How To Get A Job You Will Hate

  Liz Ryan 
I used to read career advice columns to learn what was new in the job-search arena. I was an HR person, sitting on the other side of the desk. After a year or two I noticed that the same tired job-search advice kept showing up, year after year. It was bad advice. Job-seekers were being taught to bow and scrape and grovel to get a job.
I didn’t understand that. I saw that the only thing that powered my company’s growth was the collective energy of my teammates. When they were energized and excited, we hit our goals. When our employees were confused or bored or mistreated, none of the goals were hit. The correlation was obvious: when people are valued, the organization prospers.
In recruiting, we hired people who knew who they were. We hired people with ideas and the pluck to share them. Why would career advisors tell job-seekers to bring half of themselves to a job interview, and leave the rest of their personality at the door?
Why would they teach job-seekers “correct” answers to interview questions, rather than telling them that not every single job or organization deserves them?
I made a plan. “At some point I won’t be a corporate HR person anymore, and when that day comes, I will write advice columns,” I said. “I will teach people a different way to job-hunt, and a different way to run their careers.”

I had already made a plan to teach HR people how to create great workplaces, and to teach CEOs how to lead. My HR colleagues said “When the time comes, we’ll all be students at Liz’s Funky HR Academy.” The actual name of the academy is Human Workplace, but we didn’t  know that back then.
I started to write career advice columns in 1997. I wrote a column for the Chicago Sun-Times. I wrote another column for Business Week, and then one for the Huffington Post and one for Yahoo YHOO -2.94%! People started to ask me “Why do you teach people to bring themselves to a job interview? Isn’t that dangerous? What if the interviewer doesn’t like it?”
That’s a great question. If the interview doesn’t like who you are, you probably won’t get the job. Isn’t that a good thing? Do you want a job working among people you won’t respect and who won’t respect you? Don’t we deserve to go to work with people who get us and therefore deserve our talents?
I don’t understand why anyone would teach job-seekers how to get jobs they will hate. That seems pointless and mojo-crushing to me. If we believe that we have something valuable to offer employees — and I can personally assure you that you do have tremendous talents that employers need – then why would we agree to take a job that won’t grow our flame?
The business world is changing fast. I have been on the hamster wheel since 1979. I took my first full-time office job when I was nineteen. I answered the phones in a customer service department by day and sang punk rock and opera at night. Sometimes I stayed up all night and went to work the next day. When you are 19 you have enough energy for that!
I have never seen the business world experiencing the changes it is undergoing now. Some of the change comes from globalization, and some from technology. Some of it comes from a general relaxation in stuffy old institutions, and part of it from the influence of millennials.
The recent economic downturn surely gave many working people and job-seekers good reason to question what they thought were established truths.
If I’m going to get laid off every few years and if I have to manage my own career now that employers have abdicated that responsibility, shouldn’t I at least insist that I work among smart and broad-minded people? If I have to go to work, don’t I deserve to play myself on the job, rather than some cartoon character my boss wants to see when he opens his office door and looks out?
I’d say “Yes!” Of course you deserve that. Of course you deserve to have a job that grows your flame, whether you work for yourself or someone else. I won’t teach you how to get a job you’ll hate, but I will teach you how to take a step back, decide what’s important to you and then go get it.

I would be a poor advisor if I told you to suck up and keep your mouth shut and tell an interviewer exactly what s/he wants to hear.

What good would that do you? You’d get the job, and then you’d hate me for encouraging you to sell yourself short.

You have what hiring managers need, and your job is to find them and make that message plain. It’s a new day, and the Human Workplace is already here. Will you step into it and plug into your power source at work? You can start right now!