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What are you looking for?

You can get quite stuck when going through a career transition. Perhaps you were already feeling stuck in you current role. You knew you wanted to move on, but you didn’t know where you wanted to go. So you stayed. And felt miserable.

So now you’re stuck in this halfway point, you’re SURE you want to leave your current job. You’re halfway out the door. You’re dreaming of a better life, new challenges, a jolt of energy. But – you’re feeling paralysed. What on earth are you going to move on to do?

There are a few different things that appeal, but you’re not 100% about any of them. It’s all a bit daunting and unknown. What if the job’s great on paper but the people are terrible? And if my new boss is toxic? What if it turns out I really don’t enjoy doing x all day?

Something that can be helpful when going through a career transition is to get clear on your values. What are you looking for fundamentally, forget job titles and status. If you can get your core values clear, you use that as a sort of compass to help guide you when looking for your next role.

I listened to a podcast the other day where the host was talking about whether or not a job allowed you to you ‘learn, develop and have a positive impact’. These were her base values. If she’s hitting these three then things are looking good, this is what’s most important to her.

If she were to consider a new role she could check if it meets these three criteria. Will she be learning, will she be developing herself, will her work have a positive impact?

Some of my core values are learning, freedom, sincerity. What are yours?

If you need help with your career transition, you can contact me for some sessions at joaopoku@gmail.com or LinkedIn.

Photo by Daria Nepriakhina on Unsplash

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Is now the time to reassess your values?

Values are so important. If your values aren’t aligned with those of your place of work, you’re going to feel some misalignment. Thinking about what is most important to you will help shape your career path. 

If making lots of money is super important – that will take you off on one trajectory. Having freedom and flexibility in your working day – being able to work from home or remotely some or all of the time, might be more important to you. (I know that right now with the pandemic there isn’t much freedom at all about where we work!).

Your time might be of most value to you – having a job where you never have to work evenings or weekends, and can stick to 9.5. The clearer you can get on all of this, the more that’s going to guide you in a career change.

These values become your navigation tool. You’ll know what to explore, and what to cast aside. 

When I was on my career change journey, I did an exercise where you had to study in detail various areas of your career. They were:

  • Where you want to live?
  • What you want your work environment to be – office, home, mixture?
  • What kind of people do you want to work with – curious, ambitious, chilled…do they share your values?
  • What are your top 3 areas of interest?
  • Do you want to travel with work? Where?

All quite basic, obvious stuff. But it’s easy to just look for what you can do based on your skills and experience when you are considering changing careers. You forget about the other factors that are also so important. Lifestyle and how you want to work are as important as they actual work you will be doing.

If you’d like help with your career change, contact me at joaopoku@gmail.com or via LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/joannaopoku/

Photo by Hello I’m Nik 🎞 on Unsplash