331: Job Titles Are Outcomes, Not Destinations. How to Build Career Clarity That Gets You Hired

If you feel stuck in your job search even though you are doing all the right things with your resume and LinkedIn, you are not alone. I see this pattern every day with mid-career professionals who are smart, capable, and experienced but still not getting traction in today’s market.

In this episode, I flip the script on how most people think about career growth and job search at mid-career. Job titles are not destinations. They are outcomes. 

When you build real career clarity, your value travels with you from one organization to the next, regardless of the title on the door.

I walk you through a practical framework I use with my private clients to move them from scattered job searching to selective, strategic career positioning. We talk about how to define the problems you are best positioned to solve, the conditions where you do your best work, how to SHOW UP from service rather than proving, and how to clearly articulate who you help and what you help them do.

You will also hear how this kind of clarity changes everything about interviews and recruiter conversations. When you stop trying to prove yourself and start SHOWing UP to contribute, your confidence increases, your message becomes sharper, and decision makers can see exactly where you fit.

We also talk about the role of AI in today’s job search. AI can help you optimize keywords, but it cannot replace clarity. Clarity is what carries the interview, builds trust, and helps you stand out in a crowded and noisy market.

In this conversation, you will learn how to make recruiters’ jobs easier by responding quickly, giving clear yes or no answers, and asking what they need next. These small shifts dramatically increase your credibility and momentum.

At mid-career, the most powerful question is no longer “Am I enough?” It is “Where am I most useful?” When you answer that, your job search becomes focused, your energy increases, and your value compounds.

If you are ready to reduce noise, save time, and target roles where your impact actually matters, this episode will give you the tools and language to do it.

If you want help pinpointing where your value belongs next, visit johnneral.com/resources and get the Mid-Career Clarity Code for $43. You will receive a personalized 8 to 10-minute video from me breaking down exactly what you should focus on next in your career.

Chapters

• 0:00 Redefining Career Clarity
• 2:31 Jobs As Outcomes, Not Goals
• 4:15 Value Statements Over Titles
• 5:50 Be Strategic, Not Tactical
• 8:15 AI Busywork And Real Impact
• 9:55 The Five-Point Clarity Framework
• 12:20 Confidence Through Value And Service
• 15:20 From Proving To Contributing
• 18:40 Useful Beats Enough
• 21:10 Make Recruiters’ Lives Easier

Transcript

John Neral: 0:00

Many mid-career professionals think that career clarity is all about knowing the exact title, company, and next move. But here's the problem: that belief is why so many mid-career professionals feel stuck, exhausted, and feel like they're spinning their wheels in this job market. Career clarity is not about naming your next job. Career clarity is about knowing how you want to show up with value, confidence, and service no matter what role you step into. After working with hundreds of mid-career professionals, I can tell you this with certainty: people do not get unstuck by fixing their resumes or tweaking or optimizing their LinkedIn profile. They get unstuck by clarifying who they are, how they add value, and where they want to make an impact. If you're nervous or worried about where you're going to find your next job or when that next promotion is finally becoming available, this episode is for you. My friends, take a deep breath. We've got a lot to get into, so let's get started. Here, I'm gonna help you focus on how you show up, how you make clearer decisions, build influence, and take control of where you are along your mid-career journey. It seems like the start to 2026 has already flown by. Here we are almost at the middle of January, and you might be feeling like some of the goals or momentum that you had coming into the new year, you might feel like you're falling back into some bad habits or you're thinking, oh, this job market hasn't changed. I'm not getting any interviews, I'm not sure what to do. That's where I want to talk to you today. Because I want to reset this conversation with you around career clarity. So for starters, a job is not an outcome. A job is a result of something you did in order to get that job. Jobs are outcomes, they're not starting points. So here's what I mean by that. If you're feeling stuck, undervalued, underutilized, you do not need a new job. That's going to be the result. What you need is a clearer and cleaner relationship with your career. Job titles change so quickly. And understandably, they mean different things within different organizations. So titles are organizationally specific. You might say to yourself, I'm a manager, senior manager, director, and these are the things that I do. That's what people want to hone in on. They want to hone in on exactly what it is that you do and the results you get to create. So many times, many mid-career professionals think that they're just going to find the title and that's going to validate them. It's not the case. The clarity in terms of you being able to say to someone, here is what I do, here is who I help, here is what I help them do specifically. And this is why this should be important to you because here's where I'm going to add value to your organization. One of my goals for this year is to guest on more podcasts. And so as I'm having conversations with different podcast hosts and looking to get on some other shows, what I've had to work on is getting clearer and cleaner with my unique professional value statement in terms of why it's going to be valuable for their audience. I treat every podcasting potential guest conversation that I have with another podcast host as like a job interview. I need to make sure that I'm the best fit for them at this time. And in that, how clear can I be about the message I'm going to deliver to them? I want to offer you this approach, is the same kind of thing. Because at mid-career, I want you to be more strategic rather than tactical. What got you to mid-career and what got you to the level of success that you have is because you have demonstrated proficiency and in many cases excellence about the job that you do. But now we need something more. Companies demand more of you because you have a certain level of experience. You are of a certain age. You have what they believe to be a certain value. So at mid-career, you should not be asking yourself, what can I do? The question I want you to be asking yourself is where does the value I get to bring into an organization actually belong? You have an opportunity to create more value, more inference, uh influence, more leverage. And where that pays off for you, not just in terms of the job you get to do and the impact and the visibility and the exposure and all that you have, we want that to have a direct impact on your compensation. At mid-career, you are essentially in the wealth building years. You are building yourself and your skill set and your knowledge base and your experience so you can leverage those things to admittedly make more money as you hit your late 30s, your 40s, your early 50s. The biggest mistake I see mid-career professionals make is they get very tactical and they do this with AI. So whatever AI platform you like to use, be it ChatBT, GPT, Copilot, um, Gemini, whatever it is, they treat the AI as the be all and end-all to solve their problem. If ChatGPT can just optimize my resume with the right keywords, I will clear the applicant tracking system and get an interview. So what if it does? You then have to sit for that interview and you better be able to back everything up in that optimized resume that you have. The tactics, the resume edits, the LinkedIn rewrites, yes, there is a place and they are important. But I see so many mid-career professionals default to that because it's the busy work that keeps them invested. Look at how hard I'm working and doing this, and I'm not getting any results. You're not focusing on what is my value, where am I valuable? So when you think about career clarity, and you do it right, in my opinion, your career clarity is anchored in these five points. Number one, how do you want to contribute to that organization? Number two, what are the problems you are best positioned to solve? Number three, what are the conditions where you get to do your best work? Number four, how do you show up? How do you show up from that place of value and service that is going to be of interest and most importantly, need for that organization? And point number five, how clear are you in who you help and what you help them do? Because that is where you get to do your best work. When you have this level of career clarity, the no's are so much easier. And my friends, the no's are not the no's you hear from the companies. The no's are the ones that you give. That's not the right job for me. That's not the right company. It's not the right position, it's not the right compensation. The clarity you get to set when you show up around the ground rules, the boundaries, the deal breakers, or the deal acceptors for what it is you want to do is so important at this stage. I hear from so many people who will say, if I could just increase my confidence, what does that look like? What does that actually mean when you say, I just want to be more confident when I'm in an interview? So is it a skills-based answer or a technical answer? Is it more of a leadership answer? We need to get clear on what that confidence, quote unquote, actually looks like. And I offer them that can't happen until they're clear about where their value is. It's where coaching gets to unlock so much of that. You have heard me talk about what it means to show up. And we will continue to talk about this this year, but showing up is all about this clarity behavior. There are six strategies that I coach my clients on in terms of how it is they show up, but the results of it are what truly matters. When my clients learn how to show up from this place of value and service, they show up with more confidence rather than hesitation. They show up with greater intention rather than reaction. They show up from a place of service rather than feeling like they have to protect themselves. And additionally, we work on their brand and their reputation that tells a story that gets more hiring managers interested in who they are and what they do rather than finding them interesting. We are all interesting people. But when you show up with greater clarity, we change the dynamic, we shift the energy in the room. All of a sudden, the conversation is more around I think I could see this person actually coming here to work or working on this team and helping me get the transformation we're looking for. When we show up from that place of value and service, it is not about proving that we're effective. It is not about convincing someone that we're effective. It's about contributing. Here's what I've done. Here's why it's of interest to you. Here's where we could have a different conversation. When we lack clarity, our brain defaults to us being that we have to be this person who has to over-perform and over-explain. I call it needy, graspy, convincing energy. Oh, I'm I'm just gonna tell you how great I am right here because I did some amazing things at my last job, and I want you to know that I'm a really, really good employee. They don't care. I know that's hard to hear, but they do not care what you did for this other company. They want to know what it was that you did and why it's gonna impact them more positively than what they have now. That can only happen when you have clarity. Having clarity is about communicating a message that says, here's how I'm going to help you. And it's about sitting back and letting the conversation unfold and recognizing that if you have shown up and played full out and put everything out on the table, that no matter what they say to you, we want to hire you, we don't want to hire you, no matter what they say to you, you walk away with the clarity of knowing you did everything you possibly could, and they just made a different business decision. If you are currently employed, you're looking to level up within your organization, showing up from this place of value and service is what it looks like for you in meetings, in leadership conversations, in internal networking conversations. Here's what I want you to remember. People with clarity never ask, Am I enough? We've all asked that question. We've all asked that question of ourselves, am I enough? Am I good enough? Do I have the right things? When you are clear in terms of your value and what you want to do as a mid-career professional, the people who have the greatest clarity ask themselves this. Where am I most useful? Where am I most useful for that corporation, that organization, that company, that job, or that role? When you are clear about your value, you become more strategic. And being more strategic is less exhausting. You actually save energy when you are more strategic because you know what you want and you know what you don't want. If there's one thing you could do this month, let alone this year, is get clearer about knowing your value and where you get to do and want to do your best work. It will not come from sitting down at your computer and pulling up an AI tool and trying to fix your resume. It will not come by fixing your LinkedIn profile to make it louder. And by louder, I mean you fill in all of these things you think that people want to hear about how great you are and wonderful you are. It's not about you, it's about them. I was recently working with a client and we were talking about building a strategy with recruiters. And one of the things I said to them, and if you are a recruiter who happens to be listening to this podcast, I want you to know I am saying this with a lot of love because I do understand your work. What I said to my client was when you're dealing with recruiters, never forget they are egocentric. And they're not egocentric because they're selfish, they're egocentric because they are overloaded and overwhelmed. They are often juggling dozens and dozens of positions to try to fill. And so somebody comes into their orbit and they're like, hey, I'm looking for a job. What can you do for me? You are not making their life easier. When a recruiter reaches out to you with a question, hey, I have this position. Are you interested in applying for it? Make their life easier. That means respond. Yes, no. If it's a yes, send them your resume. Ask them what they need. What do I need to provide you with in terms of the next steps? Even going as so far as saying, I appreciate our working relationship. How can I make your work life easier right now? In terms of our interactions. I guarantee you they don't hear those things. This is about how you show up with clarity, with greater confidence, with this idea of being valuable. So, my friends, when you're clear, when you have clarity, your resume becomes simpler, your LinkedIn becomes more focused, your conversations are more confident, and your job search is more selective and not desperate. I want to leave you with this. Career clarity eliminates noise. And noise is what is wasting your time. You want to work smarter, not harder. Get clear. Get clear on where you are and where you're most valuable. Now, you may be sitting here and thinking to yourself, okay, John, that's that's all great. That that's all wonderful that you want me to be clear and everything, but I'm not entirely sure where I'm best suited, or you know, what what my next move essentially needs to be. How do I get clearer about where I am at in my career? Well, here's what you can do. I've got something called the Mid Career Clarity Code. You can find it on my website at johnnarrell.com forward slash resources. I will also link up to it in the show notes. The Mid Career Clarity Code is a$43 offer. Yes, this is a paid service because you are going to simply fill out a diagnostic with some information to give me some background on where you are in your career. And I'm Going to take that information, you're going to give me, and I'm going to send you a personalized video about eight to 10 minutes long with some information and suggestions about how to get clearer and what to do in your career. This is a great first step. And it's a first step to knowing exactly what steps you want to take. Remember, you are 100% responsible for your career. If I can help you get a little clearer on where you are and what to do next, the Mid-Career Clarity Code is your next best bet. So you can visit my website, johnnarrell.com forward slash resources. Again, it's a$43 offer. It's a new offer for 2026. I'm super excited about this. This comes from all of my years of experience and working with clients to help you navigate this challenging but certainly not impossible job market. All right, my friends, my wish for you be clear about who you are, what you do, and the value you provide. And remember this: you will build your mid-career GPS one mile or one step at a time. And how you show up matters. Make it a great rest of your day. Thank you for listening to the MidCareer GPS Podcast. Make sure to follow on your favorite listening platform. And if you have a moment, I'd love to hear your comments on Apple Podcasts. Visit johnnarrell.com for more information about how I can help you build your mid-career GPS or how I can help you and your organization with your next workshop or public speaking event. Don't forget to connect with me on LinkedIn and follow me on social at John Daryl Coaching. I look forward to being back with you next week. Until then, take care and remember, how we show up matters.