I have spent the last few weeks in an unexpected place: sitting with myself, asking questions I have been too busy to ask for most of my adult life.
Not “what is my next role?” or “what does my CV say about me?” though both of those questions are important. The questions underneath those. The ones that determine whether any answer to the surface question will actually make me happy.
I know I have a strong CV, a clear set of skills, and a non-linear career that I have learned to own. None of that tells me what I actually want. So I have been working through it differently this time, and I want to share the questions that have helped, because I think they are useful regardless of whether you are in a job search or not.
The question I kept avoiding
Most career reflection tools or coaching platforms ask some version of: what are your strengths, what are your values, where do you want to be in five years?
I have answered all of those in different forms over the years. Competently. But, this time, they didn’t quite hit the mark.
The question that actually cracked something open for me was simpler and harder: what do you want your working life to feel like, day to day?
Not what you want to achieve. Not what the job title says. The texture of it. What you want to be true on a Tuesday afternoon.
When I sat with that question, I stopped listing competencies, going over my CV with a fine tooth comb, and started telling the truth. I want to create a real impact. I want to feel safe. I want to be part of a team where I can show up as myself without performing a version of myself that’s easier for other people to understand. I want to work hard, drive results, be an expert, and I want to stop feeling guilty when I turn my laptop off at the end of a working day.
That last one took me a long time to acknowledge.
Belonging without performance
Earlier this year I was very unwell. I wrote about it in Slowing down, slowly. The short version is that my body stopped and I was forced to stop with it. Inflammatory bowel disease, untreated for years because I had mistaken its symptoms for the ordinary cost of burnout from a driven life.
One of the things that period gave me, unexpectedly, was clarity on what I have always been looking for at work and rarely named directly.
I want to belong without having to perform belonging.
The best working environments I’ve been are ones where everyone is visibly different and nobody needs to hide that. Teams gel not despite the differences but because of them. I could walk in each day as myself; complicated, fast, autistic, opinionated, sober, determined, optimistic, chatty, creative; and it didn’t need explaining.
That is the benchmark I am holding every opportunity against now. Not the brand name of the company (though I’ve had the fortune of working with some of the world’s best known brands). Whether I will be able to turn up as myself, fully, and have that be enough.
The thread through it all
If you have a non-linear career, or a career that looks strange to people on the outside (like my somewhat random job titles), I think the most useful thing you can do is find your thread.
Not the narrative you put on your CV. The real one. What have you actually been chasing?
The answer, for me: I find the hard problem. I build the thing. I make it work at scale.
Then I move on to the next hard problem.
Every role I have had, across policy research, data engineering, solutions architecture and product development, global partnerships and DeFi, has been a version of that. The titles changed. The thing I was doing was the same.
That thread is the job description. Once I named it, I stopped needing to justify the non-linearity and started using it as a filter:
Does this role have a zero-to-one problem in it? Is there something to build that hasn’t been built yet? Is there a new market to unlock? Can I bring this company and/or product to the next stage of growth and scale?
If yes, I’m interested.
Being honest about that is more useful to everyone involved, and avoids me applying to roles I won’t be a good fit for long term. The benefit of a non-linear career path is you learn what you’re good at, quickly, and what works and doesn’t, for you. I don’t look for titles, I look for challenges to take on, teams to lead and jobs to be done. It’s where I bring the most value, where I have the deepest expertise and where I know I’ll stay motivated and impactful.
The questions I am now asking in every process
These are the questions I wish I had asked more consistently earlier in my career.
What does it feel like here when things go wrong? Not the PR answer, but the real one. How does the team handle a bad quarter, a missed deadline, a disagreement between senior leaders or teams? Culture is most visible under pressure, not when everything is working.
How is success measured, output or hours? Some companies say output and mean hours. The easiest way to test this is to ask what the last person who did this role well actually did. If the answer involves availability and responsiveness more than it involves impact and revenue, you have your answer.
Tell me about someone on your team who is different to you. Different in background, in working style, in how they communicate, in the skills they bring. What happens to that person? Are they celebrated or quietly managed out? The answer tells you more about belonging than any values statement on a company site.
What does flexibility look like in practice? I’ve worked flexibly for several years and every company treats this differently. I have learned, the hard way, that my capacity has real limits and I no longer pretend otherwise. I am not hiding that anymore. The right company will not need me to.
What I have learned, so far
I am still in the middle of it. I do not know which role I will land or what the next chapter looks like.
What I do know is that going into it with a clearer sense of what I actually want, not what looks good, not what I can justify, but what I genuinely need from work and from life. It means I can say no to things that are wrong for me, even when they are “on paper” exciting. It means I only apply to roles that genuinely look exciting for me. It means I ask better questions. It means I am less likely to end up somewhere that will require me to slowly erase myself in order to fit in.
I have written a personal manifesto as part of this process. Not a mission statement, goals list or a personal brand document. A set of things I know to be true about how I work, what I need, my personal philosophy, and what I will not compromise on. I read it back before each interview and if I feel I am being pulled in the wrong direction.
It is the most useful document I have made in years.
If any of this is resonating, I would encourage you to try the same. Start with the question I kept avoiding: What do you want your working life to feel like, day to day? Not what you can get. What you actually want.
The answer might surprise you.
Bek Kulidzan is a Senior Product and Partnerships leader currently based in the UK. She writes about career, health, and building things from scratch.