Alvah Parker is publisher of Road to Success and Parker's Points, e-newsletters providing strategies to advance your business and career goals. Click here to subscribe. Alvah is a Work/life coach, who can be reached at asparker@asparker.com, or visited on the web at www.asparker.com.

By Randy Siegel

Many job searches are "accidents" waiting to happen. When I ask businesspeople how they found their jobs, I am astounded at the number who answer, "I didn't. It found me." or "It was an accident."

While responsibilities, titles, and compensation are important, it's the working conditions, personalities, and corporate culture that ultimately determine our true happiness at the workplace. Savvy job seekers take time to inventory the type of environments in which they thrive, and this simple investment allows them to plant their careers in fertile fields, instead of constantly looking for greener pastures.

Let's examine the three components of an ideal work environment: working conditions, personalities, and corporate culture.

How important is physical environment to you? For Fiona, natural light is important. "I have to have an office with windows," she told me. "Early in my career, I worked in a cubicle, and I was miserable. I cannot tell you how much it affected my morale."

Other physical factors include temperature, air quality, privacy, noise, neatness, and size of office.

Style and skills are also important to review. Extroverts require interaction, while introverts prefer to work alone. For those of us who are technically challenged, technical support becomes paramount. For others, a small thing like dress code contributes to our happiness.

I believe the most important consideration in finding your ideal work environment is identifying a team with whom you can identify. When I first started my career, I worked for a large Atlanta public relations firm that had an awful reputation as a place to work. Despite its reputation, I loved my job because I liked my boss and fellow team members.

A company culture is far more than its mission statement. What are the company's core values? Traditions? Communication styles (open or closed)? Degree of formality (casual or business dress)? Structure or hierarchy? Sacred cows? Unspoken rules? Many times, we can "feel" a company's culture by checking in with our gut when we first visit their offices.

"Looking back on it, I knew from the start this wasn't the company for me," a client recently shared. "But the money was so good, I ignored my instincts. Boy, do I regret it now."

An easy way to figure out what we want is to identify what we don't. Think about all the jobs you have had over your career. What did you dislike about each one? Start a list.

Once the list is complete, turn each negative into a positive. For example, instead of writing "I don't want a boss who micromanages," write, "I want autonomy." Looking over your list, are there any other factors you left out? If so, add them.

From the larger list, clients select 10 criteria that are especially important to them. They then narrow their selection to five to seven "non-negotiables." For instance, one client selected:

1. Lots of activity, multiple tasks, high-energy work environment
2. Helping people, benefiting society
3. Working independently
4. Starting new projects
5. Stability and security

After every interview, he referred to his non-negotiable list to determine whether or not the job was a good fit. "The list helped me be more rational and analytical about my search," he reported. He has been happily employed for five years now.

Most of us will work a minimum of 40 years, five days a week, and eight hours a day. That comes to 83,000 hours over a lifetime. That's way too many hours to be unhappy. Stack the deck in your favor and take the time to inventory your ideal work environment. Your career is too important to leave to chance.

"The Career Engineer," Randy Siegel, helps clients electrify their careers and transform their lives by becoming high voltage communicators™. Whether training, coaching, speaking, or writing, he encourages people to fearlessly stand in their power by becoming the full expression of all they are. Randy is the author of "Stand in Your Power!" a monthly eNewsletter that is available at www.powerhousecommunications.com

Integrity and Global Awareness were the two characteristics cited as most important for tomorrow's corporate leaders, according to a survey of executive recruiters under age 40 conducted by the Association of Executive Search Consultants. Other qualities mentioned frequently were related to the top two: transparency, understanding of diversity and multiculturalism, flexibility, open mindedness, and interpersonal skills.

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