Have you followed your passion in your career? How so? (interview question #12)

At Movinhand, as part of our research on Behavioral Interviewing, we interviewed John from the UK for a position of restaurant manager in Malta. We asked him to take pen to paper and answer the above question in 5–10' (he actually didn’t want to write it down and answered on the spot, so we ended up transcribing it). He gave what we consider to be an answer that stands out:

I always wanted to become a chef… From an early age I’d been practicing my cooking on my parents… God bless their soul…

I realise now they went through a painful 5–6 years, and kept a straight face just to not discourage me. I’m not as kind to my own son, when he tries his guitar-playing I kindly ask him to stop and plan his practice when I’m away…

So, back to me: my cooking career failed miserably following 5 years of continued effort. Following my 4th dismissal from a restaurant down in Durham I decided to put my cooking career to rest. I sent all my gear back to my parents as a symbolic ‘thank you’ for the years of patience they showed me. I promised myself I’ll be focusing more on what I can best deliver and then on if I like what I’m doing.

All those years, fortunately weren’t in vain. I realised I had learnt a bunch of people skills as well as managerial competences in the process. My next job was ‘assistant to the kitchen manager’ in a Catering business in Chapel Hill. I did pretty well, I decided to shift my career towards helping people perform better as a team, and the rest is history… Today, I’m very passionate about what I do, and I really love my job…

The learning here for me is that you do notneed passion to find happiness at work, especially in the early years. What you do need is an opportunity to gain the crucial career capital of valuable skills. I don’t believe in the way we motivate young people today by saying ‘follow your passion’ and the rest will come. Don’t follow your passion and instead, take a job with growth opportunity where you can develop unique skills that are valuable in the market.

Why we love this answer:

Skills trump passion in the quest for work you love.

First of all, John turns the question on its head and at the same time reveals a big part of his personality. Maybe unknowingly, he subscribes to Cal Newport’s thinking in the book ‘So Good they Can’t Ignore You’.

Cal discredits the popular myth that following your passion will lead automatically to a successful, fulfilling career. He suggests that developing valuable skills and becoming “so good they can’t ignore you” is far more effective. He frequently revisits the theme that nothing replaces hard work and persistence. He believes that if you become great at what you do, passion will follow.

We like the way John describes how he pivoted his career towards a new direction despite it not being what he is passionate about. His focus revolves around his skills and not his passion per se. The reality of following your dreams rarely aligns with the fantasy. It can lead to “chronic self-doubt. Recent ‘passion-centric’ generations have sought their dream jobs without understanding how to turn their visions into reality. Many individuals might think of their ideal job but lack the capital and skills to turn such prophecies into fulfilling careers.

We believe that your life’s mission & passion follows a lifetime of practice and skill acquisition, not the other way around… The longer you practice a given skill, the more likely you are to become excellent at it, which greatly influences whether you enjoy what you do. For example, holding a job for a long time offers a greater likelihood that you’ll develop relationships with your co-workers, another contributing factor to loving your work. Having control and feeling competent, both of which come with time, also help determine job satisfaction. This discredits the theory that happiness at work results from following a pre-existing passion.

So in conclusion, you shouldn’t necessarily be partial to super passionate candidates. There are many excellent candidates out there that will learn to love their career overtime if they they focus on mastery. So passion is a plus but focus on whether your candidate loves to learn, won’t settle for being good enough and will constantly push to improve. In other words, a growth mindset beats passion every time.

This is part of our “Art of Behavioural Interviewing” series. For more, check out this…or interview question #34 and interview question #18.