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Finding the Right Job
by Avoiding the
Wrong One
By John Ford
omeone I knew very well had dreamed, since childhood,
about becoming a teacher. Lynne was influenced by good
teachers she knew in public school. Like so many great
teachers she had a strong desire to help others learn. She liked a lot
of the subject matter, too.
S
College preparation was an essential part of Lynne’s career path.
She took required classes, pursued a special education certificate
and developed skills in Spanish so she could reach more students.
During her senior year Lynne was assigned to be a student teacher.
How she had looked forward to this! For the next semester, her
world would be 35 little students and a master teacher eager to
help her polish her teaching skills.
It was such a disappointment when it turned out to be different
than expected. Lynne loved children, but couldn’t deal with so
many of them. There wasn’t time for one-on-one teaching and
behavior management took much of her time. Much of this could
have been overcome with experience, but Lynne just didn’t enjoy
teaching large groups. She improved, but was miserable.
Teaching just wasn’t what she thought it would be. If only she had
known this sooner.
Finding the Wrong Job
Have you ever had a job that made you unhappy? Many people
have. Researchers have found that as many as half of American
workers are unhappy in their jobs. (Ben Rooney, “Half of workers
unhappy in their jobs,” CNNMoney, June 20, 2011,
http://money.cnn.com/2011/06/20/news/economy/workers_disgr
untled/index.htm). Mismatch between the employees’ abilities and
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the full set needed to perform the job is part of the problem.
A report entitled Education to Employment, by the McKinsey
Center for Government (www.mckinsey.com/features/education_to_employment), found that 39 percent of employers believe
that college students lack important skills needed on the job. These
researchers also report that 72 percent of educational institutions
felt they were preparing students to be fully successful in the job
corresponding to their college major.
There are reasons to believe you cannot rely on your college education for a complete picture of the workplace.
For the past five years, The U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board
(MSPB) has done research on employee engagement. “Employee
engagement is a heightened connection between employees and
their work, their organization, or the people they work for or with,”
according to the September 2008 MSPB study The Power of
Federal Employee Engagement. “Engaged employees find personal
meaning in their work, take pride in what they do and where they
do it, and believe that their organization values them.” The MSPB
study highlights the influence of how much employees like their
jobs and how well they perform them.
“We have found evidence that a heightened connection, or engagement, between federal employees and their organization that
surpasses job satisfaction is related to better organizational
outcomes,” read the study. Federal employees who are engaged in
their work contribute more and their agencies accomplish more of
their organizational goals.
There are reasons to believe that enjoying your work and your
work environment, among other things, helps you to do your job
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recr uitment outreach/selection
well. Many factors affect how much we like our jobs. Employers
and job applicants focus primarily on the abilities required. If we
want to improve recruitment and selection we sometimes need to
widen this focus.
Being Realistic
Employers try to reduce unhappiness on the job with better selection tools that assess a wider range of job-relevant abilities and
personal characteristics. This always falls short in predicting
whether a new employee will like a job. Legal requirements
constrain what employers can investigate because such inquiries
must be directly related to the job. Few of the “little things” that
make a big difference to an employee will be assessed in an
employer’s pre-job screening. But applicants can accomplish this
for themselves.
What do we do before we pay for a suit, buy a car, or commit to a
long-term relationship? We try it on, take it for a drive, and give it
some time. The hiring version of this is called a realistic job
preview. It describes the job and work environment in detail so
people understand the advantages and disadvantages before they
apply for it. The objective is to decrease applications from those
not likely to thrive in the position while increasing applications
from those most likely to succeed (MSPB, Realistic Job Previews,
Issues of Merit, September 2008). This strategy finds job fit problems related to motivation and engagement that are less easily
measured with formal assessment tools. There is a lot of measuring
in buying a suit, too, but you still need to try it on. It’s the practical
thing to do.
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Three Views of a Job
There are three job preview strategies commonly used by employers. They can be just as useful to job seekers.
Applicant Self-Screen. Organizations recognize that they and
the applicant share the goal to find out whether the applicant
will like the job or not. Knowing this, they build on the realistic
job preview idea and provide a great deal of information about
their jobs and work environment. They help potential applicants learn about the car pools, the commute and the cafeteria—not just the competencies.
Applicants need to use such resources and then go beyond
them to get the best preview. They can gather information
about the employer from other sources using the Web, social
media and traditional media sources. Applicants can also check
the employer’s references by talking to people who currently
work or have worked there. Everyone has opinions about where
they work. If possible, applicants should visit the employer and
look over the workspace—maybe even watch employees work
for a while. If this is not possible, a useful alternative may be to
visit another organization that does the same kind of work.
Simulations. “A job simulation is an assessment that presents
applicants with realistic, job-related situations and documents
their behaviors or responses to help determine their qualifications for the job. Job simulations include, but are not limited to,
work samples, situational judgment tests, assessment centers,
and job tryout procedures.” (MSPB, Job Simulations: Trying
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Right Job
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Out for a Federal Job, September 2009) Employers like this
type of assessment because it predicts job performance accurately. A good simulation does not contain just scored tasks to
be done, but numerous aspects of the job included to make it
seem “real.” While obvious to those on the job, much of this
may be new to applicants.
Simulations are helpful to applicants as well. “By exposing
applicants to the types of events, scenarios, and challenges
confronted on the job, job simulations help applicants determine
if the job is well suited to their knowledge, skills, abilities, and
interests.” (MSPB) An extension of this strategy is to volunteer
at a nonprofit or other open organization that does the same
kind of work. It is one way to try out the job and get some feedback on how you do it.
Applicants also might investigate a professional organization for
that type of work. It is possible to identify such an association
using one of the directories or guides such as the Encyclopedia
of Associations (http://library.dialog.com/bluesheets/
html/bl0114.html), and they might earn certification in that
area—not just with the goal of passing a test but of expanding
their knowledge of the kinds of problems faced by these professionals—and whether they enjoy doing them under the stress of
performance evaluation. Practice materials for these certifications sometimes include simulations and other information
about the work their members do.
Professional organizations are also a good medium through
which to identify recently retired employees who have done
work in this area, maybe even with the same organization. They
are often happy to tell applicants as much or more than they
want to know about the retiree’s work experiences.
Probationary Period. Many employers observe new hires
closely during their first months on the job. At the end of this
time a poorly performing employee can often be let go with less
formal justification than is required later. This lets employers
“try out” an employee before making a longer-term commitment. MSPB studied this practice in the federal workforce
(MSPB, The Probationary Period, August 2005) and found that
employee performance during this period accurately predicts
later job performance.
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part-time jobs. Each of them puts employees in a position to
understand the future workplace well enough to know if they
want to be there long term. It also looks better on a resume to
complete one of these inherently short-term jobs than to leave a
supposedly long-term job after only a few weeks or months.
Although the specifics vary, these three strategies can work as well
for applicants as they do for employers. It is in the interest of both
parties to take extra trouble to avoid employee unhappiness on the
job. And employers should help applicants with these tryouts. They
are helping themselves, too, after all.
Lynne, who we met earlier, didn’t have this experience. She didn’t
think of it and her college didn’t offer it early enough. I have heard
that some teacher training programs give would-be teachers earlier
classroom exposure—a good thing. Informed students can also seek
out these experiences for themselves.
Not surprisingly, Lynne was quite unhappy with her work for a
time after she graduated. The realities of life did not allow her to
go back and get a degree in a new major. She worked a series of
jobs that helped support her family but weren’t much fun and it
eventually worked out. She discovered one-on-one tutoring, working outside the school system to help individual children who were
struggling, and even developed a specialty helping children whose
parents did not speak English. Lynne felt lucky to finally feel the
joy of helping children learn. When I last saw her, she was pursuing a master’s degree in reading instruction and expanding her
tutoring business—a direction that used her abilities, education and
preferred work style.
We should all be this happy in our work, and perhaps we can be,
without an initial period of unhappiness by understanding what the
wrong fit looks like so we can slip around it on our way to what’s
right for us.
John Ford, Ph.D., is a senior research psychologist in the Office of
Policy and Evaluation at the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board.
Before joining the Board in 2003, he worked for the U.S. Office of
Personnel Management and as a research and development scientist
for a small private-sector consulting firm. Ford earned a Ph.D. in
Psychology from Brigham Young University in 1993. His professional
interests include test development, survey research, content analysis,
and text mining. He found the right job. —N
Although designed to help employers, a probationary period can
also help job-seekers if they are willing to take short-term work
while looking for longer-term employment. They let employees
look over the employer, too. Does being in a cubicle matter to
an employee who is accustomed to a single-occupant office?
The noise might be no big deal—or it might drive the employee
to distraction. It can be hard to predict outside of the new work
environment.
Jobs with a probationary period are just one form of tryout
employment. Others include internships, contract work and
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