Finding Jobs Is Like Dating. It’s All About Matching.

Finding a job is hard. Finding a great job is harder. Finding a perfect job is impossible.

For most people in the world, finding a job is an unavoidable thing.

As a person who has been working in 3 different countries and looking for jobs several times with sending hundreds of resumes, I did 50+interviews. I have known one thing is :

Finding a job is not easier than finding a life partner. It’s all about matching instead of finding the perfect one.

🔆 Know what you are good at and what you want

In the past years, a wrong mindset set has wasted tons of time to “please” myself to meet the qualifications that seem “good” jobs.

The “good” means a high-paying and flexible TPO or medical insurance plan.

Of course, those are very important, but I have never truly care about what I want from that job.

Is it quick learning and promotion?

Better career development?

Or building a great network for myself?

No one ever told me what “matchable and good ” means to a person. The big environment told me to get into the company that everybody is craving for.

But life is not like gaming, beating a monster or enemy to be leveled up.

Life is a subjective thing; it’s all about how I feel and my experience.

When I just came to LA, one of my classmates has a bachelor's of UC Berkeley, and I’m surprised he didn’t go to those big tech companies. Instead, he wants to be a public teacher to teach coding.

I was shocked because, in China, the education we have received from a child is to fight for the best. Best schools, best jobs, best salaries. If someone graduates from a top school and chooses to do a normal job, they will be considered a “loser.

However, it’s very common in the US. I have heard a friend with a 4.0 GPA got an offer from Stanford but chose a State public college to stay closer with his family. .”

After years, I have used to it now. All of us is the director of our life, we made our own choice that is the best for us instead to please anyone.

🌻 Have a realistic target

For entry-level job seekers or career transitioners, have a realistic job expectation is crucial.

You can’t get a job at Google or Facebook after a few months of training. For those big five companies, your are competing with the candidate from the world.

To find a contract job or full-time job from smaller companies to collect working experience first.

Once you get into the industry and have 2–3 years of experience in the design area, you will find a whole new world, and getting much easier to change jobs.

If your target is set too high, the pressure for interviewing will increase and affect your job hunting motivation.

💡Use 4P theory of selling yourself

Consider yourself as a product.

The process of looking for a job is a process of self-marketing.

As we know, job referral is the key. It’s necessary to know how to sell yourself and let the hiring manager know why you are non-replaceable and the best match for the position.

According to the 4P theory,

The Product is: Your personality, working experience, competence

The Price is: Your salary expectation

The Place is: How you build your connections to your dream company.

The Promotion is: How you make the company believe you are qualified and bring value to them in the future.

About building the connection, my experience is to search the current employees in your dream company and add them on LinkedIn.

If you feel stressed to add the senior-level employees, you can add the junior level first, send them a message like :

Hi XXX,

My name is XX and am interested in a XXX position in XXX (company/team name).

I see you have worked in XX for (time frame), I would like to know if the position is fit for me or if you could do a 15 min coffee chat for me to get to know the company culture would be great!

If so, could you please tell me your availability this week, or if you are busy, any recommendation would be very much appreciated!

Thank you so much for your time and help. Looking forward to hearing fro you！

Most of the people are very generous and willing to collect with you. Don’t be shy!

After you guys connected, you can have a zoom meeting to know further what kind of person their team/ company is looking for. And do you like the culture or not.