697: How to (Actually) Get a Job You Love in 2026: Navigate a Bad Job Market, Stop Settling, and Find Meaningful Work

[00:00:00] Scott Anthony Barlow: Job search right now is more competitive than it has ever been. Hundreds, sometimes thousands, of people applying to a single posting. And 63% report being rejected by an algorithm before a human ever reads their application. On LinkedIn and Indeed, only 4% of people gave and get a response, which means that 96% of people who apply never hear back.

[00:00:23] And to make it extra confusing, one in three companies actually posted a job that they weren't actively trying to fill. If you've been applying for weeks, months, even years, and you haven't heard anything back, it's not because something is wrong with you. The system most of us use to find jobs was never an effective way for us to do so in the first place.

[00:00:44] It was actually designed to fill positions as fast as possible, not to help you personally, especially not if your goal is to find work that actually fits that you enjoy or is much more fulfilling.

[00:00:56] Now, once you see that, everything about how you approach the search changes. It comes down to just three things that people who are actually getting job offers on a regular basis, even multiple job offers for work that fits them.

[00:01:11] I'm Scott Anthony Barlow, and this is Happen To Your Career, where we share real conversations with real people and walk you through how to build the life you want and design your career so that you get to thrive more often. In this episode, we're going to cover the biggest misconceptions that people have, not just about job search, but how to get to work that actually fits.

[00:01:31] It's confusing, let's be honest. So that's why we're also going to cover what you can do instead, how to think about it instead, and what is going to be far more effective. Gonna give you some examples and even some stories along the way with real people so that you can see how this might actually work in your life.

[00:01:49] My hope is that you're gonna be able to take away just one or two things that you're now thinking about differently that you can use from this episode. So let's cover one of those biggest shifts.

[00:02:01] Shift number one, getting clear before you search. Most people start a job search the exact same way. They open up LinkedIn, they start scrolling, they start applying, and when it's not working, the question becomes, "Is my resume good enough? Maybe I need to change, you know, how my LinkedIn is positioned." Or, "How many more jobs do I need to apply to before I hear something back?"

[00:02:24] Okay. So the average job seeker right now submits literally hundreds of applications before receiving a single offer. Now, I'm guessing if you're watching this, you might not be an average job seeker. You're probably a little bit more intentional than that.

[00:02:37] A lot of people that we talk to, though, are worried about this happening, "This doesn't seem sustainable", and you would be correct. It's not, especially when, you know, people get to that point– the longer the silence goes on, the harder it becomes not to take it personally.

[00:02:51] It's not just my resume isn't working, but maybe I'm just not good enough in one way or another. Those are the questions that enter people's heads, which is highly unfortunate because partially those are the wrong questions. The real problem is not the search at all. It's that most people skip those targeting processes, as what we would call the identification stage or clarity.

[00:03:14] They never figure out what they actually want and what they actually need out of their work and how it supports the rest of their life that they're trying to build before they start looking.

[00:03:24] Think about it a little like searching for a new home. You could scroll Zillow for months or Redfin or, you know, pick an app. But if you haven't actually decided what city, what neighborhood, what actually is most important to you? Is it more important to have the five bedrooms? Is it more important to have, you know, open concept spaces? Is it more important for how it feels, or more important to have the difference of not having to renovate anything?

[00:03:50] If you don't have those things decided upfront in advance in a way that actually matters, you're gonna look at hundreds of houses, and still not get anywhere.

[00:03:58] Simply put, when you know what you want and you're able to clearly articulate that, it's so much easier to build a plan. Everything else gets easier.

[00:04:08] The job search, building relationships along the way, reach outs, interviews, negotiation, all of it. And that leads us to another point. Most people come in asking, "How do I translate my skills to something that is going to fit? How do I, you know, take what I have and present it differently to convince somebody that, you know, I'm the right person?"

[00:04:29] Those are actually the wrong starting points because if we haven't answered that prior question, "What is actually our target?" "What are you actually looking for at a deep and highly specific level?" Then it's gonna be really difficult to find it in the real world. And more importantly, you're gonna show up differently at interviews and other interactions along the way.

[00:04:49] And the really challenging part here is that most people genuinely don't know. Most people haven't evaluated what they want and what they need at an incredibly deep level. It's often four or five or six or ten layers deeper than what even highly talented, very smart individuals are looking at right at this moment.

[00:05:09] If you haven't gotten clarity in those areas, it becomes really difficult to develop a target. And without a target, and knowing where you're trying to go, it's really difficult to develop a strategy, and at that point you're just guessing. Which seems like a normal thing to do, and that's exactly why most people end up scrolling LinkedIn.

[00:05:28] Now here's what we've seen actually work over and over, across literally thousands of career changes. The people who are finding work that fits them don't start with the job market. They start with themselves. Now, some of these are questions you've probably heard before, like, "What problems do I actually love solving? What does a great day of work feel like for me specifically?"

[00:05:50] These questions aren't going to automatically give you all the answers, but they are going to be a great place to start. What is really powerful is that when you start with those types of questions and then dig down on what comes up, that's where you can get into the context, into the specificity.

[00:06:05] We help many of our clients use a tool that we call an ideal career profile. It's exactly what it sounds like. It's a profile of your ideal career, and especially how it relates to allowing you to build the life that you're trying to build along the way. Think about it just as a very large checklist of all the parts and pieces that you must have to allow yourself to thrive in your work or aspirationally where you're trying to move towards.

[00:06:32] Having this checklist allows you to develop a target. Here's where I'm trying to get to, and this completely changes your job search. The misconception here is that you need to figure out the job market first. Where is going to have open availability and then figure out where you fit.

[00:06:49] That's actually backwards, especially if we're trying to figure out work that fits for us. The people who get clear on who they are and what they want first, move faster, not slower, then we can start to bring in where can we find this in reality. Now, before we get into the second misconception here, I need to address something that is on many people's minds.

[00:07:11] It's talked about everywhere. It's talked about on the media, their friends are saying it, their family members who are well-intentioned and caring are echoing it. It's, "what if the job market is just too bad?" Here's some scenarios that people are experiencing all the time right now.

[00:07:28] Some companies posting jobs and they don't have a real intention of hiring, so it gets slow played, or you make it to three rounds of interviews only to have the role disappear. Or maybe you invest a month and then hear nothing. With easy apply flooded, every single posting might have hundreds or even a thousand plus applicants overnight immediately after it opens. The average search runs well over five months. For one in three job seekers reporting, it takes up to six months or much, much more to secure a role.

[00:08:01] The search here is getting longer. The silence is getting heavier, but what most people are missing is that the job market doesn't affect you, at least not in the way that you think. Most people say, well, if the job market is terrible, then maybe I shouldn't consider making a change right now.

[00:08:17] And a lot of people don't. However, they're absolutely missing something that's very important. The job market is data in aggregate, not on an on individual basis. It describes what happens to many, many, many millions of people. It says nothing about what happens to you or what is actually likely to have an impact on you specifically.

[00:08:39] And we should pay attention to it if we were trying to get a hundred thousand people hired, then we should absolutely bring in that job market data. But we're not, you're one person. You're trying to find probably just one right role. Okay. So here's the interesting thing. You know, we've been doing this type of work since 2013, and we have data across all of the clients that we've worked with since 2013.

[00:09:02] Every market, up cycles, down cycles, COVID, layoff waves, we actually haven't seen a meaningful difference in how long it takes the people that we're working with to get to work that fits them accepting a job offer. Now, this is really important because what it means, is that a single individual with the right type of approach and right type of help isn't experiencing what's going on with the market in all of those extremes.

[00:09:30] Now, of course, if you're trying to do what everyone else is doing, then you're going to get what the market is giving. The fears here are real, but the market isn't what decides whether or not you make it through or what you do next.

[00:09:41] Which brings us to shift number two, start investigation and exploration and experimentation, that's a lot of 'ations'. Start those before applications. The worst piece of career advice out there is "just apply to more jobs and eventually something will work out." This is still the most common advice being given, and it's costing people many months of their time.

[00:10:03] One of our clients, Stephanie, who we told her story on a past episode, she just lost her job in London. She had 60 days to find new sponsorship before she'd have to leave the country. So she did what most people do under pressure. She panicked and cast as wide a net as possible, 145 applications over four months. The result? Silence, crickets, rejections, a growing sense that something was deeply wrong and that she was the problem.

[00:10:33] Okay, so here's what changed. Well, she stopped applying to everything and she got incredibly specific. We got to help her do this. She defined exactly what she was looking for. It turned out that it was a head of operations role. She's looking for a company that was under 250 people with a hybrid commute under 45 minutes. Instead of just applying, she went to try to investigate and explore and build relationships along the way with some of the people that in organizations that fit this.

[00:11:03] Within eight days of her first offer, she already had a second. Eight days versus four months. Massive difference, right? There's something else that happens when you mass apply that most people don't talk about. When you're targeting 10 different kinds of roles, you can't show up fully for any of them.

[00:11:21] You keep having to remind yourself, "wait, how would I frame the experience for this kind of company?" Now, Stephanie described this as genuinely hurting her in interviews. When she narrowed her focus to only roles that she actually wanted, she could put herself in the role before the interview, and maybe even more important, she could come off as genuine.

[00:11:42] The enthusiasm was real and those interactions were real. And guess what? The people she was talking to noticed, unsurprisingly. But let's say that we've pushed all of that off to the side for just a moment and you're hell bent on still submitting applications. Well, consider this, a tailored application submitted directly on a company's career page has about three times higher interview rate than submitting through LinkedIn or Indeed.

[00:12:08] That gap is massive. Most people don't know it. How you're approaching this matters a lot. How you're targeting, matters a lot. And by the way, your resume, it's not a career document. This is a marketing document. It's only purpose is to get you the interview. That's it. If the person reading it can't immediately see why you're relevant to what it is that they need, they tend to move on even if they want to help. But once you're in the room, the resume matters a lot less. Whether or not you get hired comes down to you as a person.

[00:12:40] The resume often is just getting you in the door. Here's another thing. The resume does get you in the door, but someone has to open it first.

[00:12:49] So if applications aren't the answer, what is? Helping them initially, identify what creates a great fit, like we've talked about, and that helps them develop the target. However, at that point, once we've developed the target, it becomes how, "what is the most effective way to get in?" That is linked to genuine interactions with other people.

[00:13:10] This could be reaching out, this could be developing conversations. We're not talking about just random networking events. We're not talking about just sending LinkedIn requests. Actual interactions and conversations with actual human beings at the organizations that you care about, where you're getting to ask them and understand what it's actually like to work there, seeking it out.

[00:13:34] This is more of a collaboration than it is an informational interview. These interactions should be at the center of your job search, not an afterthought. A lot of people hear that and immediately think, "Well, I'm not a networker. I don't have those connections." Now, one of our clients that we got to work with, Amelia, she said exactly that, "I was not networked. I never used LinkedIn." She had to build from zero. And what she found was the same thing every one of our clients eventually discovers.

[00:14:02] Amelia Johnson: Humans generally wanna help and they're very happy to help. Shoot your shot, like, reach out to someone who you think might be able to connect you with the right person at a company you're interested in.

[00:14:13] Just stay curious about what people do and, you know, where they work and how they like their position.

[00:14:19] Scott Anthony Barlow: We saw this play out with Tom. After 16 years as a financial advisor, quietly miserable, wondering if there was something better suited to who he actually was, he wasn't in a crisis. He just knew every single morning that this wasn't what he wanted to spend his time doing, and he had no idea what it was.

[00:14:35] So he spent 18 months actually having real conversations inside his firm, outside it, with people he was genuinely curious about. He built relationships. He did what we call test drive conversations. He got specific about exactly what he needed and what he wanted.

[00:14:53] He had engineered the right situation over a period of time. From the outside this could look like luck, but here's how Tom put it.

[00:15:00] Tom Wilder: The reason I was in the right place at the right time was because I had put myself there.

[00:15:06] Scott Anthony Barlow: He didn't get his role from the job board. He got it from 18 months of intentional exploratory learning about what he wanted and needed, investigating multiple paths and then ultimately being ready to recognize when the right one showed up. It doesn't always take 18 months, but this is what it looks like when you stop using a system that was never built to help you and start building real relationships instead.

[00:15:31] But even when you're doing all of this the right way, there's something that nobody prepares you for, how long this actually takes and how heavy that starts to feel when you're in it. Nearly half of jobs seekers say the search itself has negatively impacted their mental health. I get this. I've been there. I've done those searches. It's part of the reason why we have an organization that helps people with their career and what we do now.

[00:15:54] And for people who have been at it six months or more, the rate of depression triples compared to people who are employed. Now, this is not a personal failing. It's a predictable consequence of a job search system that was never designed to support the person searching.

[00:16:08] The longer the search runs, the harder it is not to take the silence personally. That part's human. But here's what our data shows for what we would call an average career change, which is not just the first available offer, but instead it's work that actually fits what you are looking for and finding that intentionally.

[00:16:26] This takes between 8 to 10 months on average, over and over, duplicated across thousands of career change. Sometimes a little less, sometimes a little bit more, but if you're in month two or three wondering if [00:16:40] something is wrong, you're probably not failing. You're just early in the process.

[00:16:44] This brings us to shift number three. Design your career instead of just trying to get any job. The job search for so many of us is becoming an opportunity to rethink not just where we want to work, but how we want to work. Many of our clients who came in looking for a traditional full-time role are leaving the process open to things like consulting, contract work, fractional roles, portfolio careers.

[00:17:09] And for some of them it's not a compromise, it becomes the preference. Now, I should point out this is not the only way to consider how to work. There's many, many other ways that we consider that, but I just wanted to give you some examples.

[00:17:22] Here's how Paul did it. He was a communications executive who, on paper, had a career that looked like it was very successful, and it was. He had a respected title, strong team, good work. But somewhere along the way, the balance had shifted. He was spending most of his time on projects and meetings that really didn't energize him any longer.

[00:17:39] The work he was best at wasn't the work being asked of him. He described it as a slow change. The days slowly got longer. He felt less accomplished and he couldn't quite name what was wrong.

[00:17:51] We helped him build out his ideal career profile across all the dimensions that actually mattered to him, and what happened was very different than what he anticipated. When a great opportunity, in air quotes here, came along, the one that looked strong on paper and one that most people would've jumped at immediately, because in many ways it was truly wonderful, he said, "no".

[00:18:12] Because it didn't match what he'd gotten clear on. The role he eventually said "yes" to, he knew almost immediately when he got into that role that he made the right call. He told us the days flown by and I'm really interested in what I'm doing. And that's what clarity actually does. It doesn't just help you find another role, it helps you recognize what's wrong with an option that looks otherwise great, so you stop settling for roles that are almost right.

[00:18:37] So back to the job market, it's hard right now, but it's always hard in one way or another. There isn't a point in time where it's not. But hard, as we talked about, doesn't have to mean hopeless.

[00:18:48] It means that we need to evaluate what's gonna work for you. It means strategy matters more than it used to. What's effective comes down to the three shifts that we just walked through.

[00:19:00] Shift one, get clear before you search. Shift two start interactions before applications. That investigation and exploration that we mentioned earlier. Shift three, design your career instead of trying to get just any job. We have to focus intentionally to stop accepting what we think is available to us.

[00:19:21] The people making moves in this market, they're not the ones who are sending out the most applications. They're the ones who got clear, got strategic, and stopped competing in an arena where the odds are stacked against you.

[00:19:33] You deserve work that actually fits who you are, and we've never been in a better time to be able to achieve that. If you want to go deeper on this, I would suggest the Happen To Your Career Audiobook. It actually walks you through all of the elements and ideal career profile that we talked about in this episode, and I think it's a great introductory way to figure out how to make a change in the way that works for you.

[00:19:55] Plus, most importantly, for a limited time, we've actually made the audiobook available for free. You can actually grab it at happentoyourcareer.com/audiobook, but we've put the link in the description, so just click into it. Until next time, this is Happen To Your Career. Adios. I'm out.