How do I help identify what my next career step should be?
It's important to be able to have clear career goals which enable you to develop your pathway to success. The key thing that enables this for you is having an understanding of your skills, an idea of what you enjoy doing, a view of what role could give you that job satisfaction and knowing what actions you need to take to close the skills gaps that are needed for your next role. This article focuses on how to understand those gaps and develop your skills to enable you to gain the experience to move forward.
Take a step back and consider the everyday work that you do and the skills it requires for you to complete this work. When reviewing the tasks that you undertake, consider the end to end process to help you to draw out those skills. In tandem, consider the things you enjoy more than others, as this can help you to identify the preferred role you want Vs the role you're capable of doing, a very important step to ensure that you come to work enjoying the work that you do.
Let’s take a look at Sophie, the Project Manager, who is considering what her next role could look like.
Sophie has to pull together and present a report to senior leadership that provides data and insight on the project's performance.
Sophie extracts the data needed to produce the report.
Sophie is skilled in Microsoft Excel and is able to use pivot tables and formulas to give her the statistics that she needs. This makes Sophie skilled in Data Analysis.
Using her Excel skills, she can produce charts that summarise the information in a way that is presentable to senior stakeholders. This makes Sophie skilled in Data Visualisation.
Sophie is skilled in Microsoft PowerPoint meaning that she can produce a presentation that summarises the information in a format that senior leaders can relate to. She uses the data to draw out insights and adds commentary to the pack. This makes Sophie skilled in Data Storytelling.
Sophie then presents the deck in a meeting to the audience of senior stakeholders. She handles any objections or discussions in the meeting and takes away any relevant actions for her to work on. This makes Sophie skilled in Stakeholder Management, Presentation Skills and Tracking Actions
Whilst Sophie is proficient in all of the above, her favourite part of this ask is producing the data and developing the insights. Whilst she is capable of presenting these to stakeholders, it's not her preference, so she identifies that she'd like to become a Data Analyst, a role that is more weighted towards the technical side Vs the stakeholder management side.
To become a Data Analyst, Sophie identifies that Excel and PowerPoint do the job she needs to do today, but in order to become a Data Analyst, she needs to learn new technologies and hone her skills in this field. Through conducting research and networking with other Data Analysts, Sophie decides to complete a course in Data Manipulation and Visualisation where she learns how to use tools such as Alteryx, PowerBI and Tableau that enable her to optimise how she sorts the data and presents it in a different, more user friendly and more efficient way.
Now that Sophie has completed this course, she uses the opportunity in her existing role to pull together the performance report for her senior stakeholders. This time she does it in a different way to gain experience using her new found skills. She impresses her senior leadership team who prefer her new PowerBI dashboard Vs the old PowerPoint that she was using. Sophie has also gotten the job done in less than half the time.
So let's recap on the steps Sophie took.
Sophie identified her skills by breaking down the steps she takes to complete a weekly recurring task that has become second nature to her.
By considering what steps she enjoys, she identifies a career path more aligned with her passions ultimately leading to more job satisfaction
Through networking with the right people, Sophie learns more about the new role and creates a pathway of learning and development to upskill herself further in this role.
Once completed, she uses her existing role to gain practical experience so she can use this as an interview example to demonstrate her competency.
This is a prime example of how you can look to your existing skills, develop ways to enhance them and secure that next role.
When applying for a new role, remember that it is rare that an applicant hits all of the specifications required for the role. Someone who demonstrates the ability to learn and apply new skills showcases to the hiring manager the adaptability and the eagerness of the candidate to learn in the new role. Sometimes that attitude in itself is more valuable than someone who ticks all of the boxes, so don't rule yourself out, go ahead and apply! The worst that could happen is you receive developmental feedback on what to do next which can help you to close your skills gap further.
If you'd like support to understand your transferable skills or to help identify a role that provides you with job satisfaction, get in touch for some personalised support to help you take that next step in your career.
