Many people are working in jobs that they don’t enjoy. They wake up every day and head to work so that they can earn a living but they don’t feel fulfilled.
While there’s nothing wrong with entering a job solely to earn money in the short term, it’s important to find a dream career that you genuinely love. Following your passions is vital for your happiness and feelings of fulfillment.
You spend a large portion of your life at work. When you put things into perspective, it makes sense to find a job that fuels your soul and boosts your self-worth.
When you’re a happy employee, you’re more likely to succeed in your career. You feel inspired and engaged in your role, and this can significantly boost your future success.
Happiness in your professional life bleeds into your personal life too. Going to a workplace (or working from home) to do a job that brings you joy will give you the energy and motivation to be social on your days off. It will elevate your mood, making you excited to live your life to the fullest!
So, entering your dream career is extremely important but it’s easier said than done. Most of us can’t leave our current jobs and wait around for a job opportunity in our dream careers. However, that doesn’t mean that you should sit back and give up hope that you’ll ever be able to enter the perfect job.
Here are some top tips to boost your chances of getting into your dream career.
Write the Perfect Resume
Hiring managers and recruitment staff receive hundreds, if not thousands of applications per job vacancy. To get through all of the applications, they quickly scan through each candidate’s resume.
If you want the best chances of getting your dream job, your resume needs to be perfect. It needs to impress hiring managers immediately so that they don’t dismiss your application at the first stage of the recruitment process.
Writing the perfect resume isn’t easy and it takes a lot of time. Even if you’ve previously written a great cover letter and CV, you will need to tweak it for each industry. If the information on your current resume isn’t relevant to your dream career, you will need to change it.
If you’re struggling, you can use the best tools for writing your own resume online. There are lots of great tools that are completely free to use but enable you to step up your resume game.
You may even want to hire a professional resume writer to optimize your job applications. An expert writer will know exactly what information to include and how to format your resume in the most professional and impressive way.
Identify Your Best Skills
Identifying your key skills is vital if you want to land a role in your dream career. Every career path requires a unique skill set and perfecting the right skills will maximize your chances of being successful.
Consider the skills that you think you’ll need to succeed in your dream role as well as general life skills that are helpful for jobs in every industry. You’ll need to identify hard skills and soft skills.
Hard skills, or technical skills, refer to those that are quantifiable in one way or another and rely on your analytical and critical thinking skills. Soft skills are less quantifiable but just as important and they’re closely associated with your interpersonal skills and creativity.
Hard skills include:
- Data input and analysis
- Web development
- Coding
- Marketing strategy planning
- Using spreadsheets and software
- Risk assessment and management
- Invoicing
Soft skills include:
- Communication and active listening
- Leadership and delegation
- Creativity
- Time management
- Teamwork
- Creative writing
Identify which skills are vital to your dream role. Figure out how you can reflect on how you have used these skills in your previous education or work experience throughout your resume.
Remember that when you’re aiming to get a job vacancy, you need to display to the hiring manager that you have all of the skills that they are looking for.
Be Confident in Your Abilities
One of the main things that prevent people from pursuing their dream careers is a lack of confidence. If you don’t believe in your skills, you can’t expect recruitment staff to believe in you either!
Building confidence in yourself and your abilities is vital when you’re applying for jobs. You need to convey confidence and self-worth in your resume and during your interviews to impress the hiring managers.
In a competitive job market, lacking confidence can set you back. While it’s natural to be modest and water down your skills, this isn’t ideal when you’re competing against hundreds of other applicants.
Spend some time working on your self-confidence. Identify your strengths and keep all of your previous achievements at the forefront of your mind. Ask your friends and family to name something that they love about you, and ask your tutors for some words of wisdom.
Remember that landing your dream role isn’t going to happen overnight. You’ve already come a long way to obtain your qualifications and certifications but the work doesn’t stop there! You need to do a lot of work, both professionally and personally, to maximize your chances of success.
Moreover, don’t forget that there are many opportunities out there waiting. It may be that your traditional path is harder to follow right now, but digital nomadism is on the rise, and so working remotely, consulting, and become a freelancer is more than possible too.
With services like Skippers coliving suites providing a perfect space to relax and work, you can see how this is not an uncommon choice. It’s not just what abilities you have for the career ahead, but what features that career might offer you that counts.
Learn More About Your Dream Career
As obvious as it sounds, you need to spend time researching your dream career. Many of us are guilty of wanting to enter a career without knowing very much about the ins and outs of it.
Every employer makes their job vacancies sound like the dream! They highlight the best parts of the job and don’t mention the potential downsides.
By doing your own research, you can identify the good parts and the bad parts of your dream job. When you know exactly what to expect in a specific field of work, you won’t be disappointed when you start noticing its negatives.
Your research will (hopefully) reinforce your love for the career path too. It should excite you and make you even more motivated to land a role within your desired industry.
