According to a recent McKinsey report 40% of Australian employees surveyed, are likely to quit their jobs this year, leaving some organisations scrambling to retain their best people.
And in a recent HRD survey, Australian employees are considering moving on from their current roles due to a renewed focus on personal goals and development after experiencing a Covid pandemic epiphany.
Are you ready to take advantage of this situation to progress in your career?
The latest Employee Expectations Report from Workday Peakon Employee Voice includes a strong emphasis on diversity, equity, and inclusion, health, and well-being, as well as ongoing growth and development for job satisfaction.
Do you have the career clarity you need to target the right roles in the right organisations within the right industries that are a good MATCH for your needs?
What is Career Clarity?
The past few months I have received record numbers of bookings for Career Clarity Chats with growing numbers of professionals coming to me as they feel stuck in their current positions or are in-between roles and unsure of how to land the job that will be a good fit.
Here are the two of the most common questions I’m asked:
“Am I in the wrong job?”
“I feel something is missing in my career but what is it?”
No matter what stage you are in your career journey, and your level of experience, career uncertainty can hinder your progression. After all, deciding on the right career path is an exciting yet equally intimidating proposition.
So if your career has taken a turn into the wrong direction, it doesn’t have to be the path of no return. Gaining clarity will reset your career compass so you can successfully navigate your career crossroads.
And the Career Success Program provides comprehensive and affordable professional career coaching support when you want it with a unique blend of online career development programs, webinars, online self-assessments, career templates and ‘live’ group coaching sessions. Find out more here.
How Do You Gain Career Clarity?
You must first ask yourself these important questions:
- Who am I?
- What can I do?
- What do I want to do?
- What are the values that drive me?
- What motivates and demotivates me in my work?
- What brings me joy?
- What drags me down?
- What were my personal preferences about any role I’ve had before?
If you take the time to do the self-assessments required to genuinely understand what makes you tick and what your mission in life is, you are well on your way to getting the clarity you need to make choices that set you in the right direction towards job satisfaction and reaching your ultimate career goals.
Once you’ve gained clarity you then need to understand the concept of career focus.
What is Career Focus?
This is about having a clear VISION of who you are, and where you want your career to take you.
Essentially, your focus is your goal.
With that goal as your focus, the choices you make will help you to get closer to what will be truly satisfying for you in your career.
An in-depth study by Edgar Schein, widely acclaimed as one of the founders of the field of modern organisational psychology, discovered that all of us have a particular orientation towards our work. We all approach our work with a certain set of priority and values. These are what we call career anchors.
Understanding your career anchor gives you your focus. Everyone has a career anchor that pulls them in a certain direction and this career anchor stays true throughout your career.
This career anchor is a combination of:
- Your perceived areas of competence
- Your motives
- Your values relating to professional work choices
Often, people select a career for the wrong reasons, and find their workplace is incompatible with their true values. This situation results in feelings of unrest, discontent, frustration and lost productivity. It’s that feeling of “something’s just not quite right”.
For you to avoid this feeling of lack of focus, turn to your career anchor to discover your real values and use them to make better career choices.
A career anchor is the one element in your self-concept that holds you on the right path, even in the face of difficult choices.
The Steps to Take to Gain Career Clarity and Career Focus
Career Clarity
Our career is only one part of our life albeit a very important part. Our Career is what helps to provide meaning and purpose on a daily basis in addition to another essential aspect of our life – our Relationships with others. Balance this with the state of our Health, our Finances and our Physical Environment and we will have covered what is important to us for a happy and well balanced life.
Conduct a stocktake of where you’re at in each of these areas in your life and and go a little deeper into your career preferences:
- Take an inventory of your career, your finances, your relationships, your physical environment and your current state of health
- Identify what you are tolerating in both your life and career right now
- Identify your top personal and career values
- Identify your work satisfiers and what dissatisfies you (and importantly, why)
- Identify the skills you love to use, your competence level, and the skills you’d like to develop
- Create a personal mission statement – think about the legacy you’d like to leave.
Career Focus
- Identify the industries that appeal to you (and why)
- Identify specific companies that you admire in those industries
- Research the company, learn of their culture, speak with people in those companies, and find out as much as you can about the direction the business is taking to analyse how closely it would align with your own preferences
- Aligned with your career anchor, think about the legacy you would like to leave as result of the work that you dedicate your life to. Your mission will help you to hold focus and that focus will provide you with the compass that guides you.
An important factor to remember is that it’s okay if, after a period of time, you feel that you need to make a pivot and adjust your focus – life, and career, is ever-evolving so change is inevitable.
If you still feel stuck, identify a mentor or coach who can guide you. Remember, there’s always a path forward and an objective observer often can see what is not immediately obvious to you.
To help you identify your values, motivators, transferrable skills and mission statement, for a short time I have a SPECIAL OFFER on The Career Clarity Pack which includes all the self-assessments you need to gain the clarity you desire. The results will give you a solid foundation from which to base your career exploration.
Take the CAREER SUCCESS QUIZ and find out where you stand in your career right now
