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“Job seeker” can be an icky term. If you are conducting a job search, it’s an accurate description of what you are doing. But calling yourself a job seeker might make you feel desperate or self-serving: I want a job. Any job! I’m looking and I won’t stop until I get one.
Author and job search coach Madeline Mann has a better term: job shopper. Invoking retail sales might not seem like an improvement — just ask anyone in higher education the reaction they get when they refer to students as customers — but here’s Mann’s definition:
“Job Shopping is about conveying your value effectively in the job market, causing companies to sell you on job opportunities, instead of the other way around,” Mann wrote in a 2024 LinkedIn post. This article preempted her 2025 book, “Reverse the Search,” which explains her methods around job shopping in great detail.
Shifting from “seeker” to “shopper” is more than a semantic sleight of phrase. If that alone empowers you in your search, great, but there’s a lot more to the job shopper approach than changing your words. You have more buying power than you might realize in such a competitive job market.
Here are a few important takeaways from Mann’s book that could further improve your candidacy:
Commodity Fallacy
Contrary to what you might think after going through several cattle calls for an open position, colleges and universities don’t have all the advantages when it comes to choosing candidates. The applicant pools might be larger than ever, but that doesn’t mean the talent is interchangeable. Otherwise, institutions would pick whoever meets the minimum qualifications and call it a day.
“Anyone who has hired before knows that a good hire is worth paying for and waiting for,” Mann wrote. “This is quite common: Once a company falls in love with you, they will make sure you join their team.”
You are not a commodity, especially if you have rare and valuable skills. Institutions are also hiring for strong character and positive attitude. They just need to be certain they are getting the right combination.
Reduce Time vs. Risk
The problem that Mann highlights in her book is that job seekers optimize to reduce time, while employers optimize to reduce risk. As a higher education professional, you have sunk costs and you want to advance your career as soon as possible, but searches in academe take longer than most industries. Part of that is the academic calendar and hiring cycle, but a lot of it has to do with the high stakes for colleges and universities to get it right. A bad hire is costly and can be devastating to an institution or department in terms of finances, productivity, morale, and long-term growth.
“No job seeker wants their time wasted and it’s grueling to send out applications without any promise that the time spent will manifest into opportunities,” Mann wrote. “All those hoops they have you jump through is because they don’t want to be too hasty (…) unless they for sure know that you are the one.”
Job Shopper Advantage
And that’s where job shopping comes in. Job shoppers take a different approach that’s not about impressing the hiring manager and saying, “Here I am with all these great skills, experiences, and accomplishments. Pick me!”
“They position themselves as the solution to the company’s needs, making themselves highly attractive to potential employers,” Mann wrote. “By doing so, they effectively flip the traditional job search narrative. Rather than blending in with the masses, they stand out as the highly sought-after candidates.”
Paint a future where you, as the candidate, are solving the institution’s challenges. Done effectively, employers will pay a premium to hire you over anyone else, even when they have other, less expensive hiring options. You, then, become a shopper.
Autobiographical Syndrome
You might often hear interview or job search advice to “tell a good story.” That is valid to the extent that the hiring managers can easily apply the story to their institution. Otherwise, you might be suffering from what Mann coined as the “autobiography syndrome.”
“(People with autobiography syndrome) see their resume as a detailed account of everything they’ve done,” Mann wrote. “But the reality is that recruiters and hiring managers don’t have the time or interest to piece together your story to figure out if you’re a fit for the job.”
Again, it’s about them, not you, and how you can solve their problems and deliver them results.
Consultative Conversation
Decision-makers in higher education love consultants. Turn your job interview from an interrogation into a problem-solving conversation. Mann uses the metaphor of moving your chair to the other side of the table.
She wrote that your interview has two missions: to build rapport and to figure out the employer’s biggest pain points and how you would solve them. Do this by using a consultative approach or by talking to them the way you would if you already had the job and were simply being a good partner or helpful coworker.
This requires research on your part and you might not have access to all the answers, but Mann wrote that “this shift in and of itself will transform the way your resume is received and how the interview feels.”
Matching Goals
Finally, and most importantly, Mann wrote that one of the biggest distinctions between job seekers and job shoppers is that job seekers have unclear goals.
Job seekers might want a job, but a job shopper knows exactly which job they want and where. They are focused, in control, and they use that disposition to position themselves for exactly what their target employers are looking for.
Just as institutions aren’t seeking candidates — they have plenty of those — they are shopping for the right fit.
You should match their approach by becoming a job shopper.
