“What am I going to do next?” I asked myself for the hundredth time.
I was leading an $8M project with a team of 20, I was up for a promotion and I was establishing myself as an upcoming leader in the company. Things were going well.
Perhaps you can relate?
Well, fast forward in time and I did end up moving on.
But let’s stop for a moment and zero in on the career pivot I made from consulting to co-founding a startup.
Believe me, there was a lot of soul searching, research and discussions before I made the decision to trade corporate job security for an exciting, yet risky role. It was a big move for me at the time and it was one I wanted to be sure of before saying yes.
Maybe you can relate? You’re in a job that gives you security, interesting work, smart people to collaborate with, but you know it’s time for a change. But change to what?
I hope these steps help you as much as they helped me.
1️⃣ Widen your career options
When most people plan to make a career change, they narrow their search instead of widening it (i.e. they only focus on 1-2 roles).
Widening your search at the start helps to create a picture of all the career alternatives that are possible. Once you learn more about what’s out there, it’s so much easier to ideate and design your next career move.
How do you widen your search?
The fastest way to discover a new career path is to broaden your exposure to new opportunities.
Try:
Ask questions, be curious and learn as much as you can.
So the trick is to widen your opportunities the right way. That’s where mind-mapping and time-boxing come in.
2️⃣ Make a career mind-map
Mind-mapping is a design thinking tool that is used to help generate connected ideas to a core theme. It’s a great way to develop a high-level view of what you’re interested in before diving into more time-consuming research.
Here’s how it works:
Grab a piece of paper, colored pens and some quiet space to think.
Keep in mind, this exercise took me 15 minutes. If you find that you’re not sure what to write for the branches, that’s an indication that you need to spend more time researching (see Step 1: Widen Your Search).
Once you’re finished, analyze your mind-map. What are the common themes?
My themes were startup / tech / coaching. This helped me narrow what I wanted to explore so that I could create a networking plan and learn more.
3️⃣ Create a time-boxed networking plan
Once I narrowed down what career pivots I wanted to explore, I created a networking plan so that I could learn EVEN more about each role in order to validate if that career path was a yes or a no.
For each career pivot I investigated, I found 3-5 people who were veterans in that area and asked them to meet for coffee. I explained my situation and asked them specific questions to learn more about that career path.
The early conversations included high-level questions like:
Once I conducted these early discussions, I began to zero in on what I liked about each opportunity to narrow down my list of career pivots from 7 to 2-3.
When you're in this step, it's important to time-box your networking activities by making goals like...
This will keep you on track and help you avoid analysis paralysis.
Remember: the sky is the limit when it comes to your career.
If you’re feeling stuck and not sure what to do next in your career, let’s book a call. We’ll dive into your situation so you can leave our discussion with a clear plan. I look forward to meeting you!
Until next weekend!
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