3 steps for applying like a scientist and finding your next role

If you’ve recently lost your global development or social impact job, you’ll likely be facing a daunting prospect: landing your next role while staying true to your values in a highly competitive market. You’ve also likely been inundated on LinkedIn with well-intentioned yet narrow advice, advocating that the job search is only about your mindset, or rewriting your CV to make applicant tracking systems happy. According to career coaches Dan Freehling and Spencer Campbell, who offered insights into their approach to job searching during a recent digital event, this kind of advice can do more harm than good when not part of a more holistic strategy. Rather than “helping people actually get connected with work that makes them happy,” it can be debilitating to spend too much time tweaking cover letters and résumés, or scrolling LinkedIn for that one perfect job opportunity, Campbell said. “The problem with this job hunt approach is missed opportunities,” he added. Campbell and Freehling developed their “hunt like a hero, apply like a scientist” model based on what they've learned while supporting hundreds of job seekers. It is based on two truths: The job search requires both undergoing a personal transformation and finding your place in the market. Here are three of the key elements for how to find more success with your job applications moving forward. Identify your ‘3 fit hypotheses’ Referring to coaching clients they have recently worked with, Freehling called this first step, “the single most useful exercise that we've done with them.” The idea is to identify a few hypothetical pairings, matching a type of job with a type of organization. “What you want to do for your three fit hypotheses is get very specific,” Freehling said. As an example, someone who has worked in global health with report writing and communications experience may decide that, “I think a communications director at a biotech startup would be of interest. So this is a hypothesis at this point,” Freehling said. While specificity matters, the idea isn’t to encompass all possible combinations, either, he added. The goal is to identify some examples of “what might be a fruitful path for you to pursue.” “There's no way to actually know if these are going to end up being the job you get. What you want to do is take your best guess, knowing what you know about your interests and knowing what you know about the marketplace and come up with three very specific combinations … to start with,” Freehling explained. Validate with networking Once you have identified potential fits, the next step is to determine which ones might be worth pursuing, and this is where networking comes in. “Think about a scientist doing a literature review before their experiments. We are going into this with an open mind, trying to learn. We're not trying to browbeat our network for an introduction to the Gates Foundation because we really want to be a program officer. That's not what we're talking about. This is networking to learn,” Campbell said. For each of your fit hypotheses, they recommend identifying and talking to five people “who are in and around that hypothesis, who are professionals, who are in and around that world,” as Freehling described it. “For example, for the communications director at a biotech startup, you want to start with a warm connection, someone you know who is a little bit closer to the biotech startup communication space,” Freehling explained. “They might not be fully in it, but it doesn't matter, as long as they're a little bit closer to it. You have a conversation with them, you don't be at all transactional at this point. This is a market research exercise.” Refine materials and apply The final step is to “use all of this information in context to refine our materials and make targeted applications,” Campbell said. “Then we are attentive to what happens. We analyze our results, and we use that to go back on this loop again and again. We do a few cycles of this, we will really quickly zero in on where we fit in.” Job applications done at this stage, after putting the work into identifying fit and developing fruitful connections, tend to yield better results than those who front-load their job search with applications. “We find that although this approach does maybe seem a little bit harder [and] asks more of us as a job seeker, maybe emotionally — it asks us to be vulnerable [and] asks us to ask ourselves some tough questions sometimes. But in our experience, this is the kind of job seeking that leads quickly to an offer that you'd love to sign,” Campbell said. For more on this and to access the full presentation from Freehling and Campbell, you can watch the whole event below. Ready to stand out from the crowd and get noticed by the recruiters who matter most? Update your Devex profile and start connecting with top global development recruiters now.