Is Your Job Irrelevant?
Immeasurable and Irrelevant are two words you do not want to be used to describe your job. In the earlier blog posts this week we met Brian Bailey, the main character in the New York Times Best Seller, “The Three Signs of a Miserable Job: A Fable for Managers (And Their Employees)” by Patrick Lencioni. Following up on his first theory: You can’t improve on something if you can’t measure it, I want to end my blog postings this week with the next crucial step which Brian is implementing in the little italian restaurant he now is part owner. Whose life/lives do you impact in your job?
How do you measure your success, and whose life do you impact?
How does Brian’s employees the busboy, wait staff, or kitchen help identify relevance. It’s easy to say “a busboy just cleans tables”, but what if that busboy quit? Would that position then become relevant? You don’t have to cure cancer or walk on the moon for your job to be important. If my newspaper doesn’t show up in the morning or my trash doesn’t get picked up for a week, I immediately feel how important those jobs are. Some call it “taking pride in your work”, but it is more than that. In the book, Brian challenges his employees to know who benefits and suffers when they do or do not do their job well. Whose life do you impact? That’s a powerful question. Is it a customer, co-worker, or manager? Answering who you impact can help you realize how relevant your job is to those people.
What do you do?
Are you in a career that gives you pride? Unique in the United States is the question we are normally asked right after “what’s your name?” It is generally “what do you do?” Are you proud to express what you do, or do you diminish it — if you answer the question. Even if you aren’t employed, are you proud of the career you have chosen?
It may be your job.
It is possible to love your career, but not love your job. With the “transitional workforce world” that we live in today, we see corporate leadership, values and priorities change all too frequently. It’s easy for your job to turn from good to bad in a matter of months.
The second module of the Job Search Boot Camp is how to AIM Your Job Search. Building on the READY module we teach you how to identify the relevant and exciting aspects of your former jobs, and identify and use those during your job search. The Job Search Boot Camp Webcast began last Thursday, but you can still join by watching the replay of the READY module and joining us this Thursday evening for the AIM module (or you can get the replays). You can visit http://www.JobSearchBootCamp.net for more information on this great program which will help you READY-AIM-GET HIRED!
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Jay Markunas is the co-hosts of The Job Search Boot Camp Show which is available on iTunes. He & partner, Angela Loëb are the co-creators of The Job Search Boot Camp webcast – 3 evenings to career success. Visit our website for more information at http://www.JobSearchBootCamp.net.
[...] a previous blog post (“Is Your Job Irrelevant“), I mentioned the importance of feeling like you are making a difference in the company. [...]