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This article is about finding a way through career confusion to a place of your dream where your professional and financial expectations are met.
And if you don’t have a career dream at all, this article guides you on 3 proven practices on how to create a new working identity for yourself that you enjoy.
Three kinds of career confusion are addressed here:
1-) your career offers limited or no advancement either because: the industry is changing or you’ve been denied promotion;
2-) you feel intimidated about learning new technology and skills;
3-) you don’t enjoy your work because this is not your dream career. You’ll understand the cause for each confusion and learn practical ways of addressing them with proven and realistic tips.
Note: This article is not the usual career guides you find on the internet, it’s a whole lot of journey, experience, and lessons packed in.
Before you jump in to addressing your career confusion, let’s just quickly go through what each form of confusion looks like.
Why am I so confused about my career?
You’re 27, 30 or 40 yrs of age, and your career confusion is causing a career depression making you hopeless and letting you go off your dreams. There are three possible reasons why this is happening.
1- You don’t know what opportunities exist, and where they lie. What happens in reality is that, when one door is closed for you, it creates a career depression, making you think that was the only option and that it’s the end for your dreams. However, we are here to tell you, and prove to you that there are tens of other doors- yes the world is wider than what your depression has made you think.
2- Your mind is too fearful of learning new technologies and skills, because they are confusing, difficult and uninteresting. This creates a block for you and makes you indecisive of developing a career goal that promises career advancement.
3- You haven’t discovered your career dream yet, and as we reveal later in this article, the secret of how to do it, backed by research.
Jump straight to the Tips section where we address each confusion with no-fuss, promising ways to get past the troubles they cause.
Now if you think you fall in anyone of the above or more than one category, you are confused in your career. And it can affect you at your job in the following ways.
What being stuck in a job looks like…
As in the previous section we’ve offered you three most common forms of career confusion at 27, 30 or 40 years of age. This section follows and states how an individual might feel at a job where they are confused about a career.
Spot what type of career barrier you’re facing at your job.
- There are no new opportunities for you because your skills are out-of-date. And you’re not moving forward because of two reasons: you lack a perspective on newer, promising opportunities, or you are fearing to upskill on newer technologies that are in-demand.
- You work in your dream career but cannot advance further. It’s because there’s no clear career trajectory defined for you. What’s a career trajectory? It’s a well thought plan that’s a time-bound, step-by-step career path that leverages your true potential and enables you to earn the highest reputation in an industry. When you lack a career trajectory, you don’t know what step you should take next to reach a position. This wastes your precious time, without you being aware of the more fulfilling roles in your career.
- You are a person whose personality is not appreciated at work.
- You fear learning and lack readiness. Lacking the right platforms, knowledge, confidence, and the attitude stops you from moving forward.
- You don’t enjoy your work. It feels you have not been made for the kind of work you do.
Tips to beat Career Confusion and move ahead with Confidence & Clarity
1. If you lack opportunities, re-evaluate your skill set
But why? I already work in an area that I started because it was in-demand back then. It was promising at that time, and so I believe I should wait for that ideal opportunity.
No, don’t wait for it. Instead re-evaluate your skill set. Let us explain why.
When you lack career advancing opportunities in your area, it might be because there are fewer organizations that are in the business compared to the supply of skills. While this is quite demotivating for anyone to discover, don’t fret because there’s good news. Technology advancement is bringing newer perspectives to any profession, adding the Future Skills in the profile.
For content writers it could be SEO, for network engineers it could be network security, for digital marketing it could be marketing analytics, for software developers it could be DevOps, and the list goes on. Name any profession, and there’s a path forward.
What you need to do is to discover the opportunities, and various career paths that open up at your profession. This way you become aware of the closely relevant Skill Set you need to advance.
How to re-evaluate your skill set and advance in your career?
Take a pen and paper, and start with discovering skills that are closely relevant to your career. You can do this in the following more than one way.
- At LinkedIn, find a skill set that professionals in your area hold.
- Ask for in-demand skills from the senior professionals you know of who advanced to better positions.
- At a job site such as Glassdoor, LinkedIn jobs, and Indeed; enter the keyword of your profession and study required skills for the latest jobs. Note down the additional skills required for job roles.
- Make an online research on the technologies you think are relevant to your area. Study how your existing knowledge could be advanced in the light of new technologies that offer bright career prospects.
Now, you have a wide view of the possible technologies you can learn. This could be in the form of a single career path, or multiple options in front of you. Since you have to choose a single career path, how do you know which one to choose? Search about the scope (market potential) for each technology, and find out the demand, and income potential. Here’s how to do it in an effortless way (Go to study market prospects with revenue, and CAGR).
Make a clear, step-by-step roadmap starting from easiest skill to the hardest one and create a timeline against each skill. It’s understandable that learning might seem hard at first, but trust us, with the right learning platforms, it becomes truly easy and enjoyable to learn any technology.
What are the learning platforms?
Udemy, Coursera, Google Garage are three platforms that offer free, and discounted learnings of Future Skills. Search the top selling courses that intrigue your learning, wait for discount seasons and start ticking off skills one by one in your list.
Apart from these, technology vendors like AWS, Azure, Power BI, and Tableau etc., offer their own free, and paid learning resources at their official websites.
Your motivation to follow this roadmap map is the financial and professional benefits your next role can offer that you can use to fulfill your dreams.
2. If you feel fearful of learning new technology, here’s what you need to know
In what forms does fear of learning exist? (especially when learning is the only option for you)
- Learning might feel useless, because it’s uninteresting, confusing, and difficult.
- You think you can’t do it because it’s entirely new for you.
- You think it’ll take time, and mental effort which you can’t afford to bring at the moment.
New technologies might sound intimidating at first. They are strange, confusing, and difficult. This phenomena can occur because you might have been bombarded with over-information, incomplete perspectives, and poor teaching.
What’s the way out?
When you feel overwhelmed by the thought of learning a new technology, take a deep breath. Just follow these simple steps and take as much time as you need with each. But just do it:
Seek a learning platform such as discussed here. Over the shortlisted technology, find out the course that sounds interesting to you.
Start your course and as you watch along, put focus on one concept at a time. Make time for it. If it’s not accomplishable for you at the moment, don’t give up on it. Quality concepts and knowledge come with time for everyone. But once mastered, the achieved clarity of grounds take you a long way in your career no matter if you work for an employer or start your own projects.
3. ‘The kind of work I do is not enjoyable’. Find your dream work with this non-conventional, research-proven method.
If you are working at a job that’s not meaningful to you, it’s time you learn how to create a ‘new work identity’ for yourself, backed by research.
Self-discovery doesn’t work in finding your true career crush. The only way is to try and test doing different things. The best work identity is not created when you ‘look inside’ yourself to find that true identity. Instead, it could be invented for you as an effect of experimentation. As per researchers’ view, an individual has multiple identities that are reflective of either past experiences (likes, dislikes) and even the current circumstances (hopes and fears). This creates a space for new work identities, and ultimately discovering the best one in the process.
A Harvard Business Review research (stuck at the wrong career) argues that the plan-and-implement approach doesn’t work when you are discovering your dream career. A significant amount of time is wasted in the realization of your fantasy, while at the same time you miss opportunities to test and try for your new work identity. An alternate and data-proven approach called the ‘test-and-learn’ model works more effectively to crave and craft a new work identity. In the end, you find a work that you admire.
Here’s what research has to summarize: One can discover their dream career if they follow three work identity creation practices:
Crafting Experiments: Involve in experimentations that don’t put yourself at the stake. This might be in the form of extracurricular activities and weekend projects for professionals constrained by a fulltime job. Crafting experiments exposes you to uncertainty while preserving your financial stability at your current job.
Shifting Connections: Network outside your usual circle and find people who can see you grow in your new identity. Environment significantly affects your motivation and will power. And surrounding yourself with people who can inspire is a critical practice to develop your identity.
Making Sense: While you’re experimenting and shifting connections, it’s important that you infuse events- momentous or failing, with a story about who you are becoming.
4. If you are not considered for a promotion, then read this.
Despite working diligently for a long period of time, your company has denied you a promotion. If this sounds familiar, you might want to consider some aspects regarding your job role as follows. Following these, you’ll literally make it impossible for your supervisor to promote your position.
Evaluate the true value of your skills
Do you know your true worth as an employee? When you evaluate your income potential, work experience and skills, this helps you highlight your strengths and weaknesses. As an effect, you might want to opt for greater learning and become inevitable for a promotion, or you can conversate with your supervisor with confidence.
Define your work quality KPIs and measure them regularly. This brings for you another compelling advantage while you consider to conversate for a promotion.
Develop Leadership Skills
Leadership skills are one of the pillar criteria to become eligible for promotions. While your natural ability could have been observed during your years working in your profession, it’s also important to educate yourself on leadership traits.
For example, adding an achievement from the Free Mckinsey’s Forward program improves your credibility as an effective leader.
Build your Personal Brand
A personal brand reflects what people talk about you at your back. Have a remarkable reputation at your workplace that no one finds any chance to speak of, that could affect your promotion. Practice and demonstrate emotional intelligence, show resilience and work ownership, and become empathetic towards your colleagues.
Being proactive also helps in building a personal brand. Practicing proactiveness means that you don’t hesitate to communicate the necessary details, even when the supervisors don’t seem to ask for it. This reflects your genuine concern, keen interest in your work making you a trustable person for your supervisor.
Adopt a Linchpin Attitude
“You have brilliance in you, your contribution is essential, and the art you create is precious. Only you can do it, and you must”. Seth Godin, Author of the book, Linchpin.
Seth describes Linchpin as an artist, who creates a unique value within their work setting that makes them indispensable for the company. This unique value comes in the form of ideas that a lot of people are unable to deliver because they fear. Our Lizard brain stops us from publishing a work because it hates failure. On the other hand, an artist (Linchpin) overcomes this resistance and finishes a project as planned and publishes it. All quality concerns related to the project are identified and processed in that given time.
Now as per Seth, having a Linchpin attitude makes an employee irreplaceable for a company (that admires creativity and innovation) and allows them to take work ownership and lead a team with their unique insight.
Handling Career Confusion is not a single day job.
The first step in overcoming any difficulty is to know and accept that it exists. Doing this prepares you to think of the next step: the remedy. Work on to spot a career confusion and then seek support to overcome it. Ending in this note: keep your spirits high and remember with each step no matter how small it is, you get closer to your goal. Take one everyday!
