Thinking Like a Player in a Job Market (Not Just a Job Seeker)

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what it really means to be a “player” in a job market — not just someone applying to jobs, optimizing their CV, and hoping for the best, but someone who understands that they’re operating inside a market with supply, demand, competition, and timing.

This came up again this morning when I left a comment on LinkedIn reacting to a post about “magical programs.” It forced me to articulate a big learning from my own job searches, and now from running a program myself.

Here's the comment:

One big learning for me (form my own job searches in the past, and now as someone with a “magical program” 😅) is how different getting a job is from most other goals.

With things like losing weight, starting a blog, it’s mostly about your own actions. You put in the work, you get the result.

Job searching is different because it’s a market. There’s supply and demand. There’s competition. It’s not just “I check all 10 requirements, therefore I should get the job.”

You also have to think: how many other people check all 10 boxes? And if many of them do, what actually sets me apart?

It took me a long time to internalize this: We call it a job market, but we often behave like it’s a job exam.

Understanding that it’s a market and what that means for rejection, timing, and competition... was a huge shift for me.

It helped depersonalize the whole process.

What this entails for me from a program perspective is that part of the value of a program (that actually maximizes the likelihood that someone gets the job!) is not just resume fixes (that's the exam part) but helping people endure a long, uncertain market without burning out or blaming themselves.

Really appreciate you putting this message out there.