Author and consultant Michael Masterson has some great thoughts on landing that big dream job, and what it will take to succeed in it...
If you are lucky enough to land a high-paying job, expect it to be tough. Prepare yourself mentally for the work involved - not just longer-than-average hours but also greater-than-average stress.
Plan to work hard in the beginning and to keep working hard as long as you are employed. Keeping a highly remunerative position requires above-average performance and endurance. You can't expect to rest on your laurels. From management's perspective, it's not about what you've given the company in the past but what you are contributing
now.If you expect the work to be hard, you won't panic when you
find out it is. If you know you will have to outperform most of your colleagues, you won't feel stressed when asked to do so.
Being happy with a job is much more about your expectations than it is about the job itself. If, however, you do find yourself hating your job and you can't shake yourself free of the bad feeling, go ahead and quit. But don't quit until you have found another job that is better. "Better" doesn't mean better paid. It means a job that offers you a better chance to grow and develop.
In looking for a replacement job, don't worry so much about what you will get paid today. Instead, think about how much you can make two or three years from now, once you prove yourself.
And don't expect that better job to land in your lap. Well-paid positions that offer fast-track career potential are few and far between. To give yourself the best possible chance of replacing that "bad" high-paid job with a "good" one, you'll need a plan of attack. And you'll need to commit to investing approximately 500 hours in your job search.
Five hundred hours may sound like a lot of time, but it takes time to do anything well. It may motivate you to know that most people abandon efforts to land a good job after 40 to 50 hours. Think about how much better your job search will be, since you'll be putting in 10 times that amount of time.
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