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Finding Your Dream Job

Lesson 23 from: How to Make Money

Ramit Sethi

Finding Your Dream Job

Lesson 23 from: How to Make Money

Ramit Sethi

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Lesson Info

23. Finding Your Dream Job

Lesson Info

Finding Your Dream Job

We're going to cover how to find your dream job an area that is grossly misunderstood uh when I started thinking about doing coursework 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 forty years they haven't gotten a dream job since nineteen sixty two and they're giving you suggestions like follow your passion and make sure your resumes one page and all of us were sitting there like that's it that's what you got for me give me some give me something really tell me about how to actually, uh 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 fifty thousand dollars salary to a seventy five thousand dollars salary or like we're going to meet today one of my students who was at a nonprofit and actually got a twenty percent race twe...

nty percent he's going to 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 to 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 going to 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 sixty five or seventy scholarships when I was in high school? Well, things didn't really change as I got older, I actually got weirder. 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 is 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 and 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 a hundred 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 that companies like google and into it and hedge funds well I was like okay, this is great and I'm very flattered but I wanted to see if it wasn't 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 got so good I will teach you to be rich were amazing and what we did test it we tested with a small group of first about twenty people and literally people were crying this doesn't work if 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 there 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 ten people don't succeed that's my fault and then twenty didn't succeed we had more crane 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 realised that there was something wrong with the system and we ended up building I think it was about sixteen or seventeen versions. Before we got it right, we spent we collected seventy five thousand data points, etcetera more than that we spent huge amounts of money doing research, flying people in interviewing experts, et cetera and we were able to actually help people find their dream jobs. I'll 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 room eat satay or you can find them at a tte 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 wanted pick someone really tough she's a young woman which makes it tough in certain scenarios uh and 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 so I don't want to get a leg up on someone so she didn't even know her dream job was we help her identify that dream job then she didn't know howto 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, one hundred percent 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 twenty one year old a twenty two year old at this point uh no experience she actually got a ten thousand dollar raise and the hiring manager said to her uh you're too good at this you make my job impossible so that's what we want to do today we're gonna learn the ins and outs of resumes, interviews, natural networking negotiations and most importantly, what should I even do? Okay? And it's not just gonna be meat giving like telling you do this do that I'm gonna show you gonna bring people up and we're gonna negotiate we're going to interviews and stuff like that you can use this when you go to a cocktail party and someone says, what do you do notice by the way that the students here in class notice how they introduced themselves they all said the same thing every day if I were here I would have had a different thing every single day and I would have looked around and seeing what people how they reacted for example, I'm a wedding photographer from x y z ok, good for day one day two I'm a wedding photographer who helps affluent brides uh, you know, find the wedding of their dreams. Wow, affluent brides interest and then we look around, we see, like our people nodding or are the kind that's weird that's actually, you know, I do that. I told you I tested answers like where do you work? And I told them I work from home and everybody hated me. And I said, actually worked for my home office and like, oh, my god, that's amazing, uh, you contest those responses. I also told you how people ask me, what do you do? And I used to say I'm a writer and then people were like, oh, so you're unemployed no, I'm an author. Oh, really? What what book did you write? Totally different. So it starts from how you introduce yourself. Then it goes down to you know, when you take a v I p out to lunch, why would a pipe even go out to lunch with you? What do you have to offer a v I p I'm gonna show you today let's, get to it so we're going to cover the right and wrong way to identify your dream job we're going to talk about natural networking how many of us believe that networking is sleazy slimy ski again 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 going to do that I'm just going to 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 umm I think we get to it so 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 here keep a budget don't spend money on lotteries what are some of the things we hear and feel when it comes to finding a dream job what phrases that we here do what you love very good very good and you're like okay, that sounds reasonable and then you go home and you're like okay what am I supposed to do with that? Where do I get it? How do I get a job from this phrase what do we do? Literally what am I supposed to do today so I love that one what else? What other phrases we hear working on your follow your bliss very and you'll never work a day I love that. What else we got a lot of people saying that dara schubert follow your passion and susan actually says follow your passion will uh uh jennifer follow your dreams uh we have uh jennifer what did you what did you do when you were a child? Maybe that's a weird question we're gonna answer that has nothing to do with any oh let's say like, what did you want to do when you're a child but I want to be a fireman no, I think she actually wants to know what I did as a child I woke up I went to the playground so we're just questions that would be a great job affects three find a job that pays enough to support the lifestyle you want. Okay, I actually I actually agree with that. Yeah, 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 more optimized 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 to ask ourselves why even go after a dream job like how many of us say I just want a job that pays the bills and I'm happy to know I have to think about it after five p m 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. Um I would also say that when we think about when we graduate uh twenty one years old twenty two 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 thirty we want toby. What do you think we'll be doing by thirty? Put yourself in the twenty two year old your twenty two year old. What did you think you'd be doing by thirty? What shot it out have a jillion dollars exactly what else traveling very good. What else not be working retired by thirty 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 totally married with kids totally in a house that's gorgeous and beautiful got a big island in the kitchen all right so unfeminine saying be a partner to firm have a ph d have house running my own startup latin 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 twenty two you know we're living on basically nothing we're living in like a teeny room and that's fine because we're twenty two we don't need that much right you don't need any fancy furniture then we turned twenty five and things changed just a little bit I would say twenty five to twenty six 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 let's let's keep going twenty six twenty seven twenty eight now certainly people have jumped one two 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 cz a 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 identified they say like I'm a job hopper and I don't really know where I want to I want to close any doors twenty nine or thirty what happens? What happens in twenty or thirty okay there what does that mean? Really when you say freak out what do you mean just kind of looking at their current I think they got 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 so or get paralyzed around it it's interesting there we'll come back to that drew say I'm sure number of people out there if they're not doing what they love they accept that they're never gonna do it and sit in this career path how well do you drew twenty very insightful uh 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 uh 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 well say things like well, he got that job but he went to a better school or yeah, I should get to do that but like I'm just not like me 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 I would say that you look around at the news and what do you see? You see newspapers over and over saying uh, millions of people unemployed this recent college graduate sent out one hundred fifty 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's a whole game going on around you that you don't even realize I learned that phrase from a guy named steve blink 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 them 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 quinn toppling the 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 software software's don't know anything. As a college sophomore, I went to apply for an internship, and I was competing against stanford mba thes were former top tier management consultants, I was a kid who was forty pounds lighter than I am right now, I have these really weird glasses. And I walked in there with the ill fitting I don't even know if I had a blaze I actually did not have a place 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 their they were smarter than I was, but I applied certain techniques that you can apply it doesn't matter what 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 cops 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, okay, what are you doing to get there or 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 thirty thousand responses on the scan question and I read them all and people would say stuff like my dream job is to work four days a week and make one hundred fifty thousand dollars I say ok, what is your current job? Well I'm a retail clerk at 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 because you will have blood but no that's not possible in the next five years to go from being a retail clerk earning one hundred fifty k working four days a week however however it is possible to say you know what I'm making fifteen dollars ten dollars an hour my next job I want to make twenty that I want to make thirty 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 sixty k job to one hundred k job in one job I just can't eighty k two hundred k's more likely but sixty k two hundred 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 going to go here, then we're going to go here and we're gonna end up with our dream job in each place we go, we're going to take the best of what we learned. Then it becomes much more palatable. Alright, so I want to give you an example of one of my students. This is chris. Uh, love this photo. Chris chris is the only student who has ever joined every single one of my courses, every single one from the four dollars ninety five cent e book to a twelve thousand dollar dream job elite course that iran and this is I mentioned him earlier he had fifty thousand dollars in student loan debt he used, in fact there's a fortune profile on me, and I will teach you rich, 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, he he starts implementing the personal finance stuff and paying off debt, then he joins earned one k to earn fifteen thousand dollars on the side think about that's over a thousand dollars a month pretty amazing but the most amazing thing of all was in twenty twelve 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 tells these weird jokes and when he came I mean he's so funny but he's 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 raise that he negotiate the raise he got from his other job was a fifty thousand dollar race. It was forty to fifty thousand dollars he works at a top technology for total income tripled in the last eighteen months. Now he's a star ok he's a star uh most students will not get these kind of results okay, but many students get tremendous results. Obviously for for all of us fifty thousand dollars is life changing money and until 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 three years or four years from being all this money in debt toe having a ton of money in the bank he said rami that changed everything he said you know we were thinking about him 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 going to 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's 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 okay notice that uh I did not talk about the word passion although he loves what he does 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 so we're gonna cover how he did this all right and then we're gonna meet some other students who did exactly that is what you can find his uh uh actually you confined his case study right there I will teach you to be rich dot com slash creative life

Class Materials

bonus material with purchase

Ramit Sethi Interview
3 Negotiation Scripts
5 Negotiation Case Studies
Freelance Email Proposals
Freelance Income Roadmap
List of Freelancing Ideas
5 Resumes That Win
VIP Email Teardown
Updated Resource Link: I Will Teach You To Be Rich

Ratings and Reviews

AshPhoto
 

This course changed my life. After watching Ramit on Creative Live, I bought his book, then signed up for his newsletter, then bought several of his classes. You could say I am officially drinking the Ramit Kool-aid now, but I'll tell you why... His stuff works. You have to trust the system, but I've been able to create a rich life for myself by my definition of rich and I am so happy. It takes work, but I am so grateful I found Ramit in my 20s so I can truly enjoy my 30s over the next decade. Without this course, I would still be complaining that people don't want to hire me because my prices are too high and whining that I am not valued, when in reality, the problem was me. Thanks Ramit for always speaking the hard truths and giving people wake-up calls to get their act together and live the life they want... It's possible!

Adrian Farr
 

Ramit is a huge inspiration, he is not just a 'been there and made loads of money' kind of guy, he is a 'been there and made loads of money, and here's how I did it' kind of guy! Ramit really gets down to helping you understand not only how to make money but also how to save it too. I am looking forward to reading his book and plan to implement a lot of his systems into my own life.

YKR
 

I have taken a few business classes for creatives online, but this is by far the most comprehensive, most practical course of all. Especially for someone like me who loves Ramit's work but has not made a decision to commit to his full courses, this is a great introduction for what he can offer. He pushes you to think outside the box and see all the possibilities that we can have in a very clear, logical way. If you are unsure which class to take to learn about business, this is all you need.

Student Work

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