Not to wax nostalgic, but back in the pre-2000 days, when you talked to your neighbors, it was easy to understand what they did for a living. They might be a marketing professional. Or an IT person. Or a sales representative. Or a firefighter. Or a florist.
Recently, the job market has grown dramatically more complex, and I've seen statistics claiming that there are more than 200,000 different occupational niches worldwide. Not only have fairly mainstream job avenues like marketing now fragmented into hundreds of specialized niches (e.g., content marketing specialists, customer acquisition directors, SEO engineers, brand evangelists, etc.), but I'll also routinely come across titles like grief clerk, chief happiness officer, omni-experience ambassador and kinship explorer navigator that leave even an experienced career counselor such as myself scratching their head.
Given these dynamics, and the explosion of new job titles, I routinely counsel my clients to practice defining their careers from an even more straightforward, timeless perspective. I ask them to answer the fundamental question, "What kinds of problems do you solve for money?" Here's why this approach to achieving career clarity pays dividends and why it’s a helpful exercise:
1. It breaks down your work into more understandable terms
The first benefit of looking at your career through the lens of problem-solving is that it makes it far more likely you'll be able to explain your work — and craft an effective "elevator pitch" that people can understand. This is particularly true when you work in a fairly obscure profession and hold a title that won't be all that familiar to those who aren't well-versed in your field or industry.
For example, if you tell the average person you're a "programmer writer," they may nod and pretend they're familiar with such a role, but in all honesty, they likely will walk away without having the first clue about what you do. If instead you explain that you "draft highly technical documentation for computer programmers that enables them to better understand a new technology, how to work with it and build new products based on it, " even non-technical people will likely have some understanding.
There's a financial planner I met who would explain that her specialty was working with women who were "suddenly single due to death or divorce." And that her passion centered around helping "eliminate the fear, stress and confusion for women who hadn't managed their personal finances on their own." The fact that she positioned her job focus this way and painted such a vivid picture of the solution she offered is the reason I still remember her, almost 20 years later.
2. It increases your chances of generating useful job referrals
Another benefit of explaining your job in the way I've suggested is that you might find that talking in the language of problems, solutions and "pain relief" helps generate a greater number of job-related referrals. Why is this the case? While most people don't get notified about many job openings directly, almost all of us come across individuals in our networks complaining about problems they're facing or issues they need help solving.
For example, a friend who is a business owner might opine that their "accounting system is a mess" or that they’re "stressed out, overworked and wish they could find a trusted right-hand person who could take some day-to-day administrative tasks off their plate."
Alternatively, you might attend a cocktail party and hear somebody mention they don't have the first clue about putting a website together — or that their current site isn't ranking high on Google. In such a case, can you be the hero who makes a win/win introduction to somebody who specializes in solving such problems?
3. It helps you understand the value you bring to organizations
An additional reason I'm a big believer in the problem/solution line of thinking is that, in one sense, it helps inoculate professionals against the possibility of career obsolescence, stagnation and job loss. The job market is a market, after all. It's all about supply and demand — and our ability to make a living depends on our ability to supply a solution to a need currently being faced by a hiring manager or business owner.
So, when somebody seems unclear about how their work adds value to a business and how it affects the bottom line, it makes my brow furrow a bit. No job exists in a vacuum, and we all need to be looking ahead, to some degree, in order to make sure that whatever problems we solve today in exchange for a paycheck are problems that will likely still exist tomorrow, next week, next year and the decade beyond. Without contemplating this factor, you can find yourself on a career trajectory that isn't sustainable over the long term — and suddenly need to retrain or make an unplanned career shift.
So if you're feeling unsure about the value your role adds to an organization, and unable to articulate it clearly, try asking yourself a few diagnostic questions such as "What unique skills, abilities, and qualities do I bring to the work environment each day?" and “How do my contributions help the business achieve its overall goals?” and "If I were to move on to a new employer, how long would it take my current company to train somebody new to handle my role?”
4. It will supercharge your success in the interviewing process
On a final note, defining yourself as an expert problem-solver is a valuable framework in the interviewing process with companies, especially if you're one of the many folks for whom selling yourself isn't a strong suit.
Simply put, instead of feeling that you have to say whatever it takes to get hired, shift your perspective from talking all about yourself to making it more about understanding the job and figuring out how to solve the employer's problems. Treat the interviewer as your customer and ask lots of questions to clarify the issues they need to solve, where exactly they're getting stuck and how you'd be able to make their life easier if they brought you on board. Then, once you've gotten them to open up and articulate their specific needs, you'll be in a far better position to show them how you can be the aspirin to their headache.
The subtle point I'm trying to convey is that employers primarily care about one thing: "Are you the person who seems to best understand the problems I'm facing — and the most confident you'd be able to solve them?"
At the end of the day, while you may understand your job inside and out, your title alone doesn't do justice to what you do, exactly, and the value you truly bring to an organization. Figure out that aspect of things and as stated above, it should enhance your career success in a myriad of ways.