Born for This: How to Find the Work You Were Meant to Do

• Browse job posting websites • Polish their resumé or CV • Check in with industry and alumni networks • Update their LinkedIn profile These kinds of activities are very good at helping you think you’re making progress when you may just be running in circles. Why? Think about how many other smart, qualified applicants are currently doing the exact same things. These activities might feel productive, but they probably won’t help you find your dream job. In a highly competitive environment, just keeping pace with what others are doing isn’t enough. You need to be doing something to give yourself a real advantage.

Here are a few steps that will actually help you improve your odds.

1. Decide on the job title you want. If you want to land the job posted as “human resources manager,” that’s what you’ll get—well, at least if you’re the lucky person to make it through all those rounds of resumé filtering. But what if you created your own title and decided to find a company or organization that was willing to make room for it? Suddenly your competition just got much smaller.

In talking with people who’d been creative with a self-styled job title, I heard from a “chief happiness officer,” a role that has now been filled at several startups but actually dates back to 2003, when McDonald’s delegated happiness duties to the Ronald McDonald clown character. I also heard from “Mayor” Tony Bacigalupo, who runs a co-working space in New York City.

If you could have any job title in the world, what would yours look like?