Creating Luck in Your Job Search with the Luck Surface Area Idea
Good job opportunities tend to find people who both do the work and tell others about it. Learn how to widen your luck surface area, with ideas to try this week.
A classmate of yours landed a great new job without applying to any posting. They simply posted a summary of a side project, and a team lead from another company messaged them to chat. You might think they were lucky, and they were. But this kind of luck is not entirely random. They did something that made luck more likely to find them than others. An idea that explains this well is called luck surface area.
What luck surface area is
Luck surface area is an idea discussed in startup and career development circles: the good opportunities that come your way grow with two things, what you actually do and how many people know you do it. If you are skilled but nobody knows, opportunities cannot find you. If you talk a lot but have no work to show, people do not believe you. Your surface for luck widens when both sides grow together.
In a job search, this means you do not only wait for postings to find you. You make it easier for people who hold opportunities to think of you.
Side 1: Do work that others can see
Build projects related to the job you want
If you want to be a Data Analyst, analyse public data on a topic you care about. If you want to work in marketing, run a small campaign for a friend's shop. Work like this proves your skills far better than saying you are interested. Ideas in building skills with side projects.
Help solve other people's problems
Answering questions in professional groups, reviewing a friend's work, or volunteering where your skills are used are all visible forms of doing.
Side 2: Let people know without bragging
Share the process, not just the result
Posts about the problem you faced, what you tried, where you went wrong and what you learned usually get more interest than announcements of success, and they do not feel like showing off. An example opening:
This week I built a sales dashboard for a friend's coffee shop in Looker Studio. I thought the hard part would be the charts, but what took longest was cleaning the data. Here are three things I learned...
Tell the people around you what you are looking for
Many people keep their job search quiet, so those who could help never know. Tell friends, former colleagues or lecturers specifically, for example: I am looking for a UX role at a fintech company, let me know if you see anything relevant. Many jobs are filled through referrals before they are ever posted. Read more in the hidden job market.
Choose channels that suit you
You do not need to be on every platform. LinkedIn suits corporate fields, professional Facebook groups suit Q and A, and a blog or portfolio suits work that needs longer explanation. See how to start in creating content to open job opportunities.
What shrinks your luck surface area
- Waiting until you are ready to share: perfect readiness never comes. Sharing unfinished work while saying you are learning still has value.
- Contacting people only when you need a job: good relationships are built when you are not asking for anything.
- Sharing what should not be shared: be careful with confidential information about your current employer or clients.
- Measuring by likes: one right person reaching out is worth more than lots of likes.
Good to know
This idea does not guarantee a faster job offer, and it does not replace normal applications. It adds more ways for opportunities to reach you, and works best alongside a planned job search.
If you are not comfortable being public, you do not need to post every day. Sending your work one to one to relevant people, or sharing it in a small group where you feel at ease, also widens your luck surface area. What matters is consistency, not volume.
Widen your luck surface area this week
- Pick one small project related to the job you want and finish it in two weeks.
- Write one post about the process and what you learned.
- Tell 5 people you trust, specifically, what kind of job you are looking for.
- Answer a question or help someone in a professional group at least once.
- Alongside this, follow postings that match your goal on Plants.work job listings.
Luck is still beyond your control, but you can decide whether you stand where luck can see you.