Join/Renew
There are no perfect jobs.
Despite widespread investment in employee engagement, only 31% of employees are engaged and 17% say they are actively disengaged.1 This lack of engagement speaks to a desire to find a better role or, at the very least, frustration with how their current role has worked out. I have seen this with countless students in my office looking for that one, perfect answer that will give them a fulfilling, enjoyable career. The reality is, every job is what we make of it.
There are better and worse jobs, roles that fit and those that don’t. Not everything we do in life will fit who we are or where we excel. As we work with students and employees to find places of best fit in response to this reality, we need to teach them how to job craft. However, job crafting needs to take on new depth if we are to truly help individuals craft worthwhile experiences out of their current and future work. Job crafting needs to start with purpose.
What Is Job Crafting?
Most career professionals are already familiar with the term “job crafting.” The idea has been around for decades and is comprised of three main categories: task crafting, relational crafting, and cognitive crafting.
Task crafting requires individuals to change what they do and how they do it. In essence, to job craft your daily tasks is to make them fit better with what you enjoy and places of fulfillment. This type of crafting is more or less accessible depending on your level of autonomy and freedom.
Relational crafting is about reshaping your connections. This is the way that we become more selective with our time in collaboration and how we interact with others. Since it is difficult (and typically a bit rude) to ignore or avoid coworkers in most spaces, this is often one of the more challenging methods of job crafting.
Cognitive crafting is when an individual reframes their mindset around work to align with a deeper purpose. It’s about shaping the narratives we tell ourselves around what we do and why we do it. While this type of crafting requires more consistency to truly work, it is equally accessible to everyone, making it a powerful tool for career professionals.
The Power of Purpose
To job craft well, you need to be intentional, which requires us to understand the intrinsic motivators of purpose.
Purpose or calling (used interchangeably in this article) is the discovery and pursuit of that which makes you who you are and impacts something beyond your own self. Studies continue to prove that purpose is a key to greater achievement, engagement, and commitment toward work.2 Moreover, those who live out of a sense of purpose or calling tend to have a better sense of well-being and experience greater life satisfaction.3
All of this makes intuitive sense as well. When you are pursuing something that truly matters to you, that is filled with meaning, you tend to have a deep connection to the work. Finding ways to live out your purpose in your daily work can bring this sense of alignment with the areas of life you care most deeply about.
That said, there are still no perfect jobs.
Job Crafting and Purpose
In a recent study, researchers noted that calling improves an individual’s career commitment, which in turn leads to more job crafting behaviors.4 This tie between job crafting and calling is essential. As individuals develop a deeper sense of purpose, they are more likely to engage with job crafting.
We see this in practice most clearly in cognitive crafting, but each form of job crafting is impacted by purpose. Purpose gives the directional lens for individuals to understand their current work in a larger context. As we look at our specific roles, not everything will align with this sense of purpose or calling. However, when we engage in job crafting, aligning what we do, who we interact with, and how we think of our work, we can infuse more purpose into our work.
This past year I worked with a graduating business student who was feeling conflicted about their career path. The student had received an offer for a notable fellowship, but was not very excited about the company that offered the fellowship. To solve this, we turned to the student’s idea of purpose.
By exploring purpose, we were able to identify how the current opportunity fit with the student’s sense of purpose on a larger scale. The decision changed from, “Do I accept this role?” to “Does this role align with my purpose?”
The answer wasn’t a clear “yes,” so, we turned to job crafting. We examined options and considered how each one would support the student’s pursuit of calling. The conversation evolved into a deeper discussion on how to align each opportunity with their sense of purpose, leading to a clearer picture of best fit.
The student is now happily in the fellowship and has a clear picture of how their current role, despite its imperfections, is leading toward greater achievement of purpose.
How to Infuse Purpose Into Job Crafting
Discovering and pursuing purpose is a complex, individualized, and continuous process. Career professionals often lack the luxury of the time needed to truly answer deep questions of purpose with their students or employees. Still, there are a few places you can start.
Clarify values: In my work as a life coach and director of Life Calling, I have seen time and again how values create the foundation for purpose discovery and decision-making. Simple exercises like a values sort are a great place to start and can afford you great conversations. What’s important here is that the values represent the individual’s authentic priorities and are defined in the individual’s own terms.
Identify strengths: There is a whole spectrum of strengths and abilities that go into every career conversation. Assessments like CliftonStrengths provide easy access to language and discernment around an individual’s top strengths, but consider more than this as well. What makes this person successful? How do they function at their best?
Calls to action: A key piece of calling is understanding what things in the world call you to action. These can be places of need, issues or causes that resonate with you, places or people groups you care deeply for, and even opportunities you can’t stand missing. What makes this person excited? What breaks their heart? Where do they want to have an impact?
Every Job Can Be Meaningful
Infusing purpose into career conversations is a powerful tool to plumbing new depths in job crafting. Try this out for yourself: How might this relate to your own work? Your role may not be everything you dreamed it would be. What would it look like if you reframed your viewpoint with the lens of purpose?
Living with purpose on purpose can allow you and your students to tap into powerful pathways to fulfilling, engaging work. No job will be perfect. Every job can be meaningful.
Endnotes
1 Harter, Jim (2025, January 14). U.S. Employee Engagement Sinks to 10-year Low. Gallup Workplace. Retrieved from www.gallup.com/workplace/654911/employee-engagement-sinks-year-low.aspx.
2 Pitacho, L., & Cordeiro, J. P. (2023). The Relationship Between Career Calling and Workaholism: The Mediating Role of Career Orientation. Social Sciences, 12(10), 564. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci12100564.
3 Duffy, R. D., Douglass, R. P., Autin, K. L., & Allan, B. A. (2014, December). Examining Predictors and Outcomes of a Career Calling Among Undergraduate Students. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 85(3), 309-318. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvb.2014.08.009.
4 Chang, P., Rui, H., & Lee, A. Y. (2020). How Having a Calling Leads to Job Crafting: A Moderated Mediation Model. Frontiers in Psychology, 11. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.552828.
