5 quick career experiments you could do this week (part 3)
Over the past few days, we’ve been talking about how—
When it comes to figuring out your next career step…
If you’re feeling uncertain, confused, or indecisive about what to do next…
Stewing keeps you stuck 🤔
Action gives you answers 🏃🏻♂️
I know this can feel counterintuitive.
We’re used to having a clear answer first, and THEN taking action.
But I want you to think of yourself as a paleontologist uncovering a dinosaur fossil 🦕
You’re not creating something new out of thin air.
You are excavating something that’s already there.
You can see a few “glimmers of bone” in the dirt — you have a few vague feelings and pulls toward what you like and what you don’t like.
And the best way to figure out what kind of dinosaur you’re dealing with is to get down there and start digging.
Not to stand around with your hands on your hips, postulating about what kind of dinosaur it might be.
Now, when I say “action,” I don’t mean anything big, dramatic, or irreversible 💣
I’m not telling you to quit your job, enroll in a PhD program, or announce a massive career pivot on LinkedIn.
When I say “action,” I mean small, bounded experiments 🧪
Fast, simple, easy things that you can do in a few hours that let you SAMPLE various jobs and career paths.
In the introduction to this series, I told you to pick ONE idea to test. ONE job or career path that you’d like to explore (doctor, lawyer, artist, product manager, etc.)
On Wednesday, I gave you Experiment #1: Listen to podcasts where people “talk shop” about that industry.
And yesterday, we covered Experiment #2: Do coffee chats with people in the industry and get facts, not feelings.
Today, let’s jump into Experiment #3—
Experiment 3: Do the “job interview project”
One of the most annoying things about modern job interviews is that, more and more often, companies will make you do a bunch of free work before they consider hiring you.
This can be very annoying if you’re recruiting for jobs…
But it can be very helpful if you’re trying to figure out WHICH jobs to recruit for or which career path to follow.
Because doing the “job interview project” can help you trial run the job itself for a few hours and see how you feel about it.
So this experiment is very simple.
Ask around and figure out what an appropriate “job interview project” would be for the job you want to test out.
And then set aside a few hours and do that project.
The job interview project for a marketing role might be…
Analyze a company’s current marketing strategy, from everything you can see as a consumer.
What’s working in their messaging and strategy?
What’s not working?
What would you change?
The job interview project for a VC fund might be…
Give us your assessment of all the investments we made in the past year.
Should we have invested in them, or not?
Did we get a good deal, or did we overpay?
What companies should we have invested in, that we didn’t?
The job interview project for an interior design firm might be…
We have a corporate client who wants their office space to be inviting, collaborative, and polished.
Here are some pictures and dimensions of the blank space.
Please design a mood board and a proposed layout for the space.
Ask around (as you do your coffee chats!) and make sure you pick a project that represents the day-to-day work of the job as closely as you can.
Then spend a few hours executing that project as if you were actually going to submit it as part of a job interviews.
And then step back, evaluate, and see what you’ve learned about whether or not this job would be a good fit for you.
By doing this experiment, you’ve uncovered more of the buried dinosaur fossil.
What have you learned?
What does this tell you about what kind of dinosaur you’re dealing with here?
And if you want a thought partner to help you figure out the answers to those questions…
Come talk to me, and let’s work on them together :)
What my clients have to say…
“I love when Pooja drops wisdom.
It’s always, like, a five word sentence that I’ll write down in my journal and refer back to.
It’s like sometimes you’ll read a whole book just to get that one sentence.
And it’s kind of like having this encyclopedic friend who’s just like, ‘You said all this stuff. Don't read that book. Let me just tell you the five words.’
And it's really incredible.”
—Client | Founder & Co-CEO
Did you know I have a full table of contents, where all my work is categorized by topic, so you can easily find what you need right now? Check it out below! :)
⬅️ Experiment #2 || Experiment #4 ➡️
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