Use This Process to Find the Right Job For Yourself
As a Career Coach, I always get questions from clients about how they can find the right job for themselves. Maybe this is the first job they haven’t enjoyed, or maybe it's been a string of “wrong” jobs. First, let me say I don’t believe in the concept of a job “soulmate”, this idea that there is one perfect job waiting out there for you to find. However, I do think we can do a better job of finding a role and company that fits with our work style and interests. To help my clients piece together that puzzle, I have them focus on three levels of person-job-fit: functional role alignment, manager alignment, and environment alignment. Here’s how each of those levels are helpful to rethinking your job search process.
Functional Role Alignment
When my clients search for jobs, we start with figuring out what titles to target in our search. However, you need to go a level deeper to truly find the right role for yourself. For example, if we looked at 5 different roles on LinkedIn with the same exact job title, the scope and description of their responsibilities could be very different. Each company has their own interpretation and requirements for a particular role. The key is to hone in on what parts of your job you like the best. Then you can apply to the job that matches those particular responsibilities. Basically, not all Digital Marketing Manager roles are created equal.
Earlier in my career when I was looking to move from an external strategy consultant role to an internal corporate strategy role, I declined to apply to many of the “Manager of Strategy” type roles. Why? Because I knew that my least favorite part of my job was building models in Excel all day. That is a huge skillset that a strategy consultant develops, but it wasn’t engaging or enjoyable for me. As a result, I was specific in seeking out roles where there seemed to be more than just calculating M&A synergies or sizing the market of a potential new product. In the end, I found a role at Starwood Hotels that was a fantastic fit and led to 5 wonderful years of learning and growth at a company I respected. However, if I had accepted a role that didn’t align with my strengths and interests, I never would have thrived.
To go through this exercise for yourself, try asking questions like the following:
What exactly do you want to do in your day-to-day work?
How do you like spending your time?
What types of tasks do you like to engage in and when do you enter a state of flow?
What is your least favorite part of the job?
Manager Alignment
There is the old adage, “People don’t leave jobs, people leave managers.” And whether you agree or disagree, it’s clear that who you report to has a huge impact on a person’s experience at a company. While there are some universal signs that someone is a bad manager, we also have to recognize that we are all different and need different things. For example, having a manager that has a vastly different communication style can be frustrating and lead to challenges in delivering work that meets your manager’s expectations. As a result, we need to reflect and be honest with ourselves about what we need in a manager to be able to thrive.
During one particular job search, I was interviewing to be a senior level employee at a startup and would be working closely with the CEO and Founder. During the interview process, I asked a series of questions to understand the CEO’s leadership style to ensure it would align with my own. When I asked the question, “What is one thing the team would want to change about you?” the CEO responded that they could be a bit of a micromanager at times. I appreciated their honesty, but I also knew that micromanaging was the #1 quality that drove me crazy, particularly when at a senior level. I turned down the offer as a result because I didn’t want to put myself in an environment where my wings would be clipped and I wouldn’t be able to be my best self. I stand by this decision and believe I saved myself a lot of heartache in the long run.
To go through this exercise for yourself, try asking questions like the following:
Who was the best manager you ever had?
What qualities affected you the most?
What manager(s) have driven you crazy? What about their style was frustrating for you?
Environment Alignment
The last level we need to align with is the overall company environment. This goes beyond the normal ideas of “culture” and whether or not the company has a lot of team socializing events. This encompasses the types of policies, procedures, and decision-making that impacts how you manage your work. This includes the pace of the company, how decisions are made and who is involved, the level of planning, the goal setting process, and more. All of these factors affect the type of work you are expected to do and how it can get done. As a result, we need to align ourselves with the type of company that will support our work style preferences, rather than compete with them.
I worked for a few years leading Operational teams at home and personal service startups. In these types of companies, services were occurring almost 24/7. When something went wrong (and this happened frequently), I would be expected to drop everything and take care of it. This was really starting to wear on me and causing burnout because it was eating into personal time whether on weekends or in the evenings. At any moment I could have to stop what I was doing and problem solve. I realized there were two factors that were contributing to this dynamic and were incompatible with the lifestyle I wanted. The first was working for service based companies where we were essentially open almost 24/7. The second challenge was these were lean startups without a robust team or process dedicated to handling these issues before they landed on my desk. By framing it in this way, I was able to understand the types of environments I would need to work in if I wanted to work at another startup in the future.
To go through this exercise for yourself, try asking questions like the following:
What type of pace do you like at a company?
What aspects of your company do you really enjoy and align with the way you like to work?
What frustrates you the most about getting work done at your company?
If you could change one thing about your company, what would it be?
After completing these exercises you should have more clarity around what you need in place to thrive and be successful at work. When we are in the right role at the right place, everything changes. We feel more confident. We are happier and less stressed. And we can enjoy our lives more. Let me know what you learned from going through this reflective process.
