Kirk Snyder - Finding Work You Love: 3 Steps to Getting the Perfect Job After College

About the Author

Kirk Snyder is an award-winning business communication professor at his alma mater, the University of Southern California. His work has been featured in Time, Fast Company, Fortune, and the New York Times. He has spoken at some of the worlds largest companies on the intersection of communication, culture, and careers in a changing world of work. And his undergraduate and graduate work span business, communication, and organizational change and leadership. He lives in Southern California.

Conclusion

A Lifetime of Working You

You can only become truly accomplished at something you love.

Maya Angelou

Its true. If you dont love what you do, you wont fully realize your potential. Hopefully, Ive given you some new reasons to believe in that potential, along with some strategies to help you put all of your unique value to work doing something you love.

I picked this quote by Maya Angelou to conclude the book for a specific reason. Angelou is widely considered one of the most significant individuals in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. She faced many adversities in her life but had a wildly successful, five-decade career. During that career she took on many different roles, from singer and dancer to civil rights activist, writer, and poet. The takeaway for you is that in each of these roles, Angelou was extremely accomplished, and from my perspective she succeeded because she loved each role.

The steps in the Working You system can be used for making sure each role you take during your very long and successful career is a right fit. All the ingredients that went into discovering and defining each of your individual You Points, as well as the correlating Employer Points of each job in your job bank, can be adapted for any job in your futureeven if it represents a completely different field, company, or role. No matter how you evolve or what new doors present themselves, doing your best to make sure each role rewards the unique value you bring to the job market will keep you moving ahead in a productive and positive direction.

You have the ability to accomplish what you desire because the catalyst for reaching success is something you already possess: your value. Its not a pie-in-the-sky sentiment or a lofty goal. Ive seen the practical outcome of individual accomplishment when people just like you are intrinsically motivated because they love their job. That happiness is why I went hunting for a system I could share with students who were unemployed, underemployed, or unhappy with their jobs after college. Once you find a right-fit job, Im willing to bet that youll never want to accept anything else.

Working You into the Future

Earlier in the book, I shared some of the career fears my graduate students expressed. One of the fears I didnt note is an important one I saved until now: Im afraid that Ill hate my next job too, and spend the rest of my career trying to find something that doesnt exist. This is a fear that I believe you will never have to face as long as you refuse to accept less than being rewarded for your value at work. You can find work you love if youre listening to your own sounds and following your own path. Let your Human Value, Functional Value, and Image Value guide you through your career, and use the correlating Employer Points to make sure youre locked in at your first job, second job, and every job thereafter. Being intrinsically motivated because you love what you do is what Finding Work You Love is all about.

The Working You system has evolved over many years, and includes ideas and principles I have been exploring and writing about for a long time. But it has evolved. The danger we all face is getting stuck. Dont settle for stuck. You work hard to get into college and even harder to graduate. That work deserves an outcome worthy of your effort.

If you would like to continue to engage in this conversation about finding work you love, I will be posting new interviews that did not appear in the book that I hope can add further value to your journey. I will also be posting updates and advice from the amazing people who so generously shared their stories with you in these pages at kirksnyder.com. Join me there!

I hope you share this information with your friends and even with your parents. Share it with anyone you feel might benefit from ideas in the book that have resonated with you. A lifetime of Working You is my wish for you. I want you to be able to say, Yes, this is why I went to college. This makes it all worth it!

You Points and Why You Should Believe in Yourself

In a nutshell, the key to success is identifying those unique modules of talent within you and then finding the right arena to use them.

Warren Bennis

If you recognize that your You Points represent why you should believe in yourself, they will prevent you from getting lost. Your three points of value are what set you apart from everyone else in the world of work and pinpoint exactly why you have what it takes to succeed in a right fit. As we set the groundwork to define what each of these points are uniquely for you in the next three chapters, I want you to first take a moment and let this important principle of the system become entrenched.

Dont compare yourself to anyone else or wish that you were anyone other than you. Yes, aspire to grow, and aspire to discover new talents and develop new skills that will leverage those talents. Most of all, appreciate the value you possess right now as you are reading this book. Your own You Points of value represent exactly why you should believe in yourself. They are all you need to start your career in a powerful and rewarding way. This is why success after college is all about you.

Feeling Stressed and Scared

When I spoke with Madeleine Angiuli, she had graduated from the University of Arizona two months earlier with a double major in English and psychology. A bright and talented young woman, she was struggling with her next career steps, like millions of students all over the country.

I asked Madeleine where she was in her career path. I feel like Im not in control of my life and that Ive done something wrong. I guess I thought it would all just work out. Once the pomp of graduation was over, there was this realization that it actually wasnt just all going to work out. Im stressed out and scared. Right now, Im mostly just sad.

Madeleine had recently had the worst job interview at an American-based multinational retail giant. I received an e-mail that the company was hiring for an e-commerce position, and I immediately sent in my resume. She also sent her resume to a medical company for a sales position. Im feeling so stuck, but Im also scared to death about getting stuck in a job I hate. Neither interview went anywhere, which made her feel even worse. Getting turned down by jobs I didnt even really want, but felt like I needed, seemed a lot worse than getting turned down by jobs I wanted. Ive started thinking grad school would be a great escape plan for me and that maybe Im not really good enough to get a good job with a bachelors degree. I honestly dont want more debt, but I just dont know.

Madeleines experience may be your experience. When I asked her to describe what she saw as her top three talents (these factor into her Functional Value point), she seemed to welcome the question, but hadnt thought a lot about it. Once we began going down this road, exploring why she