It’s quarterly season at my company, so setting goals and planning for career development – for me and my team – is top of mind right now. And it can be frustrating to feel like you’re not growing quickly enough, especially if you also can’t pinpoint where you should be focusing your energy. So today, here’s (genuinely) the advice managers don’t like to give: you should be looking at the market.

👀 Why you should be looking at job ads

I’m not suggesting you should always be actively on the market – if you’re happy and developing in your role, then you don’t need to be! But being aware of what skills and experience the market expects is a really, really good way to develop your own career roadmap.

Even if your company has internal career guides and documentation, the job market is a great way to baseline yourself. Each company is different in titles, responsibilities, and skills, so you’ll only know what’s common if you look externally.

Job ads usually list out expected experience you’d bring to the role, typical skillset, and also responsibilities. They can even be clearer than your internal job description!

🤔 Why you should care about the market even when you’re happy where you are

There are two main reasons you need to have your finger on the pulse with the market even if you have no interest in leaving your current job: readiness and internal impact.

Readiness means that if you keep up with the market, you’ll be prepared when you decide to move on. I’ve had many friends who’ve decided they hate their job, start looking at ads, only to realise that they hadn’t spent their time working on the right skills.

Internal impact basically means that being highly employable is good for your current company. If you’re keeping up with new skills and expectations in the market, you can use that knowledge to make a bigger impact and contribute more – and get recognised for it. Companies want to have highly employable employees.

✏️ How to use job ads to craft your roadmap

Okay, I’m going to assume I’ve convinced you that job ads are a good thing to look at. So now let’s move on to the fun part: how to use them to your advantage!

These are the kinds of jobs you can look at for reference:

• Jobs that have your current title (eg. if you’re a Junior Developer, these are other Junior Developer jobs)

• Jobs that have your ideal next step (eg. this would be a Mid-Level Developer)

• Jobs that are also of interest (eg. maybe this Developer wants to be better at Design, so they also look at Junior Designer roles)

⭐️ Jobs with your current title

When you’re looking at roles that could be the same as yours, you should evaluate:

• Do I have a similar level of experience as what’s expected?

• Do I have similar responsibilities? Am I good at them?

• Do I have the listed skills? Am I at a high enough level? Can I demonstrate these?

• Would I be hired for this job?

The reason you need to look at multiple job ads is because each company is a bit different, so you need to look for common themes. You don’t need to focus on little quirks unless they’re of particular interest. From here, if there’s anything you’re missing, you know you need to work on that at your current role.

Here’s an example of how I would do it. This example is from a role that’s got a very similar title to my current one, and here’s how I would think about it:

• “8+ years of experience as a UX/Product designer, including 4+ years in a leadership role managing designers.”

  • Got the IC stuff down, but looks like I need to spend more years specifically managing designers.

• “A track record of recruiting and hiring a world class design team.”

  • I’ve got a lot of experience recruiting and hiring, and I think my designers are really good – how would I demonstrate that they’re world-class?

• “Expertise with design tools like Figma with strong visual design sensibility.”

  • Very comfortable with this, looks like we can move on!

Once you’ve run through a few ads like this, you can start to pinpoint what your biggest gaps are and then use that to make a plan. If you’ve only recently started in your role, there’ll probably be a lot of gaps and that’s normal! Consider shortlisting a few key ones to focus on so that you don’t get overwhelmed.

🪜 Jobs with the ideal next step

Looking at the “next step” is great if you’re feeling very solid in your role and looking for progression. If you have a lot of gaps in the current role stage, I recommend stopping there because it's already a big list! But if you want to be promoted, then consider:

• Does my experience line up? (Remember, if you’re within 2 years of experience it should be fine – but more than that is often too big of a hurdle. So if you’re looking at a job with 7+ years of experience and you have 3, you need more experience.)

• Am I already taking on some of these responsibilities? Are there any I can try taking on where I am?

• Do I have the skills in the required areas? Are they high enough?

• If I applied for this job, would I be considered?

And then same as above, run through some ads and look for common themes for you to work on. Let’s do another example – this one’s for a C-suite role:

• “Make ideas great because you know what great ideas look and feel like.”

  • I can do this – but could I convince an interviewer that I could? How would I demonstrate this skill?

• “Experience in managing large teams including P&L ownership and operational management.”

  • Okay, haven’t done a lot of that. How would I get experience in P&L ownership?

• “Creative problem-solver, both on a conceptual level in defining the tension and strategic vision, and a practical level in shaping scopes, plans and operations.“

  • I think this is within reach, so how can I practice?

This particular role I’ve looked at is very far from where I am now, so there’s a lot of stuff I could work on! You’d also research other similar roles, and read the descriptions to make sure they’re actually something you’d want to be doing. (I skipped over reading a C-suite role because it made it clear that they wanted an automotive expert, and that doesn’t interest me.)

💕 Other jobs of interest

Not everyone will be interested in this part, so you can skip it! But if you’re the sort of person who has a lot of interests at work, or you’re not quite sure about title/field, then you should also spend some time looking through adjacent roles.

Similar to the above two, you want to look through a few ads and look for common themes. But since this isn’t your main focus area, make sure you’re only including relevant data – don’t synthesise ads for roles you’d never want to do!

🚗 Designing your job-ad roadmap

This part is where you take all your research, create a plan, and then share it. From whichever of the job types you looked at, you should have a decently-sized list of skills you need to work on, experience you need to develop, or responsibilities you need exposure to.

Depending on your own goals, you’ll prioritise these differently – but do make sure you prioritise! If you’ve looked at enough ads, you should have too big of a list to reasonably tackle at the same time. Make sure you deliberately choose under 3 focus areas at any given time so that you can spend meaningful time on them. (And if you don’t know how to make progress, try out this framework I love!)

And last step is to socialise this plan with your manager. You don’t have to tell them you were looking at ads (that can spook them!), but you can tell them:

• You’ve identified skills, experience, or responsibilities you need to work on

• You’ve narrowed down to a few key areas that you’re going to focus on right now

• Here’s how you’re going to work on those areas

• (Optional) I need this support to improve in these areas

Taking ownership over your own development is always a good look, but it also opens the door for them to help you with your specific goals. If you have a really good relationship with your manager and you trust their judgement, you can even bring them in earlier in the process to prioritise together.

That was a long one, so if you made it to the end I hope you found it valuable! I’ve leaned on job ads a lot over the last 10 years to figure out my focus areas, so I had a lot to say 😶