a great sense of humor but with challenging looks - whom to choose?… My guest (by the way happily married to a smart, good-looking guy with a great sense of humor) was struggling to decide between the two offers. I could sense almost a physical pain as she needed to say 'no' to one of the "contenders".
While we were figuring out a decision-making process, it dawned on me that, instead of comparing two job offers with each other, we needed to bring in a third option: the 'dream job'. We all know that dream jobs do not exist, yet it's worth developing an idea of the work we'd love doing, the work that would make us thrive. Then, instead of focusing on the relative advantages of each competing offer, we would see how close each of them is to the ‘ideal’.
There are three good reasons to develop an idea of your ‘dream job’.
3 Reasons to get more clarity on what you actually want
If you are just considering your next move, this clarity helps you define a range of targets to explore.
If you are interviewing, this clarity can guide your questions to see if the job you are applying for is a good fit.
If you are considering a job offer or multiple job offers, this clarity can help you negotiate for a better deal, especially for non-monetary terms that we often neglect because they are not as easy to quantify as the number on your paycheck.
How to build a 'dream job' checklist
Let's start from the premise that it's not the exact science or patisserie, we do not need 1nm or 1mg precision. It can be a quick, "back-of-the-envelope" type of reflection, both backward- and forward-looking.
The second premise is that your notion of a 'dream job' will surely evolve with the time and with the competencies you'd develop, so it's worth re-doing this exercise regularly.
Step 0. Our Framework: Hygiene Factors and Motivators
We will organize our thinking using the two-factor theory, or motivation theory by Frederick Herzberg. Clayton Christensen describes it in his book 'How Will You Measure Your Life?' in the following way:
There are elements of work that, if not done right, will cause us to be dissatisfied. These are called hygiene factors. Hygiene factors are things like status, compensation, job security, work conditions, company policy, and supervisory practices. Bad hygiene causes dissatisfaction. However, if you instantly improve the hygiene factors of your job, you're not going to suddenly love it. At best, you just won't hate it anymore. Hygiene factors ensure the absence of job dissatisfaction.
The things that will truly, deeply satisfy us, the factors that will cause us to love our jobs are motivators.
Step 1. Your Hygiene Factors. Think Compensation & Beyond
Make a list of any tangible attributes that the job must have to ensure the absence of job dissatisfaction.
Compensation & status: understand what are the benchmark range for this type of role & seniority
Geographical location
Vacation time
Travel requirements
Ideal working hours
Insurance coverage
Physical environment. For example, for one of my recent guests, a creative, the beauty of the physical environment was of utmost importance. As for me, I cannot work well in a space with low ceilings and without windows, and I need a lot of empty space on my desk.
Training opportunities sponsored by the company
Company policies allowing working for another employer
Etc.
It's fascinating the extent to which COVID has reshuffled a lot of what has been considered unmovable work norms, especially when it comes to remote work, travel, and working hours flexibility.
Although the hygiene factors do not ensure job satisfaction per se, it's worth thinking about how you can improve them when you are negotiating an offer. We often stay focused on the compensation alone. Clarity about the hygiene factors helps you look beyond compensation. For example, you may find that a fixed salary can be capped, yet you may find flexibility in working time (how about 4 days work week for this pay? Extra days for vacation?), or getting equity, or considering a possibility to work in parallel for another employer. Or take part-time studies without eating your holiday budget?
Step 2. Your Motivators. Think What Makes You Tick
This is the key part of the exercise. We have seen that we need the hygiene factors to ensure the absence of job dissatisfaction. For true job satisfaction, we need motivators. While there are many ways to discover what makes people tick, for the "back-of-the-envelope" mode we're in, I suggest getting inspiration from the self-determination theory (SDT) by Deci and Ryan.
What does the theory say? I quote Daniel Pink & his book "Drive: A Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us":
Self-Determination Theory begins with a notion of universal human needs. It argues that we have three innate psychological needs - competence, autonomy and relatedness. When those needs are satisfied, we're motivated, productive and happy.
Daniel Pink reframes these three fundamental needs as follows: (1) Autonomy - the desire to direct our own lives; (2) Mastery - the urge to get better at something that matters; and (3) Purpose - the yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves.
A. Your Motivators: Mastery
I take the definition of Mastery from “Drive”:
Mastery begins with the "flow" - optimal experiences when the challenges we face are exquisitely matched to our abilities.
Mastery is a mindset: it requires the capacity to see your abilities not as finite, but as indefinitely improvable.
Mastery is a pain: it demands effort, grit and deliberate practice.
Mastery is an asymptote: it's impossible to fully realize, which makes it simultaneously frustrating and alluring.
Look backward:
Make a list of your previous jobs and roles answer the following 4 questions, in 4 columns:
What was your favorite part of each job?
What tasks did you love the most? What skills did you find fun honing?
Which experiences put you in a state of excitement and "flow", when you forgot about the time?
For the things that did not work so well, look at them as cravings. What were you missing?
Now, look at the full list you've compiled, 4 columns of positive attributes. Do certain themes, skills and experiences come out again and again? Highlight them.
Look forward:
Which areas of new expertise/tasks/experiences you've always wanted to explore yet have not explored yet? Add them to the list.
What are the learning-on-the-job opportunities you want to explore?
You can go one step further and you can use my favorite prioritizer tool and rank the attributes of your mastery motivators by doing pair comparison. Again, it's not the exact science, it simply refines the idea of what makes you tick.
Take another look at your list. Which of the skills & combinations thereof are rare and valuable in your current context? How do you judge your level of mastery in each of them? What are the skills you are exceptionally, uniquely good at? They are your career capital.
For targeting future roles, it's important to give yourself time to explore and actually do things. Sometimes we get better at certain skills because we love them. Yet reverse relationship can be true: we may start loving the things once we get good at them: it sometimes happens with the kids learning to play a musical instrument - to start enjoying it, they need a certain level of mastery. This means we should give ourselves (and our kids) time and not switch too soon.
B. Purpose / Relatedness
To quote the definition of Purpose in "Drive":
Humans, by their nature, seek purpose - a cause greater and more enduring than themselves. Within organizations the "purpose motive" is expressing itself in three ways: in goals that use profits to reach purpose, in words that emphasize more than self-interest; and in policies that allow people to pursue purpose on their own terms.
Expand the checklist of your "dream job" with the attributes related to purpose, connection:
How do you define your own purpose?
What are the causes you wish to be part of? Which big problems would your job help solve?
What are the types of clients you would like to have?
What are the types of teams and coworkers you would like to work with? Here, relatedness is connected to mastery: if your job gives you an opportunity to work with really great people, all else equal you'd go for such a job.
I love the story Richard Feynman told in his essay "An Offer You Must Refuse". After years of being happy at Caltech, one attack of a very bad smog almost made him change his mind and go back to Cornell. On the day he needed to make his decision, he was walking to his office, and encountered several colleagues from different fields, all telling him about their exciting new discoveries:
I realized, as I finally got to my office, that this is where I've got to be. Where people from all different fields of science would tell me stuff, and it was all exciting. It was exactly what I wanted, really. So when Cornell called a little later, and said they were setting everything up, I said, "I'm sorry, I've changed my mind again." But I decided then NEVER to decide again. Nothing - absolutely nothing - would ever change my mind again… I decided it would always be Caltech.
The next time Chicago tried to lure him to join their faculty, he simply didn't let them tell him the salary they were offering. And when he was later asked how he could turn down such a terrific offer, he responded:
It was easy, because I never let them tell me what the offer was.
C. Autonomy
Our "default setting" is to be autonomous and self-directed.
Your "ideal job" would be the one where you would have autonomy over the 4 "T's"
task (what you do),
time (when you do it),
team (who you do it with), and
technique (how you do it).
There is inverse relationship between your level of career capital (rare and valuable skills you have) and the degree of control and autonomy you can exercise.
The whole book "So Good They Can't Ignore You" is about that. It’s difficult to claim more autonomy - freedom, and control - until you’ve built career capital.
Step 3. Optionality
I still recall a poster in the mathematics class in my high school: ‘In mathematics, like in the game of chess, you have to think several steps ahead’. I strongly believe the same is related to our career. The last attribute on our ‘dream job’ checklist would be optionality: the potential of a new role to be a stepping stone on a path towards multiple career options in the future, to add to our agility and flexibility in today's ever-changing environment.
Context and personal situation are crucial when we consider optionality. For example, my guest knew that several years later she might be returning to one of the European countries, and one of the industries she was considering to join now, was simply non-existent there. In this context, the optionality of one of the two roles she was choosing from, was considerably lower.
I have my 'dream job' checklist. Now what?
Once you have your 'dream job' checklist, which now hygiene factors and motivators (mastery, purpose, autonomy), you can immediately put it to use, whatever is your current career situation.
You are targeting your next move. Use the 'dream job' definition to see where could be the targets that would score high compared to your 'dream job'. Unless financials are the utmost priority in your current personal context, my advice is to focus on motivators - mastery, purpose/relatedness, autonomy. Important: you do not always need big moves. Think about what you can change in your current role to get it closer to your ‘dream job’.
You are interviewing for your next role. (1) Understand your value. Audit your rare and valuable skills - your career capital. Again, the context of the company matters a lot. What are the areas where you are "so good they can't ignore you"? (2) Understand if the company would be a good fit for you? Ask a lot of questions - to the recruiter, in the informational interviews, during the job interviews - to understand how high the role you are interviewing for is on motivators & optionality within the company.
You are negotiating your contract. For hygiene factors, do your homework on compensation. Then, audit your career capital in the company's context. The existence of rare and valuable skills badly needed by the company adds to your legitimacy to ask for higher compensation. Then, think beyond compensation - what flexibility is there for other hygiene factors? How can you improve your offer on motivators - are there ways to improve your mastery and autonomy? optionality?
You have multiple concurrent offers. Don't get anchored by the attributes of the competing offers. They may all actually be bad options. Rather, see how each offer scores at your ‘dream job’ checklist, see what is the potential to improve them, and make your choice.
You may never find a ‘dream job’, yet if you understand what REALLY matters to you, your chances of finding - or shaping - the work you love to get higher. Good luck on that path!
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