What do you really want?
On getting personal clarity before your search begins.
The best job searches, and indeed the best candidates, start with reflection and self-knowledge. You are going to spend a lot of time and energy at work, so why not take the time to get clear on what you really want out of it?
It is true that sometimes we just need a job. This is a reality for lots of people. For many of us, the real answer to the question…”Why are you interested in this job?” is “I need to earn money”. It is a fair and often true answer. Perhaps some interviewers will respect the honesty, but this can't be the basis of your narrative or your leading motivation. At least outwardly, it has to be more than this; otherwise, you may find the job search very difficult and struggle to create meaningful conversations and connections.
Before reflecting on what they want out of a job or career, many candidates jump straight into tactics and strategy without first defining their own objectives. You cannot embark on a journey until you have an idea about your destination. If you do, it is likely to be a long and circuitous route, and you might not like where you end up. So, the first step is to get clear on your why, to know your professional purpose and imagine the type of life you want to lead. The earlier the better. Everything else in your job search flows downhill from that place.
Once you identify what really suits you, you can begin to chart a deliberate course. Generally speaking, you will find what is suitable and appropriate for you somewhere in the mix of your existing qualifications, what you are good at, what your past experiences have been, and what you want out of the future. Of course, your interests and focus will change over time, but this is a good place to start.
Once you have done that work, and identified the types of roles that are most appropriate for you, you’ll need a job search system which orientates all your efforts in that direction. The nature of your system depends on getting this level of clarity before you even begin to apply or reach out to recruiters and hiring managers.
If you do not have these thoughts organised for yourself, and the corresponding ability to articulate those thoughts to someone else, much of your hard work could be in vain. If you find yourself going through the motions and drifting aimlessly through hundreds of applications with little feedback and few interviews, this is a sign that you may need to spend more time getting clear on what you want and what suits you.
So, how do you build an effective job search system? The best place to start is with your professional narrative. I think of the professional narrative as the story of your career and professional experience, told through the lens of your personality. When crafting your professional narrative, you’ll want to ask yourself some searching questions.
For example, why did you get into your field? What do you enjoy about the work? Who inspires you? What direction changes have you made over the years? What have you learned about yourself, others, the world? What have you overcome? What have you achieved? Where have you fallen short or failed? What are you ready to leave behind? Most importantly, what do you want next and why?
Answering these types of questions will be hard. You might have been so focused on achieving your qualifications and then delivering in your role that it may have been a long time since you reflected on how it all feels and connects together. Once you do get some answers to these questions, the rest of your job search will unfold naturally.
Your self-searching leads to answers which then become the signposts that help you map your market. You’ll be able to directly target the types of companies, projects, people you reach out to and connect with, and the conversations you have will begin to align with your past experiences and your career trajectory. You will be operating within your niche.
From here, your CV, cover letters, online presence, and interview performance are shaped in reference to the market you have mapped. When your objectives, your desires, and your criteria are clear, it becomes a much simpler task to move toward them. You’ll be guided by your own intentions rather than being helplessly pushed and pulled by market forces and systems that are hard to understand.
As a live exercise, can you, right now, in under a minute, articulate your professional narrative clearly, with conviction and enthusiasm, without tripping over your words or repeating yourself? If you can’t, that is a sign that you need to spend more time thinking about your experiences and the thread that connects them to your future. When I run this exercise with candidates, I often get rambling answers that indicate uncertainty. When I repeat it back to the candidate in a tighter, more certain format, they feel the gap instantly. You must know what you really want and how that aligns with your market before you can be truly persuasive about the value you offer.
There are few limits on what you decide you want. It is your life after all. As a practical matter, it does help to want roles that you are genuinely appropriate for. Sure, aim high, back yourself, and take some chances, but make sure that you’re legitimately suited for the types of roles you are going after.
You may want to be a rocket scientist, but unless you are deeply skilled in maths, physics, and mechanical engineering, you are unlikely to be competitive in that field, regardless of how much you want it. I saw this lack of intention constantly in engineering recruitment. Civil engineers would often apply for software roles because the word "engineer" was in the title. No alignment, and zero ROI on the candidate’s effort. Beyond this level of basic pragmatism, your imagination is the only barrier. The clearer and more detailed you are in your reflections, the more efficient and impactful your search becomes.
This process never ends. Each new experience becomes part of the story. Your professional narrative is alive. It adapts, it evolves, and you can tailor it on the fly if need be. Knowing your narrative and being able to articulate it quickly, with enthusiasm, leads to better confidence and clarity in interviews. Getting clear on your narrative translates into better conversations and more authentic connections.
Your reflections and the resulting structure and direction of your job search require a willingness to be vulnerable. If you are unwilling to share authentic parts of yourself, you will find the process difficult and your interviews will be short, low on connection, and unlikely to result in progress to the next stage. To be competitive and to stand out, you need to put more of yourself into the job search.
To do this, you need to think about what it is about the skills, experiences, motivations, and personality you bring that adds value to the companies you are interested in and applying to. Identifying those companies and grouping them in order of preference is the next task. This is what I refer to as market mapping. It involves narrowing your market to only the companies where there is legitimate alignment, then approaching each of them appropriately. This is where your personal clarity makes your efforts count instead of dispersing your energies where you have no real chance.
