Intelligent Career Model: A new model for managing careers
As a result of extensive practice, empirical research and consultation with close colleagues, here is a suggested model for managing careers that is built for the 21st century. Each of these 3 stages are inter-related and we find that people we work with move between all three, especially the first two, many times before feeling they can commit properly to stage 3.
Now let’s break down each section and see what it’s all made of:
STAGE 1 - WHO AM I?
What gets me up in the morning? What kind of people do I really want to spend every day with? What matters to me in life? What am I good at? This makes up the supply side of the equation - the person you are and what you are going to offer to the world. People usually arrive at career coaching feeling pretty confused. Some are subconsciously still trying to make career choices to please someone else (usually parents) and many feel they are unclear about what conditions are in place when they are at their best. Stage 1 is often the most illuminating phase of our work, as this is where the self-discovery happens. It is foundational to everything that follows. Some of the aspects of coaching at this stage are highlighted below and might help address these fundamental questions:
STAGE 2 - WHAT DO I WANT?
What does the world want from you? What do you want from the world? Focus now shifts from supply to demand as we seek to understand a hiring manager’s perspective and tilt your offering to meet their needs. Understanding and empathy with their needs are your greatest weapons, but you can’t empathise if you don’t know what keeps them awake at night, what worries them or what they want to see happen in their organisations. Remember, humans hire humans so make sure you activate the reward networks in your interviewer’s brain. Show interest, appropriate concern and understanding for their world. Be curious. Never stop being curious. Things change on a dime. The best way to do this is to prepare, read, listen and form a view of their world. It doesn’t have to be 100% correct, but it says so much more about you as a person if you can show genuine interest. Areas to focus on are highlighted below:
STAGE 3: HOW DO I GET IT?
Finally, we try to pull together an emerging self-concept from stage 1 with a clearer sense of what to go for in stage 2. Here in the final stage, we take an idea and work with it. Even if it is not the thing you will end up doing, the work is to create a system for success and practice it. Crucial elements to turn thoughts and ambitions into reality are set out below. They are probably more familiar, and more what people expect from a career coach. Nonetheless for many people, stages 1 and 2 lay the foundations before we can do this “execution stage” well and get desired results:
Conclusion
Career management is not easy. Our inner thoughts, fears and doubts can stop us being all we can be in life. We sincerely hope this model provides a clear pathway to help individuals progress in their working lives. Of course, as with anything, it needs some commitment, hard work, courage at times and an openness to new possibilities. We would always recommend (unsurprisingly) that you have 121 Career Coaching to maximise your chances of success, but if that is not possible we would recommend you join our online Career Discoveries Course if you’re reasonably early on in your career or contact us to join Group Career Workshops we regularly host online. It could be the very best investment you make for your future, especially in a world so uncertain and volatile. It is more important than ever that you align your natural talents and motivations with a clear-eyed view of how you can help organisations solve their problems. That’s what people buy. They don’t give you a job to help you out but to fulfil a need they have. If you can realise that and let it shape how you approach the job search, you’ll be on the right track..