Promote Yourself into Your Dream Job
As millions of workers rethink how they want to live and work—with a recall to physical offices triggering mass resignations throughout the global workforce—employees are surveying their current career landscapes with increasing dissatisfaction and are switching jobs, changing career paths, or just flat-out quitting as a result.
If you count yourself among the masses who are planning a workplace departure, it’s worth asking yourself what you’re actually leaving by changing jobs, and, more importantly, asking “what do I really want from my career and its impact on my life?”
In a “world is your oyster” job market for individuals with critical skills—particularly integrated skills that blend tech, science, business, and entrepreneurship—is it really possible to land a job that not only provides ideal work-life balance, but that ticks every box of your “dream job?”
Absolutely, say executive coaches Abbe Rosenthal, and Kathleen Cashman-Walter, who both agree that there’s no better time than now to employ a “design thinking-based” method known as “Designing Your Life (DYL)” to redefine your life and career.
What is DYL?
Formalized by Stanford University’s d.school (and, later, their Life Design Lab), “Designing Your Life” (DYL) teaches individuals how to apply design thinking to solve what Stanford refers to as “the wicked problem of designing your life and career.”
Since 2019, DYL has been a cornerstone element of Rutgers Master of Business and Science degree program—integrated into all curricula, professional development opportunities, and experiential learning. Why?
Through DYL, students are able to identify their ideal life and career, and then—in collaboration with executive coaches and academic advisors—design an individualized, goal-driven master’s pathway to support that vision, adjusting course when necessary.
Students are introduced to DYL methodology at orientation so that they can start planning their professional futures with an eye towards career expansion as early as possible in their MBS education—leveraging both academic offerings and the many professional resources available to them, including:
- MBS’s signature Leadership & Communication course, which examines the fundamental aspects of communication and leadership in STEM-based, science-intensive careers.
- A unique, robust executive coaching program and academic advising that allows each student to structure personalized curricula to meet his or her professional objectives.
- MBS’s constant focus on “Jobs-Skills-Courses:” Dynamic, industry-specific academic and career alignment that employs both cutting-edge labor analytics and a diverse body of experts to inform and shape dynamic curricula—allowing all classroom learning to remain ever-relevant.
The Benefits of DYL Integration
Life is dynamic and iterative. And DYL-based skills and techniques are portable—equipping students with the strategic thinking skills and tools that allow them to map out fulfilling lives and careers while at MBS and beyond—giving them the ability to easily pivot and chart new paths at any point in the future.
MBS students and alumni are already well positioned to succeed in a job market, say Rosenthal and Cashman-Walter. However, through DYL they have an extra leg up: they’ve not only identified their ideal careers, but have mapped out goal-driven paths to attain them.
With clearly defined goals and in-demand skill sets, "MBS students really can promote themselves into a future they define,” says Cashman-Walter. One in which they create their ideal position, and achieve a work-life balance that’s ideal for them as well."