Career Inspiration Interview Series: Dream Organization

Alison’s Note: I recently received an email update from an attendee at one of my presentations. Earlier this year he had been uncertain about putting all his job search efforts toward one dream organization that he really wanted to work for. He wondered at what point he should broaden his job search to include other organizations. In his email update he shared the happy news that he had found full-time paid work with his ideal organization. (Way to go!) I asked him to share a bit of his experience and advice because I found his success so inspiring.

His Story and Advice: Find something specific to grasp…either a specific organization or a specific position/role. Once you have that, target it by networking and meeting anyone and everyone you can in the organization or that has the position or knows about the position. Start with people that have entry level jobs. Eventually it is very important to make the leap to the mid level and senior managers that have decision/hiring power. But it’s easiest to begin with the entry level workers as they are typically younger, less experienced and perhaps less intimidating. It is very difficult to find the job you want if you don’t know what it is. I was lucky because I didn’t know what job exactly was for me, but I knew I only wanted to work for one organization. So, I targeted it and met about 35 people that worked in it. Two months later I took an unpaid internship. Two months after that I was in a full time paid position with enormous potential in my dream organization.