Benjamin Todd

But it's also true that, based on the research and our experience, some approaches to predicting fit seem better than others.

You can use these prompts to better target your efforts to gain information, and to make better guesses before you start doing lots of investigation.

1.

What is a job actually like?

We often meet people who speculate on their fit for, say, working in government, but have little idea what civil servants actually do.

Before you go any further, try to get the basics down.

Can you describe what a typical day might look like?

What tasks create value in the job?

What does it take to do them well?

2.

What do experts say?

If you can, ask people experienced in the field about how well you'd perform, especially people with experience recruiting for the job in question.

But be careful.

Don't put too much weight on a single person's view and try to find people who are likely to be honest with you.

Three, what's been working for you so far?

One simple method to predict your success is to project forward your track record.

If you've been succeeding in a path, that's normally a good reason to continue.

You can also try to use your track record to make more precise estimates of your chances.

For instance, if you're at grad school, roughly the top half of your class will go into academia.

So if you're in the top 25% of your class at grad school, you could roughly guess you'll be in the top 50% of academia.