What happens when you get your dream job but it doesn't turn out the way you
expected? Friends, career consultants, and the media inundate us with a
barrage of advice that continually supports us in pursuing our dreams,
finding happiness in ourselves, or pursuing our energies in the future
professional life. But this kind of advice is not always easy to follow.
Even when heeded, that advice can come with a downside, especially when it
turns out that the job involves work that includes daily routine tasks that
people usually don't like. In short, work is often defined as working hard.
In choosing a career, we are encouraged to follow our energy. But what
happens when the job you apply for lands you in a tedious job? (Unsplash).
For example, people who get jobs in information science and artificial
intelligence, they hope to create brilliant algorithms that will solve big
problems.
But instead they end up working only to perform tedious tasks like
collecting and cleaning gross data. The desire for jobs in technology is
then dimmed by the presence of difficult and tedious jobs that are often
outside the workers' main area of interest.
And not everyone who is promoted to a higher level of management is
enthusiastic about taking on management duties, or even sees the job as a
step forward.
People romanticize jobs in the media, fashion, film, fine and performing
arts, and other cultural industries, but those jobs often end up being more
boring than excitement. What a quip job, especially in a novice position,
has elements of a tedious job.
Prestigious jobs are not always fun
This gap between expectations and reality for day-to-day work is a
phenomenon we call "reflexive work" which turned out to be boring in a
recently published study.
In this study, we interviewed fact-checkers for a magazine full of allure
that turned out to only carry out basic tasks on a daily basis. They
experience a kind of mismatch between their work status and reality.
The fact-checker explains:
"Because you're affiliated with a magazine, people think you're a pretentious type of job, no matter how affiliated you are in it."
We study how this phenomenon affects them. For employees, a sparkling job
mismatch can spur job-changing efforts and create frustration and a desire
to quickly leave the position.
Polish work also raises the dilemma of how workers can present their work
and themselves to the world. How do they balance their need to improve, to
be fully understood, and to be authentic?
Brush up on boring and mundane work
We found they did this by differentiating their job descriptions across
different audiences. When talking to strangers - people at social
gatherings, for example - they focus on the more exciting aspect: working in
journalism and for well-known magazines.
For high-status writers they collaborate with, they focus on their own
expertise and on the various factors that can enhance their status. As for
insiders, they present a more complete view of their work.
Presenting themselves differently - depending on who they are talking to,
can mean that anyone who is not a company insider will end up with a partial
or inclination view of the job. The true image of the job is often obscured,
and that becomes a problem for those who are considering applying for a
position in this job.
When they only hear about the great stuff, potential employees will end up
with false expectations that tend to set off a cycle of disappointment. If
you only receive pretentious information about a job, you will only end up
feeling disappointed.
Potential employees can get around this information camouflage by conducting
more thorough research into the underlying nature of the job options they
are considering. They should ask questions about day-to-day activities and
consult with various people who currently have similar jobs or who have held
the position before.
What employers can do
The "polish job" also poses a disadvantage to employers as they try to
manage the frustrations experienced by their employees as well as staff
turnover cases. They can stop this vicious cycle by providing realistic job
previews. This does not mean they are required to show the negative side of
the job, but it is necessary for them to provide a balance of honest
explanations of both well-known and not-so-famous jobs.
Employers can also consider a method of aggregating tasks which can make the
not-so-pleasant jobs evenly distributed among all employees from various
types of positions; do not focus on any particular position.
Allowing employees to help structure their job descriptions and create new
opportunities can go a long way. (Unsplash)
Employers also often want to be open to employees' efforts to explore their
jobs and create new opportunities with their organizations. However,
ultimately doing many mundane routine tasks often remains a reality in all
jobs despite the promise that AI will eliminate more routine tasks.
What's more, hiring managers must be careful when including narratives of
"energy" or passion as a job requirement. In an analysis of more than 200
project interviews about startup recruiting, passion has become an overused
subject of discussion.
In hiring managers, the narrative of passion needs to exist because the
manager's position requires it. While potential ordinary employees must have
already established their passion.
Yet not a single joke from hiring managers who are already looking for
passion in their prospective employees can explain how they would rate that
passion, or explain how important the existence of passion for a particular
job is.
The risk is that they hire passionate people and then deliver unsuitable
jobs and then extinguish that passion, ultimately creating a problematic
situation for both the employee and the company.
