The job search and better yet the career path that one takes has a genuine undertone that I think inevitably shapes the thoughts and minds of the seeker. That is the person’s passion. Passion is under-used criteria in the search process as most people think that passion is lost when they need to “grow up” and move out into the world. I researched passion and this is what I found “Passion can be expressed as a feeling of unusual excitement, enthusiasm or compelling emotion towards a subject, idea, person, or object. A person is said to have a passion for something when they have a strong positive affinity for it. A love for something and a passion for something are very similar feelings.” Does this sound like something we need more or less in the work place?

To me I would say more. I have recruited, placed and built departments in the IT world for 10 yrs plus now (I am getting older….LOL). The thing that makes a person or a place great is the passion the team or professional brings to the job and the environment. So many of us do not have passion for our daily duties. A real love of what we do, how we do it, how we can make it better. I read once that a person with a job has too much time, and a person with a career never has enough. I believe that this makes a strong alignment to the passion one feels and the career that spurns from that love. Jobs are boring, careers tend to be better, but what about a passion that happens to be what you do for work? That has power, creativity, efficiency, and hard work written all over it. It is the key to making your job what no one else haves….a part of your daily life that you love doing and happen to get paid for.

How do we capture this in our search for a new role, or even create it in a role we currently have and enjoy? I think that bringing passion to the search is far easier than creating it from scratch. So we will begin there. I know that people have heard in all sorts of forums the need for a professional job seeker to look for what they love and apply that to the search. But that does not really address the idea of passion. People love to do a great deal of things, most of which cannot sustain a living. So what about a passion? Well…pick it and I think we can come to a handful of positions in which that passion can be leveraged to create a career. Passion is the key in what needs to be defined.

So lets do it….what is your passion?

Ask yourself:

What do you wake up thinking about?
What brings you more fulfillment than anything else?
What spurs a restlessness in your heart when you discuss it?
What can someone say, or bring up, that immediately floods you with passion to talk about, act on, or defend?
These are all defining comments on passion. If these are answered truthfully, passion is easy to define. Once defined, you need to incorporate that into a what positions use or leverage that passion to succeed in their business or objective. Those are the positions and companies you need to align yourself with knowing that you are progressing the cause in which you have a great deal of passion.

Written by Jason Monastra at LambentPath