Just curious about a job change? Learn what you might be missing out on career-wise.

This week’s Careers & Coffee Pod talks about how not everyone is actively looking for a job, but many are open to new opportunities. Setting yourself up for the right opportunity if it comes along doesn’t have to be accidental.

Learn some steps to determine what roles you might consider, and how to evaluate what companies might be a good fit. Simple first steps can include updating or reviewing your LinkedIn profile or reaching out to friends who recently changed jobs.

When you're not actively looking for a job, you can still be 'job curious.' Thinking over a change in your career? Dan and Liz talk thru the different steps you can take to explore a job change.

Steps discussed:

1. Define what's wrong with your current job

2. Turn these into opportunities to become more satisfied.

3. Talk to friends who have changed careers recently.

4. Network to find any opportunities that might fit your skills.

5. Be open to consider opportunities that you discover.

More resources:

10 things to consider before accepting a job

Checklist for considering if a job is right for you

Good. Morning, Liz. Welcome back everybody.

Careers and coffee episode number 644.

Right. Morning.

Good morning. This is not episode number 644.

Probably. I have no idea where we're out probably in the 30s.

But yeah. Hey, we're doing good. We're still rolling. So I think

we're almost a year into this.

Yeah, that flew by.

It was a quick year. Right. Cool. Well, let's

dive right into our topic for today. So we wanted to talk

today about what it means to be job curious. And this is

actually something that came up. Because we're hosting a career

fair. We are your career fair? What do you know, Corridor

Careers where where to go? Yeah, April 28. Cedar Rapids Public

Library, from three to 6pm. We already have, like 15, employers

signed up. And we're going to be heading towards well over 30.

Hopefully. So good news on that front.

Yeah, we hope this will be the most accessible

Career Fair yet. And when we say accessible, not just mean from

like, accessibility standpoint, but from like meeting

jobseekers, where they are standpoint. So that's what our

topic is about. Today, we're going to talk about are you job

curious? And is there a place for you at a career fair? Maybe?

Yeah. And I think when you think about a job

seeker, there's really a couple, there's probably two different

kinds, right? You have somebody that's 100%, looking for a job

right now they are checking the job boards every day, or at

least every, you know, few days, to see what new is out there.

But then you have somebody that's just maybe curious or

more of like what we would call passive job seeker, right?

Somebody who's open to exploring new opportunities, but not

working every day. And so that's what we want to talk about

today. So it was if I had to ask you, like, what are some things

that a job curious job seeker should be looking for? Like,

what would you think those are?

Well, I think it's just opening your mind to the

possibilities of new opportunities. So you may be

have been working in your position for some time, so it's

a good chance to kind of evaluate is this job still right

for me, is the career path still right? For me, how just take a

pulse on your level of comfort with your current role. And

then, you know, you could do simple things like just get on

LinkedIn and take a look at and see what some of your colleagues

or just friends and the are doing. And if there's any job

moves that they're going through, maybe talk to him a

little bit about their job move and how the experience was for

them. So you can kind of just help yourself, set your mind at

ease with the potential of looking and then if the right

opportunity does come your way, then you'd be kind of ready for

that to happen.

Yeah, I really like that point to, you know,

talk to friends, talk to other people that have just gone

through this, maybe see what the experience is like, you know,

especially right now that it really is a job seekers market.

There's a lot of jobs open. Companies are I don't want to

say scrambling, but somewhat like to find it to find quality

employees. So yeah, that's, that's a really good point. I

found an article on forbes.com that talks about this and talks.

And the title is never ever take a job unless it passes this

test. Some really good questions on it that I wanted to review.

And we'll drop this in the show notes. So just some things to

consider when you are thinking about looking or taking a new

job. So here are some of the questions. Will I learn

something new in this job that I don't know already? What are the

working hours for this job? What are the opportunities for

advancement in this new job? Who was my manager at the new job?

What will the working day be like? So I thought this is a

really good article. How did the company treat me during the

recruiting process? Like all really like kind of different

things to think about, rather than what's the job title? And

how much am I making? Yeah, that's a lot.

That's a lot better in depth because you don't want

to go through the hassle of making a job move and then find

out a weekend that it's not right for you. That's that's so

much stress. So it's already stressful enough to go through a

job search process or a job change. It's, it can be pretty

disruptive. So that checklist mentality is really helpful,

especially if you were maybe evaluating multiple offers,

which would be awesome, right? Like if you had three great

offers to consider. And if you do have at least one offer, you

should definitely try to see if there's another similar role out

there where you could compare, just like you would comparison

shop, you know, a big purchase, this is a major change in your

life, potentially. So having some comparison shopping tools

out there, and that the checklist is a great idea. So

we'll throw that in the show notes. So you can add that tear

your list of two dues if you're interested in maybe exploring

if your job curious. Yeah, I mean, I think

it comes down to like, what are those must have? Right, like,

what are those? I mean, you're not gonna have the whole

enchilada, right? Yeah, if you know, working for a company that

you really care about, that's making an impact is more

important than say, money or like your working hours. I just

feel like, there's certain things that you have to decide

that are most important to you, and try to align those with the

company that you go work for. Hmm.

Yeah, and sometimes it's, um, you know, evaluating

what kind of culture it is at the the job, but there's no one

culture that's right for everyone. There are some

business cultures that appeal to different kinds of people. So if

you're, like, very regimented, and you like rules, like you

like knowing what the rules are, and sticking to them and not,

not having a lot of nothing having to adapt every day to

changing situations, then you might want to look for a company

culture that's a little bit more structured. And you can kind of

look in certain industries where that structure may exist. So

military, military contract companies, any kind of it

situation might be a good fit, too, because there's generally a

lot of structure around those roles. But if you're open and

adaptable, and you like to be, you know, you'd like different

things each day a mix of different things, maybe a

culture that's closer to a retail environment, or something

that enact interacts with the public on a regular basis might

be better for you, for maybe like a nonprofit, those

typically have lots of things happening all the time. So

yeah, and I think you bring up a really good

point that, you know, there's maybe no, there's, I feel like

there's company values, right, at every company that you can

usually just find on their website, it'll list out the

values. You know, most companies have like, five, and they

usually kind of make like an acronym out of it. But then,

yeah, within each company, there's obviously all these

different jobs. Right? And so blending your personality traits

to the job that you're going after. Super important.

Yeah. There's that train.

There's a train. Yeah. Can

you hear it? brings up a good point. So you're in

the office, I'm working from home, working from home is a big

huge thing that's come up. And people have been it who have

been working in an office, maybe curious about work from home

situations, if they didn't get a chance to do that, during the

pandemic, they might be very interested in.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, for me, and I

really appreciate our company's culture and the fact that we

have this flexibility, right, like, you can work from the

office, you can work from home. I do most both days. Right now.

So that's, that's just kind of something that I've chosen to

do. So. Um, all right. Anything else? Before we sign off?

Nope. So let's just say I'm just curious. And I want

to see what's out there. So I guess my first steps are going

to be kind of look internal, like, what am I looking for? Or

what am I dissatisfied with? So start with the easy, those are

easier to figure out right? Then what you want is what you don't

want. So when you determine what you don't like, with your

current role, maybe try to look for the opportunity there. So is

there something that would be more satisfying, so identify

that, and then you can start to circle around, maybe some

friends that have gone through transitions in the last two

years, and see how their experience was if they had any

pointers for you? And also networking? Do they know about

any opportunities that might fit your skill set? You tell them

you're not necessarily need to change right now, but you might

be interested sometime this year. It'd be interesting to see

what would happen there. If you put that put it out to the world

that you might be interested in a change. And then yeah, develop

some kind of checklist. So if you weren't We're going to

decide whether to apply or whether to, you know, say yes to

a company, what would the criteria be for you? And that

way you can cleanly evaluate those opportunities as they come

your way.

Well, alright, let's

See you next time guys.