YouGov asked over 14,000 people what they would like to do for a living. Over 60% chose writer and 54% chose librarian. Academic came third (51%).
It seems the respondents were attracted to prestige rather than celebrity status (or money!). Twice as many people chose librarian as chose astronaut. And twice as many people chose author as chose Formula 1 driver!
The US top ten jobs of 2014
CareerCast analyses 200 roles in the US and scores their desirability using a range of factors including:
- Emotional and physical environment; Salary; Stress; Growth potential (sector and personal)
The top ten jobs include several health related roles (dental hygienist; audiologist; occupational therapist); tech roles (software engineers and systems analysts) and mathematics (mathematician and statistician).
Those identifying writing as an ideal job will be disheartened to discover that newspaper reporter is identified as the second worst job of 2014 (after the low paid and dangerous job of lumberjacking). Librarian came in 38th place.
A learning attitude
Now you’ve identified your dream job – how are you going to get it? Researchers at the University of Missouri and Lehigh University followed 120 college graduate job seekers.
The study found that people who seek to learn from every situation in life – those who have a high learning goal orientation (LGO) - are more successful in finding their dream jobs. This is because they can respond to the stress of rejection or failure by becoming even more motivated to improve their job searching. The study also found that candidates can be trained to improve their LGO. Candidates can learn that:
“…the stress and failure they experience while searching for a job is not a bad thing, but instead represents an opportunity to learn from the process and determine how they can be successful at it."
Source: YouGov; CareerCast; EurekAlert.