Why You Need A Career Strategy

Career Challenge

March 13, 2019

It is the last week in February which means we have 8.5 months left to get you into your dream career. In order to do that you cannot start with the resume and cover letter, you have to start by creating a career strategy and I am going to break down the 3 parts of a Career Strategy for you this week!
 
I want all of you to get your career plans moving now so that you really get to take advantage of your new career strategy, get into that new job, start operating in it, and really have a completely different life by the end of the year.
 
What is a career strategy? It is a definite path of where you want to go, what value you are bringing to that place and what value you want to take from it.
 
It takes between 23 and 85 hours of your personal time from the moment you start working on applying to a new job to the moment you get the offer. These are big numbers so you have to have a framework for success that prevents you from wasting time on jobs that you never wanted!

STEP 1: WHAT IS YOUR LONG-TERM GOAL OR VISION?

 
I want you to think about creating a career strategy in terms of where you want to be. Now, if you follow me on Instagram you know that I do not believe in the “where do you want to be in 5 or 10 years question”. It’s a dumb question, nobody knows, nobody wants to think about the future or predict it.
 
But, I do want you to think about where you want to be in your future self. Don’t give it a timeframe because that’s too specific. Just when you think about your future self, what do you want that to look like? Every single one of us has that and if you can’t think about it, I also like to ask people to think about who their celebrity persona is. If you had to pick a celebrity that you want to be like, who would that be?
 
Okay, so think about where you want to be longer term and that’s going to be the first component of the how to create your career strategy.
 

STEP 2: CREATE A PATH TO GET THERE

Now this is where people really get stuck but remember that it doesn’t have to be right! I don’t expect that you know everything about company operations. I just want you to think through what kinds of jobs could get you to that place. It’s not always the obvious ones!
 
Let me give you a mainstream example. You might want to be an influencer in the YouTube world. Well you don’t necessarily need to want to do that next. It’s a big risk to not have a job and to work for yourself. Instead you might focus your next job search on working for a media or ad production company that will give you insight into how media operations work.
 
Now you can see how it is not always the obvious answer. If it’s the obvious answer, you’re probably not thinking enough.
 
Think through what kinds of things you might need to learn to get to that place longer term. Then also think about what you might have to do, so what are some possible next steps between today and having some of these next jobs that you could do to get there?
 
There are obvious ones like everyone needs to update their resume and cover letter but, what are some other things you could do? Think through what tools you will need to have in your arsenal to go about getting these opportunities that you’re thinking that you might want to have.
 

STEP 3: DEFINE YOUR SUPPORT NETWORK

 
Now I want you to think of people that you know that can help you in this process. This is not about people you think can get you a job because nobody can get you a job but yourself. This is about people who are going to support you when the job search process gets stressful.
 
Job searching takes time and energy. Additionally, some of the companies you are targeting have long interview processes that can take up to 6 to 8 months. In this case, it’s going to be a long-term strategy for you.
 
If you are targeting smaller, more niche companies, the process won’t take so long… you might be in your new job within a month!
 
But, the process is equally stressful for everyone because thinking about making a change or actually going through the steps to make a change is an intense process.
 
So, think about people in your network who can support you, people who you can talk to about this process and also people who can give you helpful guidance and advice.
 
And those are the three critical steps you need to take in defining your Career Strategy! That was easy, wasn’t it?
 

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