‘It makes sense of all that I’ve done to date’

I heard these words come out of my mouth on several occasions in response to the interview question ‘Why do you want this job?’ As if I'd been headed towards that destination all along on some career mystery bus tour.

It was my attempt to construct coherence (or at least the appearance of coherence) and relevance from what felt like a rum bunch of experiences gained in a very careering career history, combined with a lack of understanding of what I wanted or had to offer. I therefore looked at job adverts and applications through the lens of whether I could manage to magic up some career coherence in relation to them.

It was a bit Ready, Steady, Cook - trying to create something appetising from disparate and sometimes incongruous ingredients, and under pressure too.

This is a game we play. Everyone knows it’s a game, yet we still play it, and that's fine.

But it can have some unfortunate side effects and we need to be alert to them.

We need to distinguish between this ‘sense making’ as an exercise in relation to a job application or interview, for example, and any notion that our career should 'make sense’ in and of itself.

Why? Well, firstly, because it doesn’t have to ‘make sense’. It really doesn’t. You are under no obligation to have a naturally coherent career story to tell. In fact, the most interesting career stories are not the neat ones, but those with the unexpected twists and turns.

Secondly, there’s a risk that (necessarily) going through this kind of creative exercise to jump through the hoops of applying for a job may lead you to believe that ‘coherence’ is the norm and that you and your career are the exception. Also not true. Everyone is jumping through those hoops clutching their newly coherent and targeted story.

Thirdly, and worst of all, it may lead you to overlook the richness, uniqueness and inherent value of what you’ve done in your life and career to date and how you’ve done it.

We all tell stories and they help us shape and reshape our past, present and future worlds. But we need to recognise that that’s what we’re doing and understand the purpose of the exercise in the given instance.

In this instance, we need to stand outside our job application story and see it for what it is - an exercise in creative, persuasive writing on a fairly random topic set by someone else.

Cue apt photo (yeongkyeong lee on Unsplash)