What Job Is Right for Me? How to Find Your Direction Before You Apply Again

When your job search isn't working, the easy thing to do is apply to more jobs. More portals, more applications, maybe an AI tool that applies for you while you sleep. Maybe you're doing that right now. A lot of people are: in a 2024 survey by Greenhouse, 38% of job seekers said they were mass-applying (Greenhouse).

But if you don't know what you are aiming at, more applications only bring more silence.

So to start with, you need to know which job you really want and are interested in doing, what skills you have, and, based on that, which job is the right one for you. It sounds obvious, but it's the step that gets skipped when you're busy applying.

I'm someone who thinks in systems. When I see a messy process, my first question is usually: can this be turned into a system? Job hunting is about as messy as it gets, so let's build a small system for it, one step at a time.

Step 1: find out what you actually enjoy

It's easy to end up looking for jobs that match your degree instead of jobs that match you. I studied computer science, and over time I found I cared less about just writing code and more about how technology solves real problems for people and businesses. That's why my interests grew beyond one job title, into data, automation and AI.

There's a simple way to find your own direction. Work can be sorted into six broad groups by the kind of activity it involves: building and fixing things, solving problems, creating, helping people, leading and persuading, and organising. This comes from Holland's model of career interests, and the US Department of Labor uses the same six groups in its free career tool, O*NET's Interest Profiler.

So what kind of work do you actually enjoy? The quiz below uses those six groups to show you. The statements are ours, it takes a couple of minutes, and nothing you answer leaves your browser.

Don't treat the result as final. Use it as a starting point: look at the jobs listed under your two groups and notice which ones you'd actually like to read more about. If a job looks far from where you are today, keep it on the list anyway. We'll come to skills next.

Step 2: write down what you have actually done

Enjoying something is one half. The other half is proof that you can do it.

Take a page or a notes app and write down five things you have actually done. Not courses you watched, but things you did: a project, a problem you fixed at work, an event you organised, a tool you built, a customer you helped. Next to each one, write two lines: what the problem was, and what changed because of what you did.

This list does two jobs. It shows you which of your quiz groups you already have evidence for, and it gives you the stories you'll need in interviews. In Part 3 you'll see why that second line, "what changed", matters so much.

If your list is short, don't worry. Step 5 is about filling the gaps for free.

Step 3: look at where the work is going

Now look outside yourself. The jobs that will need people in a few years are not always the ones everybody is talking about.

In this job market, I think the demand for industry and hands-on work is growing, while a lot of routine computer work is exactly what AI is getting good at. The numbers partly back this up.

The International Labour Organization found in 2025 that about a quarter of jobs worldwide are "potentially exposed" to generative AI, and that "clerical jobs face the highest exposure of all". It also says AI is "more likely to transform jobs than eliminate them", so exposed doesn't mean gone (ILO, May 2025).

Now look at the US government's list of the fastest-growing jobs to 2035: nurse practitioners (+41%), solar panel installers (+37%), data scientists (+35%) and wind turbine technicians (+30%) (US Bureau of Labor Statistics). Two of those four are hands-on energy jobs. If your quiz result was Realistic, that's good news for you.

Tech is growing too. In Hyderabad, where I work, LinkedIn's Jobs on the Rise 2026 list put AI engineer at number one, followed by marketing strategist and solutions analyst (Telangana Today, January 2026).

So don't look only at tech jobs, and don't ignore them either. Look for the place where your quiz result, your list and the growing work overlap.

Step 4: pick two job titles and ten companies

Now put the three steps together. From the jobs under your quiz groups, keep the ones where you have something on your list and where the work is growing. Then choose just two job titles.

For those two titles, write down ten companies you would actually like to work for. Then, for each company, find one person who already does that job there. LinkedIn search, your college's alumni group, a friend of a friend: any of these can help.

This is the "find someone who works at the company and get a referral" part from Part 1, and there is good evidence behind it. A study of nine large companies in three industries, published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, found that referred applicants were "more likely to be hired and more likely to accept offers" than people with similar skills who applied without a referral (Burks and others, 2015).

When you message someone, don't open with "please refer me". Ask about their work first: what a normal day looks like, what their team looks for. A real question is easier to answer than a request from a stranger.

Step 5: fill the gaps for free

If your list from Step 2 has gaps, you don't need to pay for an expensive course. Two free places to start:

• iDEA (the Inspiring Digital Enterprise Award) is run by a UK charity, but anyone can use it, on any device, anywhere they can get online. Its badges are short interactive modules made with industry experts, in five groups: Citizen, Gamer, Worker, Maker and Entrepreneur. You can work up from Bronze to Silver to Gold awards, and more than 2.6 million people have signed up. It's free (iDEA).
• Skill India Digital Hub, if you're in India, is run by the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship. Most of its courses are free and come with government certificates, in areas from AI and IT to healthcare, banking and logistics (skillindiadigital.gov.in; details from DQ India, December 2025).

After all this

You should now have a few things written down: your two quiz groups, five things you've done, two job titles, ten companies and a few names. That's your door.

But finding the door is only half of it. When it finally opens and you're sitting in the interview, you have to explain yourself clearly, and that's exactly where I went wrong in my interview for Google's project management apprenticeship. That's what Part 3 is about.

Your next three steps

4. Take the quiz and write down your top two groups.
5. Write your list of five things you've done, with the problem and what changed.
6. Pick two job titles and ten companies, and find one person at each.