Is there a dream job in your future?

Orlando Huaman

 

Of course there is! What is more; 

it is within you.

Preamble

There is a book called:”Do What You Love and Money will Follow.” I would rather title it: “Do What You Love and Happiness will Follow.” After all isn’t happiness what we are after? Happiness is a condition of being and comes from within you. Nobody makes you happy but yourself.

Dale Carnegie said: “if you do not find happiness in your job with all probability you will not find it anywhere.” If not ask the 20 per cent of all the employed people who are holding the job fit for them. They derive the happiness they deserve. The rest or 80 per cent are simply holding their jobs for their reasons only known to them.

In this regard Myron Clark said: “More than 80 per cent of employed people do not make use of their ability in their jobs, with the result that they do not derive the satisfaction associated with success.” 

Let us just say (the inescapable truth) that each person is (born) unique. Or in the words of Dr. B. Haldane, the inventor of “Job Counselling” “Because you are unique there is something you are better at than everybody else.” The something referred here are talents, skills, and abilities that each person has. That is to say that each person has uniqueness and excellence in him or her.

Traditional beliefs about how to identify the talents of a person are outmoded. As a result, hundred of thousands of workers feel locked into their jobs and are plagued by frustration. 

The truth of the matter is that almost all of us are trained to take for granted some of our best skills and talents, and even to encourage others to overlook them. For this reason many people accept the belief “No one really know himself.” To this they add “No one can see himself objectively.”

The individual who is not afraid to try can get to know himself as a growing progressive person. He can identify the pattern of this inner motivation. This makes it possible for him to take charge of his own life and career development and, with the cooperation of others, influence the course these will follow.

He/she can identify his/her excellence and re-channel its direction. In recent years a great deal of importance has been placed on intelligence and aptitude test. Whatever the results, the best thing to do is to forget it. 

“They can’t predict success or satisfaction in your job,” said Earl Ubell, Science Editor for the New York Herald Tribune.

When your whole future is at stake, it would seem that the results of aptitude test and intelligence tests- which are not reliable to begin with- and can be influenced by a good night sleep, outside reading, a cold in the head or a hangover are hardly conclusive.

Remember it is one thing to test for the right person and another thing is to get the right person to take the test.

It was this impasse that led Dr. Haldane to career work back in the ‘30’s. He would like us to ask ourselves: it is worthwhile to dedicate a few hours (or days) of our life to find the job that belongs to us as a birth right? Everybody knows that we (some) spend a lot of time in finding the right pair of shoes, dress or a car than looking for the right job. A job that means so much to us and in which we will spend one third of our waken life at it.

Now think it over. Mind you. I am not talking about any job. I, for one had many jobs, most of them frustrating and dead end jobs…until I found my mentor and job counsellor Dr. Haldane in 1971. I am talking here about your dream job. The job that is meant for you, a job in which you will derive the happiness you deserve as worthy human being and contributing to the prosperity of your family and country.

Now about the dream job and how to get it.

First and foremost; to whom this article is addressed? This article is addressed to you. Who is you, you may ask?

The you referred here are: Professionals, college students, factory workers, clerical, unemployed, terminated men and women, drop outs, housewives, retirees, handicapped, youth, clergy, and foreigners. And the great majority of persons who either do not know what they could do best, or who find their work increasingly frustrating. Success Factor Analysis (SFA) has also been adapted to help college students identify courses which are most likely to enlarge their potential for fulfilment.

Among the most satisfying applications to me (The Haldane System of Job Finding) is the use of these systems by any companies to prevent lengthy unemployment of terminated employees, and by clergy leaving their job.

U.S. Ex–president Johnson said of Dr. Haldane’s “Private programs such as yours supplement the public effort to provide men and women with job alternatives and new futures.”

Who was Dr. Bernard Haldane?

Dr. Haldane (1911-2002) was born in London. He immigrated to the U.S. and became the foremost author and innovator in job counselling. He wrote 14 books on the matter and digests have appeared in more than a dozen languages.

 

His pioneering work (that covered more than 50 years) has been praised by 3  U.S. ex-presidents. In fact a U.S. Department of Labour publication reports that the job finding system (it will be described in a succinct form in this article) is more than 7 times as effective as generally available methods. More than that, the self identification process has become basic to career planning programs at Harvard, and Columbia University, Atomic Energy Commission, Peace Corps, Union Carbide, Smith-kline, and many religions denominations.

His books include: “Career Satisfaction and Success- How to Know and Manage Your Strengths” and my favourite- my “bible” for job finding techniques:  “How to Make a Habit of Success.” He founded his career counselling  firm in New York in 1947 and The Centre for Dependable Strength in 1945. Now Bernard Haldane Seminars has more than 100 offices worldwide.

Here is the system to uncover your dream job

As I said in the beginning, your dream job is within you, nowhere else! Suppose your father owns a company, you might not be the right person to succeed him. Or (as I read years back) the founder of a Japanese computer company had to be fired by his own sons… you guess. I did also say that each person is unique; consequently he/she have had achievements during his/her lifetime.

It is achievements that we are going to emphasize here - the core of your dream job.

Achievement. What is an achievement? 

Until now, there have been no formalized methods for the study of man’s achievements.

What do I mean by “achievement?” What do I mean by “success”? It is likely that you feel you have no “great” or “earth shaking” accomplishments. And you have not made your million dollars. I have not made my, either So I have to meet the problem of defining achievement in such a way as to be understood and appreciated by each reader in his or her own individual way.

An achievement is an experience which gives you this combination of feelings: You feel you have done something well (what other think of it doesn’t count), you have enjoyed doing it; you are proud of what you have done. It is very essential that you fully understand this breakthrough definition; for this is the backbone of what follows.

A “success” is a high quality achievement. If you study the life of successful men, or companies for that matter you will find out what makes them tick. On the other hand history is loaded with cases of “successful” men. Including many a conqueror, dictator, and busy tycoons, who were no good at all but thought they were. Unfortunately, success reached through an illusion is nothing but an illusion when reached, and no envy need to be wasted on these who get “it” although having “it” inside (i.e. within) to start with.

By these definitions, you have had achievements as an infant, in and out of school, in connection with many different segments of your life as an adult, youth, child. It is the way you feel about them that counts; an achievement is something personal, perhaps something private.

 

That is where past achievements come in. Here is the start of a system to find your dream job. Repeat, dream job, not “any” job mind you.

The procedures are simple, but they take time, they include no test. They do use the SIMS, the System to Identify Motivated Skill, which will be referred as SIMS from here on.

SIMS helps you to identify your strengths, it helps you remember many experiences in which you have used those strengths, and it enables you to explore those experiences so you can see which strengths have helped you achieve job satisfaction.

Your strengths, the ones that are used repeatedly in experiences that turned you on, are called “motivated skills.” Once you know what your strengths or motivated skills are, that knowledge stick with you.

 The key to success factor analysis

Through the listing of achievements you have made (10 or more) a start on what is to grown into a highly rewarding experience.

Out of your list, pick the ones that mean the most to you, and number them from 1 to 10 in order of significance to you, repeat to you. Give to each a special attention it disserves. Dissimilar though your achievements may be, in them are to be found certain factors that crop up often enough to form a pattern. For this purpose you use a chart of 52 factors that appear more frequently in lives of successful men.  

Here are some examples of some of the (52) factors involved: Analysis, control, creative, sales, words, etc. 

Your achievements are thus analysed in terms of the 52 factors.Within this group of high-scoring factors will be found your Success Pattern. (SP). Now the factors that have the highest scores are carefully analysed and are called your Dynamic Success Factors (DSF). These factors point to the field in which your (job) opportunities are greatest.  Your success factors will respond to exercise (in your dream job) in the same way your muscles do. That is to say, if you are in a job that does not require the use of your dynamic success factors you will become frustrated…sooner or later. Better sooner as you can change courses.

Introducing Functional Self Analysis (FSA).

It is one thing to know what your Dynamic Success Factors (DSF) are and another thing to use them effectively. In what career or occupation do they apply? This is a complex question made attractive by the rich selection now offered in your discriminating eye. Today there are more than 32,000 different occupations or careers, most of them in highly advanced countries.

These can be divided in 5 broad groups. 

• The commercial world of finances and sales. 

• The industrial world that transform raw products into saleable goods. 

• The service world that teaches, transports, feeds, houses, cleans, etc. 

• The professional world of scientists, doctors, lawyers, accountants, consultants, etc. and 

• The ownership world of individual enterprise.

A breakdown of the 5 groups reveals 12 classifications: Artistic, computing, mechanical-technical, words, persuasion, ideas, science, human relations, problem-solving, musical, and leadership.

Here is a simple illustration of how the above information can be used. Suppose your DSF’s are words, design-art, ideas and writing. In combination, that points more strongly to the commercial and professional world than to industrial service or ownership. So your attention can be concentrated on those 2 groups. Where is such a job to be found? Advertising, editing, publishing, TV are obvious field that come to mind.

The moral of the story is that the advantage of this “success hunt” is painlessly conducted in paper not in the “trial and error” experimenting one real job after another hoping blind faith that “this one will turn out all right.”

For the next step you need a good library. They should have the book: “Dictionary of Careers and Occupations.”  In this book you will find information-packed description of nearly 950 jobs in its data base. One must be yours, I bet. Here in a few hours of research you can dig up one or more of the jobs for which you feel qualified. All these based on your SIMS’s, DSF’s and your FSA.

Sounds hard, not at all, and the effort is immensely worthwhile. I can attest to that myself. 

The name FSA (Functional Self Analysis) was coined in 1948 by Walter Rust, Placement Director of the Harvard Business School. Much improved in recent years, FSA now enables you to determine how effective you have been in the past, and how much more effective you can be when your functions in a  job that uses our best talents to best advantage.

Now you in black and white

We are talking about now your C.V./Resume. Most paid jobs require you to present a C.V.it is here that a well written resume will get you ready for an interview.

Unfortunately, the majority of interviewers do not know who and how to choose the right person for the right position. Sound familiar?

As you well know people (the hired ones) make or break a company, a country, a marriage (when you choose the wrong partner.).

To finish up this piece, there are 3 kinds of resumes: 

• The Obituary One (the one widely used around the world- It is called obituary because it does not lead you to your dream job.

• The Functional Resume and 

• The Directed Resume. 

The latter one is the one used when you are following the advertised position you think is for you. 

 

*Orlando Huaman is a job counsellor and a freelance writer.  [email protected]

 

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