Below, Emily Durham shares five key insights from her new book, Clock In: No-BS Advice for Getting Ahead in Your Career (Without Losing Your Mind).
Emily, also known as Emily the Recruiter on social media, is a recruiter-turned career-coach with an audience of over 3 million people across Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and her podcast.
What’s the big idea?
We’ve been taught to dream of jobs when what we’re really looking for is validation, purpose, and a lifestyle we actually enjoy. Getting ahead at work has a lot less to do with finding the perfect role and a lot more to do with knowing what you want, making your value visible, and remembering that your job is just what you do—not who you are.
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1. Forget a dream job. Why are you dreaming of work?
Many of us made pretty big decisions about our careers before we could even vote or order a beer. And yet, at the ripe age of 17, we were forced to pick an academic and professional path. I surely do not trust any decision 17-year-old me made, but here we are.
From the time we could read, we were asked what we wanted to be when we grew up. And often, the jobs we dreamed of were the jobs that we knew existed, that we saw ourselves represented in, or had education about. The dream job often isn’t our dream alone.
What you want in your career has largely been shaped by your environment, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But there’s so much power in understanding that what we have always wanted and what we will want in the future may evolve alongside our environment, circumstances, and sense of self. And there’s even more power in bringing awareness to some of these self-beliefs and giving ourselves a chance to challenge them.
The worst thing you can do is be married to a path that one day may no longer be the path you want. Your career will become significantly less stressful once you detach your sense of self from your work. Because as much as our careers feel like an integral part of who we are, they’re just what we do. Although they influence us as people, they aren’t who we are at our core.
“There’s so much power in understanding that what we have always wanted and what we will want in the future may evolve.”
And because we’ve been conditioned to dream of labor—literally, it is so gross—we think we’re targeting a dream job alone. When the reality is that most of us are targeting these three core needs, and the job is just how we plan to get there.
As people, we are fueled by my Jersey Shore-style acronym, VPL: validation, purpose, and lifestyle. If we stop targeting a dream job and start targeting a life that gives us the VPL we’re looking for, things start to feel just a little bit lighter.
2. Your job is never loving you back—like, ever.
Have you heard of love bombing? In short, it’s when someone tries to shower you with love and affection and praise super early on in a relationship so that you feel valued and ultimately really loyal to them. Eventually, once the love bomber gets what they want—often your unwavering devotion—they pull back and withdraw the positive affirmations and attentiveness they used to hook you.
Companies kind of do the same thing. They know humans have a desire to feel valued, so what do they do? They manufacture a sense of belonging in exchange for our loyalty. You’ll hear things like, “We’re a family at this company,” or “We’re the good guys.” Eventually, we start to believe them. We feel a heightened sense of responsibility and anxiety. We work late, we don’t ask for a raise—all to avoid letting the company that we love down.
But the truth is, it’s hard to get ahead without losing your mind when you’re expecting your company to love you back. You start to work overtime, lose sleep, and go above and beyond for a company that will pass you up for a promotion or lay you off if necessary. You may love your job, but much like my ex-boyfriend, that job is never loving you back. Ever.
3. Your résumé doesn’t have to be perfect. It just needs to not be bad.
With thousands of applications for every single job, how does a recruiter get through them all and read them all? On average, a recruiter looks at your résumé for six seconds before they determine whether they move forward with you as a candidate.
Only six seconds! How are they reading everything you wrote down in that short a time? I have big news: They’re not. Baby, they’re not reading your résumé at all. The average recruiter is skimming, not reading. So, your résumé doesn’t need to be AI-proof or perfectly laid out to get ahead. It just can’t be bad.
“Baby, they’re not reading your résumé at all.”
If your résumé isn’t bad, then it’s good. If we know recruiters are skimming your résumé, all we need to do is make sure the design, data, and details of your application align with how real recruiters review applications to get you ahead.
So please do not feel like you need to customize your résumé. It is totally unnecessary. You don’t need to do it. You also don’t need to flood your résumé with a whole bunch of buzzwords directly from the job description. All of that advice doesn’t actually help.
All you need to do is have one really strong résumé that’s loaded with meaningful data that explains in detail the value and impact of your job, with a design that’s simple and easy to read. No crazy colors, no crazy design—something that a human person can scan easily in under six seconds, ideally.
4. Be liked and seen.
Have you ever noticed it’s almost never the smartest or most qualified person who gets the job or the promotion? It’s the most visible and the most well-liked. If you have limited time to invest in your career, I would genuinely rather you invest it in improving your likability and visibility than in your actual intellect and skill. And believe me, I know that’s messed up.
The ugly truth is that meritocracy is a myth. People are not hired, paid, and promoted based on skill, talent, and hard work. Of course, those things can be factors in success, and they often are. But in a world based on racism, capitalism, sexism, and every other “ism,” merit alone isn’t going to grow your career.
Ask yourself:
- Does my boss know what I’m working on?
- Is what I’m working on visible to senior leadership?
- Is the impact of what I’m doing visible to senior leadership?
- Do people like me?
- Do I make people feel valued and understood?
- Do I operate with empathy?
If the answer is yes, you’re light-years ahead.
5. Be a little bit crazy.
I’ve seen this happen countless times with my clients. They do all the right things. They make a plan. They network. They develop their skills. And they’re passed up for opportunities, or they’re told to wait it out by a boss who clearly doesn’t have their best interests at heart. Sometimes this is because the work culture is toxic—that’s a whole other can of worms—but sometimes it’s because you need to be just a tiny bit crazier, also known as being a better salesperson.
Operating with a sales mindset in your career is literally life-changing. It doesn’t mean that you’re pushy or that you never take “no” for an answer, because that isn’t what great salespeople do. They don’t steamroll, get in your face, or force you to buy what they’re selling. What they are is consistent. Great salespeople aren’t scared to get creative and be persistent to get the job done. So, I challenge you to start thinking about your career through the lens of a salesperson.
Many salespeople live by the “rule of seven.” It’s a sales and marketing term that states a customer needs to interact with a brand seven times before they make a purchasing decision. This might mean a person sees two commercials on TV, sees an ad on the subway, sees a sponsored post on social media, gets a call from the sales team, hears a radio ad, and receives an email from the same sales rep they’ve been working with—all before they even decide to purchase the product.
“Operating with a sales mindset in your career is literally life-changing.”
Good salespeople know that asking you to purchase a product once just isn’t going to cut it. They need to influence you again and again. Think of your career as the product and your boss as the consumer. Your boss needs consistent and clear messaging that politely reminds them what you want. It’s as simple as that.
You asking for growth once isn’t enough. You need to have conversations about your ideal next career move at least once a month. Look for those opportunities to socialize your desires regularly. And don’t get discouraged if it takes a little bit of time.
This article originally appeared in Next Big Idea Club magazine and is reprinted with permission.
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