How does one even go about figuring out what they’re going to do with their life?
You’re just about to graduate—college, high school, or even middle school for some of you ambitious punks. You should probably be getting a job at this point, but doing what?
General industries or fields are so vague and one-dimensional.
Specific job descriptions just seem like a bunch of words smushed together with no real context or meaning.
You’d try to ask someone questions, but apparently you don’t know anyone doing anything other than professional barista-ing or cat-sitting.
What’s a gal (or fella) to do?
Simple: some good, old-fashioned, nose-to-the-ground, magnifying-glass-to-your-eyeball sleuthing.
And what’s the most essential skill for any good pipe-smoking, trench-coat-wearing sleuth?
Interviewing.
You’ve gotta ask the right people the right questions, and then the pieces of the puzzle fall into place and all of a sudden you just know who dunnit.
Similarly, in The Mysterious Case Of What The Heck We’re Supposed To Be Doing With Our Lives, asking the right people the right questions is what starts making the pieces of the puzzle begin to fall together.
Now you may be wondering where to find those right people to ask the right questions to when we’ve already established that all your friends are baristas and cat-sitters.
Where do the best detectives go to if they want to find the the right people to ask the right questions?
Obviously the dive-iest of dive bars—where the seediest of seedy, but knowledgeable, characters hang out.
Does this mean that you should head to your local sketchy saloon and hope for the best of career advice?
Absolutely not, please don’t do that (please—your mom won’t let you read my blog anymore).
Rather, let me introduce you to the magical, slightly-less-seedy world of LinkedIn—the home of meeting strangers on the Internet in the name of networking, building your personal brand, and adding value to other business people.
LinkedIn is a veritable gold mine of successful, knowledgeable people actively working in those industries, companies, and job positions that all seem like gibberish to you.
They are what give life to titles like “Business Development Representative” and “Growth Associate” or “Content Specialist.” They bring context, provide depth, and spark interest and enthusiasm in a bunch of words that don’t make sense to the untrained eye!
This week I took a leap out of my comfort zone and reached out to a ton of random people on LinkedIn—none of whom have I ever conversed or interacted with in any way. The thought of it made my hands sweaty and stomach a little butterfly-y, but once I got started, I quickly discovered what an amazingly powerful, valuable tool I had in my hands.
Basically, I’m in your position. I know I need to do something with my life, but how am I supposed to figure out what I want to do if I don’t even know what my options look like in real life? That’s where all these LinkedIn people come into play—they’re the ones providing insight, clarity, and behind-the-scenes knowledge into what the day-to-day work life entails.
So, how exactly does this process work?
First off, do some digging to figure out what you enjoy doing. Take a look at your previous work experience and distill out the essence of what made you feel alive while you were doing it. No matter what the job—you have to have enjoyed at least one aspect of it. Figure out what the essence of that is.
When I did that this week, I discovered that I love interacting with people of varied backgrounds and positions in life. I also enjoy learning the behind-the-scenes psychology of everyday settings that influence people in subtle, but significant, ways. Lastly, I enjoy working in high-energy, exciting (even festive) environments.
Secondly, pick an industry you’re potentially interested in exploring. You can definitely choose multiple ones, but for the sake of the exercise, I’d recommend choosing one to dig into for a little bit. Compile your evidence, and then repeat the exercise for another career type. That way you’re able to compare and contrast later!
For example, I was tempted to reach out to a variety of people in a variety of roles. However, I knew that my responses would be more scattered that way. I figured that I can repeat this exercise for a new role area each week for the rest of the month and get a deeper look at more career options at the end of it. For this week I chose marketing.
The next step is to simply start reaching out to people. Search for the area you’re looking into (“marketing,” “underwater basket weaving,” etc.) and start sifting through the results. Once you find someone you think would have some valuable insight into what you’re wondering about, click “connect” and add a note explaining what you’re doing—basically, wanting to learn about a given field or position.
And then just send out a bunch of those messages! Try not to seem spammy, though, if you can. When I sent messages to people this week, I tried to incorporate something from their profile or work experience that made it seem personalized (without being too creepy, hopefully).
Not everyone is going to respond, so that’s why it’s better to start off with more than you think you’ll need. Once someone does respond, start asking them questions about the career-area based off of what you know you like.
This is what differentiates the whole process from just Googling “what do marketers do.” This can get your personalized question in front of a personalized human being who has a little bit more depth and insight than Google does (for questions like this).
Then! All you’ve got to do with compile the answers you get from these beautiful human beings who are willing to help a young punk out in their brand new career-insight search.
Here are some of the questions I asked this week, the answers to those questions, and the professional who gave those answers:
Me: “I really like that you’ve had more training in graphic design. Do you use any of that knowledge within your marketing work, or are the two kept fairly separate?”
Keri Schueller, Marketing Manager at BB Wheels and Graphic Designer: “I definitely use my design skills a lot! I think it s a huge benefit to have both.”
Me: “What kind of interpersonal interactions do you have within your marketing work — if any? I know I really love working with people, and I’m curious as to what extent that comes into play in the job!”
KS: “I work for a company that only sells online so I have very little interaction with people outside my office but I think most marketing positions would have a lot more.”
Me: “In the job I have right now, I get to learn about how behind-the-scenes psychology impacts people in subtle, but significant ways. I like the idea of marketing because it seems like it would have a similar psychological component to it. Does that dynamic come up in your day-to-day work life at all?”
Chaz Stead, Marketing Manager at eResources: “Sort of- Let me explain in a long winded tangent. I run the marketing department of four separate companies (all within the same ownership, structure, etc). Each company has completely different services and different target markets. When I’m getting started on a new vertical, I identify decision-makers and create personas based on those decision makers. These try to identify everything about that target, from age, education, location, industry, marital status, etc. The more specific the better. By creating these personas, you tailor content, ads, messaging, targeting, all around what will make this one specific person convert to a lead. Building personas is perhaps a quarterly task, but the execution is what I do everyday. Hope that answers your question!”
(I love long-winded answers because my default setting is long-winded, so this really spoke to me. Upon follow-up, Chaz graciously suggested this article as a resource for further learning about building personas.)
These are only a few people who responded to my initial message! However, because humans aren’t Google, getting answers in a LinkedIn dive bar interview type setting is a little bit less instantaneous than we’re used to, so I don’t have more answers to specific questions yet.
However, the answers will come and they will be solid gold when they do.
So that’s about it! Make sure to keep track of who you talk to, what they say, and how their answers compare to what you love doing! The whole point is getting an inside look at what that career looks like, and whether or not you think it would be a good fit for you.
For me, personally, this exercise has done much more for cementing the value of LinkedIn in my mind. I’m looking forward to reaching out to people in sales and operations roles, but right now I’m just really grateful for this new world that’s just been opened up to me!
Let me know if you give this and shot and how it worked out for you! And if you haven’t already, make sure to add me on LinkedIn.
Happy career-sleuthing!