General Article When your dream job is a nightmare

Topic Selected: Careers and Employability Book Volume: 405

When your dream job is a nightmare

Employees are often shocked to find their dream job involves menial tasks and drudgery. While they need to manage their expecations, employers should also be more honest about the true nature of the jobs they’re hiring for. (Unsplash)

Lisa Cohen, McGill University and Sandra E. Spataro, Northern Kentucky University

What happens when you land your dream job but it turns out to be anything but?

Friends, career consultants and the media inundate us with a constant barrage of advice telling us to follow our dreams, find our bliss or pursue our passions in our professional lives. Yet this kind of advice is not always easily followed.

Even when it’s heeded, the advice can come with downsides, especially when it turns out that those aforementioned passions involve jobs with routine, day-to-day tasks that people are less than passionate about. In short, work is often hard work.

A man intently looks at his laptop.
We’re told to follow our passions in our careers. But what happens when the ...

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