Your friends would help you find a flat. Why not a job?

When a friend is looking for an apartment, what do you do?

• You keep an eye out for something that fits what they want.
• You share it on your story, or post it to a portal like flatsforfriendz.
• You ask around: your friends, friends of friends, whoever might know someone.

Why don't we do this when a friend is looking for a job?

This started with one of my favorite reader submissions: "I wish career moves were more like collective apartment hunting for our (friends') friends."

"Looking for a job" has a stigma. It usually means you're unemployed, about to be fired, or unhappy with what you do. Not exactly high-status signaling.

But that's the wrong way to think about it.

Your job is one of the most important parts of your life, and you should get the most out of it. If you’re not learning, not enjoying what you do, not being paid properly for the work you provide, you absolutely should change jobs. And you should celebrate that you're taking care of the thing that eats a third of your waking hours.

Nobody wants to feel stuck. When you do, it's okay to rope your friends in.

That realization is step one: it's okay to ask for help with job stuff.

But the reader pushed further:

"What if this kind of support didn't require an 'active approach' first? What if we were all constantly primed to look out for opportunities for our friends, colleagues, and extended networks, matching great people with other great people, regardless of whether they're actively looking right now?

Perhaps we should think about careers much more collectively, just as we keep an eye out for apartments for our (friends') friends. Not only when someone is actively searching, but by staying continuously attentive to one another. Because maybe the best career opportunities are often not 'found,' but recognized by others."

In Berlin, this already happens with apartments. Most people are low-key hunting (open to the right place) until they land their forever flat. And they pull their friends in. "Hey, if you see something affordable in PBerg or Mitte, let me know."

I have two hypotheses for why we don't do this for our friends' jobs:

1. Our friends don't actually know what we're looking for (fair, since most of us don't really know either)
2. We assume our friends are happy with what they do (an assumption I'd like to challenge)

Let's take them one at a time.

First, you have to know what you're looking for before you can tell anyone. Let's think about the perfect job like the perfect apartment.

For an apartment, you define hard criteria: location, price, number of rooms. And because your friends know you, they also know the "vibe" you want, and your specific needs (does the layout have to work for family planning?).

For a job, the hard criteria are location, salary, industry. In my case: I wouldn't work outside the startup world, I'm not leaving Berlin, and it'd take a high salary to pull me off my current work. My friends should know all of this.

But they also need to know your "job vibe". What are your strengths? What kind of environments do you actually enjoy? Which problems excite you? Where do you want to develop long-term?

Almost none of your friends have this, unless you've specifically talked about it.

Here's how I'd fix that.

The Dinner Party Focus Group.

I featured this in a recent newsletter, so it might sound familiar. It's simple: invite 6-8 friends from different parts of your life. Be a good host, make them dinner. Or cocktails, to loosen the answers.

Then ask:

1. What are my greatest strengths?
2. If you didn't know my job, what would you guess I do for a living?

Even better, have someone else ask the questions for you. People speak more freely when you're not in the room.

Self-perception and how others see you differ more than you'd think. That gap is exactly what you want to find.

This kills two birds with one stone. You get an outside read on your strengths (which helps you figure out what to do next), and your closest friends finally understand what you're looking for.

I'd also run the full positioning exercise I wrote about here. Build a document with your strengths, your storyline, and a few examples of jobs you'd actually consider.

(This is also what I try to do in Generalyst interviews: get you talking about your wishes, your strengths, your past, so we can model a "perfect" job for you, and then go find it.)

So now you know what you want, and your friends know too. On to the second hypothesis.

Are our friends actually happy with what they do?

We don't know. But let's assume they aren't! This gives us license to throw opportunities their way.

Keep a running mental list of what your friends are secretly great at, and message them when you see something.

Become a matchmaker by default. Your friends can always say, "no thanks", but that way you're giving them the freedom to check out cool opportunities that they'd never find themselves.

Second, if you see something special in someone, tell them. Most people never get told, unprompted, "hey, you'd be unreal at X".

I recently had a situation like this at Generalyst. Interviewed a candidate finishing up her master's degree. Bubbly, high energy, friendly personality. Studied hospitality, then worked as an SDR for six months.

I told her: "hey, I think you'd make a fantastic talent acquisition manager." Here's why:

1. Talent Acquisition (TA) is like sales, so the sales experience transfers.
2. TAs need to be friendly, and have the candidate's best interests in mind, which is the entire job in hospitality.
3. Her personality just fit.

She's now interviewing as TA with one of my clients. A role that she would've never identified for herself.

So in a way, you'd be doing as a friend what I do professionally at Generalyst. Kinda cool.

Finding the right job isn't an optimization problem. There are many "perfect" jobs out there for you, and no prize for endlessly hunting a marginally better one when you're content.

But the moment you start to feel that what you do every day isn't right, ask your friends.

It takes a village.

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Whenever you're ready, there are four ways I can help you:

[1] Reclaim up to 4 hours per day and find time to do the things you've always wanted to do by enrolling into Personal Productivity OS.

[2] Hire your next Founder's Associate or other business generalist position with my startup, Generalyst Recruiting.

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