What do you want from your dream career? (page 2/3)
Exercise 2
Are you sitting comfortably? Is the phone off the hook? Are the kids occupied? Good, because you need time to concentrate on this…
Again, imagine your ideal career, and what you would be doing right now if you were there.
Now, think about what you would have been doing the hour before, and the hour afterwards. And two hours before and afterwards. And a day before and afterwards. And, if you have the time, a week before and afterwards.
The point of this exercise is to make sure you understand the full requirements of your dream career.
Perhaps you want to be an advertising account manager, presenting your team’s proposals to a potential client?
- The hour before, you might have been preparing for the presentation – perhaps rehearsing in front of the partners of the advertising company you work for. What happens if they don’t like what you say? Or the way you say it? Do you change your presentation with only an hour to go? Is this going to affect your review? How are you going to take what they say to improve your presentation without allowing their criticisms to detract you from the perfect delivery?
- The day before, you might have been meeting with the ‘creatives’, the people who actually create the advertising slogans and advertisements, trying to relate what the adverts they are creating to the key requirements of your potential client. What if you can’t see the link? Do you try to change the adverts at this late stage? What if the creatives disagree with you? They can be quite a volatile lot – how will you get them to change the adverts?
- The day after, what happens if you’d lost the pitch? How do you explain it to your bosses? How do you explain it to the creatives? Was it their wrong ideas or your poor presentation? Or did you give them the wrong guidelines to start with? What are you going to say now?
- And even if you’d won the pitch, what are you going to do (as well as take your creatives out for a VERY lavish dinner I hope!)? It’s time to get to work!! How are you going to convert those ideas into a viable campaign? How are you going to test your ideas against your target market? How are you going to integrate the results from focus groups with the purist artistic minds of your creatives to arrive at the optimal solution for your client?
Again, this exercise is only to make you start to think about what you REALLY WANT from your dream career, and to make sure that you FULLY UNDERSTAND some of the demands that go with holding down such a career.
So, go and get yourself another cup of coffee or tea, or whatever you like to relax with. Cuddle up in your favourite chair. Take a pad, and go through the two exercises we’ve discussed.
Firstly, think about your dream career, and what you like about it. Write down all of the things which you find appealing. Now, are there other careers available which might give you what you are looking for? Against your list of appealing features, write down which other careers might be able to satisfy each feature. And be as creative as you can!!
Secondly, think about the other aspects of your dream career. Do you fully appreciate the demands that each career expects of you so that you are able to enjoy the best parts of the career? The results of this exercise will be particularly important in the next stage of this course.
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