Find your dream career, don’t settle for just having a job.

Anyone can get a job and get paid. This isn’t too difficult and it’s very short-term thinking. I believe there has to be something more to a person’s work life than just moving from job to job hoping to find something better than the job they have now.

What is the difference between a dream job and a dream career?

I think it depends on the person and what that person’s goals are when it comes to their work life.

If your dream job is to work as a sportscaster because you love sports, perhaps getting a job on tv as a sports anchor would accomplish everything you ever wanted and would be your “dream job.” Perhaps you’d be happy working for a small local tv station as long as you were getting paid to talk sports and you would have no desire to move beyond this.

But maybe your goals are a bit different.

Maybe you want to work as a sportscaster but aspire to work for a national tv station and won’t be happy with just working on local tv. Perhaps you will work for a local tv station only as a means to getting your foot in the door and eventually moving to a larger regional channel and eventually to a national tv station. Anything less than this would be considered a disappointment and if you found that you unable to move to the national stage, you would eventually change careers. For you, it’s all or nothing.

In other words, your dream job is to work as a sportscaster but to find your dream career, you must attain a sportscasting role on the national stage, something that involves a more prolonged career path.

In order to find your dream job, it might just be a matter of applying for the job and getting it!

In order to find your dream career though, you might need to follow a series of steps before you attain it and even after attaining your dream career, are constantly looking for the next step. You love being in sportscasting but for you there is always something else out there in sportscasting that you aspire to do!

See the difference?

At the end of the day, it really depends on what your goals are and what you consider to be important in your career.

All I’m saying is that planning for the long-term will help you meet your goals better than simply thinking about your next job.

Your job only lasts as long as your current employer says so. If they lay you off or fire you, your job is gone.

An employer can’t really take your career away from you.

If you consider the earlier example of the sportscaster, if you are working on the local scene as a sportscaster and get fired, who knows if you’ll find another similar job or even if you’d want it. Afterall, it was just a job.

If you’ve made it to the national stage as a sportscaster and lose your job, you’re a lot more visible given your high profile and might find it easier to get working again because this is your career. This is what you do and you’re probably not as likely to simply give up as you would be if you’d simply been content to stay at the local level. Besides, at this point if you really needed to start working again, you could probably get a job at a local tv station again to get yourself back on track!

To find your dream career, you have to plan for the long term and not simply look for short-term gains. Switching jobs simply to earn more money for example is a short-term gain that can limit your long-term success. If you want more money, why not just ask your current boss for a raise?

To find your dream career, you need to change jobs for the right reasons and also need to think about more than just having “a job.” You also need to know if a job change has become a necessity especially if your current employer is stifling your growth or limiting your potential.

At the end of the day, to find your dream career means you have used common sense, made the right decisions and carefully thought about each of your options before acting.

Using common sense means just that: what does your brain tell you to do? One of the worst things you can do to ruin your chances to find your dream career is to listen to the wrong advice or worse, try to find your dream career based on what other people say you should be doing.

Sure, it’s always good to get valued advice from people you trust but at the end of the day, you need to find your dream career, not theirs.

Making the right decisions can refer to a lot of different things. Sometimes the best decision you make is to stay put in a job rather than jumping to another one. Other times, you find that switching jobs is the best decision you will ever make and you have no regrets for doing so.

Carefully thinking about your options before acting really means that you are thinking about the long term. You understand that a job is just a job but that a career lasts a lifetime and can take you a lot further.

Carl Mueller is an Internet entrepreneur and professional recruiter. Carl has helped many job searchers find their dream career and would like to help clear up some of the job search myths that exist while helping job searchers avoid common job search mistakes that cost them jobs.

Visit Carl's website to find your dream career: http://www.find-your-dream-career.com

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