#JobActionDay

Monday, November 5 is #JobActionDay

Are you living your best life?

You like your job, but you aren’t super passionate about it. Everywhere you turn, it seems there are people exposing how great it is to find your passion and do that work… And why does it seem like everyone has to be an entrepreneur and make their own job, make their own business, make their own brand? What if you don’t know what your passion is, or maybe your passion isn’t something that can make you a living wage? What if you don’t want to own your own business? How do you find the job that allows to you live your best life?

First, you must take ACTION! Today, Monday, November 5, is National Job Action Day. A day to reflect on where you are in your career and take action toward better. Spend some time today accessing where you are and where you’d like to be next year, or even five years from now. If you don’t take action to access your career situation, you’ll stay stagnant. If you love what you are doing, great – but you probably don’t, since you are reading this article from a staffing agency! So, read on and discover some action steps you can take today to move yourself forward.

There are hundreds (maybe even thousands) of job personality quizzes in every corner of the internet that promise to reveal to you the career you should have, or the dream job you never knew you wanted. We’ve taken some, and the results can be hilarious! While these quizzes may be fun to do and give you ideas of big dreams, they don’t really answer the question of what will fill your bucket – what will make your life seem full and meaningful.

So, if you haven’t tried out every profession you can think of that might make you happy – or that one of those career quizzes tells you will make you happy – how do you know that career is the right fit? Start with taking some time to define three key attributes for yourself that will best inform career decisions: skills, motivation and values.

What are your skills?

NOT just what you went to college for, or received technically training in – but what are your skills? You might have gone to school to be a computer programmer, but at your summer job at Nordstrom you outsold all your fellow shoe salespeople. This doesn’t mean you should sell shoes your whole life, or work at Nordstrom indefinitely. It does reveal that you have a skill for selling. Maybe you are more skilled in sales than most other people. Taking your sales skill and your computer programming training, maybe you’d be the perfect candidate for an outside sales position at a tech firm.

Or maybe while in school for technical engineering, you found yourself to the go-to student for tutoring… perhaps this means you have a true skill in teaching tech. Perhaps your niche is being an in-house technical trainer for a fortune 500 company. When you open up your idea of what your actual skills are, you’ll find you open up a range of career possibilities.

What is your motivation?

What gets you up in the morning and keeps you going through the day? (And we mean more than your quad shot pumpkin spice latte.) Do you seek opportunities to help people, or serve a greater purpose? Are you motivated by numeric goals – sales goals, revenue targets, etc…? Do you aspire to be a trendsetter, always the first to engage with a new technology, a new app, a new fashion, a new restaurant? Identifying what truly motivates you will help narrow down the corporate field to focus on companies that provide opportunities that might coincide or align with your motivation.

Working for a nonprofit organization or a fortune 500 company or a tech start-up firm are all very different work environments that require different types of employee motivation. A nonprofit organization may have a great mission you connect with, but it may not be able to pay as much as a for profit company that has a similar job posting. Likewise, a tech start-up may require longer hours and more creativity but may also involve more variety in the work tasks than a similar job at an established, large corporation.

What are your values?

In today’s political climate and with “fake news” and radical expressions of beliefs being at the forefront of our lives through social media, it can be difficult to get honest about your values. Sometimes we find ourselves hiding our values for fear they are not popular or for fear that we’ll be ridiculed because of them. It is so incredibly important to be true to yourself about your core values. You can have the best job on paper in the world, but if the company you work for holds values that are not true to you, it may become a difficult place to work. If you are surrounded daily by people you feel the need to hide your values from, you may start to resent your coworkers.

It may not be possible to find a company that perfectly aligns with your beliefs and values; however, if you are honest with yourself about your values and how important certain ones are for your everyday life, you’ll likely end up at a company that is accepting of you, with other employees who share similar values.

Putting together your reflections on your true skills, your motivation and your values should help you craft a great vision for your career path. You’ve basically just completed your own job personality quiz!

So… are you where you should be? Or is it time to find better? Today is #NationalJobActionDay, so let’s take action! Send us your resume today, and let Salt Lake Staffing find you the best gig in Salt Lake’s growing tech industry.

At Salt Lake Staffing, we pride ourselves on helping candidates and companies connect to make lasting relationships. Sure, we can fill temporary positions with great, qualified staff too, but our passion is helping great companies find the best people to fit their unique jobs and work environments for the longer term. We look at the whole person and how they’ll fit into the company’s culture. Give us a call today, and take action to make great moves for your career!