Tired of job boards and late-night applications that lead nowhere? Learn how to identify and leverage your transferable skills to find roles that actually fit—download the free Ultimate Transferable Skills Guide → www.careerbloomcoaching.com/the-ultimate-transferable-skills-guide

In this episode of Career Clarity Unlocked, Theresa White, Career Clarity Expert and 5x Certified Career Coach, explains why personality tests and values exercises aren’t enough and what actually works to find a career that energizes you.

If you’ve been “spray and praying” with job apps, second-guessing your career path, or trying to force-fit yourself into job descriptions, this episode will change how you job search for work.

Theresa breaks down her signature three-step framework—Assess, Align, Apply—and shows you how to go from “I guess I could do that” to “YES, this fits.” You’ll learn how to inventory your skills, uncover what energizes you (not just what you're good at), and use tools like ChatGPT and job boards to find aligned, realistic career options that you actually want.

This episode is perfect for job seekers, mid-career professionals, career changers, or anyone feeling stuck, scattered, or unclear about their next step.

You’ll learn:

→ What career clarity actually is (and isn’t)

→ How to stop wasting time on jobs that aren’t a fit

→ Why values exercises and personality tests aren’t enough

→ How to use AI tools like ChatGPT to find aligned roles

→ The top mindset traps that keep you stuck in “maybe”

→ Real client examples of what shifts when clarity clicks

🕒 Episode Guide

00:00 Introduction to Career Clarity

00:58 Understanding the Career Clarity Gap

02:17 Defining Real Career Clarity

03:51 The Importance of Career Clarity

04:17 Three-Step Framework: Assess, Align, Apply

15:11 Step 1: Assess Your Skills

19:59 Step 2: Align Your Skills with Your Passion

23:27 Step 3: Apply for Aligned Roles

26:27 Conclusion and Next Steps

🎁 Free career clarity resources:

→ Career Clarity Masterclass

→ Impact-Driven Job Guide

→ Transferable Skills Guide

💼 Coaching + strategy support:

→ Career Clarity Formula Program

→ 1:1 Deep Dive Coaching Session

→ Free Career Clarity Consultation

Connect with Career Coach Theresa White:

1. LinkedIn: @Theresa A. White
2. Facebook: Career Bloom Coaching
3. Instagram: @theresa_careerbloom
4. YouTube: @careerbloom
5. TikTok: @career.bloom
6. Website: www.CareerBloomCoaching.com

#CareerClarity #CareerChange #JobSearchStrategy #CareerCoaching #CareerCoach #AIJobSearch #CareerSearchTips #CareerClarityMasterclass #CareerAdvice #FindYourCareerFit #ChatGPTForJobSearch #AssessAlignApply #CareerAlignment #DreamJob

 If you've ever found yourself spiraling down a late night rabbit hole of. What am I meant to do and why haven't I found it yet? And let's be honest, who hasn't? Then you're in the right place. I'm Theresa White, career Clarity expert and five times certified career coach, and I'm here to help you navigate the question of how to find a career that truly lights you up on career clarity.

Unlock. We're all about those light bulb moments. I'm talking to people who are still trying to figure out what they're meant to do, coaching them life to reach that magical, yes, this is it moment, and we'll also hear from those who've already found their dream careers and figure out exactly how they did it.

Whether you are looking for inspiration or actionable advice on finding a career you love, I've got you covered time to unlock some career clarity. Let's dive in. 

Welcome back to Career Clarity and Love. I have a great episode ahead for you today, especially if you are deep in the job search, possibly second guessing everything from your resume to whether or not you're even in the right career anymore.

And that right there is what I call the career clarity gap. And it's where so, so many talented, driven, heartbroken women get stuck. So today's episode is all about cracking that open and finally answering what is career clarity really, because let's clear something up right off the bat.

Career clarity is not knowing your Myers-Briggs type, your strengths or your top five values from that workshop your company made you take. Those things are useful. Mm-hmm. But they're not enough. Real career clarity is knowing exactly what types of roles you wanna target, which industries and which work environments feel right to you.

And it's not just a feeling of like, yeah, I can do this, but man, this makes me come alive. And it's the difference between I'm good at spreadsheets and I wanna be a customer insight strategist at a mission-driven startup where I get to turn data into stories that drive real world change. Boom. That is career clarity.

Stop settling for jobs that drain them and start finding roles that energize them, inspire them, and make them come alive. And in today's episode, I'm going to walk you through what career clarity really means and what it is not.

Why not having career clarity is quietly sabotaging your job search and 📍 your confidence . What's really getting in the way of you gaining clarity, and I'm gonna share my three step framework, assess, align, apply so that you can start building your own career clarity today.

By the end of this episode, you'll walk away knowing the difference between qualified for a job and being excited about it.

How to identify roles that actually align with the life here, one, so you're not in the same spot a year from now. Again, wondering what went wrong and the one mindset shift that will help you stop wasting time on aimless applications and start moving with confidence. And I know career clarity can sound so overvalue, especially if you've been stuck in confusion.

Uncertainty analysis paralysis for a while. But I promise we are not gonna be reinventing your entire life overnight. We're gonna uncover what's already there, the skills you love using, the problems that excite you when you're solving them. Re both that make you say, wait, that's a real job, because they are, and I'm going to show you how to find them.

So grab your favorite beverage, get cozy, and let's finally answer that big scary, beautiful question together. What do I actually want to do with my career? We are gonna start with defining career clarity. 'cause as I already had said, career clarity is not knowing your skill, strengths or values.

That was helpful. But if you know that you value growth, impact creativity and autonomy, that's fantastic. But now what job is that? Career clarity is actionable. It's knowing the exact types of roles that you are excited about targeting. It's not big ideas, but a specific group of job titles that genuinely excites you.

And it is knowing the types of industries and companies that aligned with who you are. And to me, you know that you have clarity when it feels right in your gut. It's not this feeling of like. I meet their qualifications. I can do this, I should apply. No, it's reading a job description and being like, that sounds so exciting.

There's people who get paid to do this. Oh my God, I would love to do that. And it is you feeling confident that this is possible for you to reach those roles. Maybe they're a stretch role. Maybe there's some upskilling required. Maybe it will require you to go networking, but it does feel realistic.

Because if you get excited about brain surgery, but you're quite now an accountant. Well, that's not realistic. I mean, yes, you can go back to school and all of that, but you're not gonna make that a reality in the next year. So that to me, wouldn't count as career clarity unless you're committed to going back to school for that extended amount of time.

But career clarity is a job where you're like, yep, no, I'll take two Coursera classes and I'm gonna talk to a couple of people, but I know I can achieve this and I'm excited to go in that direction. Now you might wonder why I talk so much about career clarity, and it's because it's really, really important.

Because without clarity, you are most likely in what we call a spray and pray job search. That is when you send off hundreds of hundreds of applications and just hoping something sticks. But think about it, if you send out, let's say, 800 applications and you actually land one out of those 800. What are the chances this one out of 800 is actually a good fit?

It's probably not. And most likely you're gonna be in the same cycle in a year or two. And career clarity is the one thing that can break this pattern and actually allows you to move towards work that feels aligned and fulfilling. And the beautiful thing is that career clarity actually makes your life easier.

Because it streamlines your entire job search and everything that follows becomes so much easier and faster. You can position yourself as the ideal candidate if you know the roles you're targeting and the problem they're trying to solve by filling those roles because then you can position yourself as the solution to that exact problem that makes your job search so much more efficient, more effective, faster, and a lot less stressful.

Now, you might wonder what happens if you don't have clarity. Well, that is what I talk to people about every day. It is this forever long, frustrating and exhausting job search where you feel like you're , wasting months or years applying to roles that in the end aren't even right for you. And to give you an example, I recently worked with a client and she came to me after applying four hundreds and hundreds of roles for over a year.

She was getting nowhere. She felt stuck, super frustrated, discouraged. She didn't know what was wrong. Was it her? Was it her resume? What is going on? I had one career clarity session with her. She had this huge breakthrough that the roles she'd been applying to were roles that she was good at, she was qualified for, but they didn't excite her.

They felt blah, and that energy carried in her interviews, in her resume everywhere. The moment she figured out that customer success is the one piece that makes her come alive, that sparks her. It gave her a completely different and a really strong sense of direction. And the crazy thing is, well, actually not crazy because I see it happening all the time, but the first role she applied to in that field led to an a credible offer.

That's the power of career clarity. So now you might be wondering, yes, career clarity is great. Why doesn't everyone have that clarity? Well, there's a couple of things that get in the way. And I see those with my clients over and over. But those were also the things that I struggled with myself eight years ago because I had no clue what I was meant to do.

Like into my early thirties. I was as lost as, I don't know what is the saying? Well drop a comment below and let me know what the saying is. I'm missing it right now. My English is having a gap here. Um, but I was lost. I had no clue. I was like, well, I studied philosophy. I have a degree in global leadership and sustainable development.

I've worked for a car rental company. I've experienced in hr. Right now I'm in recruiting, but what am I supposed to do? Because none of those have felt right so far. How the hell, I'm gonna figure that out. So the three biggest blocks to gaining clarity that I see is one overthinking. That is when we're stuck in analysis paralysis, spending months and months, filling out values, worksheets, taking quizzes, journaling, but never actually moving forward.

The second one is a huge one, and , it's a sunk cost fallacy. The sun cost fallacy means that you keep going in one direction because of what you already put into it, even if it no longer serves you. So in your career, you feel like you have to keep going in that same lane because of all that you put into it.

You invested your time, your energy, your money, education, even if it no longer feels fulfilling. But you worked so, so hard to get to where you are that you feel like it would be crazy to give it all up and start over. But the really important thing that most people don't realize is that you're not gonna be starting over because , those very same skills and the experience that you build had actually be applied in totally different ways, in different roles, in different settings.

It's just so hard to see that. When you've been in one lane for a long time and you have never experienced those other different ways to apply those safe skills. And the third one is the biggest reason people don't gain career clarity, it's because you don't know how. I had absolutely no clue, and I was so fascinated just the question on why no one could actually help me answer it, that I became obsessed with answering it.

Studying career development for years, and then finally developing that coaching program for Career Clarity formula to give people actual guidance on how to find that answer for themselves. But most people don't know where to start. No one teaches us, and there is so much vague and abstract advice. We already talked about it.

Find your values journal about your purpose. And all that is beautiful, but it does not help if we can't translate that into real actionable next steps. So inside the Career Clarity formula, that is where I help people identify what energizes them, and then turn that into a concrete career direction.

That means a roles and path that they 📍 feel excited and confident about. And I guarantee that I can help you less in 30 days or less. And today I'm gonna walk you through a piece of the program that can really help you take the first step towards gaining actionable career clarity. And the strategy I wanna share with you today is called assess align, apply.

First we're gonna assess, which means you're gonna inventory your skills. Second, it's about aligning, identifying the skills that truly energizes you. And third, we're gonna apply. You're gonna pursue roles that truly feel aligned. So let's start as the first step. Assess. That's when we inventory your heart skills, your soft skills, and your hybrid skills, and in order to inventory your skills.

And this is all your skills, not just the skills that are officially on your job description. You might be doing things that you just do because they come to you naturally, or because you cannot not do them. I, for example, worked with a merchandiser and she told me she hates everything about her job.

There's nothing she would wanna even put down on the list of skills she wants to use again. Once you dug into it, she actually realized that she loves helping new hires. She loves training them, she loves taking them under her wings, getting them acclimated, teaching them, training them, setting them up for success.

She wasn't paid to do that. It wasn't in her job description, but yet she had over 10 years experience doing exactly that. So approach this exercise from a wide lens of all the things you do, even if those aren't the ones you're specifically being paid for. And then we are gonna take it in three categories to make it easier to categorize and list all the skills you have.

Your first category is gonna be your hard skills. Those are your concrete abilities. It's the, it's answering the question, what specific tools, software, or technical method can and do I use? So this is the measurable CHOP specific competencies. Technical proficiencies, software knowledge certifications, industry specific expertise.

If we, for example, take a marketing manager as an example, their hard skills might include Google Analytics, Salesforce, C-R-M-S-E-O, optimization, marketing automation tools, and so on. The second category are our soft skills. Those are your personal attributes. This is answering the question, how do you naturally interact with people and approach challenges?

It's how you do the work you're doing, how you work with others, how you approach tasks, and that includes communication, leadership, problem solving, teamwork. Or if you go back to the example of our marketing manager, soft skills might be strategic thinking, cross-functional team leadership or stakeholder communication.

Now our third categories are hybrid or strategic skills, and they point towards the strategic impact your work has. And the question, the answer is, where do you add unique value by applying both your technical and your strategic thinking. So those are the skills that bridge the technical knowledge, this human judgment or critical thinking.

So those include data analysis and interpretation, user experience design, or going back to our marketing manager. That can include customer data analysis and segmentation content strategy informed by performance metrics or digital customer journey mapping. So to summarize that, we have three types of categories of skills that we want to inventory.

One, your hard skills, your concrete abilities that answer the question. What specific tools, software, or technical methods can and do I use two, your soft skills, your personal attributes, answering the question of how do you naturally interact with people and how you approach challenges.

And three, your hybrid and strategic skills pointing towards your strategic positioning, and those are the ones answering the question, where do you add unique value? By applying both technical and strategic thinking. And if you are the type of person who is like, oh, it's so hard to start this list from scratch, can I have a list of skills where I can just check off if I have them or not?

I got you covered. You can head over to my website, career bloom coaching.com. Under resources, you find your transferable skills guide, and this is a. Long list of transferable skills that have the hard skills, soft skills, hybrid skills, listed the most common ones, and you can go through them and find the ones that you ly fill.

You have. Now we can move on to step number two, which is called Align. And now we wanna identify the skills that energize and inspire you. Because now we have this long list of skills that you have, which is fantastic. You have a lot of skills, but if you now want to find a job that uses all the skills you have, you're gonna end up in a job that's really similar to the one you're doing right now.

And if you are not happy with what you're doing right now, that's totally against the point. So how now do we identify which of the skills you actually want to be using? This is where I invite you to think about yourself like a battery, and there are certain things we do that energize us, that make us come alive.

Think about when you're in that state of flow and you just feel like, I could be doing this forever. Right? It's like your battery fills itself, and then there are things that drain us that zap our energy and we feel like exhausted and tired, and we have nothing left. Those are things that are draining us.

So now we wanna look back at your list of skills and identify for each skill how it makes you feel when you use it for an extended period of time. So our marketing manager, for example, would think, okay, now if I would spend four to six hours SEO optimizing a website or a blog post, how would I feel inside my body at the end of that time?

And really important is that you don't think about if you're good or bad about something, because proficiency does not mean something energizes you. You can be really good at something and it can still drain you. So leave out all the shoulds or, yes, I'm good at this, out of that equation. We know you're good at it, but how do you feel honestly when you perform that task?

Will you feel drained and exhausted? Would your battery be empty and or do you feel energized, motivated, and empowered? Is your battery gonna be full? This, that visual, revisit the list of skills that you created. Cross out the ones that drain and exhaust you and circle the ones that energize and motivate you.

There's gonna be a lot of ones where you feel like, well, they're kind of somewhere in the middle. Cross them out. I only want you to circle the ones where you're like clear without a question of, yes, I love doing this. This is totally energizing and motivating for me. Without a question. Now, a great tool to help you identify what energizes and what drains you is the sparky type assessment.

If you've been listening to my show for a while, you heard me talk about this many times, you can take it for free on sparker type.com. And the Sparky Time assessment originated from the decades long experience and research of award-winning author, founder, and business advisor, Jonathan Fields, and it focuses on identifying new unique source code for work that makes it come alive.

I did have the honor of having Jonathan Fields on the show. So if you haven't seen that episode yet, make sure you go and listen to it. It was incredible. And this is a free 10 minute assessment that you again, can take on sparko type.com. Now we're moving on to step number three, apply. This is when we're gonna pursue and identify the roles that feel really aligned to you.

And there's two ways to approach this. The first approach is that we're gonna go to job boards like Indeed or Max List, or LinkedIn. And you wanna search this job board, not by job titles, but by keywords of your energizing skills. So for example, if you have circled speech writing, Adobe Creative Suite leadership, emotional intelligence, project management, those are the keywords. You're gonna type in the search bar off the job board website, and then you're gonna see what jobs come up and you're gonna read. Through those tasks and responsibilities that belong to those jobs, and you will have to play around this different combinations of your energizing skills.

Enter three to five at a time, and then your goal is to find positions that revolve around the skills that you circled. Another way you can do it is to go to chat to pt, or any other AI tool that you enjoy using. And type in the prompt Act as an expert career coach and write my ideal job description. My ideal job revolves around using all of the following skills, and you enter your list of energizing skills.

As always, AI gives us a great starting point, but it will be up to you to refine it, to edit it, to fill out like, okay, yes, this, this does resonate, this doesn't. I wanna rewrite that. And once you have your own version. You are gonna use a second prompt, and you're gonna say, provide the eight most likely job titles for the following job description.

And then you copy paste your ideal job description in the way you edit it, that it really resonates with you, um, into that prompt. And then you're gonna get a group of job titles that hopefully feel really aligned. Describe the type of work that revolves around all the skills that energize you and make you come alive.

Now to recap this, our strategy for this is assess, align, apply. So assess, you're gonna inventory your heart, soft, and hybrid skills align. You're gonna identify which of the skills energize you and which of the ones drain you. And then third, apply, you're gonna find the roles by searching. With the keywords of your energizing skills or using ache teeth to find roles that feel truly aligned and revolve around your energizing skills.

So we covered a lot today. One important takeaway I want you to remember is that career clarity isn't just about what you can do. It's about finding what lights you. It's knowing the exact roles, industries, and work environments that make you come alive, excited and confident.

It's trading in the draining cycle of, yeah, I guess I can do that for a crystal clear vision of this is what I want and I know how to go after it. Because without that clarity you end up spinning. You're gonna continue to send out hundreds and hundreds of applications, just hoping for something to stick and then landing a role that might look okay on paper, but feels empty after another six months. And you are wasting so much precious time and energy on opportunities that never truly fit.

And you might keep wondering, why do I waste all this time in my life doing something that isn't aligned, that isn't meaningful, that doesn't feel like me?

But once you have clarity. Your job search gets faster, easier, less stressful. You can build a personal brand that makes you stand out, that positions you as the candidate these hiring managers are looking for. And you'll know what to say in interviews, how to tell your story because you are not guessing.

You are aligned. And best of all, you finally feel like your work reflects who you really are. Can't tell you how priceless that is. I'm not experienced that just for myself, but I see it as so many of my clients whose entire life changes that they're suddenly radiating joy instead of feeling so depressed and anxious every day.

So now if you're sitting here thinking, oh my God, therea, I really want that, but I still don't know how to really figure this out for myself. Don't worry. That's what I'm here for. And this is exactly why I created the Career Clarity Formula, my coaching program, in which I guarantee you career clarity within 30 days.

So if you're feeling tired of feeling stuck in that same old pattern and you are ready for real career clarity, you are ready for someone to guide you in identifying what truly energizes you and how that translates into actual roles and job titles, and find work that is aligned, fulfilling, and well paying.

Of course, it's time for you to book a free consultation call with me and my team. We're gonna talk through it, get a feel for where you're stuck, and help you figure out your next best step. Book a time right now on career bloom coaching.com. Limited time spots are available for this month.

And if anything hits home from this episode, I would absolutely love to hear from you. I would love if you give one of the things from this episode a try, maybe creating a list of your skills. Thinking about yourself like a battery, and identifying some things that energize you and some things that drain you.

Or playing around as job boards to find roles that revolve around you. Energizing skills, and then let me know how it goes. Tag me on LinkedIn. Sent me a dm, sent me an email, drop a review in the podcast right down here. I am cheering you on and I'd be so excited to hear from you. So that is all for today.

Thanks so much for hanging out with me and I can't wait to see you back here next week on Career Clarity Unlocked.

 And that's a wrap for today's episode of Career Clarity Unlocked, if you feeling stuck in that. What's next? Spiral and are ready to finally break free. Let's chat. You can book your free career clarity call where we'll uncover what's really important to you. Tackle any obstacles holding you back and map out your best next step.

Schedule your free 30 minute call today on career bloom coaching.com and before you head out, be sure to follow us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, so you never miss an episode. If today's conversation gave you new insights and inspiration, please leave a review. It really helps us reach more amazing listeners like you.

And don't forget to share this episode with a friend or on social media. Your support truly means the world. Thanks for hanging out with me and I'll see you next time.