I recently wrote a post about my experience looking for a job and what worked for me. Here's another (much more concise) perspective on the same thing from Shreyas Doshi (who inspired much of that post in the first place:  4 prompts to ask yourself for career clarity.

If you’re looking for a job, whether or not you have one, or even just thinking about where you want to go in your career, take the 8 minutes to watch it and the lifetime(?) to actually ask yourself the questions.

It is difficult to overemphasize how beneficial clear answers to these questions were. Not complete clarity, mind you (whatever that means). Even incremental clarity - more clarity than I had when I started - was like magic serum for:

you will never be able to buy it from a wizard, you can only generate it yourself

These are all things that are in short supply during the job search.

The only thing I’d add to Shreyas’ insights is to write the answers to the questions down.

The hard truths (that only you can answer) are what is so valuable about the exercise. And if those hard truths remain only in your head, it's easy to be vague about them.

But writing them down, making them more real, even sharing those words with other trusted people forced me to be clear and specific. When the words didn’t look right, I had to revise them. Because they were staring me in the face.

This is difficult to do. That’s why it’s valuable.

Because if something is difficult, most people won’t do it. And if you do do it, then it’s a differentiator for you.

Differentiation is what make products win. And in the job search, you are the product.