Looking for your dream job in 2020?

You may have seen our 12 days of Christmas #dreamteam’s #dreamjobs campaign which launched over the festive period last year. In this series of mini blogs, we spoke to members of the Douglas Scott team to find out more about their childhood aspirations and to see how their ambitions have guided their careers!

From wannabe Police Officers, Entertainers, Sports Professionals, and Writers, to a Translator, an Archaeologist and a Businessman, our Douglas Scott dream team certainly had (and continue to have) large imaginations and ambitions! More so, what we discovered was that most of our team use the skills that are fundamental within their childhood dream jobs in their day to day positions and lives. Their interests as youngsters have shaped who they are as people as well as enabling them to develop skills essential within the world of recruitment.

In a study by Employee Wellness Company PerkBox, becoming a Lawyer ranked in ninth position in a list of the top childhood ten dream roles. It also found that 96% of adults are not in the job they dreamt of as a child. As part of our own 2020 Salary and Benefits research, 75% of our legal sector survey respondents indicated that they have or are studying for a Solicitor accreditation along the traditional legal practice course route. Whilst many people dream of a career in Law and begin to pursue their ambitions along the conventional path in early adulthood, the Legal Industry is becoming increasingly imaginative in terms of developing new and innovative ways to train new legal talent which challenge this traditional career trajectory. Entering the Legal Industry after a career change, or in the completion of a more vocational method of qualification such as CILEX, the Bar Professional Training Course (BPTC) for aspiring Barristers, the CLC or CPD accreditations for Property Law, and the ACL Costs Lawyers accreditation, is becoming more and more prevalent. Law firms are continually embracing these changes with some large names even announcing new Apprenticeship schemes that bypass University to train the next generation of Lawyers.

In getting into the swing of not only a new year but a new decade, we encourage professionals to take a step back and evaluate whether they can achieve their career aspirations within their current position. Our 2020 Salary and Benefits Benchmarker data also revealed that of the Lawyers who are not already working at the business leader or partner level, 72% have aspirations to join the upper echelons of the legal industry but only 40% of them believe that they can achieve these dreams with their current employer. Making your dreams reality is all in the planning; it is about setting goals, realising the best method as to how to achieve them and putting in the effort to action them. Working in your exact “dream job” may not be an option, after all Tim Peake was one of only six astronauts out of almost 9,000 chosen by the European Space Agency as part of their new astronaut training programme at the beginning of the decade. And, to put it into perspective, as of December 2019 only 565 people have ever travelled to space! However, as our dream teamers have realised, we all have the capability to live our childhood dreams, it just ultimately depends on whether they are perceived in a literal or abstract sense.

Back on earth, if your dream legal, compliance or financial career is in touching distance, now is the time to make it happen. We’ve received instructions already for new roles in 2020 with employer’s keen to hire the best talent. Our expert consultants have years of guiding career changes – whether this be in terms of helping candidates realise their market potential and initiating moves that instigate career progression, lateral based moves between practice areas through retrain opportunities, from a change in sector (Private Practice to In-house and vice versa), as well as working with legal professionals relocating to a new region, and whole team moves.

Have a look at our latest positions here or take a look at our online candidate advice centre for hints and tricks to assist you in your job search.