Stop Applying to Job Ads. Start Creating Roles.
Stop waiting for the perfect job advertisement to appear. Create the change you want to be in the world.
You may be job searching all wrong.
Are you refreshing job boards, crafting cover letters, and competing with 2,000 other applicants for roles that were designed by people who don't understand what you actually can do?
Louise Le Gat spent 25 years building a purpose-driven career, and she learned she could create roles for herself that focused on driving strategic impact she wanted to have on society.
She never applied to a job ad for the work that mattered most to her. She created every role.
RSVP Now to speak with her about your job search on Wednesday.
Her playbook is below.
The Problem with Job Ads
Traditional job postings in the social impact space are disappearing. The humanitarian sector is shape-shifting, sustainability departments are being built from scratch, and corporate social impact work is being invented in real time.
The roles we want don't exist yet on job boards because organizations don't know what they need, nor how to hire people to solve those problems.
There are always opportunities for those who create new things, think outside the box, innovate, experiment, and design new pathways to reinvent impact processes.
Those opportunities aren't posted on LinkedIn. You have to create them.
How Louise Created Her First Role
Louise was a lawyer, but she cared about people transformation. So she positioned herself as the answer to a problem the law firm didn't even know they had.
She says:
"I did a lot of work on understanding what I was really about. Then I went to have a conversation with the head of HR and I managed to convince him to create a role for me."
Notice the sequence: understand yourself first, then approach the organization with a solution.
The result? She worked on ideas that she cared about. For example, she created innovative career pathways for people within the organization. She also led self-coaching trainings, which at that time was truly innovative.
She became indispensable by solving problems before they were formally recognized as problems.
The Strategic Framework
Louise's approach is systematic. She identified who she was, what was important to her, and why her strengths were unique. Then she used them to bring positive change in that organization.
Here's the framework:
Step 1: Map Your Unique Value What combination of skills, experience, and passion do you bring that nobody else has? Louise combined legal training with people development expertise and social impact drive.
Step 2: Identify Organizational Pain Points Where is the organization struggling? What problems keep leadership up at night? Louise saw that her law firm had no systematic approach to developing people.
Step 3: Bridge the Gap Position yourself as the solution that connects your unique value to their specific need. Louise didn't ask for a "people development job." She proposed becoming their strategic answer to talent retention and growth.
Why This Works Now
Louise explains why this approach is more relevant than ever:
"You can still bring a lot of who you are. You just have to be really quite savvy around having the skill set of what I call change making."
Organizations across sectors are facing unprecedented challenges:
Corporations need sustainability expertise they don't have in-house
Governments need innovation capacity for complex social problems
Startups need impact measurement and stakeholder engagement skills
Even traditional NGOs need people who can create new pathways and reinvent processes to have greater impact.
You have exactly the skills they need. You just need to stop waiting for them to post the job ad.
The Intrapreneurship Approach
Louise taught at what she calls an "intrapreneurship academy," where participants created their own ventures within existing organizations. They looked at the real needs of the organization, what people wanted to do, and how they could bridge that in a powerful and meaningful way.
You can use this approach now.
Look at your top three dream organizations. What are their strategic priorities? Which problems are holding them back? How can you position yourself as essential to achieving them?
Hone your answer to a short paragraph. That’s the core message you can deliver when you informational interview with key staff at the firm.
They will know what you can do and why its valuable to the organization.
The Sustainability Department Example
Louise witnessed this firsthand:
"I remember when you may have had one person who was a sustainability person and they were kind of locked in a cupboard somewhere. Now you have huge departments."
Those departments weren't built by hiring from job postings. They were built by people who saw the writing on the wall, understood organizational needs, and positioned themselves as essential.
The next wave of roles is being created right now. By people like you.
The Mindset Shift
Louise's most important insight: Stop thinking like a job seeker. Start thinking like a problem solver.
"If you want to have a positive impact, it means you have to have a complete different level of self-leadership. You also need to become masterful around change-making."
Change-making means creating the role you want instead of waiting for someone else to define it for you.
We spent our careers tackling problems that didn't have obvious solutions. Now we need to apply that same approach to our own career transitions.
These organizations need us. They just don't know how to ask for what we offer.
It's time to help them by creating the role (and impact!) you want to see in the world.
Shift to Role Creation on Wednesday
As global funding contracts, we need to shift from finding a new job to reimagining what’s possible. Join Louise Le Gat in an Ask Me Anything session at 8AM EST on Wednesday.
In this forward-looking session, we’ll explore how to:
Flip the script: The inner reframe to steady yourself through uncertainty and transition
Articulate your unique value: Design or attract roles that don’t yet exist
Partnering for the new: Opening up to emerging possibilities through corporate changemaking and social entrepreneurship
This session is to support you to go beyond what was, and begin shaping what could be.
Paid Career Pivot Subscribers can RSVP below.