08 Mar Happy With Your Job? Why? … What You Can Learn From Asking >100 People
“Talk to as many people as possible and get first hand experience” – one of the most mentioned tips for your search to your dreamjob. We did this job for you in 2017 and talked to more than 75 people. Interested about what we found out? Care how many people like their job? And why? Then keep on reading …
Before we get started, let’s share the stats – ths is based on own research from talking to >100 people, and capturing >75 people in a structured questionnaire. Those have a gender balance of 60% female/40% male. We asked a broad age range of 25-40 years old, without real bias, They come from different countries with strongest representation from Spain 39% and Germany 23%. The study mix is equally broad, 35% business, 21% engineers the strongest groups.
Having cleared this upfront, let’s get started with what they told us.
My job matters. A lot. Especially every 2 years.
44% of the people we asked think about their job every single day, 39% of the people every week. It is clear – your job matters, this occupies so much thinking time.
By the way – this is confirming a study that found out that we spend almost half of your waking hours (41%) at work or thinking about work. Combine this with the fact that the average time of the survey participant in their job was 2 years. Actually, this is still long – compared to the average years people stay at technology companies like Uber (1.23 years), Snap (1.62), and Amazon (1.84)!
1 out of 2 are unhappy or indifferent. Age, study background nationality doen’t matter
45% said, that they were happy about their job. So far the good news. 20% of our participants are unhappy with their job right now, 35% indifferent (would this not be unhappy, too?).
And of course, we wanted to understand, what has an influece on happyness? The older the happier, because you understand more and more what you want? No – no such relation, job happiness does not relate to age.
Should you study business administration, enconomics, or law in order to be happy. No relation to that either. The good news, you can be happy anywhere – so, study what you want to do.
Are Spanish participants (un)happier than their German counterparts? Yes to a certain extent, but we did not see that much difference really.
What makes people happy? Or unhappy? Mostly the same things.
We asked participants to tell us, why they are “happy” or “unhappy” – and the answers were very telling. It seems we are looking at the same coing from two different perspectives:
- Happy: „Combination of company, role, and culture“, „genuinely interested work and good at“, „autonomy, clearer purpose and impact“
- Unhappy: „feeling of being stuck without perspective“, „no purpose“, „negative working environment“
Most difficult: The “what?” and then the “where?”
Asking participants what they find most difficult in the process of finding a job? Participants struggle with finding what they want to do: Discovering what it is that makes them happy, that fullfills them, that motivates and gives them the purpose. Almost double the participants would love to get help to find what they want – compared to those that look for support in writing a CV or application letter. (Interesting detail – only the Spanish struggled also to get their applications in shape).
And then, taking the next steps – once you have clear what you want to do, how you actually find in a job. Take for example of I know I would love to work with numbers, in a team, and an environment that is growing. Oh and with a great boss. Now, how do you find that? Where does it exist. We came to call it the “match” if your dreams with reality.
So, what, how do you find work you want?
We also asked people what they recommend their friends when they are looking for a job. The amount and richness of the material is fantastic, do check out the full presentation. Get a sneak preview here:
- Have a clear view on what you want to do and why – get this clear before you do anything else
- Try new things out like doing a course on Coursera, work in a NGO besides the job, help out in a company for free on the weekend … so that you find out what you want
- Acknowledge that it takes time to find the job you love, so build a support team that helps you go through the more difficult times (e.g. any rejected applications that you will get almost for sure!)
- Don’t go for a “get away job, but “go to” jobs – at least as long as you can bare what you are currently doing
- Reach out to companies before sending an application, network with them early, so they “know you” when they get your application
Have a look at all the results here.
And now, what do you think?
We would love to hear your view – do you think the same? What do you recommend? Share this with us below … we would love to hear what you think.
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