A popular question in celebrity interviews is: ‘if you weren’t a successful actor/writer/celebrity chef, what would you be?’

The purpose of the question is to reveal an untapped inner passion – perhaps they secretly want to swap the red carpet for a duck farm, leading to a fantastic headline for the interviewer and the idea that such-and-such is actually really down to earth and never wanted all that fame and money anyway.

However, this question is not just reserved for the A-listers. A study just last year found that a typical Briton will work across six entirely different job roles or areas, spanning six different companies, over the course of their working life. Therefore, it’s realistic to expect that we’re not all in our dream role right now. When you’ve built up the key skills you need to land the best digital and marketing jobs at your level, looking at what you really enjoy outside of work, as well as what you’re good at, can be a great starting point for the next step in your career.

So perhaps working on a tropical island, serving cocktails on the beach, is your idyllic alternative to your current marketing department desk job, but looking for a new marketing role with overseas travel involved could actually help fuel that dream. If you can turn the things you are passionate about into an area of expertise through training or building up your knowledge, your enthusiasm will shine through and you’ll develop an edge over competitors for the hottest new vacancies.

A superb example of this is the F1 racing fanatic who helps their agency win a new motorsports account, or the amateur photographer whose picture editing skills make the new business presentations so much slicker that they repeatedly win over the company’s competitors. So, whether you put yourself through an official ‘skills audit’ or just kick off an informal chat about your alternative dream career, you might be surprised to find that your hidden talents and abilities are the key to the new role you’ve always dreamed of.