Six Steps to Advance Your Career
I have worked with thousands of miserably employed professionals over the years and have observed a strong pattern among them: they had never defined what they wanted from their careers long term.
Most people change careers only when something comes to them, or they are somehow forced to exit a job for something safer or less miserable.
Needless to say, it can be very difficult to manage a career if you don’t know where you want it to go before you have to go there.
Taking charge of a career isn’t so hard (especially with a great career coach on the team…had to get that promo in there) if you take the right approach.
Set Clear Goals
These goals should include both on-the-job and lifestyle needs. A great job that wrecks the rest of your life isn’t going to be a winner. Conversely, if you want a cushy lifestyle and don’ t care at all about the job you can stop reading here.
On the lifestyle side, consider things like compensation, the need for specific benefits, work schedule, scope of responsibilities, tolerance for travel, company culture, and forecasted demand in target industries and sectors.
You want to avoid career paths that would put you on a collision course with your personal commitments or that places you in a dead-end industry that will force another knee-jerk change down the road.
When it comes to the role, I suggest taking an inventory of skills that you are great at and want to continue using, activities that you are doing (or have done) that you hope to never do again, and competencies that you might like to add given the right circumstances.
Identify Roles that Match Step One
My preferred way to identify career paths is to search job sites (Indeed is best for this) based on what jobs do rather than what they are called. For example, if your skills inventory shows an interest in strategy, financial modelling, and operations, you can use those as search terms to find roles that fit. Indeed even offers an experience level filter to help narrow the results.
Because so few jobs ever make it to the job boards, I recommend doing this kind of search nationally to start. This will provide a better read on the abundance of those jobs, your interest in those jobs, and your viability as a candidate for those jobs.
If you do this well, you will gain a very specific idea of not only the jobs you want, but also which skills which may be required that you may not yet have.
To verify your hypothesis, you can look up those job titles using LinkedIn’s “all filters” feature to find others who are in those roles and understand more about the path they took to get there and the skills they boast along the way.
Get Second (and Third) Opinions
It is a great idea to talk about your plans with others who may have insight.
Coworkers, colleagues, clients, suppliers, and career coaches (another shameless self-promotion) may all be in a position to help you recognize skills that you don’t see in yourself. They may also have thoughts about directions that hadn’t occurred to you.
Even better is talking to a few people who are in the roles to which you aspire. Tell them about the direction you are leaning toward, share your background, and ask them to honestly share their thoughts regarding your viability as a candidate, the skills and experiences you should add, the frequency of and reason to fill the role, and the types of people you should meet to take the next step.
The only reason that this is not Step Two is that having done no reflection or searching on your own beforehand will place the entire burden of your career planning on your closest allies. Not only is this not fair, it doesn’t work well either.
Fill Gaps
Using job postings to identify where your skills may fall short of requirements is immensely empowering because it gives you some control of your own destiny.
Sometimes the gaps may lead to a major undertaking like getting an MBA. Other times it may involve getting credentialed or formally trained in a technical skill. Sometimes the gap may be something that can be closed by how you handle the job you have now.
As an example, I once had a client who wanted to advance in finance but whose job didn’t give him the opportunity to use the Excel pivot tables and VLOOKUP tools which were required for his next step. Our plan to address that was to start developing reports for management using those techniques even though those managers didn’t ever ask for them. This allowed him to learn these features in a real-world environment and truthfully claim them on his resume and LinkedIn.
I have seen the same thing work to close gaps with Python, Tableau and other types of tools. Showing that you have used tools in the workplace will usually be seen as more valuable than a certificate anyway.
Those of you who aspire to leadership positions may require soft skills training that is difficult to do through a credentialling process or self-training. Those folks can often benefit from working with an executive coach who can draw out areas in need of improvement and help ensure readiness for that next great thing.
Anyone interested in developing executive management skills should check out my interview with Executive Coach Angela Justice in my November newsletter coming out after Thanksgiving.
Build Your Collateral
Once you have determined the direction you want to pursue, it is important to look as much like that new job as possible “on paper.”
Redo your resume to emphasize the aspects of your current and previous role that carry forward while minimizing anything that may distract from that core brand. Using the job descriptions that you found in Step Two is the best way to know what you should be writing about. If you have content that is not referenced in those target jobs, ask if it really needs to be there.
You want to take the same approach with LinkedIn as much as possible while remembering that your current colleagues and customers will see what you are doing.
The better job you do matching your resume to the job you want rather than the job you have, the better a networking connection or recruiter can see how well you fit.
As you add credentials to fill the gaps make sure to update your documents to show that you are one step closer.
Build the Right Network
It is well publicized that 75% to 80% of jobs are filled through the hidden job market, usually through networking. And we know that networks can take a while to build.
Once your LinkedIn profile is built to best align with the requirements of the new direction it is time to look for connections who are in those roles, supervise those roles, recruit into those roles, or...best of all…support those roles from the outside.
Join LinkedIn groups which are populated with influencers in your new target area.
And get yourself out there!
For more about the hidden job market and outside connections click here.
