With the festive season moving on towards new year, it is that time again when many employees find the time and mind space to pause for thought about the direction of their careers. Questions such as; ‘Am I still in the right job?’ ‘Is this company still right for me?’ ‘Am I limiting my career by staying in this role?’  ‘What differentiates me in the job market?  spring to mind.

Too Busy to Think about Your Career Direction

What is it about the contemplation of career transitions that makes it so challenging to most of us? With the breakneck speed of technology driven changes in customer and competitive dynamics, companies have to move rapidly to remain responsive to these developments. Small wonder then that many employees at all levels in the corporate world feel that they are forever propelled forward  by the next deadline, next meeting, or next item on the ‘to do’ list. Being busier than ever, they have little time and mind space to contemplate their careers and accumulated learning.

The Price of Unresolved Career Transitional Issues

When the realisation hits home that they are no longer as motivated in their jobs as they used to be, and that it is time to move on, they are distinctly unprepared to act on this revelation. Remaining stuck in a job that you can no longer engage with productively, can not only hurt your performance and credibility, but set back your career growth as well, in a rapidly evolving job market.

Resolving Career Change Concerns

Most often, we are unable to communicate effectively what we want, until we find and respond to the right questions. Asking the right questions, and answering them thoughtfully, on your own, or with the  assistance of a skilled coach, can help you begin to regain perspective on the direction of your career, whatever your transitioning  concerns might be.  An important exercise to help clarify your future career options is to identify your personal brand.  Engaging in this process can minimise the risk of overlooking salient competencies gained.  Equally, overstating competencies, in the absence of supportive narratives, undermines job applicants’ credibility.

Let us look at a talented strategist and analyst, whom we will call Rachel, to see how she came to resolve her career change concerns. Rachel has post-graduate degrees from leading, global universities, and an undergraduate IT degree. She was contemplating applying for a CEO job with a start up, which was part of a group of established companies. The job expectation for this role was that she would launch its new digital product into the market and grow the company’s market share rapidly. She agonised over whether she could make ‘the leap’ into this CEO role, seeing that she had never occupied a managerial role before.

When she spoke about her career achievements and the various roles and tasks she had performed, it became clear that, indeed, none of this experience gained was ‘managerial’ in the hierarchical organisational and process sense, such as, interpreting company strategy into business unit planning, implementation, budgeting and resource allocation management, and supporting employee performance. That said, when encouraged to reframe her perception that management experience can only be obtained within organisational hierarchies, she began to reappraise the  value of  the tasks she had performed over the years,  for the CEO position.

Gaining and Viewing Work Experience Differently

Thinking differently and in terms of non-hierarchical organisational networks, Rachel was able to link many of the tasks she had already performed, and organisational impacts she had achieved, to the specifications for the job under consideration. Some of these key tasks and achievements were:

• Cross-functional leadership : Leading organisational teams across all divisions and levels to address short term and long term challenges
• Strategy development: Creating a turnaround strategy for an incoming executive
• Linking strategy to implementation: Developing business and financial models for newly acquired Group businesses
• Customer value generation: Spanning the entire company value chain from inbound logistics through marketing, operations and sales, in an advisory capacity to senior management ; and
• Realising go-to-market plans: Launching award winning marketing initiatives for company products

Once this point was reached, our conversation shifted from identifying salient competencies for carrying across into the CEO role, to drawing on her business management and IT qualifications to close the gap in requirements, where on the job experience was lacking. This formed the basis of her branding for the CEO start up role, and for building a coherent, credible narrative around her suitability for it.

Coherence and credibility stem from having the appropriate backing stories for claims you make. Casting your net too widely or narrowly is inadvisable. To help you to begin taking stock of your job experiences and achievements, in preparation for your next career move, here is a list of 6 questions to answer, to identify what your personal brand has to offer prospective employers.

Personal Brand Identification Exercise