How do you actually figure out what roles are really like?

I (Late Twenties / F) am in the middle of trying to shift out of more admin/EA-type roles and into operations, and I’m realizing job descriptions are only helping so much. I’ve spent about 7 years in EA/executive support roles, but I’ve also worked in customer ops, supply chain, nonprofit, finance construction, and other pretty cross-functional environments.

The stuff I’ve always liked most is fixing messy processes, figuring out where things are getting stuck, building trackers/docs, connecting teams, improving workflows, and generally making things run better. I'm a older sibling so I've always been bob the builder or fixing messes. 

So I’ve been looking at roles like Operations Analyst, Operations Specialist, Business Ops, Project/Program Coordinator, Business Systems, Enablement, Process Improvement, Consulting etc.

But every company seems to use these titles differently.

I’ve tried messaging people on LinkedIn to ask what their jobs are actually like, but usually they accept the connection and that’s where it ends lol.

So I figured I’d ask here.

If you work in ops or , what does your job actually look like day to day? Like, what are you actually doing most of the week?

What parts do you like or hate?

What skills actually matter versus what the job posting says?

This is one of the things I’m struggling with. I’ll find a role where I don’t technically have the “right” background or title, but then I read the responsibilities and I’ve done most of them under a completely different title. Things like building out an ops framework or creating automation architecture using Power Automate, Power BI, Copilot Studio, SharePoint, SAP, Salesforce, Snowflake, etc.

What kind of person does well in your role?

Are there titles I should be searching that I might not even know about?

And if you came from an EA/admin background, how did you make the jump?

Mostly I’m just trying to figure out what I’d actually enjoy instead of taking another job because I know I can do it, then either being bored all day because it doesn’t challenge me or realizing the actual day to day is nothing like the job description.