Make Your Job Fit You

If you are in a role that you do not seem to be fitting into, maybe it is time to make that role fit you.

My first “real” job was as a pharma sales rep. I learned to love being a sales rep but back then, fresh out of school, the last thing that I could picture myself doing was sales.

I was and have always been the King of the Nerds. The idea of going out and spending my day talking to strangers and trying to sell them something completely terrified me.

I had just finished spending three years working on my MSc. looking at how the genes for a really nasty poison made by Castor Bean plants were expressed. Outside of figuring out how turn a graduated cylinder, screw-top test tube and some liquid nitrogen into a rocket launcher, I had not really distinguished myself much in the laboratory while I worked to get that degree.

On the other hand, during that time I had gotten heavily involved in student politics. I was good at it and it was there that I realized that I could really make a difference figuring out how to make teams and organizations work better. I thought that a career in business would be a great way to pursue this passion.

So Plan A, a career as a researcher was out and I needed to figure out what exactly Plan B would look like fast because now that I had graduated, my school loans were coming due.

To buy myself some time, I sent resumes to anyone who would take them, got an interview and was hired as a pharma sales rep.

I spent my first month as a rep breaking into a cold sweat every time that I set foot in a doctor’s office. Over time the nasty sweating problem disappeared but it was never and still is not my comfort zone.

My sales skills were awful and trying to do a classic close on a call was almost physically painful for me. Compared to the model of a sales rep that I had been trained to be, I was simply terrible.

What turned it around for me was that despite not being terriblygifted at working in a laboratory environment, I was strong on the science side. Not Mr. Charisma with the physicians but man, I knew the science behind the product and could explain it in a way that clearly showed how it helped the patients.

I leveraged the Hell out of this ability. It gave me credibility with the healthcare professionals and over time, played a big role in helping me to be successful in my job as a sales rep.

Doing this also helped me to learn to love my job because it played to my strengths and it reminded me of how we make a difference for patients.

Many people believe that if you want to be greatat something, it is important that you are a good fit for whatever that something is.

As I said above, I would argue that if you are in a role that you do not seem to be fitting into, maybe it is time to make that rolefit you.

Figure out what you are great at and then look at how you can leverage this in the job that you have today. Don’t try to fit into someone else’s mold of what the job should look like. Make it your own. Use the strengths and passions that you already have.

If you are a Brand Manager who loves strategy and is not into details, be great at strategy and find someone to help you with the details. If you are a sales rep who is passionate about community service, find a way to build that passion into what you do in your work.

I am not saying that it is always easy, but you will have much more success adapting your job to your strengths than you will ever have trying to minimize your weaknesses.

We all aspire to be great at what we do. If you want to realize that aspiration, think about what you are naturally great at and why you love being great at it.

Then, make it happen.