3 Ways For Young Employees To Get Their Ideal Job

An ideal job entails various components such as set working hours, manageable workload, sufficient sleep, and a day of laughter with colleagues. 

But in fact, employees can shape their current jobs to bring more fulfillment using “Job crafting”. This approach involves 3 aspects: changing both the amount and nature of the current job (task crafting), then changing and improving the relationships with colleagues (relationally crafting) and finally changing the perception of work (cognitive crafting).  

Focus on personal strength 

According to Amy Wrzesniewski and Jane Dutton, task crafting means workers can choose the tasks they want. At that time, inspiration is stimulated, even if the work is challenging, young workers will also agree. 

The effectiveness of the opportunity story is evident in the Skills Future Program, a Singaporean Government-supported initiative that enables employees to acquire desired skills, thus lowering unemployment rates and boosting productivity. Similarly, by offering upskilling courses tailored to employees’ aspirations, Vietnamese businesses can cultivate talents, taking inspiration from this foreign example. 

Result in “Talentnet-Mercer Total Remuneration Survey Report 2023” showed that the ability to grow and learn was in top 3 priority values for the young (ages 21-30). “At Talentnet, we also have a “library” of 10,000 online courses and employees can choose to study according to their interests. To encourage and appreciate learning, HR selects the best students every month and rewards them,” shared Ms. Nguyen Thi An Ha – Marketing & Customer Experience Director, Talentnet Corporation.  

Have close colleagues 

According to HubSpot, the motivation to retain 70% of remote employees is to have “bestie” colleagues, while for office and remote workers, it stands at 65% and 67%, respectively. This emphasizes the importance of the second change – changing colleague relationships for fulfilling work experience (relationally crafting).   

Increasing interaction among departments is an inevitable thing for colleagues to understand each other and work more easily. Meanwhile, leaders and HR should organize team-building activities among departments to increase opportunities for employees to find “besties” outside their departments. This helps workers to improve their skills, learn from each other, and develop new skillsets. For example, a Marketing executive might team up with Customer Services staff to acquire a deeper understanding of customer personas and imaginative concepts to more effectively connect with customers. 

Positive perception 

For example, if you are an office cleaner and think that you are doing dull cleaning, you will quickly “get bored”. But when you change your perspective, thinking that you are creating a neat, professional working environment, work will become more meaningful. It is a prime example of cognitive crafting.

On the other hand, managers can cultivate a collective positive outlook while simultaneously aiding employees in forging their own unique path, rather than adhering to rigid daily bullet points. If an accountant understands that their job is not just about numbers, but that they are the one who manage the “cash flow” the whole business, and an HR person recognizes their job is not simply to manage human resources, but rather to foster connections throughout the company, the outcome will be markedly different. 

“While job crafting has been a longstanding concept, when applied in today’s context, it presents a fresh paradigm for younger employee’s perspectives. The ideal job does not inherently exist, it only appears when each employee and business work together to create this definition.” – Ms. An Ha concluded.