career

identifying what you want in your next role

Finding your next role is a difficult but important challenge. How do you know what you’re looking for? You could simply look for your current job title, or maybe the next job title on the ladder, but that doesn’t help you know whether that’s a good job for you.

When I’m trying to figure out what I’m really looking for in my next role, I spend some time doing a deep review of job descriptions. Here’s my process:

  1. Search for jobs with relevant titles. I like to cast a wide net and look for different titles, different levels, and different size companies. LinkedIn is a great place to start for this search. Collect a good set of JDs. Don’t worry if they don’t look amazing, that’s going to be the next step.
  2. Collate the JDs into a document. Copy the text of these JDs into your favorite word processor. I insert a break or line between them so that they don’t all run together.
  3. Evaluate a JD carefully.
    • Highlight everything that you like about this JD with one color. I use yellow for this.
    • Highlight everything that you don’t like, or that raises a potential red flag for you, about this JD with another color. I use blue for this.
    • Review your good-highlighting and write out a list of what you like.
    • Review your bad-highlighting and write out a list of what you don’t like
    • Write out a list of open questions that you have after reading this JD.
  4. Repeat this process for the rest of the JDs that you’ve created.
  5. Evaluate your lists. What themes do you see emerging in each category?

When I’m first starting a job search, this exercise helps me hone in on what I really want to do in my next role. If I’m considering a role that is somewhat different than what I’ve been targeting, it helps me evaluate whether the role might still move me towards my career goals. This also helps me know what I don’t want in my next role.

After you’ve identified the themes of what you really want and don’t want in your next role, you can use that to help you rank which roles are most interesting to you. For those roles that are most interesting, you can prioritize looking through your network to see if you have a close connection to that role who you can leverage. For those roles that are the least interesting, you can decide whether you want to spend your time on pursuing them at all. Being more focused in your job search will help you manage your time and your resilience better.