Being In The Wrong Job Is Bad - But Just How Bad Is It?

written by Gill Best

Whether they are managers or professionals thinking about a career change, women returners wanting to get back into the work place or someone who has been made redundant looking for a new job, many people still can’t answer the question “what do you want to do when you grow up?” 

Considering work comprises the largest single activity of a working adults life (over 55% of waking hours in reality), finding an answer to this fundamental question is vital.  Having a career or job that is right for you massively impacts the quality of your life in general.  Relationships, stress levels, physical and mental health are all affected by how happy you are in your job. 

Gill Best and Mark Burbridge of Caelum Coaching and Consultants have made it their life’s mission to help people find the answer to this dilemma.   Best strongly believes we owe it to ourselves to fill our working day with employment that truly reflects who we are.  “Our natural talents are going to waste because our system still hasn’t got it right”.  So many people are in the wrong job and that is not just at a high cost to themselves, their families and friends, but also to the economy.   Just think of the financial benefit to companies and the economy in terms of higher productivity, lower turnover, reduced stress, sickness and absenteeism if the people they employed were in the right jobs.

 “At the moment, companies spend thousands of pounds trying to find the ideal person through assessment centres, extensive interviewing processes, headhunting and so on.  However this system is fundamentally flawed.  One of the major flaws is the inherent assumption that the person applying for the job believes they are right for the job.  To an extent this assumption is  true.  However the problem is that unless an individual is truly aware of their career values,  

skills, natural talents and working preferences then this belief is more wishful thinking than fact.  Once short listed for interview it is more often than not left to the company to decide if that person fits the bill.  Individual candidates need to be better informed about their talents, skills and natural preferences —that way the hiring process will start to become what it should always be - a two way search for the ideal partner.

 “Once you’ve achieved that win-win situation more and more people will go to bed on Sunday evening looking forward to the following morning with excited anticipation of the week ahead”.   

Best believes that we all have the information we need to decide what we are best suited for, it is just a question of drawing it out of us.  With that in mind Best and her colleague Burbridge have devised a two-day workshop to do just that. “During the work-shop, individuals will learn so much about themselves, their likes, their dislikes, what they are good at and just as importantly what they should steer clear of at all costs.  Using a range of tools and techniques including NLP, attendees will leave feeling confident that they know what they want and that they can get it.”  

The benefit to companies is obvious – a job candidate who has been through this process will be keen to make sure that there is a true fit between themselves, the job and the company.  That good fit will translate into high levels of motivation and performance; the elusive dream of all employers and recruitment professionals.