The upheaval of the past few years has caused many thousands, even millions, of people to question what they’re here to do. Not in the meet-a-KPI, find-a-partner, bake-the best-sourdough kind of way, but in the infinitely deeper question of purpose.
Many of us have been given a chance to slow down and assess what’s really important, and perhaps take a step back in the hope of finding that purpose. But where to start?
Finding purpose in the way you spend your proverbial nine-to-five can be a process of discovery, but also could be immensely fulfilling. And with almost a third of us looking to change jobs in the next six months (with the majority citing uninspiring gigs as the primary motivator), according to a recent Seek survey*, there’s no time like the present to seek it out.
We spoke to two people who found purpose in their work via very different avenues.
Rebecca Miller, head of Seek Volunteer
Rebecca Miller, head of Seek Volunteer
Rebecca Miller’s career has, in her words, always revolved around purpose-driven work. She’s bounced from community-focused work in sport to public service and even banking.
And while she agrees the banking sector doesn’t have the best reputation for doing good in the world, she found great fulfilment in building up her former employer’s corporate responsibility at a time when it was a relatively new concept.
“That just led to my passion to have roles that help businesses have a social impact,” she says.
That passion has led Miller to Seek, where she’s the head of the business’s volunteer arm. “It’s a dream job, using my social impact knowledge and learning about a sector that’s extremely important,” she says.
Volunteering – whether through your workplace or out in your community – can be an incredibly effective way to find your purpose, Miller says. But what is purpose, exactly?
Miller’s experience has led her to define it as a state of mind. “It gives us that motivation … to get out of bed, turn up every day, give it our best, and do it with passion and a smile,” she says.
The good news is that understanding your purpose doesn’t have to be a solitary venture. Many companies have evolved along with the passions and values of their employees, so Miller recommends investigating where a company stands on the issues that are important to you, and opening a dialogue about how it can help you give back to your wider community.
“Maybe they’re at the start of a journey, where you could actually contribute to … their responsible business practice,” she says.
Kirstin Hunter, commercial lawyer turned problem solver
Kirstin Hunter, commercial lawyer turned problem solver
In her former life as a commercial lawyer, Kirstin Hunter enjoyed working with her clients and shaping teams around common goals, but the work that fulfilled her most was pro bono or helping on her firm’s social impact committees.
“So I spent a lot of time doing volunteering work, and that really gave me a lot of energy to keep focused and learn in the corporate day job, because I got to see how valuable those skills were when they were put to community problems,” she says.
The demands of new motherhood meant her opportunities for volunteer work dwindled. They also made her view humanity’s challenges in a totally different light.
“All of a sudden, I had this big realisation that my brain power is focused on helping companies make more money, but oftentimes at the expense of the world – and my daughter’s going to grow up into it,” she says. “The majority of my brain power was spent in work that [wasn’t] having the kind of impact that I’m really motivated for.”
It was then that Hunter made the leap, and joined an early-stage, sustainability-driven superannuation fund, Future Super, where she experienced exponential growth in terms of her professional experience and purpose.
“I basically got to take everything that I had learned in 10 years of professional services and apply it in a super-scrappy, fast-moving way to solve problems … and figure out how to build this business into something that really changed the conversation about how money can be used to drive the type of future that we all want to live in,” she says.
Hunter says she no longer believes we’re operating with the cognitive dissonance that defined the decades leading up to the pandemic, where we collectively believed we could be different people at work and outside it.
For that reason, she believes it’s vital to find work that serves your purpose – and be mindful that those jobs might not exist yet.
“Take time out regularly to think about what’s important to you and rehire your employer,” she says. “Ask yourself: is this still the right place for me to be learning what I want to learn, to have the kind of impact that I want to have over my whole career?”
Visit SEEK Career Advice for tips on finding the right job for you.
*Independent research conducted by Nature of behalf of SEEK, interviewing 4800 Australians annually. Published February 2023.
