Leadership expert Simon Sinek says if you're hoping to find the perfect job, you're setting yourself up to fail

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July 14, 2017 7:06 PM

Leadership expert and bestselling author Simon Sinek says being happy in your career takes a lot of work — just like being happy in your relationship.

Finding the right job isn't like a scavenger hunt, says Simon Sinek, pictured.

If I could write the marketing material for a cool, new job-search website, I'd borrow a line from Simon Sinek: "Finding a great job is not like a scavenger hunt."

Okay, so it wouldn't be the catchiest tagline ever. But it would be some refreshing real talk. As in: There's no one, perfect role for you on this site — but any of these gigs could potentially become the perfect job for you.

Sinek is a leadership expert and the bestselling author of multiple books, including most recently, "Leaders Eat Last." When he visited the Business Insider office in July for a Facebook Live interview, he compared finding a fulfilling job to finding a fulfilling relationship:

What Sinek's essentially talking about here is "job crafting," a term psychologists use to describe the process of molding your job to become more meaningful to you. You can do that by changing up your daily responsibilities, or by changing your perception of your role.

Sinek's insights also recall the words of behavioral economist Dan Ariely, who previously told Business Insider that people mistakenly believe they need to find the ideal job. "Look for a job that is in the general direction of your skills and passion," Ariely said, and then make it fit better.

So Sinek's observations aren't exactly new. But these ideas are worth repeating because most of us have been guilty of either looking for the perfect job and getting frustrated because we can't find it or taking a job and then getting frustrated when it doesn't turn out to be as perfect as we thought.

Sinek said this kind of passive attitude can contribute to feeling lost or unsatisfied in your career:

"If you think it's that way" — i.e. if you think the perfect job will miraculously appear — "then you're going to keep going from job to job to job to job, and unfortunately you'll never find what you're looking for."

Watch the full interview:

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