5 Questions to Focus Your Job Search

Blog #3 in the series on career advancement, context: Male, 28, 6 years of unbroken tenure at one company

When looking for a job people often start by saying, "I need to figure out what I want to do with my life" and then a wave of anxiety makes the prospect of further exploration too much to handle. Not to mention that there is often pressure to consider only the highest salary positions, to take the first option, or to follow in someone else’s footsteps. These pressures and your own ignorance can make finding a job more knee jerk reaction than well thought out decision.

Luckily the intention of this blog is to provide a framework with which you can use to make this decision a little easier by splitting up this otherwise overwhelming decision into more manageable pieces. Before applying to anything or talking to anyone try answering the following five questions:

1. Where do you want to live? It's a bit unconventional, but it kept coming up in conversations with recent grads or peers looking to make a switch. Even in a work from home world, it still matters. Where do you see yourself living? Close to friends, family, away from it all? In a tech or finance hub? Don't care? It's so important because you should think of this question as a large filter on the options you need to legitimately consider. Additionally, you should consider where you live as an important ingredient in your job success.  For example, if I am not interested in clubbing, beaches, fast cars, fashion, etc. you probably shouldn't be looking at jobs in Miami especially if you are early on in your career,  your coworkers, bosses, new friends etc. are all going to want to do those things so set yourself up for success and put yourself in an environment outside the office that you will enjoy. If you want to be in the center of the tech industry you probably shouldn't be considering options in Louisiana. It is important to be as specific as possible here. You want to avoid the situation where you like your job but have to move or change roles because you can't stand cold winters. This can be unnecessarily costly and time consuming as you look to succeed in your career. If your answer to the above question is truly that it doesn’t matter than feel free to skip to the next question. 
2. What industries are you interested in? In the US there are only 115 recognized industries by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which may be much smaller than you had imagined. Review this list  and filter it down to a subset of maybe 10 that interest you the most. Attached to this link for each industry there are additional pieces of information like average pay, trends in employment in the industry and a variety of other interesting pieces of information that you can use to help inform your decision. Don't consider this generic information to be specific enough to make final decisions on both enough to give you an idea of what might be a good fit. Additionally, don't miss the opportunity to use this list as a way to expand your mind beyond the conventional industries that you have already been exposed to.
3. What companies are you interested in? Now that you have your industry subset it is now time to research the companies that make up these industries ensuring that you are sticking to your previous assertions on location. As a general rule of thumb, for any standalone company I like to consider only the headquarters location. Unless you are considering consulting or another highly decentralized company, it is generally safest to consider the headquarters as this location has a lower likelihood of being shut down or moved and has a higher likelihood of containing advancement opportunities. in the largest variety of functions. In order to help facilitate your continued progress, below are a few things you should consider:
1. Big or Small Company - For argument sake, consider the arbitrary threshold of 1,000 employees as the distinction between a small and a big company. Of course this is gradient rather then a clear cut but bare with me. When considering big companies you should expect that roles are specialized and focused, move slower, and require climbing the corporate ladder and a hierarchy of managers to advance. Smaller companies have more ambiguity, move faster, and can provide opportunities without having to always negotiate the corporate ladder/hierarchy. 
2. Market Leader or Follower - Not all companies are created equal in an industry, working for the market leader can give you access to the best people and resources but working for a non-market leader can provide unique opportunities and potentially more upside. 
3. Culture - Most brands resonate with a particular type of person and companies have a similar impact. It is highly important to figure out which company you want to represent as their culture and brand will likely permeate everything they do. For argument sake, Nike is likely to attract different people than Wells Fargo. Don’t discount the value of being drawn to a particular company/brand. 

This step can be as simple as googling the various industries and seeing what companies come up, and then browsing their web pages for an indication of the above topics. A side by side comparison of two different companies can give you an idea of what I am talking about. Following the links to the websites for two New York based financial services companies National General Insurance and Merrill you can get an idea of what I am talking about.

On the web page alone you can imagine that these are very likely two very different companies. Once you have reviewed a number of companies, really do your best to retain only the ones that you are most excited about. Pursuing companies that you are lukewarm on should only be acted on after you have pursued all of your top choices. 

3. What organizations are you interested in? Each of the companies that you select are likely comprised of a variety of organizations.  For example, a large corporation like Microsoft is comprised of organizations that include Business Development, Sales, Marketing, Human Resources, Product, New Ventures, Operations, Finance, and Support. These are all collections of teams that try to accomplish a specific flavor of work for the company at large. Each of these functions may have slightly different requirements for their roles or slightly different focus areas. It is important to understand which of these orgs resonates and works with you most because interviewing for roles in the same org will often times have a similar style and require a similar skill set. These similarities can improve your chances and abilities when it comes time to interviewing.

4. What roles are you interested in? Finally, we need to now consider what job is right for you. At this stage you have identified where you want to live, what industry and what company you want to work for. Now your list of options for simplicity sake is limited to the roles that are posted on each company website. Review the job descriptions and record the ones that excite you the most. (In a future blog, we will discuss alternative options at this stage but for now we can keep it simple.) Each company likely has a number of departments legal, operations, engineering, sales, hr, etc. review all of them for the best match.  At this stage you are looking to identify roles that sound interesting, match your skill set, and align with your experience level. Do not be put off by roles that require a little more experience than you have or an optional skill that you may not yet have as there may be some wiggle room in their hiring application. Just apply and let recruiting reject you if they aren’t interested. Ideally at this stage you are able to isolate 10-20 roles that interest you the most and from here you are able to start a very focused application process. Even if you feel like you are unable to sufficient narrow down the list in your first pass, you will have a really clear idea of the roles, orgs, companies, and industries that are most interesting to you, giving you the confidence and direction to continue the next stages of your job search. 

Hopefully, the above text has given you an idea of how to approach the job search process and given you an indication of how to start broad and let your interests guide you to the right reduced set. Once you have identified the right subset of roles or at least enough roles to start the next steps, read on here for tips to landing a first round interview. 

Citations: 

1. “Industries in Alphabetical Order.” U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 17 Sept. 2021, www.bls.gov/iag/tgs/iag_index_alpha.htm.