In our experience, if more than eight people have been through the wringer and no decisions have been made, the hiring process is probably broken. This is a sign that the company may not be a great place to work, and you might want to walk quickly to the exit.

Awareness is key to life design, and this is true especially when you are designing your career. If you are aware of the process involved in hiring, in writing job descriptions, in reading résumés, in interviewing (from the employer’s perspective), your success rate in getting a job offer goes way up. Empathy is a crucial element in design thinking, and having empathy—and understanding—for the poor hiring manager buried under a sea of résumés will help you know how to design a more effective job hunt. Effectiveness in getting hired involves a simple yet important design reframe.

8: Designing Your Dream Job

“As we said earlier, we don’t recommend mining the Internet for a job. In fact, in the United States only 20 percent of all the jobs available are posted on the Internet—or posted anywhere, for that matter. This means a full four out of five jobs that are available, are not available through the standard model of job hunting. It’s a staggering number; no wonder so many people feel frustrated and rejected when job seeking.

How can you break into this hidden job market? Well, you can’t. No one can. There is no such thing as breaking into the hidden job market. The hidden job market is the job market that’s only open to people who are already connected into the web of professional relationships in which that job resides. This is an insider’s game, and it’s almost impossible to get inside that web as a job seeker. But it’s quite possible to crack into the network as a sincerely interested inquirer—someone just looking for the story (not looking for the job). That’s how this works. It is a wonderfully happy accident that the very best technique you can use to learn what kind of work you might want to pursue (prototyping with Life Design Interviews, as discussed in chapter 6) is exactly the best, if not only, way to get into the hidden job market in your field of interest, once you know what you want.

Kurt entered into genuine conversations, and he found a good job that he’s been able to build into a great job. You can do the same. We know this is hard. We know this is a lot of work and is sometimes scary. But it’s also incredibly interesting and is the only way we know to crack the hidden job market. To some degree, it’s also a numbers game—the more connections you make, the more prototypes you run, the more opportunities will turn into offers.

Consider the alternatives.

Thirty-eight applications for zero offers.

Fifty-six conversations for seven offers and a great professional network.

Which approach do you like better? It’s your call.

It is more than possible to use design thinking to get your first job, transform your current job, design your next job, and create a career that integrates your Workview and your Lifeview. In fact, we recommend it, because there is no Job Charming coming to rescue you. The idea that your dream job already exists, fully formed, just waiting for you to find it, is a fairy tale.

The key is to remember that imagined choices don’t actually exist, because they’re not actionable. We’re not trying to live a fantasy life; we’re trying to design a real and livable life. If we burdened ourselves with knowing everything about our decisions and discovering every option possible (which, of course, you should do if you’re going to make “the best choice”), we’d never decide. In life design we know that there are countless possibilities but aren’t stymied by that fact. We revel in exploring a few possibilities, then taking action by starting with a choice.