Think back on your career to date. What led you to accept the job roles in which you have previously worked? Were some due to the career of study you pursued in your high school, college and post graduate studies? If so, how did you decide the discipline you studied was right for you? Did you make the decision yourself, or were you “encouraged” by others (eg., family members, friends, someone you admired), to pursue work that direction?  
How did you find your first formal job after your education was completed? Did the company for which you did your first full time assignment come to your school’s campus and offer you an internship? Were you referred as a candidate by a relative or friend to the hiring manager of a company? Did you yourself apply to the company and go through their interview process?

How did subsequent job roles come about? Were you recruited by others while you were actively working for another company? Did you feel you needed to accept a job quickly, even if you felt that it did not meet all your needs or expectations? What kind of preparation did you do to get yourself ready for the interview process? Did you take time to develop, strengthen and refresh your resume? How did you prepare for the interview questions that you ultimately received?

In the ideal scenario (where you are working a “structured well developed job search process”), one would ideally do two steps in tandem to start out their search. One would be to “assess” where they were at that point in their career. The second would then be to do the “research” to determine how that in turn would translate into the preparation they would need to do for that next job role. Is there schooling or course work that would be needed to make sure you had the skill requirements for the roles you seek? What accomplishments did you have in past assignments that display how your skills exhibited from the past would transfer into opportunities in other industries, other job functions, other job openings?  

The questions asked above, (and others that I have not even listed), face all in job search. The answers often differ significantly depending on the time of your life when you are facing them in a job search. In your earlier years, (right out of school, and through jobs in your first 10 to 12 years), often the answers are focused on the opportunities that may provide you the best chance of learning the skills that are in demand in the profession you are pursuing. Yes, you may have financial needs. Certainly, you will want to be compensated fairly for your talents. However, in those building years, you may look to work at roles that make you a candidate for a future role in your career. The path to that role may be part of your research. And, that path may say, you will need to start out at an entry level position, followed by a lower-level management position, followed by an upper-level management position, before you are a candidate for the role you ultimately seek.

Once you have been working for some time, one may find themselves facing some obstacles they had not originally planned upon. The job function, industry, or field they pursued did not provide the satisfaction, enjoyment, or compensation which they hoped. Or their plans in terms of their personal life changed, in that instead of only having themselves to care for, they now had a spouse and children to support. In these later building years, into their peak earning years, that may drive decisions such as, what might be the best path to a new career trek. What studies may be involved? Are those studies ones that require a formal degree or certification? What skills and learnings from their past roles, may be used in the new work discipline? What ones may be considered obsolete, due to technology changes or ways of doing business that have changed?

What are your thoughts for work in the later years of your career? Are your thoughts to stop working completely? Is it a time of life where you have thought of starting your own small business? How much income will you need to live on at those times in your life? What costs and responsibilities that you had in your prime earning years will no longer be there? How active do you plan to be after your prime earning years? If so, what will keep you busy if you choose to have an active lifestyle?

The questions of what you may choose to do in terms of your career are there no matter what time of life or what quarter of your life you are in. In fact, the questions themselves often do not change. What changes is you, in terms of your values, your needs and your wants at various points along the way. Having the awareness to face the questions is the first step in the process. The next step is to continue exploring, researching, and trying until you find the answers that meet your need at that point in the journey.

October 2023 - Closing Thoughts