How to Find Your Dream Job in 4 Steps

specific reasons why you applied for their job and want to work for them. This is one of the top reasons people fail their job interviews in the first few minutes of the conversation).

So start by brainstorming all the companies you would like to work for and all the kinds of positions you want.

Bonus points if you look up companies that do have open job postings. However, a company doesn’t need to be hiring for you to approach them.

In fact, there’s a lot less competition when you email a company that doesn’t have a job posted publicly. This can be a key to finding your dream job – emailing companies even if you don’t see the perfect-fitting job on their website.

More on this coming up! For now… go create a list of 20-50 companies you would like to work for.

It may take you a few hours to put this together, but the potential payoff is HUGE.

You also need to find the contact info of the most relevant people in that company that you could talk to. You may have to use your judgement on who that person is. This can happen while you are looking for companies and job postings or after you have accumulated your list.

It wonât always be the HR/hiring manager. If it is a sales position you are looking for, then the sales manager would be the most relevant person to talk to. If the company is really small, maybe it makes sense to reach out to the CEO directly.

After you have built your list of strangers, you are going to need to warm them up to you.

Step 2: Send âPre-Heaterâ Emails

You are going to send your prospects a pre-heater email to warm them up to you. The email will consist of 2 parts: personalized knowledge of the company and an engaging question. This is to initiate contact with them, start the conversation, and give you a reason to talk to them. You need to make the personalized knowledge section of the email personal to each company you are contacting. But each one of these can be whipped up in a matter of minutes.

Weâre going to use the example of someone whoâs in sales and is looking to find a position in a new company. Hereâs an example email youâd send.

âHi Name,

I was doing some research on (companyâs name) and I really like how you take a real benefits approach to pitching prospects. I donât see many companies do that, so I was impressed. I just had a quick question, what is the number one trait you look for in new salespeople that really helps them start selling quickly?â

Step 3: Develop Your Pitch

You are going to have to learn how to pitch yourself. Eventually, in these conversations, you will be asked about what you do. So you better have a good answer to that question.

Create an elevator pitch for yourself. In about 4 sentences clearly and concisely explain what makes you awesome and end with what you are looking for. If you have a sales background here is an example of your pitch:

âIâve worked in sales for 5 years, ran my own franchise of a window cleaning business and broke sales records. Iâm looking for a job that will challenge me to grow as a salesperson. I excel at person to person sales, but I really want to learn about high-ticket sales. So Iâm shopping around for a few different positions currently and learning how to upgrade my sales potential.â

Once you have your pitch ready, you can start to plan out what you will say when you get them on the phone.

Step 4: Plan Out Your Phone Script

You are going to plan out a call script to engage with your âProspectâ so to speak. You arenât going to map out a whole conversation, just plan a few questions to ask your prospect. You will also need to know how you are going to lead the conversation into asking about job openings.

Donât let a lack of email reply stop you from calling them. If they didnât respond to your email youâll just say this when you call them:

“Hi (Name),

Iâm just following up on an email I sent you. My name is (Name), and Iâm doing some research into some of the traits that lead to new salespeople excelling. I did some research into your company and liked how your sales message is focused on how you save customers time in their daily routine. Since your company seems to have a pretty good sales process set up I was wondering if you had a few minutes to answer a few quick questions I have about excelling as a new salesperson.â

Then you can go into the body of your script.

If they did agree to talk to you:

âHi (Name), thanks for taking the time to talk to me.â

The body of your call script:

In the body of your phone script, you are going to ask a few questions to engage with your prospect. Their answers are giving you AMMO. What they answer is letting you know valuable details for the industry you are looking to get a job in as well as what points you can emphasize when you start asking about positions within the company

Plan out a few high level questions you could ask like the ones below:

What sorts of traits lead to a new salesperson becoming successful in your company?
What has been one of the main things that have led to your success in this company?
What would you recommend for someone like me to work at a good company like yours?

Any other questions that you think would be relevant to show that you are looking to make yourself the ideal candidate for the position would be great to ask here. After a few questions, you are going to ask the big question…

âIâve worked in sales for 5 years, ran my own franchise of a window cleaning business and broke sales records. Iâm really looking for a job that will challenge me to grow as a salesperson, I excel at person to person sales, but I really want to learn about big-ticket sales. So Iâm shopping around for a few different positions currently and learning how to upgrade my sales potential.â

âDo you think thereâs any current need for someone with my skill set in your company?â

You may get a ânoâ here, but thatâs alright. You are still going to look for any other openings you can.

âDo you know anyone else in the industry I could talk to about this type of work?â

Asking for referrals is a fantastic way to build your list of possible prospects. And if they do give you a referral, that is a very strong lead for a possible position.

âMind if I check in in a month to see if anything changed?â

This will leave the door open for future contact with this person.

Now people wonât be throwing jobs at you just because you asked them a few questions. However, you will have engaged with them in a way that almost nobody has before. Eventually youâll engage with the right person, and find yourself in a job offer position. This is much more effective than spamming your resume to as many people as possible.

Now the trick is to keep track of all your possible leads and follow up with them at appropriate times.

Time investment: ~2 days for all the setup and calling.

Potential upside: A new awesome job.

You are making a bunch of small bets, with a big potential payoff. Will you get rejected a lot? Yes. Does it matter? No.

This is how to find your dream job… even if you’re in an ultra-competitive job market and feel like nothing you’ve tried before is working.

How to Find Your Dream Job if You’re Not Sure What It Is Yet

Now, we looked at how to find your dream job by targeting the right companies and approaching them in a way that will help you stand out.

But what if you’re not sure what type of job would be your dream job? Maybe you just graduated, or have been working a few years but haven’t found anything that excites you.

Well, there are a couple of ways to figure out what your dream job might be.

Talk to people

First, talk to people more experienced than you. Friends, family members, etc. Ask them what jobs they’ve had, what they enjoyed most, and why.

This can be a good starting point to gather some ideas.

Think about your passions/interests

Next, think about what you’re passionate about in general. Do you enjoy technology and computers? Do you enjoy history and politics? It’s okay if you aren’t sure how these ideas will lead to finding your dream job (or any job).

Listening out your interests will still be useful as you narrow down the types of roles you want to pursue.

Think about what you DON’T like

Maybe you hate dealing with customers. That’s okay! You know that your dream job isn’t going to involve any direct contact with customers, because you don’t enjoy it!

Write that down. That’s an important piece of criteria to keep in mind when you try to hunt down your dream job using the steps earlier in this article.

Don’t be afraid to say “no” to some opportunities. You need to narrow down your job search and get specific with what you’re looking for, and part of that is knowing what you’re not looking for.

Don’t let anyone tell you that you’re hurting your job search by focusing on a specific, narrow type of role while saying “no” to others. This is what the most successful, highly-paid job seekers do in their careers!

Find reviews of different jobs and industries

I’d recommend searching YouTube for this. Many people make videos showing a “day in the life” of their career.

You could search for “Day in the life of a digital marketer,” etc.

Sometimes those videos are a bit quick and don’t show you much detail about the work, though. So I’d also recommend searching for things like, “What’s it like working as a digital marketer?” and, “what does a digital marketer do?”

You can also search Google for terms like these as well. I’d just recommend starting on YouTube for this particular research.

Research LinkedIn

LinkedIn is an amazing research tool. I wrote about the 5 reasons everyone should use LinkedIn, and the research you can do is one reason.

You can look up people with certain degrees/educational backgrounds and see what jobs they have now.

Maybe you just graduated with a degree in Economics and don’t know what options are available. This would be a way for you to see many different paths people have taken after getting a B.S. in Economics.

Or, let’s say you have a pretty good idea what your dream job is now. You can type that job title into LinkedIn, pull up some profiles, and look at how they got to that point.

They didn’t just wake up one day with their dream job. So you can look at what jobs they held previously. Did they get any certifications/special trainings? Did they get promoted within their own company, or learn some skills elsewhere and then get hired directly into this job you want?

These are all things you can research and make note of when trying to land your dream job for yourself.

Sometimes You Need to Try a Few Things Before Finding Your Dream Job

As a final piece of advice – look for great companies to join, not just great positions.

If you’re in the early stages of your career, a good boss and employer should give you an opportunity to try a few different things, exposure yourself to new challenges, etc.

That’s an important part of the process of finding what you enjoy doing and finding your dream job in the long run.

It’s hard to sit behind a computer and read about jobs and figure out what you’ll really like. It’s much better to join a great company (even if you’re not sure that this is your dream job), and start trying things and learning things!

This is one reason I suggested writing down a list of your interests earlier. That way, you can make sure to join a company that aligns with your interests, even if you’re not sure the role is what you want to be doing forever!

The process of how to find your dream job doesn’t happen overnight, especially if you aren’t sure what that job even looks like. But if you follow the steps above, you’ll have a better idea of what your dream job might be, and you’ll know how to get in touch with the right people to start landing interviews for these jobs you want.