16 Tips to Discover Meaningful Employment Opportunities
What is one tip to help job seekers discover meaningful employment opportunities?
Here is what 16 thought-leaders had to say:
- You and Your Company Should Align
- Identify Your Ideal Work Environment
- Include Remote Jobs in Your Search
- Find Your ‘Why’
- Take a New Approach to Networking
- Practice Skills that Are in Demand
- Align the Skills You Wish to Learn
- Research Companies that Interest You
- Finding a Meaningful Career Beyond Passion
- Consider Using Realistic Job Previews
- Focus on Work You Love
- Ask for Help! It’s Underrated but Efficient
- Apply to Your Best Fit Options First
- Define Your Personal Mission, Vision, and Values
- Make Your Ideas Known
- Know Your Career Goals
You and Your Company Should Align
One sure way to discover meaningful career opportunities and hopefully your dream career is by assessing whether the company you’re working for aligns with your values. If you’re still looking for a job, be sure that the companies you’re applying to are ones you’d actually want to work for, and could be proud of working for. Try to be a force for positive change wherever you are, engaging with coworkers and leadership to make a better tomorrow for all.
Linda Scorzo, Hiring Indicators
Identify Your Ideal Work Environment
When pursuing a new job or career, it is important to have a clear understanding of your preferred work environment. This may include your preference of in-person versus remote work, working in collaborative groups versus individual work, or flexible hours or time off. Do you prefer to take control of your time and break out of the typical 9-5 workday? Maybe you should consider a career path that allows you to do so.
Than Merrill, FortuneBuilders
Include Remote Jobs in Your Search
Since the onset of the pandemic, many companies and startups are going 100% remote. This means that many businesses today are open to hiring candidates in other cities, or even in other countries. Remote job postings can easily get lost in the fray on major job sites like Indeed, so you’ll need to look for them elsewhere. For example, there are job boards dedicated to remote work, like Remote.co and FlexJobs. You can also filter LinkedIn Jobs for remote opportunities. Finally, lots of remote-friendly companies list remote job openings on a Careers page on their site.
Chloe Brittain, Opal Transcription Services
Find Your ‘Why’
Find a profession or industry that aligns with your ‘why’. It can be scary or overwhelming trying to figure out what your next career step will be. Use a tool to help you uncover your personality, skillset, and your ‘why’. Once you know what positions you’re aligned with, you can narrow your search, and use your network to get recommendations.
Alison Stine, Stine Wealth Management
Take a New Approach to Networking
Expanding your network solely for the purpose of bagging a new job can be somewhat limiting and even keep you from stumbling upon new and meaningful opportunities. Instead try to keep an open mind and build connections wherever you go, with the intention of really getting to know people. Cultivating this natural curiosity will inevitably spark meaningful conversations which is the first step in finding work that aligns with your purpose as opposed to being mechanical about it. Besides, you never really know who could be pivotal in your journey and unexpectedly point you in the best direction.
Harry Morton, Lower Street
Practice Skills that Are in Demand
An effective way to find meaningful employment opportunities is by gaining skills currently in high demand within an industry. By adding these skills to your resume, you will be more likely to get called for interviews. You may even consider doing an internship during the summers to gain work experience and make connections within your field of interest. Look for part-time employment where you can learn transferable skills such as communication and teamwork abilities, find networking opportunities, build up a resume, and pass references along towards future job searches.
Cody Crawford, Low Offset
Align the Skills You Wish to Learn
If it is your priority is to pick up the skills and experience necessary to build a meaningful career, zero in suitable employment opportunities. The right job profile will help you learn the right skills that can help you further your career, and on-the-job tasks will also help you gain the necessary practical experience to hone these skills. A meaningful job opportunity would mean a perfect amalgamation of work responsibilities and professional development opportunities.
Jase Rodley, Jase Rodley
Research Companies that Interest You
Rather than scrolling through job listings, start by researching specific companies in your industry instead. By looking into a company’s culture, benefits, and work environment, you can more easily discern whether there’s an open role that might suit you. Researching makes it easier to tailor your resume to the role at hand, arming you with keywords and key competencies to include in your application. If you can’t find a role at a company you like, don’t give up just yet – inquire further and offer up your skills and expertise. You might be able to carve out an entirely new role of your own. This is one of the best ways to not only discover meaningful employment opportunities but to be proactive in creating them.
Mike Grossman, GoodHire
Find a Meaningful Career Beyond Passion
Finding something you are passionate about is always a great way to find meaning in your work, but so is simply finding something that you enjoy and are naturally talented at. A sales representative may not be passionate about sales but may be gifted at recognizing customer needs and finds meaning in improving lives with a product or service. So many job seekers get stuck on finding something they are passionate about but feeling that you have a sense of purpose with a company can be just as meaningful and impactful on your career.
Adam Shlomi, SoFlo Tutors
Consider Using Realistic Job Previews
Consider using realistic job previews instead of traditional job descriptions. Even the most well-written job description only includes the basic requirements, duties, responsibilities, and skills needed to perform the job. However, a realistic job preview can be used to share both the good and bad aspects of a job (remember that “good” and “bad” are relative to most). Applicants may know little about the job for which they are applying and/or have inaccurate expectations or perceptions. Realistic job previews can help candidates learn more about the work environment, duties, and expectations to help them decide if they are a good match. This can help reduce the size of your talent pool via candidate self-selection, which reduces the time that you and your team spend screening applicants.
Jessica Miller-Merrell, Workology
Focus on Work You Love
As the person who is interviewing candidates for my team, I’m always looking for a candidate that is not only qualified but are they the right fit for the rest of the team. There are a few questions I specifically ask when I am interviewing (1) all things aside, what do you love doing: writing, selling, marketing, etc.? (2) If you could choose your dream job what would it look like, what would you be doing?
I think focusing on work you love doing, something that you are naturally good at or that you are passionate about will lead you in the direction of meaningful work. We tend to feel a deep connection to the work we do and it is often driven by something much bigger than ourselves. Helping others, serving, impacting others, there is usually some bigger meaning to why we are driven to do something. Sometimes it’s a personal drive, other times it’s the positive effect we or it will have on others.
Amanda Russo, Cornerstone Paradigm Consulting, LLC
Ask for Help! It’s Underrated but Efficient
If all else fails, ask for help. Recruitment services stay in business because it can be difficult for anyone to find work they feel supplies them with a meaningful experience.
It isn’t always on us to know exactly how to navigate the professional sphere. There are consultants, résumé builders, job coaches, and recruiters whose whole job is to help talent find suitable employment.
You can be full of passion for an industry that needs your skills and still be held back by logistical obstacles. Sometimes the best way to move forward or break into your dream career is to take the indirect route. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel when there are already strategic approaches for getting you where you want to go.
Consider all the possibilities as you carve out the future for yourself. Being self-made in a world dominated by networking is phenomenal but not always the smart solution.
Zach Goldstein, Public Rec
Apply to Your Best Fit Options First
Our best tip is that you should answer ads that you are qualified for, but not overqualified for. This tip is a subset of exercising thoughtful communication and comprehension skills in your job search.
If you know you are applying for a position that requires a basic level of experience, don’t apply if your experience far exceeds what is being asked for. Your current salary and expectations of the job, be it the pay or the work itself, will probably not match up with what your potential employer is looking for in a candidate–even if you do have 20 years of experience.
What is more strategic is finding an appropriate fit. The benefits of working to your own experience and level of expertise will be commensurate with the expectations and compensation from your employer.
Laura Berg, Kong Club
Define Your Personal Mission, Vision, and Values
Before job seekers can find meaningful opportunities, they must understand what that entails. Every job seeker’s purpose is different, and what can be considered “meaningful” for one candidate can be entirely different for another. Reflecting and defining their personal mission, vision, and values can help candidates assess if job opportunities align with their professional goals and interests.
Benjamin Farber, Bristol Associates, Inc.
Make Your Ideas Known
When applying for jobs, candidates typically feel like they’re following a format. The template is basically whatever a prospective employer asks for during the hiring process, the candidate dutifully obeys and then hopes to get a call. You meet all the deadlines for resumes, fill out all the online forms, answer the questionnaires, take the skills tests, follow the cover letter requirements, etc.
Do more than what is required. Job seekers should take the initiative and make time to let the employer know what special ideas you can offer to the company. Don’t just write a cover letter that states what you’ve done. Explain what you will do when you get hired. Make sure your resume explicitly states how your skills and experiences translate to what you plan to do next. Follow-up emails should contain specifics, too. Give the hiring manager an idea of what kind of employee you will be even before you come in for an interview. If you do that, you’re more likely to be granted that interview.
Jon Carder, Vessel Health
Know Your Career Goals
From the countless job seekers who I have interviewed and met with, I discovered one universal truth: people who know their own aspirations are much more likely to end up finding a job that they love. Unfortunately, yet understandably, many people approach job searches without really knowing what it is that they’re looking for. While they’ll often know the role they want to fill, they may not have considered factors such as their preferred management style, ideal career progression opportunities, and the right company culture. As a consequence, they may end up accepting a job offer at a company that does not offer things that are fundamental to their workplace satisfaction. That is why I believe that job seekers can better their chances of finding meaningful employment opportunities by defining their goals and the features that they’re looking for in a company before starting their job search.
Joe Coletta, 180 Engineering
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