Chapter Overview

1: Confronting Your Career

We live in a world with more opportunities than ever before. But in that case, why do so many people struggle to find personal and professional happiness? Why do so many twenty-somethings burn out? Why do so many others stall completely in their careers? And why do so few know what they want out of life? Welcome to the twenty-first-century phenomenon of the quarter-life crisis.

This introduction paints a picture of the quarter-life crisis. The chapter identifies the “job-market dilemma” as the source of the problem. Namely, should you aspire to making money or societal impact? Should you seek prestige or intellectual satisfaction? Should you follow your passion or settle for a more practical option?

2: Dissecting the Dilemma

The reasons for the job-market dilemma can be broken down into three distinct yet interrelated issues. First, there is a bewildering array of options available today, compared to even a few years ago. How can you possibly find out about all of them? Second, most of today’s aspiring professionals are members of Generations Y and Z. Typically, the experiences of these two generations make it difficult for them to find their ‘dream job’, particularly when it comes to making trade-offs. Third, social media, peer and parental pressure are at an all-time high. How are you supposed to find your own path in life in the face of so many different influences and competing expectations?

This chapter takes a deep historical dive into each of three issues and reassures readers that they are not alone. It explains the evolution of the job market over time, the differences between the various generations (Silent, Boomers, X, Y, Z and A), as well as the major game changer since the beginning of this century: digitalisation. Finally, it lays the ground for focusing on why you – not your friends, your parents or your generational herd – want to work.

3: Why Do You Want to Work?

It’s strange how few people ask themselves the question in the title of this chapter. To put it simply, if you can’t define what you’re looking for, how on earth can you recognise it when you see it out there in the job market? Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that in a world with more information than ever before, so many people make bad career decisions…

Based on experience and research, we have identified the seven most important reasons why people want to work. This chapter helps you to understand your personal reasons for working by unpacking them one by one. It’s a good first step to becoming more intimately acquainted with yourself – in terms that relate to the job market.

4: Know Thyself

Personality tests – they always teach you something, right? They confirm your suspicions about yourself, they make you confront traits that you’ve never faced up to, and sometimes they tell you something entirely new about yourself! But the one thing they can’t do is find you a perfect job. That requires further work…

This crucial chapter analyses how getting to know yourself better can help you find the perfect job… and how even an imperfect job can help you to understand yourself. The chapter also uncovers the sense and nonsense of personality and aptitude tests. Best of all, it introduces a work-focused assessment tool that we have been using for many years in our course for master’s students. This powerful instrument, the AEM Cube (exclusive online test, free of charge, available in this book), gives insights into the kinds of roles and environments where you will naturally thrive, those where you will need to make more of an effort and those that you might want to avoid altogether.

5: The Working World

How do you translate your personality and reasons for working into a sector, organisation or role, especially as you’ve never ventured into the world of work before? Of course, you can go to career events, talk to recruiters and recent recruits, even do internships and work experience, but these are essentially random encounters. Why should you leave such an important matter to chance?

This chapter tries to improve the reader’s chances and broaden their scope by giving a systematic overview of what’s out there. We start with a quick overview of sectors – from business to government to not-for profit. Then we move on to a typology of organisations by size, ownership, culture and stage of development. Finally, we look at roles. What do all those opaque job titles mean and how do they all fit together?

6: Where Personality Meets Job Roles

Now you know yourself and you understand the job market better than you did before. But you still have one major problem: how do you translate your personality profile into a role, an organisation and/or a sector?

In this chapter, we return to your personal AEM Cube profile (as introduced in Chapter 4) and start to map it onto the working world (as described in Chapter 5). We also tell you about other people’s profiles, which should give you a head start in making the most of your first job and ease your progress through the subsequent phases of working life.

7: The Three Phases of Working Life

In all honesty, you’re probably focused on your first job. At the start of your career, it’s normal not be too interested in the long term. We fully understand that. However, with so many options on the table, we recommend that you try to understand their future implications.

This chapter helps the reader to deal with the questions that arise once they start work. What is my potential? How can I ensure that I fulfil that potential? Where should I be heading? Who should I become: a specialist or a generalist? When should I make my first job move? To answer these questions, we use the simple yet effective metaphor of building a house. First, you must assemble your toolbox and learn how to use your tools. Second, you must design and build a house that fully meets your personal needs. Third, you can settle down and live in the house you have constructed, continuing to make the improvements that will make it your home. Each of these career phases requires a different approach. To help you choose the right approach at every stage, we carried out some original empirical research, which offers some interesting takeaways about career strategising.

8: How to Choose

This career business sure seems complicated! You have to recognise the dilemma, understand your personality, uncover your innermost desires, scan the entire world of work and project yourself into the future. How on earth can you do all of this at once?

This chapter brings together all the considerations of the previous chapters, using the model of the search engine. The reader now has a worldwide web of possibilities and the correct search terms. But realistically, the algorithm may not identify a job with everything they are looking for, let alone put the ideal career at the top of the list. Any job search inevitably involves trade-offs and compromises – and it helps if the job seeker can weigh them objectively.

This book is just a starting point for the reader’s own research and information-gathering – over many cups of coffee, both alone and with other people. This final chapter deals with the practicalities of that process, whether for a first job, an early move or a later career change. It takes you back to the starting point and the questions to ask yourself along the way. It reemphasises the importance of navigating a strategic course with an open mind, looking beyond the usual suspects for the role that really resolves your own job-market dilemma.