Your Dream Job - And Your Passion

What would be your dream job? If money were not a consideration, what would you do?
A recent Harris Interactive survey among almost 8,000 employees over the age of 18 found the following:

• 45% of workers said they were satisfied or very satisfied with their jobs
• 55% of workers said they were not satisfied

Furthermore...

• 20% were passionate about their jobs
• 33% believed they had reached a dead end
• 21% were eager to change to something different

The above statistics paint a vivid picture of how elusive passion can be in careers.

Here are some more observations about dream jobs:

• Dream jobs are absolutely personal. Everyone has a different dream.
• Dream jobs are aligned with a person's core passion. Your passion is what you care most about in life. It is what attracts you and gives you energy. It is what inspires you, and what you can not live without doing.
• Dream jobs consistently leverage your core strengths and skills, draw on what you do best and most naturally, let you do what you are really good at doing.
• Dream jobs minimize the down sides, the things you don't like to do or don't do well. They accentuate the positive allowing you to focus your work time on activities you love to do.
• Dream jobs offer enough compensation to sufficiently support a life style that is acceptable and feels good. If a minimum level of income is not there, even an otherwise ideal fit may not be the dream job.
• Finally, dream jobs are not perfect jobs. Even when the fit is right, every job has some drawbacks

BOTTOMLINE: Stop "dreaming" - start doing. Take stock in yourself, identify your core skills, research the market - and go back to your passion.