Career direction Archives - Women Returners

Navigating a Successful Career Change

As life expectancy increases, our working lives will get longer and many of us will be lucky enough to be working into our 70s and beyond. This provides an opportunity to move from the traditional model for our career and life (education, work, retirement) to something more flexible that enables us to enjoy a number of different careers with breaks interspersed throughout.

Often around mid-life, our focus shifts and we look for more meaning and purpose. Making the right career change for you on your return to work can enable you to pursue something that fits with your values, plays to your strengths and utilises your transferable skills. Rachel Wright, Career Coach, recently joined us for a webinar for members of our Professional Network and shared her 3 step plan for navigating a career change.

1.Take stock and understand who you are

Reflect on what motivates you and interests you now at this stage in your life
Consider what your key skills and strengths are that you’d like to be using in a new role – ask a few trusted friends to share what they believe your strengths to be when they’ve seen you at your best, or use an online strengths tool such as Gallup Strengthsfinder
Look back over your career and reflect on the highs and lows. Why did you particularly enjoy a role – was it the type of work you were doing, team you were part of, organisational culture?

Capture on one page everything that comes out of your reflections and use this as a lens to assess job options.

2.Explore career ideas and gain clarity on what you want to do

Expand your list of career ideas first before narrowing them down
Carry out some research online to inspire and provide info on routes into professions (have a look at https://nationalcareers.service.gov.uk/ or https://www.mynextmove.org/ ) capturing the ideas that energise you the most
Share these, and your one page reflection document with a few trusted people to ask them for advice about job ideas, and create a list of career options
Step back and consider what excites you most and narrow it down to a maximum of 3 career change options to research further

Consider: Is this area of work increasing or reducing in demand? How far will I be able to use my skills/strengths I enjoy and what skills/strengths will I need to develop?

3.Take action steps towards making a successful career change

Research your 3 chosen ideas further online
Reach out to your network to speak to people who can give you further insights into these areas or help connect you to other people
Use LinkedIn to connect with friends, former colleagues and new contacts working in areas you’re interested in exploring. Like and comment on other users’ posts who are working in areas you’re interested in to help get you noticed
Attend seminars, events, networking groups and join professional associations to build knowledge and relationships including possibly finding yourself a mentor
Explore opportunities for strategic volunteering to build your experience, confidence, and contacts – this could also lead to paid employment (see Strategic Volunteering in our Resource Signposts)
Research free online training and courses to upskill, develop and build your knowledge (see here for a selection of retraining courses)

By diarising time to take small actions, you’ll move one step closer every day to making your successful career change.

Shall I return to work or not? Ambivalence and transitions

“I keep having nagging worries about going back to work, so does that means it’s not the right thing to do?”

For many career returners, this uncertainty can keep you awake at 4am, inwardly debating pros and cons and never coming to a clear-cut conclusion. Even if you’re really motivated to restart your career, you might be worrying about the impact on your family, or whether the timing is right, or whether you’re ready to disrupt your life. Because you feel ambivalent, you question whether it is the right decision. But if you want to feel 100% certain before starting your return to work job search, this can be a mind-trap that keeps you stuck.

Coping with ambivalence and transition

William Bridges, who has been researching life transitions since the 1970’s, reassures us that few changes are universally positive, “letting go [of our old life] is at best an ambiguous experience“. Even with a positive and much-anticipated change, there will be a sense of loss. So just because you feel confused and unsettled, it doesn’t mean that you are making the wrong choice. Bridges explains that when we make a change in our lives we go through a transition period of psychological readjustment, when up-and-down emotions are completely natural. If we anticipate this unsettled period, we are less likely to retreat back to our comfort zone without even exploring the alternatives.

Overcoming ambivalence

Rather than letting those worries keep you awake at night, a good place to start is to write them down. You can then talk about them with your partner or a friend and work out whether they are genuine concerns or if they are worries that can be overcome. Some may even disappear altogether once you have talked them through.

Another way of getting past your indecisiveness, if you’re stuck endlessly debating rational pros & cons of returning to work, is to use your more intuitive side. These are two ways to do so:

Imagine yourself at 70, looking back on yourself today. Is your 70 year old self sympathetic or impatient with your current indecisiveness? What advice would your future self give you? Would she encourage you to make a change and relaunch into the workplace now or to wait a while longer or maybe to make other changes to your life?
Imagine two different scenarios of how your life could be a year or two from now. The first scenario being that things have remained as they are. The second being that you have returned to work. How are you feeling? What are the positives of this scenario? What is missing from this scenario? What is the best thing about this scenario? Now take a step back and think about which of these two scenarios is more attractive and fulfilling for you and why. If it is to return to work, you can then go back to rational planning, thinking about what action steps you can and want to take towards making the transition back to work.

Managing transition

To help you manage those ups and downs that you experience both during your job search and when starting in a new role, it’s useful to give some thought to who is in your support network. Who are your supporters and encouragers? Who can be your sounding board and encourage you to take the next steps?

If you start now to take some action steps to prepare for your return, this can also reduce feelings of anxiety about potential negative impacts on your life. For example, if you’re worried about whether your family can cope, try listing out all the chores/activities that you currently do and then discuss these with your partner/children. What can be shared out? Can you outsource something? What can you stop doing?

Once you start to manage your worries and mindset, you are likely to gain more clarity and feel less stuck in uncertainty. Be prepared for those inevitable doubts about your decision to creep in again from time to time, even when you’re back in a fulfilling role. Ask yourself what is the worst and what is the best that could happen? Be brave and take that leap of faith into action.

Return to Work Roadmap

Our Virtual Back to Your Future Conference on 12 and 13 October 2020 includes 5 practical workshops providing expert guidance for every step of your return to work journey: finding your career compass, boosting your professional confidence, improving your self-marketing, sharpening your CV and enhancing your LinkedIn profile. To give you a flavour for the specialist return to work support you’ll receive, we’re sharing a Return to Work Roadmap below (Find out more about the conference and book your ticket here.)

When we set out on a new journey, we know the destination we want to reach, and we take time to plan a route (with Google maps to help us!). Planning your return to work needs to be approached in a similar way. You are likely to know the broad destination – doing satisfying and rewarding work – but the map to get there can be harder to find. What is the best route to take?

Return to Work Roadmap

1.Be clear about your goals

Understanding what is driving or motivating you to return to work will keep you focused, as you move through the different stages of your job search. Your motivation may be to have intellectual stimulation, to use your professional experience and skills, a financial motivation or to be a role model for your children. Whatever the reason, getting clear on why you are doing it and reminding yourself regularly helps to keep you on-track. Now think about what you want to do. If you do not want to step back into your previous field this is where a lot of people get stuck. If you are feeling unsure, think about what will make you feel fulfilled at work. We spend so much time at work, we want it to be enjoyable and rewarding. It can be hard to identify what will make you happy – these questions may help:

What skills or strengths do I enjoy using?
Which parts of my previous work would I like to do more or less off?
What is important to me in work? Is it being part of a team, autonomy, being an expert, using my creativity?
What do I find most interesting?
What would help me to grow and learn?

2.Refresh your knowledge and skills

Taking the time to refresh your professional knowledge is worth it! There are lots of different ways to do this, such as an online course, reading professional journals or relevant articles on LinkedIn. With the virtual world that we live in, it has never been easier to refresh or learn news skills. Read this blog to provide you with inspiration and links to online courses.

3.Build your professional confidence

After being out of the workplace for a period of time, it is easy to forget who you are as a professional person. That, coupled with a dose of imposter syndrome, can paralyse you with so much fear that you decide not to go any further on the journey or indeed to turn the car around and head home! However, we will share a secret with you: your professional confidence comes back quicker than you think. As confidence comes by doing rather than thinking, look for opportunities that will help you to use and refresh your skills in practice (strategic volunteering is one way). Remember your strengths and what you achieved before your career break. You are still that same capable person, with the additional skills you have developed in recent years. Read about typical return to work fears and doubts and how to tackle them in this blog.

4.Connect with your network

Starting to re-build your professional network is a great way to let people know you are looking to return to work. Reach out to old colleagues, tell friends, and connect with people on LinkedIn. The simple act of speaking to people about work, your experience and what you are looking for soon puts your mind into the professional zone. And the more you do it, the easier it becomes. Remember, it is not asking for a job, it is just having a conversation. Consider creating a networking map to help you to recognise that you are already likely to have a wide network.

5.Update your CV & Optimise LinkedIn

Take time to refresh your CV and ensure that you include any relevant information from your career break, specifically experiences that identify new or existing skills. You should tailor your CV each time you apply ensuring that you are highlighting the correct skills or experience for that role. Ask a trusted friend to review it and provide constructive feedback. It’s hard to know how to address your career break on your CV – find our advice here.

LinkedIn is a super tool for finding out and sharing information as well as looking for jobs on the open market. Ensure that you have a professional photo, and have updated your personal summary and experiences. Now start to build your connections! Sharing articles and being visible on LinkedIn ensures that your profiles appears higher up the search function. If you need advice on how to leverage LinkedIn, read out blog to find out more.

6.Focus your job search

Treat your job search like a project. Identify each step that you need to take and a timeframe for completing that step. It helps with accountability and you are less likely to find that weeks have passed without taking any action! Do not fall into the trap of trawling endless job sites, but use your time wisely and productively to target your search. If you are looking for flexible roles then focus on relevant jobsites, follow companies on LinkedIn that appeal and use your network. The pandemic-related upsurge in remote working could be a positive for you in finding a flexible job.

7. Be patient and persistent

Returning to work often takes time. Do not be disheartened when it doesn’t happen quickly, and decide it will never happen. Please don’t turn the car around and give up! Persistence and patience do pay off. Keep on going and it will be worth it when you reach your destination.

See our Advice Hub for many more Return to Work articles

How to develop your return to work career direction

At our Women Returners ‘Back to Your Future’ Conference , our CEO Julianne Miles led a session on how to get focused and develop your return to work career direction. Here are some of the key takeouts.

We find that many returners adopt one of these unhelpful strategies when they want to return to work:

Treating it like a research project with lots of thinking but little action
Taking a scattergun approach – randomly applying for a range of jobs online
Waiting to ‘find their passion’ or for the ‘perfect job’ to come along.

For success, it’s important to have greater clarity and focus. Julianne explained, “When you’re thinking of going back to work, there are three questions you need to answer – why do I want to go back to work? What do I want to do? How do I get there?” This session focused on helping you to answer the first two questions.

Why do I want to go back to work?

Start by working out exactly why you want to return to work. Your motivation is often a mix of different things. It could be a need for mental stimulation, to use your qualifications, or to be a role model for your children. It could be a desire for a more tangible sense of achievement or to get your professional identity back. It could be financial motivation; in this case consider whether you need the money, want to have your own money or want to have the affirmation of being paid what you are worth. As you think about your options, check that you’ll be fulfilling your major motivations in the job(s) you’re considering.

What do I want to do?

“This is often where people get off track,” said Julianne. “They don’t recognise that there is a trade-off triangle – it’s very difficult to optimise job fulfilment, flexibility and pay/level. I recommend that people start with job fulfilment and then think ‘how can I do that flexibly (if this is important to you) and how can I get the salary I want?’ A return to work is unlikely to be successful unless you enjoy what you are doing and are getting enough out of the work day-to-day.”

There’s a lot of evidence that if you orientate your career, and life as a whole, around knowing and using your strengths you are likely to be better at what you do and also to be happier. Often other people are best placed to give you very valuable feedback on your strengths. This is because we tend to underestimate our own strengths as they are often the things that come naturally to us – and we tend to value more the things we find harder.

It’s also important to determine your work values – what is most important to you in your working life? Test which aspects you can compromise on and which are make-or-break for you.

Likewise, working out what interests you is very important. What do you enjoy doing? Remember that you’re more likely to find your passion if you start off by doing something that interests you, rather than waiting for your passion to appear!

Use these factors to develop your decision criteria. This will help you to develop new options or to narrow down the options you have already identified.

The next step is to actively explore your options.

Julianne said: “Pick two or three options that you have the most energy to investigate. Go out and talk to people to find out more information. Start by talking to family and friends. Go to conferences, seminars – parachute yourself in with lots of people who are already doing what you want to do – and investigate if this could work for you. This way you’ll be able to clarify which option best meets your decision criteria. And don’t underestimate the intangible aspects – which job feels most like you – as this is equally valuable information.”

Find your road to success

Following our Women Returners UK Conference on Monday, we’re delighted to feature a guest blog this week by one of our wonderful returner panelists, Samina Malik

The road to success is always under construction (Lily Tomlin)

If someone had told me 6 months ago that I would
be a panelist at the first Women Returners
Conference being interviewed by Jane Garvey (of Radio 4 Women’s
Hour fame) with two other incredibly talented and inspiring panelists, in front
of an audience of nearly 200 women, talking about my successful journey back to
work at O2 … I would probably
think they were mad!

My experience in looking for suitable roles to
get back into work had been that I had a CV gap and I couldn’t return to
corporate world. My degree, my previous extensive corporate experience for 11
years, my voluntary work … it all counted for nothing.

The fact that during my “time out” to raise my
family I had continued to develop whilst doing one of the most difficult jobs
around … as a leader, innovator, problem-solver, negotiator, teacher,
project manager, care-giver, nurse, psychologist, financial manager, supreme
organiser … basically as a mother … didn’t count.
I was told the best I could do now was to become a part time
teacher/tutor or executive assistant.

But I wasn’t going to let that stop me as I knew
that there was more to me. The constant googling paid off … I read about Women Returners a leading
organisation in the returnship space, offering help to people like me. In one
of their newsletters I saw the O2 Career Returners programme being
advertised. This was it, I thought. My skillset
was relevant, the commute was manageable, a work/life balance was on
offer … I was going to go for it.

Fast forward the last 6 months or so and on
Monday I attended the sold-out Women Returners Conference as a panelist, to
talk about my “successful return to work” journey in a room full of hugely
talented and qualified women … an untapped pool (more like a sea) of potential
… looking to make their own journeys back to work.

Thank you Julianne Miles and
all the talented team at Women Returners, for your work in this area is amazing,
actually life changing. I was honoured to be invited as a panelist and proud to
represent O2, a company investing in Diversity & Inclusion programmes
because it recognises that it makes business sense to have an employee workforce
that reflects its 25 million customer base. It also makes business sense
because having a diverse workforce creates happier, more productive and more
innovative business teams.

To all those who, for whatever reason, decided to
leave work but are now looking to return … know that it is possible. Stay
positive and keep an open mind about the opportunities that come your way.
Believe in yourself and your own strengths, don’t let the inner critic grind
you down. Engage with Women Returners (or similar organisations) to help
support you on your journey. The journey will have twists and turns, it might
be smooth or bumpy but it’s a journey of discovery and I look forward to what
lies ahead on my road to success.

Samina Malik, Supplier Manager at O2

Tackling the Paradox of Choice

I read a review this week of ‘Not Working’ a debut novel by Lisa Owens. It’s about a twenty something woman who gives up her job in marketing career to find out what she wants to do with her life. Rather than quickly finding her ‘passion’, she procrastinates, faced with too many options and too much time to think, and her morale plummets: “If I can just digest enough TED talks, self-improvement
podcasts, overviews on the Aristotelian sense of purpose and first-hand
accounts of former City workers who set up artisan businesses from their
kitchen tables, then surely the answer will reveal itself?”

This may ring bells for a few of you – it took me back to my
own uncertainties when I was trying to work out what to do with my
life after my career break. I wrote this blog post back in 2013 about how I got past
the ‘choice paralysis’ …

When I was on a career break after stepping out of my first career in strategy/marketing, I realised after a while that being a full-time at-home mother was not for me. I knew that I wanted to do something enjoyable and flexible and spent many hours dreaming and chatting with friends about what this might be. One month a friend and I got excited about importing baby equipment from Australia … then a few months later I was inspired to set up a family-focused travel agency … then it was a flexible childcare business … then studying psychology. I was never short of ideas but the interesting thing was that the more options I thought of, and the more I talked about them and researched them on the internet, the more problems I could see and the further I became from actually doing them. Eventually I was reluctant to share my next great idea with my friends as I had stopped believing myself that I was actually going to make any of them happen. Somehow having too many choices was stopping me pursuing any one option more seriously.

When I went on to study psychology, I found that my experience is so common that it has a label: the Paradox of Choice. Too much choice in everyday life can make us confused and paralysed. The psychologist Barry Schwartz in his book and TED talk on this topic explained “with so many options to choose from, people find it difficult to choose at all”. As no choice is perfect, we can always imagine that we will find a better alternative. And the effect can be stronger with more complex choices, such as career decisions. We are less likely to hit ‘choice overload’ if we are clear on our preferences or have a simple way to compare between options.

What got me out of the choice paralysis was realising that first of all I needed to develop some decision criteria to work out what I wanted from my life, so that I could weigh up my alternatives. While all options were appealing, with some positives and some negatives, I was unable to prioritise. When I became clearer on what was most important to me and where I could compromise, I was able to discount many of my ideas and to focus on the one that seemed the best fit. Then I needed to push myself to stop thinking/talking and start taking action. I dipped an exploratory toe in the water by enrolling on an introduction to psychology course and that was the first step on the road to retraining as a psychologist.

Some of the returners I meet also see too many possibilities and may have been thinking and talking about all the things they could do for years without making any concrete progress. One woman had a list of the pros and cons of the 16 options she had been considering – unsurprisingly she felt very confused about where to go next! If you too are hitting choice overload, aim to narrow your focus to get down to a manageable number of choices to investigate:

Work out what is most important to you in your future job. Fine to start with 1) flexible 2) pays enough, but then go beyond that. What are you missing about work (is it using your brain, the achievement, the social aspect, …), what are you really interested in, what are you good at and love doing? If you’re wondering where to start with this process, look at some of our other posts on these topics or at Build your Own Rainbow.
Use this to work out what you want from work, decide what are ‘must-haves’ and where you can compromise. You can then choose a few possibilities that really appeal and seem like they could be a good fit for you. And don’t fall into the trap of looking for the perfect job as all jobs involve trade-offs.
Critically don’t spend more time thinking – practically reality test your short-list: talk to people in the area, maybe take a short course, go to a conference, work shadow, do an internship … test your ideas and learn along the way.

Having choices and being open to possibilities is a great thing – don’t let it keep you stuck!

Further Reading

Prone to procrastination? Tips to help you move forward

Using your instincts in career decision-making

Are you overthinking your career decisions?

Posted by Julianne

Making your own choice on the working/stay-at-home mother decision

A Daily Mail report this week that only 1 in 10 women are stay-at-home mothers, together with the judge’s ruling in a recent divorce case that a mother should ‘get a job’ once her children are seven, have reignited the debate about whether mothers ‘should’ be at home with their children or remain in the workforce. We’re at a strange point in history where there seems to be pressure both ways: a longstanding societal push, reinforced by some parts of the media, to be an at-home mother and a corresponding push from Government and other parts of the media to keep mothers working. Mothers are squeezed in the middle, torn as to the ‘right thing’ to do and feeling judged whatever path they take.

I hear these mixed messages played out on the personal level as well, from the mothers I work with. Some women feel pressure from partners/parents/friends to give total attention to the family, while others feel pushed to get back to work. And we then have our own internal ambiguity: “I’m being selfish and ungrateful if I want to work and leave my children” vs. “I’m wasting my education and sponging off my partner if I stay at home”. It’s not surprising that so many mothers feel guilty whatever they do.

What I’d love to tell all mothers wrestling with your work-home choices, either post maternity or career break, is this: There is no universal RIGHT answer. This is a time in your life when you need to acknowledge all the internal & external pressures you are experiencing, and then decide what is the best choice for you and your family, dependent on your desires and your personal circumstances (which can also change over time).

If you have no real choice and need the income, then avoid the ‘pro-full-time mum’ press, focus on managing your work-home balance, read our articles on how to ditch the guilt and stop labelling yourself as selfish.

If you do have a choice, then focus on deciding what you want to do, not agonising over what you ‘should’ do. There are many options: working as an employee full-time/part-time/flexibly, setting up your own business, going freelance, pausing your career with a clear strategy to return later, or being an at-home mother. And it’s fine to chop and change over the years as you create a life balance that works for you.

Personally, I was taken aback by the pull I felt to stay at home for a few years when my kids were small – I’d always pictured myself as someone who would never take a break. Being at home suited me best in the early years but after four years I was desperate to engage my brain again in other interests and went back to university to retrain, doing some consultancy alongside. I then worked part-time and grew my own business, working longer hours as my children got older. Many of my friends and colleagues had different experiences; from those who were very happy get back to full-time work after maternity leave to those have remained at home until their children are much older and are only now considering how they can find their way back into work.

There is no single and perfect solution. But you’ll know you’ve made the best choice for you when most of the time you feel (fairly) satisfied with your life and rarely feel frustrated and stuck in a place where you don’t want to be. And if you don’t feel satisfied, that’s when you need to make a change, not when other people say you should.

Posted by Julianne

Moving out of your return to work comfort zone

Last Saturday, I had my first experience of appearing on a live radio show, to talk about our work at Women Returners. Although I’m very comfortable with talking to all sorts of audiences about what we do and why we do it and have had a small amount of media training, it was still daunting to be appearing live on a public broadcast. But I did it – and enjoyed it!

This experience made me reflect how easy it is to stay in our comfort zones, generally, and specifically how remaining in our comfort zone can be a barrier to a finding a way back to work. There are many things we know we ‘should’ do which will help with our return (and this blog is full of ideas and advice) but if these things feel uncomfortable and difficult we make excuses and don’t do them.

Three zones not one
It is useful to think about three zones of experience. In your comfort zone, you feel safe and unchallenged and possibly slightly bored. In your stretch zone, you feel slightly unsafe and nervous and there is also some excitement at doing something a bit different. In your panic zone you feel out-of-your depth, scared and unhappy.

What might you be doing that keeps you in your return to work comfort zone?
– not calling a former colleague to arrange a coffee
– delaying putting your LinkedIn profile online
– filling your days with chores, volunteering and looking after others
– not putting yourself forward for a strategic volunteering opportunity
– not going to events or conferences in your area of interest

How can you move into your stretch zone but not your panic zone?

Sometimes we need something or someone to give us a push to do something that takes us out of our comfort zone and into our stretch zone. This was certainly true of the radio interview: I hadn’t actively sought the opportunity but when it came along I decided to go for it. As I reflected on the experience, there were quite a few things which helped me to make the move out of my comfort zone, without going into my panic zone, which will be useful to in your return to work activities:

Small steps. This first interview was with a small local radio station, far from where I lived so I didn’t feel my reputation was at stake and nor was it a ‘make or break’ opportunity for the business.
Mindset. I decided to treat the interview as an experiment and an opportunity to learn. This mindset made it possible to be open to the experience and not judge myself too harshly on how I performed.
Realistic expectations. Alongside my mindset, I chose to set my expectations at a reasonable level for me. I didn’t have to be perfectly fluent in the interview, I could be ‘good enough’. It was OK to make mistakes because I would learn from them for next time.
Preparation. Even though I only managed to do this at the last minute, I spent the journey to the studio writing out bullet point answers to the questions I was expecting to be asked. Having thought through what I would say in advance and having my notes in front of me gave me focus and helped me to stay calm. I had also listened to the previous week’s programme so I had some idea of the format of the radio show and the style of the presenter.
Enlist a buddy. Sharing the experience with Julianne made a big difference. I wasn’t alone and I had someone to give me a boost if I needed it.
Celebrate success. By acknowledging that I had achieved what I set out to do, it reinforced the possibility that I could continue to stretch myself. It is great to know that I will never face my first radio interview again!

These six components are applicable to every return to work situation whether it is attending a networking event, calling a former contact or putting your self forward for a new role. What are you ready to do to move out of your job search comfort zone?

Posted by Katerina – Co-founder Women Returners

If you want to listen to the broadcast, click here

How to return to work after a long career break

Telegraph Wonder Women, The Telegraph’s online section for women, has recently launched a new Work section: “a witty, informative and intelligent look at working life”. This week, we have contributed our top tips on our favourite topic:

How to return to work after a long career break (click to follow link)

It might not be witty, but hopefully it is an informative and intelligent summary of some of the topics we’ve covered in more depth on this blog. Useful to check which of the steps you have already taken on your route back to work and what you want to add to your action plan for September.

Posted by Katerina & Julianne

How to identify work you will find fulfilling

As Julianne highlighted last week, when we think about returning to work we can focus too much on family-friendly work rather than work that will be fulfilling. In our effort to find work that will fit with the rest of our lives and commitments, we can miss this fantastic opportunity to identify what we will find sustaining and will give us a sense of purpose for the years ahead. It can be very easy, as a career break mum, to fill the days with voluntary roles, hobbies, seeing friends and caring for others. I know – I’ve done it! These activities can make you feel useful and valued and busy but will they sustain you in the longer term?

The hidden bonus of being on a career break is that it allows the time and opportunity to do some thinking about what gives you meaning and what is really important to you. This is great preparation for your return to work, when you are ready, as it helps you to get a clearer idea on the direction you want to take. If you’re not sure of your future path, and would like to investigate the type of work you find fulfilling and purposeful, this is a process you can follow:

Take yourself away to a quiet place where you will not be distracted by tasks or people and are able to think for an hour or so.
Think back over your working life and focus on one or two times when you felt a sense of personal fulfillment. Make a note of what you were doing, who else was around you, your location, your emotions and any other details you remember.
Think about what it was that gave you a sense of fulfillment. This is about more than simply feeling successful, although that might be a component. To get to what’s underneath feeling successful, ask yourself what you felt successful in and what this meant to you. For example, were you solving an impossible problem, helping others & making a difference, being recognised as an expert, …?
Think about what you were doing and what was going on around you in these times of fulfillment. For example, were you:
1. Working alone or part of a team
2. Part of a large organisation or striking out on your own
3. Working with data, working with things/products or dealing with people (or a mixture of these)
4. Thinking through ideas and theories or carrying out practical actions with concrete results
5. Developing/influencing others and/or developing yourself?

You might find it useful to talk this through with a trusted friend to help you to reflect on what was most important to you in these situations. Through asking yourself these questions, you will gain more clarity about what success at work means to you and the nature of the work and the surroundings you need in order to feel most fulfilled. In this way, you will start to form a clearer sense of your own purpose which can guide your search for a new worthwhile role. What better way to spend an hour or so this Summer?

Posted by Katerina