In today’s episode of “College Admissions Real Talk”, Dr. Legatt explains job crafting and how it can affect your work load.
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Transcript:
VO: Welcome to College Admissions Real Talk with Dr. Aviva Legatt, a podcast for students seeking to get admitted to top-tier colleges. Each episode will feature an important tip for your college admission success, delivered with candor and love. If you’ve ever wanted to take a peek inside the mind of a college admissions officer, this is your chance. Have a question? Text Dr. Legatt at 610-222-5762. So, what’s your dream school?
AL: Welcome to College Admissions Real Talk. This is Dr. Aviva Legatt, founder and Elite Admissions Expert at Ivy Insight and author of “Get Real and Get In”. Today, we’re going to be talking about job crafting. Now, job crafting might sound like something that’s not relevant at all for college, but hear me out. If you don’t believe me, just think “you know what this is coming from an Ivy League professor, so it must be right on”. Yes, I have taught and teach at University of Pennsylvania, in the organizational dynamics program. And one of the things that I talk about with my students that I think is super relevant to the college process, and to you specifically, is this concept of job crafting. So, job crafting is this idea of taking a mindset and taking your skills and organizing those things in such a way to make your life less boring and more fulfilling along the way. Job crafting allows you to shape, mold, redefine what you do every day so that it feels energizing and it says fresh. According to this article by Dan Cable, which is in Harvard Business Review (Ascend), a lot of us grew up thinking that when we got hired by somebody we would know exactly what to do based on what was written in our job description. Maybe you feel this, too. Maybe you have an English class, you know, you’re supposed to read a book. You’re supposed to turn in a book report, and that’s kind of it. You don’t really question how you might go about that, but today, as Cable says, that mindset doesn’t really work so well. With all of the technological changes and life changes you’re experiencing every day. You can’t just take what the instructions are and expect to do the assignments in the exact same way. You’re under a different set of conditions and constraints and you have to adjust what you do and how you do it in order to maximize the assignment not only to get the good grade but also to make it as rewarding and enriching as it can be. Job crafting is comprised of three different kinds of crafting. One is task crafting, two is relational crafting, and three is cognitive crafting. The first do a little easier to understand task crafting is Well, what are the different pieces of what I have to do in terms of the deliverables And what order might I do with them then? So, you have control. Even if it’s a boring little book report or a fun book report depending on your perspective on English. You have some control and some influence about how you choose to tackle the tasks and what tasks you put into what order So that can make the reward of the book report more fun. The second is relational crafting. Now, I’m not advocating that you collaborate with somebody who would be inappropriate to collaborate with on a book report, but I wonder if there’s a friend or a family member, maybe a sibling who likes to talk about interesting ideas. And there are some cool ideas in the book that you can bring up to that person to get their perspective. So rather than do your book report in a vacuum, you make it a more engaging relational task that allows you to actually gain different insights. So that was relational crafting. Before that I talked about task crafting, the order of things that you do and what you choose to do in order to get it done. The third kind is cognitive crafting. So this is all about the mindset. So, how do you think about the book report? You think about it as just something you have to do an obligation that you want to mindlessly go through every day or is it an opportunity to engage in something that’s larger than yourself? Whether it’s an idea that you explore in the book or a way that you go about reading it that you take as a personal challenge to yourself. Maybe you try to read it faster or you try to read it differently than you have other times. So cognitive crafting is the most interesting and can be the most challenging because it requires us to think about our work and what we have to do in a bit of a different way. As Cable says, job crafting works best when you personalize your work around your superpowers or your own distinctive strengths. We all have these specific strengths that we have and job crafting according to a school assignment or any other tasks you may have to complete is a really great way to bring your superpowers into whatever you do. The processes that you choose, the people that you choose to engage with, and the purpose that you find for yourself in whatever you have to do. Until next time.
VO: College Admissions Real Talk is hosted by Aviva Legatt, edited by Stephanie Carlin, and produced by Incontrera Consulting. I’m Caroline Stokes and this has been your daily boost of college admissions insight. Have a question? Text Dr. Legatt at 610-222-5762. For more information on Dr. Legatt and Ivy Insight visit www.ivyinsight.com. And you can pick up Dr. Legatt’s book, “Get Real and Get In”, at major retail outlets across the world. Insight out.
