Your Career Needs a Target List
There’s a moment in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland when Alice asks the Cheshire Cat which way she ought to go. The Cat’s reply is timeless: if you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.
“Which way should I go?” is the question we’re constantly asking. In the career context, people express frustration about their current job situation or complain about their inability to find an opportunity that might energize them. And when I ask what organizations they’re targeting, most don’t have a clear answer. They’re applying broadly, scrolling job boards reactively, and hoping something sticks. In a transforming job market, hoping that this will magically land you in your dream role is a false hope.
So what’s the real issue? People don’t spend time really figuring out who they are, what they want to be doing, and then mapping those insights into a specific target list of organizations where they could thrive.
When advising student-athletes through their college recruiting process, I use a simple framework that applies directly here. First, we work to help them define their “best fit” — combining their academic and athletic profile, college preferences like location and size, and what works financially. Once those variables are clear, I tell them they’re ready to “recruit yourself.” That means building a target list of 10-30 schools, developing a strong online recruiting profile, and then consistently reaching out to coaches at their target programs. This process is critical because here’s the reality: 99% of student-athletes need to invest the time and effort to recruit themselves. No one is coming to find them.
The same is true for your career.
Define Your Best Fit
Ok, I get it — when just starting out the “just trying to find any job I can get” approach makes sense, and given the uncertainty AI is creating, this may be the vibe more than ever. But whether you’re in your first role or your fifth, you should be using the job you’re in now to sharpen what “best fit” means for you.
Current roles help a lot because many of our ideas about work–and what works for us–get shaped by the jobs we’ve experienced. But even as you move through subsequent roles, keep asking yourself:
What problems do I want to help solve?
What users or customers am I most drawn to serve?
What kinds of things do I love doing in my work — and what do I hate doing?
What kind of environment do I thrive in — working with a lot of people, or performing more often in solo-player mode?
There are many more questions you can come up with to shape what matters to you. The key is being honest about what you’ve learned from the roles you’ve already had, not just what sounds good on paper.
Build Your Target List
This self-inventory sets you up for the next critical step to create a target list of organizations based on what you’ve identified. Focus on the problems you want to solve and the users or customers you want to serve, because these are the variables that let you research organizations from the outside and evaluate whether they map to your priorities.
See how many organizations should be added to your list. It might be two or three, or it could be ten or more. The number matters less than the specificity so make sure each organization is on your list because you can connect it directly to your best fit questions.
Once your target list takes shape, make sure your “online recruiting profile” is fully built out. For the career context, this is your LinkedIn profile. Make sure it highlights who you are as a person and potential team member. Imagine someone from an organization on your target list lands on your profile, and ask yourself, “Will they see something that makes me stand out?”
Start the Outreach
The real work begins once your target list and profile are in place. Start researching who works at the organizations on your list in the types of roles that interest you — marketing, product, business operations, whatever your lane is. Keep track of these people and look for connections. Are you one or two degrees of separation away? Who can make an introduction?
Then reach out. Communicate clearly your interest in learning more about their organization and the role they play. Propose a 15-20 minute Zoom conversation, as that’s a time commitment most people can fit into their schedule. And if you’re in the same city, offer to meet for coffee near their workplace. Meeting face to face is always the best option when it can work.
Use these conversations to learn if this organization is truly a best fit. Ask what they look for in new hires, what attributes they prioritize. Ask about the hiring process. Don’t be afraid to ask if roles are open that aren’t posted on the careers page. And ask the person you’re meeting with if they can introduce you to another colleague at the organization. Keep building your network inside the places that rise to the top of your list.
This is the part of the process where the real learning happens. The more conversations you have, the more you learn about how different organizations work, and you keep refining what “best fit” really means for you.
Final Note
Your target list becomes your north star. It’s a mirror reflecting what organizations and roles within them represent the best fits for you next. And the more time you spend engaging with people at these organizations, the sharper the reflection that mirror provides.
So here’s your move this week: sit down for 20 minutes and write out your answers to the best fit questions above. Be honest with yourself about what you’ve learned from the roles you’ve been in. If you already have a target list, revisit it to confirm it still reflects where you want to go. And if you don’t have one yet, that may be why you’ve just been aimlessly following roads that have been taking you anywhere.
Now, what organizations are on your target list?
NextPlay>Forward AI Disclaimer: I very actively use artificial intelligence and large language models to generate the content you read here, but I do review it and edit it to make sure it can be generally useful to people who read it. Keep in mind that AI can make mistakes - check important information. Let me know if I make any errors and I will correct them.