Can You Get The Job You Want?

Paul Potts was an unassuming mobile phone salesman who had a dream -- to be an opera singer. The judges of Britain’s Got Talent looked visibly skeptical and unimpressed when he went onstage. What nobody knew was: he has a one-in-a-million golden tenor voice, like Andrea Bocceli’s. He began to sing Puccini’s Nessun Dorma. The audience listened in amazed silence, then they all rose in a wild, deafening and ecstatic chorus of acclaim. It was a magical moment: everybody was in tears, even the judges.

People don’t want jobs. They want a career – a life work that gives professional growth and personal fulfillment. Here are some tried-&-tested ways to get what you want, from the classic job-finder’s guidebook What Color Is Your Parachute? by Richard Nelson Bolles (Ten Speed Press).

Set lifetime goals. Rico Hizon had always known what he wanted to be – a broadcast journalist – even while he still a teen-age service crew at McDonald’s. He made his vision a reality by taking it one step at a time. Starting as an apprentice at the newly established GMA-7 network, he gradually spread his wings to become the first Filipino anchor at CNBC Asia, and today, for the BBC World News.

Know the job market. Birutế Galdikas’ dream job had no opening in any company: to study orangutans. Unfazed, she approached famed British anthropologist Louis B. Leakey and soon, she was rehabilitating captured orangutans and protecting their habitats in the Sumatra and Borneo rainforests. She later became the world’s top expert on orangutans, part of the “Leakey’s Ladies” trio with Jane GoodallJane Goodall (top expert on chimpanzees) and Dian Fossey (top expert on gorillas), whose life was filmed starring Sigourney WeaverSigourney Weaver.

Talk to the top. Sir Richard Attenborough knew he was destined to film the unparalleled life of Mahatma GandhiMahatma Gandhi but he didn’t know anyone in India. He nonetheless went straight to Lord Louis Mountbatten, the last Viceroy of India and Supreme Allied Commander for Southeast Asia during WW2, introduced himself and asked to meet PM Jawaharlal NehruJawaharlal Nehru. Attenborough got the support of the Indian government, but it took him 16 epic years to start filming – witnessing Nehru’s assassination and his daughter Indira’s rise, exile and return to power – but Gandhi conquered the 1983 Oscar Awards for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor (for Ben KingsleyBen Kingsley), and was hailed as one the greatest movies of all time.