What is a good job fit in Singapore?

For the first five years of my career, I struggled with my jobs in the social services. 

I thought I wasn’t that bad a candidate. After all, I had been shortlisted as the Global Graduate of the Year, ranking just second in a school of 35,000 students. I had been a Board Director, and had been well liked by other board members. I had even published a book.

I don’t share this to boast that I’m all so great, but to give some context to my statements.

Eventually in my first job, I was issued with a Performance Improvement Plan. Then in my next full time job, I was asked to resign because of a misunderstanding over the submission of a nomination.

Some of us will face this at some point in our careers. Where we don’t do as well as we thought we should have.

And we wonder what’s wrong with us.

It’s not the job fit, but the people fit

Let me use the example of my first job.

In that job, I submitted my SSNET assessments on time. My case notes were regularly praised for being detailed and well written.

But I was on a team with a supervisor that worked differently to how I did. In one of those early times, I enthusiastically shared an idea I had to a colleague. The colleague told it to the team leader, who then copied the whole team in an email saying that we had to first share ideas with him.

He ended the email saying,

as cliche as this sounds,

there’s no ‘I’ in team.

Needless to say, I didn’t mix well with this teammate. It affected me so severely that it became awkward for me to feel safe enough to share ideas with the rest of the team.

You’re going to face this some point in your life.

As much as you may be a nice person, you might just find that one person who doesn’t like you, no matter what you do. That will cause significant pain in the work you do.

But you won’t know how your team is going to turn out at the interview stage. So the best thing to do is to understand the personalities in your team.

You need to work well with them, or risk suffering a lot in your coming months at work.

The most important thing to note though is that it is your relationship with your boss that will substantially make or break your success at work.

It’s your boss

My last placement in the U.K. saved me.

I was on the verge of failing my placement, and no one knew what to do. It just didn’t seem that I had the necessary skills to pass. At that time, I didn’t know their assessment of me yet.

But I enjoyed speaking to my manager and spent more and more time with the team manager.

After everyone left at 5, I would sit with them and have tea, and share about what I was going to do over the weekend. As a 24 year old, 35 years younger than them, they all loved hearing my stories.

One afternoon, after most had left the office, I told them that I was contesting in a public speaking competition that weekend. They asked me what I was going to say.

I performed my speech in front of them, even going as far as kneeling down on my knees and performing the tearjerker.

They clapped and cheered me on.

Just the two of them, in an empty room on a Tuesday evening.

Looking back, it was probably this great relationship that saved my placement from failing.

He spoke up for me in meetings with my direct supervisor, and told me what to do to pass. He could have very easily decided that I wasn’t worth that much trouble, and moved on from me.

But he didn’t.

He stuck by me.

When you have a strong relationship with your manager, it will make your job a lot easier. You need to be able to trust your manager, and your manager needs to be able to trust you. He needs to know that you can deliver, and therefore defend you amidst the difficult questions he may face from his boss.

But a great relationship with your boss is ultimately what is going to help you understand what matters to him, and therefore push you to the next bound of your career.

Understand your boss’ priorities and how he wants you to express them

Even now, as I’ve hired more, and become the boss, I’ve come to see that those who are the most valuable to my business are those that are able to understand what I want.

I try my best to communicate what I want and how I want that expressed.

You need to know what that looks like for your boss too.

It’s not how driven you are, it’s how ambitious the organisation is

I walked down the lonely road, nearly on the verge of tears. I was praying and hoping that someone would give me a chance. But after 406 applications, no one would.

I was desperate.

How could it be that I had showed so much potential at school, but had experienced so little success at work?

That evening, a friend called. As I told him about my problems, he said,

John, maybe it’s not you. Maybe it’s the organisation.

They just aren’t as ambitious as you are.

It clicked. For years, I had been working at organisations that didn’t really care about being the best.

They were charities that just wanted to do the job for clients.

Anything extra was nice to have.

But I was there, pushing my managers and colleagues to do more.

I just didn’t understand the context I was working in.

And that’s why I never found the success. My drive would have been well matched to an organization that wanted to be the best. But in an organisation that just wanted to get by, I would be seen as the dangerous deviant that needed to be managed out.

If you’re driven and ambitious, make sure you find an equally driven and ambitious organisation. Forcing yourself into one that isn’t will just leave you more and more frustrated.

How I eventually excelled

Things turned unexpectedly when I had to earn my own keep.

When I left my job in October 2021, I didn’t know what else to do. I just turned to writing, which I had been doing since being a university student.

Know your strengths and work to them

I wrote daily, even when those articles weren’t paid for. I saw them as a way to build my skill.

But I found myself stuck. Along the way, I yearned to build a team, and a family around me.

I started to find likeminded people. And slowly, I began to see them naturally following me.

I wasn’t sure why. After all, I was unqualified to lead. But somehow or rather, there was something in my ambition that they saw.

One good friend, a PHD holder, then told me that she decided to work with me simply because I was real. I didn’t try to hold back my flaws.

And she saw how knowledgeable I was in different areas like strategy, planning, and even far-flung areas like finance.

Even though I didn’t look successful, she knew that I would eventually make it, somehow.

It’s the place where you can express yourself the best

Over the past 5 years running a writing business making annual reports, I’ve come to build a place where I can best express myself, without holding back.

I know that I am not the easiest to work with, but as I’ve come to build my own team, they have needed to work with me (because I unfortunately pay their salaries). But some do see the advantages of working with me, as they see the growth potential that comes from working with someone who’s driven to succeed.

Finding the place where you don’t feel hindered to express yourself is going to be the biggest game changer for you.

Until you find that, you may never find the limits of your skills.

Understanding your strengths is the first step.

But even after that, you need to keep finding the different organizations that will best amplify your skills. If you feel the organisation doesn’t fit you, change it.

Sticking with it may not work, because the organisation will not change just for you.

Cut your losses and move on.

See the organization as a vehicle for your skills. Like a car.

Find the right one, and you will be racing off the tracks.