4 Steps to Taking a Self-Inventory and Landing Your Dream Job

Doing some self-reflection and taking a self-inventory can bring mindfulness to your job searching process – leading to better decision making when choosing which companies you’d like to work for.

When we’re looking for our first job opportunity we tend to apply everywhere we see an open position where we feel we meet the majority of the requirements. How we feel about meeting job requirements can be a whole other article, so I won’t touch on that right now. When I was looking for my first tech job I looked in common places like LinkedIn and BuiltInChicago for companies that seemed like they hired junior developers. I didn’t really pay attention to details about the company or the job itself. I thought I could open myself up to more possibilities by being willing to do front-end, back-end, full-stack, hybrid mobile, native iOS, or native Android development since I had some project experience with each.

What I really wanted to be doing was native iOS development, but felt less confident about my abilities there than with any type of web development. So I primarily applied to web development jobs telling myself once I gain some professional experience and keep practicing my iOS skills, then I’d switch over and look for an iOS dev job. It was this imposter syndrome and the lack of direction that really dragged out my job search to almost 3 years.

My Initial Self-Inventory

After applying to an iOS dev role at Sittercity, the hiring manager, Pamela Bergson, offered to have coffee with me to talk about the iOS community in Chicago. One of the best tips she gave me was to focus on the one thing I want to do most and only apply to those roles. The second she said that, without a doubt the first thought that came to mind was being an iOS developer.

After another coffee meetup, this time with Don Bora of Eight Bit Studios, Don really got me thinking about the ideal work environment I wanted to be in. Did I want to be in-office? What did the office look like – open collaboration or private space? Agency or product company? These questions helped me a lot in figuring out which companies seemed more appealing to me in terms of a physical environment. However, after some experience, I realized that there several other factors that are important when looking for our dream jobs. Does the job fit my lifestyle? Will management care about my development and growth? Will the culture cause me burnout? I didn’t consider these things when I was trying to land my first developer job. It’s important to know ourselves so that we can choose the right companies to apply to and pour the most energy into. So take a look at the 4 steps to taking a self-inventory and landing your dream job.

The 4 Steps

Visualize Your Life & Find Your Purpose

The way I like to think about it is, “what do I want my personal life to be like?” Start visualizing what your day-to-day looks like. How much time do you want for yourself or to spend with family and friends? And then think about how you want your workday to fit into that lifestyle.

What are your interests? What is important to you? Do you want to be able to pursue or implement these interests in your work? What type of work do you value and want to get paid for? I had been applying to companies in the finance industry until someone helped me realize that the work I’d be doing would make it easier for underprivileged people to get into more debt – ultimately having a negative impact on their lives rather than helping improve their situations. That’s something that didn’t sit well with me so I started thinking about my values more and how the work I wanted to be doing would align with those values.

Take Inventory of Your Talents

Who are you? Not the jobs you’ve held in the past, but what experiences have you had that made you who you are today? They could be work related experiences, volunteering, or personal/side projects. There is knowledge that we gain from those experiences that we don’t always realize. There are a ton of non-tech skills (soft skills), that we pick up from these experiences like how to communicate and work with people or how to work our creative tendencies and let that seep into our work.

After taking inventory of the skills you’ve accumulated ask yourself which of those are your favorite. Which skills would you like to be able to use on a day-to-day or almost day-to-day basis? Which skills would you prefer not to use because even though you’re good at something, you may hate doing it?

Work Environment

The first two steps involve figuring out what you have to offer and why you want to offer those talents to a particular company. The last two steps are determining what you want the company to offer you.

Now that we’re in a more openly remote world, think about what type of physical environment you want to be in going forward. Do you want to be location independent and work remotely 100% of the time? Does location matter to you because you want the ability to be in-office some or all of the time? What are your ideal company and team sizes? If you like collaborating with teammates, what does the collaboration layout look like?

The second part of the work environment is the company’s culture. What type of people do you want to work with? People that prefer to be solo developers or people that enjoy pairing or collaborating? Are you interested in being friends with your coworkers outside of work? Is there evidence of encouragement and development of their employees from managers? How important is that to you? Do you need or want work-hours flexibility? What about benefits like time off for volunteering? Or ability to fly out for conferences?

Financial Needs

Finally, the last step, what are your financial needs? When we’re desperately looking to land our first dev jobs, we’re willing to compromise on the salary just to gain some experiences already. Or maybe we feel like we don’t deserve more money or can’t negotiate for it.

Take a look at what your cost of living looks like – all of your bills, needs, and wants. And then I would add 20% to that as the base of the salary range I’m looking for. Determining salary and going through the negotiation process is a whole topic for another article. But for now I’ll say that you want to determine a salary range that you would be good with rather than a specific number.

Another thing to consider is what type of health and family benefits do you need? Some companies will offer 100% health coverage for their employees, but nothing for family or more expensive coverage for family. What are your long-term financial goals and will working for this company help or hinder you from reaching those goals? Company benefits is also another large topic we can get into, but for now let’s focus on doing our self-inventory.

Wrap-Up

It’s important to know ourselves so that we can choose the companies that are going to be right for us. This helps us build a list of companies that we are excited to work for because not only do they have a cool product, but we also know that they are going to take care of us. This makes us much more likely to invest more time and energy into landing a job with them. We prepare more and come off more excited during the interview process, helping us stick out and securing that job.