Dream Job Blog

I’ve hosted Thanksgiving at least a dozen times. In all honesty, it’s not my favorite holiday — mostly because I don’t love the traditional meal and don’t love to cook. Most years, I’d order the turkey dinner from Whole Foods so I could just reheat the bird and sides. Not once, not twice, but THREE times I cooked the giblets that were wrapped in plastic inside the bird. Thankfully, the plastic bag stayed intact, so the meal was saved.

Thanks to therapy, I have a lot more awareness of my mistake (especially a repeated one). I felt like I had to host — did it out of obligation and felt resentful that the responsibility laid on me. Did I have to host? Absolutely not. Looking back, I could’ve approached the holiday in a completely different way and/or set an intention that felt good to me (nothing to do with the actual dinner).

Ben spent his early career as a Systems Administrator and Release Manager at Autodesk, but had a strong interest in building products. So he pivoted to product management and found his true passion. He loved leading cross-functional teams to determine use cases and build products that solve meaningful problems.

After a long tenure, Ben was ready for a new challenge where he could learn the intricacies of a new industry as well as grow his experience and expertise.

Vivian built a strong marketing career at management consulting firms — successfully partnering with Fortune 500 companies and building strategies and programs that drove brand awareness, customer loyalty and revenue growth.

The pandemic gave Vivian the opportunity to reflect on her career and determine what she wanted to do next. She felt ready for a new challenge and wanted to move into an in-house role at a tech company.

Kenneth had a progressive career at Concur (and SAP Concur), moving from Marketing Analyst to Senior Analyst to Team Lead and finally to Senior Group Manager. He valued his experience there, but missed the high growth stage where he built programs, processes and teams to support the business unit’s double-digit revenue and customer growth.

He was ready for a new challenge that would leverage his expertise and experience where he could make a big impact. Kenneth also wanted to make a strategic move that upleveled his career trajectory — so he joined our program.

Many people I talk to have an idea of what their dream job is, but it’s often a stretch role. They want to uplevel their career when they make a move, which makes sense. They want to leverage their experience and all the skills they’ve gained and step into a bigger position.

“I don’t have enough time.”
“I don’t have enough money.”
“My family needs me.”
“I tried it before and it didn’t work.”
“I don’t know where to begin.”
“I’m too stressed out.”
“I don’t believe I can get what I want.”
“I’m not good/smart/talented/whatever enough.”

Over the past couple of months, this has become one of the most frequently asked questions we get.

It’s a horrible feeling when you find out you didn’t get the offer. It just plain sucks. You put in all this hard work, got excited and believed it was the perfect job for you. You may have even walked away from the interview feeling confident that the offer was at hand.

It’s baffling that we don’t learn how to start or build our careers given that most of us spend 30 – 50% of our lives working.

The Great Resignation has become a part of our everyday conversations. According to The Bureau of Labor Statistics, 47.8M workers quit their jobs, an average of ~4M each month — making 2021 the highest average on record. For reference, the year with the lowest monthly average was 2009, which averaged ~1.75M.