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Finding Your Dream Job

Lesson 8 from: FAST CLASS: How to Make Money

Ramit Sethi

Finding Your Dream Job

Lesson 8 from: FAST CLASS: How to Make Money

Ramit Sethi

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Lesson Info

8. Finding Your Dream Job

Lesson Info

Finding Your Dream Job

when I started thinking about doing course work on this like I instantly fell in love with it because it's an area just like personal finance, where everybody feels bad. Everybody feels guilty. The advice is horrible. The so called experts haven't been in the field for 40 years. They haven't gotten a dream job since and they're giving you suggestions like Follow your passion and make sure your resumes one page and all of us are sitting there like That's it. That's what you got for me. Give me some Giving something, rial. Tell me about how to actually negotiate. Get so many job offers at once that I can pit them against each other and get negotiations going like that. Tell me how to go from a $50,000 salary to a $75,000 salary or, like, we're gonna meet today one of my students who was at a nonprofit. It actually got a 20% race. 20%. He's gonna tell you the actual numbers. He's here from Texas and he's gonna be here in studio in a few hours. So how do you do this? That's why I wanted t...

o get into it. My story behind this, like why should you even listen to me about jobs? Is that when I was at school, we had a pretty easy recruiting process. Basically, you sign up, you're guaranteed an interview. And if you like, can basically speak English and breathe oxygen, you're gonna get a job at least the year that I graduated, It wasn't too hard to get a job at somewhere and even talk to your company's. So I I was a bit of a weirdo. Like, remember how I told you I built that system to apply to 65 or 70 scholarships when I was in high school? Well, things didn't really change. As I got older, I actually got were I started interviewing with companies and I had this small group of friends and we would actually all interview with these random companies and we would come back and share our best techniques like, Yeah, I said this in an interview, and this is what happened. Oh, I'm gonna try that. What's your answer when they ask for the best weakness? And we would actually just test all kinds of stuff. And we got to be pretty good. Like we could walk like, right now, I could walk into a nonprofit that I have no knowledge of, and I could sit there an interview, and they would be like, Wow, this guy gets us and odds are that they might extend an offer, But that came from years and years of practice, and that's why I want to teach you. So all these painstaking years that I spent, I spent 100 man hours on my resident that shows you that I didn't really have a life. All right, I want to actually show you that resume today, and I'm gonna analyze it line by line, to show you how you can use it for your resume or your client proposals. So after I did it and I started getting offers at companies like Google and Intuit and hedge funds, well, I was like, OK, this is great. And I'm very flattered, but I wanted to see if was it just me was Maybe it was like, Oh, I had good grades or I went to a good school or something like that. Or could I actually help other people too? So I started testing these ideas with my friends. I kind of I didn't really have a system yet, but I would help them along. And I ended up helping a bunch of friends get great jobs. So I'm talking about top tier companies in finance, in technology, in everything in marketing, all kinds of industries. And I started to realize, like, this stuff works not just for me, but for other people. And I also discovered a lot of things that I didn't know back in college, like little subtleties and stuff like that. And, uh, then I just kept hearing people over and over say, like, I don't even know what my dream job is like. What am I supposed to do with my life? I have too many ideas. I don't want to close the door. What am I supposed to do? And so I built a system and I built it with my team and I thought, We are so smart. We're so we're so good at this. We don't even need to test this like we've got so good. I will teach you to be rich. Were amazing. And what we did testing. We tested it. A small group at first, about 20 people and literally people were crying. This doesn't work. Nobody passed. By the way, no one found their dream job in the first version. No. One and they were crying. And you know, the first person who started crying and just didn't get were like They don't know what they're doing. Then the second cause that's what you know. If one person doesn't succeed, it's like it's your fault. But if 10 people don't succeed, that's my fault. And then 20 didn't succeed. We had more cry, and I really don't like people to cry around me. I'm like, I'm not emotionally equipped to handle this. Just go over there So we realise that there was something wrong with the system and we ended up building. I think it was about 16 or 17 versions before we got it right. We spent we collected 75,000 data points, etcetera. More than that, we spent huge amounts of money doing research, flying people in interviewing experts, etcetera, Um, and we were able to actually help people find their dream jobs and give an example. Now I'll give you example. Throughout the day I had one student and you can actually find her interviews on my YouTube channel. Raw meats 80. Or you can find them at I will at the site that I'm gonna mention today. You. She was I picked her to help specifically because she was a recent college grad. College grads basically have no functional experience whatsoever. I want to pick someone really tough. She's a young woman, which makes it tough in certain scenarios on. She kind of didn't know what she wanted to. She had all these ideas. But you know what you want to do. She also didn't want to use her network because she felt like it would be cheating. I want to do this on my own. I don't want to use some. I don't want to get a leg up on someone. So she didn't even know her dream job was. We helped her identify that dream job. Then she didn't know how toe meet these people cause she lived in different city. We helped her walk through that. Uh, she didn't. She was uncomfortable doing networking because guys were hitting on her. By the way, In my early testing, 100% of women who went through my natural networking system got hit on. That was interesting. And we found a way to avoid that as well. Uh, and eventually she actually landed to dream job offers. This is in the worst economy since the Great Depression. Uh, she landed to dream job offers, and she actually pit them against each other. This remember, She's like a 21 year old, a 22 year old at this point, No experience. She actually got a $10,000 raise. And the hiring manager said to her, uh, you're too good at this. You make my job impossible. So we're gonna cover the right and wrong way to identify your dream job. We're gonna talk about natural networking. How many of us believe that networking is sleazy, slimy? Scam Me? We're so like, petrified of being the sleazy dude, so we just don't even do it. And yet at the same time, we hear phrases like your network is your power, and your network is the way you find these dream job and get clients right. We kind of know that in the back of our head, but we don't know how to do it. So we say that's for those people. I'm not gonna do that. I'm just gonna put my head down and they'll recognize we're gonna learn how to write a killer resume again. You can applies to anything you write and interview and negotiate like the pros. Alright, um I say we get to it. So the the the area of finding her dream job again is an area that many of us We hear these phrases for years and years, just like in money we hear keep a budget, don't spend money on lotto. What are some of the things we hear and feel when it comes to finding a dream job? What a phrases that we hear. Do you do what you love? Very good. Very good. And you're like, OK, that sounds reasonable. And then you go home and you're like, OK, what am I supposed to do with that? Where do I get it? How do I get a job from this phrase? What we do literally. What am I supposed to do today? Okay. All right. So let's let's keep going. So yesterday we talked about the CEO model and on the day before, cut costs earned mawr optimize your spending a framework for thinking about money, etcetera and somewhat arguably radical notion that you don't just have to think about money in terms of cutting costs. You can actually add the other side of the equation. So I think it pays toe. Ask ourselves why even go after a dream job? Like how many of us say, Uh, I just want a job that pays the bills and I'm happy to not have to think about it after five PM Anybody ever hear that anybody ever say that? It's okay to say that it's totally cool, right? Some of us don't want to have to be thinking about work all the time, but I would argue this. I would say that you spend an inordinate amount of time at work. I would also say that when we think about when we graduate, we're 21 years old, 22 years old. What do we think when we graduate, we think about our career. In many ways, it's like the world is our oyster, right? We can do this, do that. Take a trip by 30. We want to be What do you think we'll be doing by 30 put yourself in the 22 year olds. My, your year old. What did you think you'd be doing by 30? What Shot it up? Have a jillion dollars. Exactly What else? Traveling? Very good. What else? Not be working? Retired by 30. Okay. All right. What else? You know, for a lot of people of my friends, it was like flying around on jets and advising CEOs. Right? That's in the business side. What else? More retiring, I think. I don't know if I thought this, but many women, I would say, I wanna have kids. I would have married with kids. Totally in a house that's gorgeous and beautiful. Got a big island in the kitchen. All right, so unfeminine. You saying, be a partner to firm, have a Ph. D have house running my own startup Grammy Award Winning. Okay, well, and that's possible. Many of these things are possible, but let's actually take that progression. So we're 22 you know, we're living on basically nothing We're living in, like a teeny room. And that's fine, because we're 22. We don't need that much, right? We don't need any fancy furniture. Then we turned 25 and things changed just a little bit. I would say 25 to 26. A couple of friends maybe get a different job. They get a race. Maybe they move into a little bit of a better apartment. Some of us don't. We're at our job. Still kind of trying to figure it out. Anyone ever heard that phrase? Anyone ever say that phrase? I'm just trying to figure it out. Uh huh. Let's Let's keep going. 26 27 28 Now, Certainly people have jumped 12 maybe even three jobs. Some of our friends are still trying to figure it out. They may be working at a coffee shop. They may be working, you know, a Zaha marketing coordinator. And they're not sure if this is what they want to do for the rest of their lives. Others have so many ideas, they are what they call job hoppers, and they even self identify. They say, like I'm a job hopper and I don't really know where I want it. Don't close any doors 29 or 30. What happens? What happens at 29 or 30? Okay, what does that mean? really looking when you say freak out, What do you mean, just kind of looking at their current? I think they get more self reflective looking at their current reality and matching that to see how it does or does not match with what they're doing and then try and take action around that. Oh, you think Forget paralyzed around it. It's interesting there. We'll come back to that Drew and say, I'm sure number of people out there kind of just if they're not doing what they love, they accept that they're never gonna do it and sit in this career path. How old are you? Drew talking to Very insightful. It's very insightful that you could put yourself in the mind of someone that you're not yet, because I think you're exactly right. What we found in our research was that there are a few people who take action when they freak out, But most of us actually become resigned, and we don't we do it in a really weird way. We'll say things like, Well, he got that job, but he went to a better school or yeah, I should be able do that. But like I'm just not like B. I really need to get motivated. Okay? Or she could do that. But she had X y z so we never look at ourselves and say like, Oh, I did not work hard enough. Well, say things like, Well, the economy is really terrible right now. I'm just lucky to have a job. Okay, so I would say that actually, I But I would say that you look around at the news and what do you see? You see newspapers over and over saying millions of people unemployed. This recent college graduate sent out 150 resumes. This other person is just lucky to have a job. How dare she even think about negotiating? She's just lucky to have a job. And what happens? We read that and we say, Oh, my God, we actually like, Oh, my God, I'm just lucky to have a job. I better just hunker down, buckle down. And we don't think in the long term we don't think aggressively. But what I'll tell you this is there is a whole game going on around you that you don't even realize I learned that phrase from a guy named Steve Blank and, uh, and it is so true when it comes to dream jobs. Top performers right now are negotiating tens of thousands of dollars in salary increases. Top performers right now are getting dream job offer after dream job offer after dream job off top performers. And I know a lot of are turning down offers left and right. How do they do that in the worst economy since the Great Depression? Is it that they went to an Ivy League school? Sometimes? But I also have plenty of top performers like you saw in the last two days, who are turning down client after client and Quint toppling their rates just like people are doing with their salaries and with their dream jobs. I have people who are changing industries from fashion to business or business to fashion, even in this economy, even if they didn't have that much experience, I'm gonna tell you how as a college sophomore sophomore Software's don't know anything. As a college sophomore, I went to apply for an internship and I was competing against Stanford NBA's. These were former top tier management consultants. I was a kid who was £40 lighter than I am right now. I have these really weird glasses and I walked in there with a ill fitting. I don't even know if I had a blaze. I actually did not have a blazer. Now that I think of it, I had nothing. And yet I beat out the Stanford MBA. It wasn't because I was smarter than there. They were smarter than I was. But I applied certain techniques that you can apply. It doesn't matter where your education level is. I applied certain techniques and I ended up getting the job. And by the way, I negotiated a super hefty salary. That was the summer that I got pulled over by the cop and I told him all my money was in the market. I wasn't see. I may have been smart and getting the job, but I lacked a little bit of common sense. I think we can all agree on that. So a dream job. I will first say that it's possible. It's definitely possible even in this economy. So many of us have these lofty dream job goals, and we say I want to be a Grammy Award winner, etcetera, and you say OK, what are you doing to get there? Oh, you want to travel two months a year? Cool. What are you doing to get there? And it's easy to create these goals that are so high level that we almost can't even touch them instead of saying, you know what? Like I have five people, this is so funny. They go, I asked them, What is your dream job? And I collected? I don't know. 30,000 responses on this can question and I read them all and people would say stuff like My dream job is to work four days a week and make $150,000 a year, I said, OK, what is your current job? Well, I'm a retail clerk. A target. Well, that's just not possible. It's not possible. It's not likely that people won't say that to you because they're like in America. If you dream dreams, Bigas, you want blub blub? No, that's not possible in the next five years to go from being a retail clerk to earning 150 k working four days a week. However, however, it is possible to say, you know what I'm making $15.10 dollars an hour. My next job. I want to make 20. Then I want to make 30. Then I want to go into a salary. So it's gonna take me a few years, maybe not my next job, but my next job will be closer to my dream job. So I can't promise you to take you, for example, from a 60 k job to k job in one jump. I just can't 80 k to 100 kids. More likely, but 60 K 200 k I can't do. But if you understand that Look, this is a is a journey. That's a path. We're gonna go here. Then we're gonna go here. Then we're gonna go here, and we're gonna end up with our dream job. In each place we go, we're gonna take the best of what we learned. Then it becomes much more powerful. All right, so I want to give you an example of one of my students. This is Chris. I love this photo. Chris. Chris is the only student who has ever joined every single one of my courses. Every single one from the $4.95 e book to a $12, dream job elite course that Iran and this is I mentioned him earlier. He had $50,000 in student loan debt he used. In fact, there's a fortune profile on me and I will teach a bridge and you should pull it up to search Fortune room, eat satay. And there's a story about him. They interviewed him. He used to actually take food from his works like Pantry because he didn't even have enough food out. Okay, so he's reading my stuff. If he starts implementing the personal finance stuff in paying off debt, then he joins Earn one K to earn $15,000 on the side. Think about that's over $ a month. Pretty amazing, But the most amazing thing of all was in 2012 By the way, he's not the most socially fluent guy of all. He's really not. And he would say that himself. You sit down. He he's a hilarious guy, but he kind of tell us these weird jokes. And when he came, I mean, he's so funny, but he's like a bit introverted, and he would agree on this. He would say that this is totally true. He doubled his previous salary. I believe that raised that he negotiated that the Rays he got from his other job was a $50,000 raise. It was 40 to $50,000. He works at a top technology firm. Total income tripled in the last 18 months. Now he's a star. Okay, he's a star. Most students will not get these kind of results, okay, But many students get tremendous results. Obviously, for for all of us, $50,000 is life changing money. And he told I asked him, I interviewed him recently. He's There's massive interviews of him in my dream job course, and I sat down. It's like, What is this money mean to you? Because imagine going like in a period of about I don't three years or four years from being all this money in debt, toe having a ton of money in the bank, he said, We meet. That changed everything, he said. You know, we were thinking about He told me, When you're in debt, all you do is think about debt. All you do is think about paying off your debt. That's every decision you make is about that. And that was a very powerful moment. And then he said, You know, recently we had some friends who were gonna get married. I don't know where Main or Texas or something. And he and his wife were kind of like deciding Oh, can we do this or not? He said, Wait a minute. Why do we earn all this money it so that we can get on a plane and go be with the ones we love? That's the power of finding a dream job. OK, notice that, uh, I did not talk about the word passion, although he loves what he does, and he certainly loves being treated well. I didn't talk about how he found his passion from heaven, and then he fall it along like in the Wind. And now he's making all this money. No, he strategically used systems and techniques to get here. Do you think this guy's happy? He's really happy

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