To Get the Job of your Dreams, Stop Dreaming

We’re bombarded every day by the idea of overnight transformation and instant career gratification. We’re fueled by stories of people who suddenly made it, who unexpectedly broke through. We want to believe that career dreams can come true.

And of course they can, but rarely overnight, and rarely without a great deal of exploring and probing. While a small proportion of people will succeed by giving up their day jobs and risking everything, the best approach for most people is taking things one step at a time.

In practical terms, this means adopting a new mindset around two areas of behaviour.

The first is that we should allow ourselves to explore career options for a great deal longer than we do before attempting to make a decision. We also need to be realistic about what actually happens when we think we’re making career choices – a great deal of the time we just think in circles, moving swiftly from ''what if?'' to ''yes, but.''

The second is that we should learn to explore new careers as if we’re doing it for someone else. If someone offered you $5,000 to find useful professional connections and identify potential areas for investigation, you wouldn’t come back after 48 hours and say ''I looked at a few things but you probably won’t like them.'' That, however, is exactly how many of us play the game when the client is ourselves.

It’s important to challenge the current market wisdom that there aren’t good jobs out there. Taking small steps could be about developing new interests or spending time with people who are doing the job you’d love to be doing.

The biggest challenge, however, is this: Do you really need to do something totally different? Naming an unattainable, fantasy career goal is often a roundabout way of accepting the fact that things aren’t going to change. Going from A to Z in one leap is often impossible. But perhaps A to D isn’t. The latter involves moving into a sector or opportunity that’s close to where you are now, but that’s also the beginning of a new direction. The toughest part of the journey isn’t the last 10 yards, but that first step.

(John Lees is a UK-based career strategist. He is the author of, among other titles, "How to Get a Job You'll Love'' and "The Interview Expert.'')

© 2012 Harvard Business School Publishing Corp.