Everywhere you turn, these days, someone is going on about “corporate culture” and how to align your professional career with your personal goals. But finding the right fit as a tech engineer is more than making a list of the companies which serve free lunch and have bean bags strewn across the office—it’s about properly assessing where YOU want to go and whether your intended career trajectory is possible within any given organization.
Will You Be Properly Challenged and Groomed?
There’s an easy trap that can happen when we think about our career goals. We often trick ourselves into thinking that we want to be in a position which we are over-qualified and highly compensated and that things will be Easy Street from there.
When we look at the psychology of career satisfaction, however, it isn’t easy which brings the most satisfaction, but rather the right level of challenge. As human beings, we have an innate drive towards expansion and being in our “stretch zone”—that Goldilocks style place of not too little challenge, not too much challenge, but just the right amount of challenge to properly grow us—brings more satisfaction than simply flying through challenges that are actually beneath our talent stack.
When seeking employment at a technology company, it’s important to identify the types of problems or challenges that you’re interested in solving and what those challenges will grow into as you become more adept at your current talent stack. Will the organization you’re considering have a program from grooming you into greater and greater challenges? Or are you signing up for a position that will be in perpetual stagnation, carrying out the same tasks over and over again with monotonous drudgery?
Do You Like What You Do and the People You’re Helping?
It’s cliche, but it really helps to like what you’re doing as a career. We’ve seen many gifted engineers who went from a position where they were serving a product and customer which they had no affinity towards to working for a company whose cause was salient and powerful for them—the shift in overall career satisfaction can be remarkable, even though the day to day looks nearly the same.
Who you’re serving and the solutions you’re providing are important to overall job satisfaction. Is the organization you’re interviewing with solving problems and providing solutions which strike an emotional chord for you. Finding work that is aligned with purpose can be an incredibly uplifting and satisfying experience.
How To Find Your Dream Job
Is it possible to find something which is both perfectly challenging and vividly salient? Of course, but you have to approach your job search in a smart way. At Providence Partners, we have successfully placed thousands of top level talent in the technology sector. Whether your a tech engineer or executive, we can help you design a strategy for finding the right corporate and career fit for you.
Your dream job is out there and Providence Partners will help you discreetly search and seek out the opportunities which are a yes on multiple levels. We aren’t just interested in finding you a job, we want to help you grow a career and discover a career trajectory that puts you in the driver’s seat.
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