How To Start Effective Career Mapping
Many people say, “what does your career look like five years from now? Ten? Fifteen?” After recently leaving my first corporate job to pursue my startup, I found this question to be more confusing. If you had asked me this question when I first started my corporate job four years ago, the thought of doing a startup never really crossed my mind. I thought I would be able to climb the ladder in corporate America, but as the years went on, I felt that the job did not match me well. Maybe I was impatient, maybe it was my personality, but I realized after years that there was a mismatch in my identity to my career that I had initially chosen. The startup itself was not something I suddenly pieced together, but was done almost by “mistake”, by working on weekends and hours after work to lay the foundation of my current day-to-day operation.
Tim Urban had the perfect timing publishing his article shortly after I had quit my job. After recently leaving my first corporate job to pursue my startup, this article provided a lot of clarity through a time of uncertainty as I deviated from the “high school, college, corporate job, retire” path. We often seek familiarity and definition in our path, but at times, it’s not there! The article by Tim Urban I am referring to is here that helped me understand this non-linear path. Let me preface that I am a huge fan of Wait But Why’s work with its funny stick figures, yet witty articles, so I thought it would be fitting to share my thoughts going through. This article and the associated exercises helped me through trying times, so I was really happy through the outcome of this.
Although there are many articles out there, this one I felt was more direct in its application of aligning personal values to a fulfilling career path. This was my journey through my actual first career map.
Thoughts Starting Out
I spent a couple hours on a Friday to go through the article and draw and structure my career path thus far. Tim Urban has a systematic way of approaching career mapping from looking at your previous jobs, value system that you define now, and what types of jobs exist now and in the future. He also addresses areas such as competencies, education, purpose, and strengths.
The exercise involves looking at previous jobs and also aligning with your personal value system with the career that you want. One may seek high income and prestige in a career whereas another would want a career that focuses on strong work-life balance. There is no right or wrong answer but asking yourself these hard questions and being truthful to your core. These values change over time and by defining a career to be aligned can only put you on a better path.
As I began writing these things down, I came to understand what aspects of my previous jobs that I liked and did not like and how it culminated into my idea of a career now focusing more on certain areas than others. There is no way one can “have-it-all” because we are all bound by the same limitation of time. These questions that arise such as, “do I want children/have obligations to my children” to “do I value to have a high income position to spend less time at home” are truly hard to answer, but thinking about them can only help spawn the thinking process.
Article Conclusion
At the conclusion of the article, I felt a bit more at ease choosing this path of entrepreneurship. I had previous experiences in doing side hustles, but I also understand the gaps that I have in choosing this career path. There are a lot of growth opportunities that I have been looking for, which has been great too. I am unsure where this career will take me, but I know that I am going to learn everything I can from this experience and use it wherever life takes me.
I asked myself a lot of uneasy questions and had to dig deep to understand how I viewed my relationship with money, prestige, social impact, and saving face. This process showed me a huge shift I had from when I entered the workforce at 21 thinking I wanted a high power career at a Fortune 500 company with six figure income to a completely different narrative now. It was key for me to understand why I had that mentality in the first place, what caused this shift in my mentality, and how that ultimately led me to leave my previous job to pursue this new endeavor. Albeit, this new endeavor has a lot of uncertainty, I have never been happier fulfilling other aspects of myself that I could not do before.
Closing Thoughts
Our education system does not provide much about career planning or consideration of big life choices. I wish I had taken more initiative as my career started out to figure out the following questions.
- What are my values? (Not ones that others have defined for me)
- What is it out of this job do I want to gain out of it?
- What are possibilities of future career options that can still align to my value system?
At the end, I wish I had sought out more articles like Tim Urban’s in being more direct and focused in my career planning. There are many resources out there, but I never took advantage of them.
I have shared this article with every friend who wants to talk career path with me. I think it’s one of those things that is highly underrated and never really spoken of to each other. Maybe out of taboo or fear of judgement, but I believe that by having more honest communication with each other, we can drive better conversations behind our individual career paths and help each other rise to our potential.
I plan on reevaluating and going through this process again in beginning of 2019 to see what’s changed, what’s stayed the same, and how does the future look like from there. This map has an initial structure, but is always being tweaked by life experiences and choices that can dramatically change the outcome. I hope by doing more targeted and proactive career mapping, I can pave a path that I want to be on, not somebody else’s.
