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Making your Job a "Dream Job"

By Kathy Barton, July 12, 2007

Depending on which survey you read, 40 to 60 percent of the workforce is just waiting for you to call them with a great job. The number of people who are dissatisfied with their current job seems to climb with every new report. CareerBuilder's "Dream Job" Survey in January 2007 revealed that 84% of US workers are not in their dream job. No, these are not the jobs we dreamed of as children (in case you were wondering, the most popular are firefighter, princess, dancer, and cowboy). The definition of a dream job for us "grown-ups" is far more prosaic that that. According to CareerBuilder, "Workers said they want to enjoy their work experience, apply their talents and feel like they're making an impact. Having fun at work was the most important attribute of a dream job for 39 percent of workers, which heavily outweighed the 12 percent who said salary was most important."

Read more articles by this author.

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Doesn't sound like that should be so unachievable, does it? To add some cold hard facts to the surveys, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, overall annual U.S. voluntary turnover increased to 23.4% in the year ending in August, 2006, up from 22.7% the previous year. The highest turnover by far was in the Accommodation and Food Services sector at 56.4% and lowest in government at 8.2%.

So on average, almost one in four people change jobs every year. And four out of five don't enjoy their jobs or feel like they are making an impact. But if so many people are changing jobs each year, why aren't they finding jobs that are closer to their dream jobs? After all, most people aren't looking for huge salaries or C-level positions.

Recently we've worked with two clients that had just finished surveying people who had been with their company for less than a year. In both cases, almost 75% of the people surveyed said that the job they were doing was not the job they thought they had been hired to do. These people applied to a job listing, went through the interview cycle, and started the job only to discover that it wasn't the job they thought it was.

75% is an amazing number. This points to something more than a couple of vague hiring managers or inaccurate job descriptions. It means that there is some kind of systemic problem that creates confusion around the work that the candidate will do in the job. Clearly, neither the job description nor the interview process really reflected what the person needed to do to be successful in the job, and so the candidate didn't really understand what would be required.

Once again, I believe poor job descriptions are the culprit. Get rid of them!! Stop using them! You've heard us say that job descriptions keep you from attracting top talent - here is evidence that job descriptions keep you from retaining the talent that you hire. Why? Think of what's in a standard job description. Years of experience, skills and competencies, academic degrees, industry background, scope of responsibilities, etc. This doesn't describe a job, this describes a person. There is absolutely no information included in these items that describes what a person who takes the job will do in the job, and what they need to accomplish to be successful in the job.

A hiring manager at one of our clients recently told me that what she really needed was someone who could multi-task, make sure that projects got done in a timely matter and nothing fell through the cracks, speak with confidence to senior executives and motivate a team. Does this description even tell you what department she was hiring for?

This is why performance profiles are so important. A performance profile is a summary of the five to six key performance objectives of the position, not the qualifications the person needs to have. For a plant manager, it might be to implement a process improvement program increasing capacity by 25% during the first year. For a person in a call center, it might amount to showing up every day (100% attendance) and processing 30 orders per day.

The key to preparing performance profiles is to get the hiring manager to focus on what the person needs to do to be successful, not on what the person must have in terms of skills and qualifications. It should look more like a performance review than a job description, with measurable goals and objectives. These are the things the hiring manager will expect the person to do, and what that person will be measured against. Shouldn't you hire someone based on their ability and motivation to do those things, rather than their academic background or claimed competencies?

One of the great benefits of using performance profiles is that the person who takes the job really understands what he or she will be doing. Candidates already know their own skills and qualifications. What they want to know about your job is what they will actually be doing. Is this something they would enjoy? Based on the goals that they are expected to achieve, do they think they can be successful? This gives a candidate enough information to find a "dream job" - one that they will enjoy, and where they can have an impact. Without that information, they are just guessing. Worse than that, it may feel like a "bait and switch" to them - in the absence of good information, they hope the job is what they want, and when it isn't, they feel tricked. And when they find out that they were wrong, they move on.

Try surveying your employees with less than a year's tenure with your company, and see how many of them feel like the job they are doing is the one they thought they were hired to do. Look at your turnover in this group, and check exit interviews to see how many people you are losing for this reasons. Most important, throw away your job descriptions, and start using performance profiles. Help your candidates make an informed decision as to whether your job could be their dream job. After all, the demand for princesses, dancers and cowboys is not what it used to be.