It’s not just a job it’s your career (Part Two)
Get the most from your career by doing a ‘personal audit’.
Having invested time in developing a career strategy is one thing but making sure that you maintain your focus can be a significant challenge. Having the appropriate tools to help keep you on track is critical to your success in making progress throughout your career. The personal audit is a tool that can effectively anchor your career strategy.
The Personal audit
The following questions are the starting point for your personal audit and are designed to assist you to identify the role of your capabilities, achievements and motivations when making career decisions. When tackling each question make lists and validate your reasoning with examples.
- What are my key capabilities?
- Which of my achievements have contributed most to my career?
- Where do I gather motivation from in my job and personal life?
To help you clarify your thoughts go back to your last appraisal or assessment and extract those capabilities where your bosses or teachers have rated you highly. Identify major tasks you have completed and projects that you have worked on. When you think of how you went about completing these, you should be able to identify capabilities you can add to your list.
When you think of your achievements some of them will spring to mind immediately as they formed milestones in your career. Some will be measurable such as meeting business targets or you may have introduced a new human resources policy that enhanced work life balance for management and staff. Your last appraisal will also be a good point of reference for this list.
Identifying motivations can be as easy as thinking through what you like about your job, your studies or other areas of your life. It maybe that you have autonomy to do your work as you see fit, you thrive on problem solving or it is being part of a team that motivates you.
Three things to keep in mind when doing your personal audit
- Would I benefit from undertaking an objective personal assessment of my capabilities, achievements and motivations?
- How could I effectively use the results to build on my career strategy?
- Do I need guidance from a mentor or coach to review my career strategy and help keep me on track?
The danger in not taking an audit is that you take a narrow focus in considering career possibilities which lead to you making ill-judged decisions that you will regret. This may lead to overlooking roles and organisations that may prove to be a good fit for you in terms of career progression and personal satisfaction.
Job fit
As you consider different roles, use your personal audit list as a filter. If there is divergence between the role criteria for a specific job and your list then you need to consider if you are best fit for the role.
To make this assessment your starting point is to ensure that you fulfil the key selection criteria. From there, go on to pay close attention to how well your capabilities, achievements, motivations and values align with the requirements of the role.
Organisational fit
At the heart of organisational fit is the culture of the company which is comprised of the beliefs, values and behaviours that are set and governed by management under the direction of the board. Management is focused on aligning the culture of the company with its strategic aims, putting in place policies that set the agenda in terms of employee behaviours internally and dealing with external stakeholders.
Company cultures embrace and promote certain behaviours. Entrepreneurial companies will have high risk/reward focus and expect their employees to put forward their best ideas whereas a bank will have a more risk conscious culture and have a myriad of checks and balances to ensure that employees follow prescriptive policies that govern all behaviours.
Decisions about organisational fit are critical to the success of your career strategy. To assist you make an assessment of what type of organisational culture would suit you, ask yourself the following questions:
- Would I be suited to an institutional business culture with highly defined roles and responsibilities or more suited to a business culture that is more personal and flexible and risk taking in its operation
- Do I like rules and regulations to guide me in my work place?
- Would I fit in to a culture that supports autonomy in my work?
- Does the company have formal and informal communications between management and employees?
- Is there a commitment to formal on the job training and sponsorship of educational courses?
- Are there career pathways that are actively supported by the company?
- Has the company has demonstrable community engagement and a policy of social responsibility?
- Is there is a focus on work life balance?
- Are there formal and informal employee forums and social activities?
- Is the dress culture formal or informal?
- Are there are employee benefits additional to remuneration? This may include time off for employees to engage in volunteering activities, payment of club memberships and journal subscriptions
Industry fit
It is not uncommon for people starting out to focus on an industry just because they know someone who is already employed in that industry. A family member or friend who is employed in a specific industry may talk about it being a growth industry with a diversity of career opportunities that are well remunerated. They may also be instrumental in making introductions to potential employers. Then, without taking the time to see if there are other industries that might better suit you the induction program has started and you’re sitting in the front row.
Sometimes people can feel as though they are stuck in the industry they are in because although they would rather work in another industry, they feel their skills and experience aren’t transferrable so they don’t take any steps to see if they can make the move. This doesn’t have to happen to you!
Whenever you have the opportunity, take the time to meet with a range of people in different industries. This is not a difficult task as each industry sector will run career information seminars, often organised by industry associations. These seminars and career expos often aren’t just for graduates but cater to a broad range of people who may already have careers in other industries.
In part three of this series of articles we will discuss the key ingredients in a professional CV and how to effectively manage the interview process.
This is an abbreviated extract taken from It’s not just a job it’s your career by Peter Dawson written in conjunction with Susan Rochester, a senior HR practitioner.
