What If Your Dream Job Doesn't Exist Anymore?

I was talking to an experienced, but not-yet-discovered, on-camera, news/talk person at one of my Social Media Networking Parties. She was asking if I could give her some advice about getting in front of the "right" people in New York. Not a problem. I've got a couple of friends in the biz, so I asked her, "What are you looking for?" She said, "I want to host a talk show, anchor a news broadcast or be a field reporter for a local news station in NYC."

Somewhat stunned, I asked her to explain. And she replied, "It's my dream job. I want to be a famous talk show host or anchor and make a lot of money." Thankfully, at that very moment, several people joined the conversation and I was able to make a stealthy getaway.

I thought to myself, what made her think that any of the jobs she is dreaming about actually exist? As a practical matter, they don't. You can't go from 34 year-old, female, third-string, foreign language, cable news reporter to NYC-based talk show host. In fact, you probably can't get there at all. Not because of personal talent, but because the job doesn't exist. There is no locally produced talk show that is looking to hire a host. That's not how talk shows work.

Over the next several weeks, this conversation was replayed several times with several different individuals. Each person was asking me about a job that either no longer existed or worse, never existed at all. Then it dawned on me -- if you ask the wrong question, you are guaranteed to get the wrong answer.

While all of this was going on, WNBC-TV announced that Len Berman, the venerable sportscaster, was being let go because of budget constraints. But wait! Len is a fixture in NYC, he's a sports brand, he's one of the main reasons people tune in to Channel 4 ... um ... nope, he's a very big budget item that could easily be cut to make room for a bunch of high quality, low cost, good looking young people who can read, write and speak on camera.

Do you think they made a good decision? Go ahead, name all the "branded" sportscasters in the New York DMA. You can't? Neither can anyone else. The job of "venerable" _____caster at a local TV station no longer exists - everyone can be replaced with younger, fresher, cheaper talent.

Well, that's pretty depressing. Yeah, I think so too. But that's not where it ends. How many people are now looking for jobs that no longer exist? If you used to be a computer photo typesetter, you were replaced in the 1980s with desktop publishing. Now, if you had that skill set, you probably could have opened a boutique desktop-based print pre-production house and done fine. Or, you could have looked for work in the transportation or food services industry. They are all about as related.

Perhaps you'd like to be a theme music composer for television or a graphic designer for the broadcast industry. How about a gig as a professional studio trombone player, or a cameraperson on a remote three-person news crew?

All of these jobs still exist in some form, but they are far from dream jobs. In fact, these production skills have been commoditized and practitioners can look forward to making about the same kind of money as they would waiting tables in a good restaurant.

I started asking some of my more seasoned friends about what jobs actually exist in their industries now (as opposed to the jobs that people think exist). The answers were truly stunning.

Last week I had the honor of lecturing to a classroom full of graduate students at the Columbia Business School and then later in the week I had an opportunity to address a similar group of graduate students (via Skype) at the Newhouse School. As I do during every lecture, I gave the students my email address and invited them to contact me with questions or comments. Just for fun, I asked about a dozen of them what they hoped to be when they entered the work force. The answers were a total surprise. To a person, they are aspiring to jobs that have devolved into commoditized low wage work, that they still perceive to be high profile, high paying careers.

We hear so much these days about workforce development and career guidance. But I wonder who is educating the educators? Who is communicating reality to the job counselors? Does it make sense to go to school to become a studio musician in 2009? The short answer is no. You can certainly go to music school, that is a privilege and a joy. But there is no job called "studio musician" any more. In 1980, being good at that job guaranteed a six-figure income. Today, you'd be lucky to make $50k per year in a big city, and away from the three major production centers, beer money. Do you know how many students are in music school thinking that there's a commercial production business to go into? Now, substitute camera operator, editor, graphic artist, set designer, copywriter, news giver, spokesperson, model/actress, script supervisor, the list just keeps on going. And it's not just the production side; the same holds true for the business side, the promotion side, all of it.

What would you do differently if you had the ability to accurately assess the total potential of your dream job and found out that it was no longer possible for it to provide the living you dreamed accompanying it? There's only one answer ... you'd look for a different line of work.

The pace of change being what it is, it is truly surprising how many people still laud and revere certain jobs in our profession. Jobs that, in reality, bear little resemblance to what they used to be.

Shelly Palmer is a consultant and the host of MediaBytes a daily show featuring news you can use about technology, media & entertainment. He is Managing Director of Advanced Media Ventures Group LLC and the author of Television Disrupted: The Transition from Network to Networked TV (2008, York House Press) and the upcoming, Get Digital: Reinventing Yourself and Your Career for the 21st Century Economy (2009, Lake House Press). Shelly is also President of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, NY (the organization that bestows the coveted Emmy Awards). You can join the MediaBytes mailing list here. Shelly can be reached at [e-mail] information about Get Digital Classes, visit www.shellypalmer.com/seminars

Comments

[drymartini1]

if you wanna love you are you doing, develop a hobby.
as for a job, its about a good paycheck. !!

when i came to this country, i realised that a whole generation of students were being told to "follow their heart when choosing a career". WRONG.

pick a career that will pay well !! if you wanna love doing something, make it your hobby !!

[ThePeacemakers]

The days of planning to do ONE thing your whole life (or most of it) have been gone a LONG time.

Diversify to survive...

The one skill most people can improve on their own without a lot of money (they just may need time) is learning foreign languages. You might even want to start looking at opportunities in OTHER countries.

[ImmanuelGoldstein]

This is mostly useless advice. It takes years to develop a skill to a genuinely professional level. Just how many can people actually develop and maintain?

[drymartini1]

jack of all trades!!

[traveller77]

You hint at the problem but don't quite address it.

The plain fact is; we are not being told the truth about jobs available to us. We can't make practical career choices without good information.

Government agencies are responsible for collecting labor data, including job markets. These surveys are poorly constructed, poorly handled, improperly analyzed, and simply incorrect by the time results are published.

The joke is not just on us; it's on our employers as well. Large Corporations need to define and implement business plans on a quarterly basis. These plans determine who they will hire, what skills they will need, how much they will cost, and what kinds of products and services they will create, build and sell. They base their planning partly on the statistics that the government collects.

When businesses turn to financing, they turn to local Banks. Bankers' financial planing depends on the "beige book," an industry-level projection of regional business conditions, including labor skills -- and the Beige book depends upon general economic statistics collected by Government agencies.

How badly do you suppose major employers' plans are, when they are based on such poorly collected and analyzed government data?

This is a great article for everyone who works for a living -- but it should lead to a few more articles that discuss WHY we are in the pickle we are in, who needs to fix it, and what they need to do.

tt77

[Terrance Heath - Huffpost Blogger]

The reality lurking behind all of this, that is probably part of the bigger economic picture, is that we're moving into an economy where few of us will make much of a living doing what we love to do, or what we dream of doing.

The problem is that many of us were told growing that if we wanted it and worked hard enough we could be anything we wanted to be. We were taught to dream big in that regard. We went to college with the idea implanted that we would do, become, or accomplish something important.

In the economy to come, where more and more skills are commoditized, it may be that we are entering the end of the era downsized dreams and even the end of "dream jobs," for all but a few. The rest of us will still have to earn paychecks, but for the most part it won't be for doing anything we particularly want to do or dreamed of doing.

And if we do, we'll probably do it without the standard of living we had before or aspired to. In fact, we'll probably work harder just to maintain a lower standard of living than we had, and at jobs that may not be all that fulfilling or rewarding, outside of a paycheck.

So, what do you do when there are no dream jobs at all anymore? Dream differently? Or just stop dreaming altogether?

[ImmanuelGoldstein]

The fact always has been that the ideas that any but a small minority is going to get their 'dream job' is nothing but careerist propaganda.
How many people have I met in my entire life that have their 'dream job'? I don't have a scientific survey but I'd be surprised if it were as much as 1 in 10.
The whole concept of your entire emotional fulfillment can necessarily derived from what you do for money was never anything more than a Big Lie for most people.
For me a dream job is one that pays enough money and leaves enough time to actually have a LIFE. This kind of job is becoming rarer and rarer though....

[art4atom]

I'm a graphic designer. Of my entire graduating class, I only know of two that are working in the field, including myself. Every year my former school pumps out more and more graphic designers, all of whom have been told about the great job placement program and that they'll be able to make money hand over fist, and all of whom now carry tens of thousands (one friend even over 100k) of dollars in debt. None of whom have been told the simple truth that there are more designers than there are jobs and that. while the number of jobs never seems to change, the number of graphic design graduates increase every semester.