How to Build a Career You Won’t Hate

Author: Michelle Gibbings

Whether you’re just getting started in your career, or are ready to take the next step, you need to approach your career goals strategically. You need intention, but also flexibility, to move forward—you need a career guide.

A career guide is a well-thought-out plan highlighting what it will take to progress your career in ways that you find truly meaningful. This approach has served me (and my clients) well throughout my time in the corporate world and now as an executive coach helping others make the leaps that will advance their careers.

Create Your Own Career Guide

Your guide will include four parts. Each is meant to challenge you to think critically about what you want and where you should focus your energy. The ultimate goal is to identify and take steps that will help you align your career with your deeper purpose and skills.

Part 1: Write down your current career traps

Have you ever had a job, internship, or class that you felt trapped in? Maybe you knew something was off or wasn’t working, but you struggled to pinpoint why. This feeling is often caused by what I call career traps—patterns of thinking or behaviors that we practice because they’re familiar to us, even though they can negatively impact us. It can take a crisis—a pandemic, getting fired, painful boredom, burnout, loss, or a significant illness–for us to stop, reflect, and recognize the career traps that might be getting in our way.

Don’t wait for that to happen. Based on my experience, there are five common traps people fall into. Be proactive by challenging yourself to consider if you’ve struggled with any of these traps, and which ones may impede your progress.

• Ambition trap: You’re a high performer who is used to success. You worry that if you slow down you’ll stop achieving. Not knowing how to dial it back, your solution is to work harder when the pressure at work rises.

• Expectation trap: You continually strive to meet other people’s expectations. Consequently, admitting that you’re struggling and overworked is ego shattering. You worry that people will think less of you if you acknowledge you are burned out or unable to cope.

• Busyness trap: You enjoy being busy and consider it a part of your identity. For you, work always comes first. As a result, you struggle to say no, slow down, or switch off. You likely regularly sacrifice time with loved ones and your health for your job.

• Translation trap: You’ve worked hard to get to where you are, yet the happiness you thought you’d find eludes you. You have all the hallmarks of success, but you feel like you have lost your way because your role doesn’t fulfill or inspire you. Nor does it align with your purpose. At the same time, you worry about changing directions because you believe that your current job is all you know.

• Adrenaline trap: You run your life on adrenaline, not taking enough time to care for your mind, body, and spirit. You are run down and overworked. You say to yourself, “I’ll take a break tomorrow,” but tomorrow ends up being just as busy. You have forgotten that putting your self- care needs first is a critical act of leadership and crucial for a sustainable career.

Avoiding these traps in your career (and getting out of them) involves making deliberate trade-offs, and deciding on those trade-offs will become easier when you are clear on what matters to you.

Part 2: Define your purpose

Your purpose is your why—the reason you do what you do. For some of us, it may be to lead a happy and healthy life. For others, it may be to create a life filled with learning and passing on those lessons. Purpose can center around study, experimentation, and trying new things. It can involve serving our communities, taking risks, or venturing into the unknown. Whatever your purpose is, research shows that we can find meaning in our work by putting our why at the center of our decision-making.

So, what’s your purpose? Answering this question isn’t easy, and there’s no magic formula. It’s an iterative process that involves some soul searching. To start, pay attention to what matters to you and motivates you.

Ask yourself:

• What matters to me?

• What and who inspires me?

• When have I been the most motivated?

• What difference do I want to make through my work?

• When have I been most proud of who I am as a person?

When you answer these questions, consider both your personal and professional life. This holistic approach is essential because you can’t divorce your work from the rest of your existence. A decision you make personally will affect you professionally (and vice versa).

Write down your responses and look for themes or common threads. If you are more of a visual thinker, you might even try creating Pinterest boards for each question. The objective is to capture your thoughts, feelings, moods, and impressions. Your ideas don’t need to be perfectly formed, so long as they have meaning. Over time, ideas will percolate, bubble up, and the obvious answers will spill over. When that happens, you will know you have hit on something. It will feel right.

Once you know your purpose (which, by the way, can shift and change over time), you can be more intentional about dropping the habits that don’t serve you (your career traps) and doing things that bring you closer to it. When picking a job or career path or saying yes to a new project, for example, you can ask yourself, “Does this align with what really matters to me? Does it get me one step closer to living a life aligned with my purpose?”

If the answer to those questions is yes, you know you’re ready to move forward.

Part 3: Document your unique skills and create your selling statement

Say you want to get a job that will stretch you, and you’ve found one that aligns with your purpose of always learning. To get that job, you’ll need to demonstrate what makes you a good candidate, and more so, better than others who may be vying for that same job.

Take some time to identify your unique selling point (USP)—the skills and experiences that, combined, make you better than your competition.

To find your USP, try this exercise:

• Divide a sheet of paper into two columns (or use Google Sheets or a Word file).

• List the skills and competencies you know you have in one column. Include role-specific technical and functional skills (things like programming, design, or accounting), as well as non-role-specific competencies (such as problem-solving, relationship building, or creativity).

• For each item on your list, ask, “What value or benefit does this offer an employer?” and add your responses in the next column. For example, your digital skills may help an organization elevate its digital presence, or your strong relationship-building techniques may support a business looking to improve its customer engagement.

• Look at your experience and expertise and highlight your greatest strengths—the specific skills that make you an especially valuable candidate.

Once you’ve gathered all your data, use your analysis to start drafting your selling statement, a short explanation of who you are, what you stand for, and the value you can bring to any team, culture, or organization. Play with the words and sentences until you find a combination that accurately captures your essence.

Here are some short examples:

• Example 1: I am an energetic sales professional committed to building strong and successful customer relationships. With a demonstrated record of identifying and nurturing potential leads and converting those into successful customer relationships, I create sustainable, high-quality revenue streams.

• Example 2: I’m committed to making a difference by helping people learn and grow in their roles through my work. I’m skilled at creating a shared sense of purpose among my team members so we can deliver outcomes in a rapidly changing and complex operating environment. I do this by bringing the talents of each individual person to the forefront.

Your selling statement has multiple uses—you can use it as an elevator pitch for prospective employers and add it to your résumé or LinkedIn profile. Remember, though, crafting your statement isn’t a one-and-done exercise. As you grow your skill sets and experience, you can and should revisit and rewrite it. Plus, what’s valued by employers will change with time, so you want to ensure your USP is current, meaningful, and targeted.

Part 4: Seize opportunities to expand yourself

It’s important to always be on the lookout for opportunities that align with your purpose and skills. Write down a list of internal projects or teams you’d like to work on, organizations you’d be interested in applying to at some point, or volunteer opportunities you’d like to pursue. That way, when an opportunity arises that aligns with your purpose, goals, current skills, and the skills you need to build to move forward, you’ll be ready. The key here is to be strategic about the process—you don’t need to say yes to every opportunity.

And remember: Successful careers don’t happen by accident or without help from others. You need great people around you to inspire, challenge, and support you along the way. It can also be helpful to write down a list of specific individuals or people with roles you’d like to learn more about that you’re eager to get in touch with. This will help you further build your network and find opportunities that will move you forward. Having a broad and deep network can help you expand your mindset about what’s possible, more readily learn about how your industry and profession are changing and identify where new opportunities are arising.

Now’s the time to do the work. With your career guide drafted, your purpose at hand, and your attention focused, you’re ready to move forward.