How to use continuous discovery habits in your job search

Since its publication in 2021, product managers have turned to Teresa Torres’ Continuous Discovery Habits to better understand customer needs. But what if this approach was applied to your product career, especially during a job search? By treating your job search as an ongoing process of discovery, you can navigate the market more effectively and find roles that truly fit your skills and aspirations. In this article, we'll explore how adopting continuous discovery habits can help you find the right job.

This mindset reframes how you see yourself in relation to your skills and experience. According to social identity theory (Tajfel and Turner, 1979), we often align our identities with the sense of belonging we get from working in a particular role at a particular company (Who are you? I’m a product manager at Google). This can create an unhealthy attachment to something not entirely within our control.

Instead, viewing your career as a product allows you to interview confidently with prospective companies: you’re not selling “your self” but rather how your skills and experience can benefit them.

It also helps you realise that your career is always in development and can be iterated through skill acquisition, new responsibilities, or exploring new opportunities. Regularly assess your skills and experience against market demands, even if you’re not actively job searching, to keep your career fresh. A desktop job search every six months will show you what skills employers value and how that changes over time.

Successful product discovery starts with identifying the outcome you want—i.e., the value you’re creating for your customer. Start by viewing hiring managers as your customers: what needs, desires and pain points do they have? What impact would you like to have on their work lives? If they’re hiring, they have a problem to solve—your mission through job interviews is to discover what that is beyond just filling a vacancy.

It’s also important to consider the value you want to create for yourself. This could be financial, but it’s also about security, purpose and meaning, culture, work-life balance, and professional growth.

Once you know the outcome you’re striving for, create hypotheses to test. Each job application centres on the hypothesis of “I would like to work here.”

Hypothesis creation is essential. Many clients I work with start a job search with only a vague idea of what they want. If you’ve been out of work for some time, you may feel pressured to take any job. Unfortunately, the ‘spray and pray’ approach is the least successful when it comes to finding the right role, and you may soon find yourself job hunting again when it doesn’t meet all your needs.

I’ve created a tool for my clients to help with this stage, the job search matrix. It guides you to think about the roles you want and in which companies. More importantly, it surfaces the trade-offs you may need to make for your ‘ideal role,’ such as flexible working, location, or salary. This helps you refine your hypothesis about which opportunities to pursue.

Use the entire hiring process to test your hypothesis. From desktop research to interview conversations, you’re interviewing them as much as they are you. What evidence are you gathering to test your hypothesis? What do you need to update as you learn more?

Employ rapid experimentation

As you progress through interviews, use the feedback you gather to refine and improve your job search. Find out what works and double down on that, updating your resume, LinkedIn profile, interview responses, or target roles and companies.

Always ask the hiring team for feedback on your performance and take the useful bits to work into the next iteration. If you’re unsuccessful because they went with someone else, ask what made the other candidate the better choice. Remember, actionable insights come from people telling you what they actually did, not what they might do in future.

You might also seek feedback from people outside the process for a fresh perspective, especially if companies aren’t getting back to you. This could be a mentor, coach, or colleagues you’ve worked with previously.

Wrap up

Continuous discovery habits is an approach to reduce the risk in product development. Job seekers can apply these same techniques to minimise the risk of not landing the right job. It’s disappointing when you believe you have the required skills and experience, yet the hiring team doesn’t see it. Following the approaches outlined here can reduce that risk—and if it still happens, another opportunity is out there just waiting for you to discover it. Good luck.