I’m Waiting For My Dream Job

What do you want to become I asked my 6 year old daughter. Teacher’ she said without batting an eyelid, a year later she came to my office and stayed for half a day, that evening she came home to say “Appa’ When I grow up I want to become Kelly’s MD. We are now struggling with our succession plan 🙂 but then, is there any difference between a 7 year old and us when it comes to changing aspirations?

I think we are similar too, why does our ‘want’ keep changing? Human nature, too many options? But then we always talked about, read about, heard about dream jobs, but seems that it’s like a moving object. What’s a dream job then? The ‘one’ we aspire about all the time, the job we talked with twinkle in our eyes to our friends many times or a job we grew up fantasising about? I find it difficult to articulate…

When I was 8, I wanted to be a pilot, at 10 like Kapil Dev, at 12 Amitabh Bachchan, at 15 a politician, but @ 18 I was determined to be an ace researcher and become a famous microbiologist, that was the only time I followed up studied and put some efforts to become a start-up version of a microbiologist, but at 22 I took another turn to become a sales guy in a Pharma company, then I thought becoming the CEO of a Pharma company would be cool as I saw my MD had grew up the ladder to become one. At 28 I felt I could become a CEO of a staffing company and at 37 I became one, I should have called this my dream job and declared to myself and everyone that this is it, my dream job, but I didn’t, every year I get kicked about a new job, so it’s become an endless journey.

My dream job today seems to be in the past, but somehow they seem to be a composite of many of the below

• I thought I was in a dream job when I used to work with my favorite boss, but I also recall that I had to travel one hour to office and constantly cribbed about my rather below market salary
• In one of my roles I was the top performer by all means, only had to drive for 15 minutes to office and could come home for lunch every day. But constantly felt short of recognition in my role and was underutilized.
• When I was in an international role, I lived in one of the best work infrastructures, drove the car of my choice, got all the titles I had asked for, great bosses, but could never enjoy the work as I was part of a turnaround operations which took longer to perform, the stress on health and inability to earn bonuses was frustrating.
• Once I was extremely thrilled about the money I was making, enjoyed the scope of the role, had a great team, was performing to my and organisation expectations, making bonuses, but was constantly at loggerheads with my boss which left me incomplete.

I know I am talking about myself and hope you are talking to yourself too as you read them!

So could a dream job consist of the following?

• A great boss/li>
• Fantastic working culture/li>
• Above market ‘pay’ & bonuses
• Zero commute (or permanently work from home)
• Fulfilling role and title

But get real, how many of these can come together in any given job and stay put with you for a long time? Our viewpoint of what drives us, keeps us interested, satisfies us financially and gives a good work life balance keeps changing.

In my view there isn’t anything such as a dream job, it’s always what we tell ourselves on a given day to keep ourselves engaged. Or maybe dream practically?

Let me ask you then, Are you in your dream job?

I dream of waking up in my farm house every day and blog for a living!