Tuesday, January 5, 2021

It's a good time for career planning.

 It's a good time for career planning.

There are few things more empowering than being confident you can stroll into a new job whenever you like, daisy chaining your career through successively better paid and more interesting roles.


And we're really bad at doing it in this country.


In many sectors no one really job hunts. Once they have got a job they stop, hoping to never have to do a cv again. Understandable but a choice that truncates your potential in many circumstances.


IT can be a sector where the opposite is true. At a city firm I worked at our longest-serving IT staff member of 40 was about 2 years and he was head of department. A combination of narcissistic CEOs who rather liked poaching their rivals' best people and aggressive recruiters who would headhunt anyone who had been a year somewhere meant these people were always finding better offers.


Lorry drivers on the other hand - they have mediocre pay and conditions despite being a massive skill shortage profession because they put up with them rather than hopping to a firm paying £2 an hour more. (Big generalisation obviously).


Brexit plus the pandemic is a massive economic game-changer. There will be no return to normal. Some sectors are almost certainly toast (cruise ships perhaps) even in a covid-safe world if we ever get back to one.


However that means new opportunities, new ways of doing business.


My hot tip just now is Customs Agent. Most people hate filling out forms, there's going to be a ton of work for you if you don't mind work of that nature.


Otherwise I'm not going to make predictions because if you identify a sector and decide that's what I'm interested in and research it you will soon know much more than me.


So basics of career planning: talk to a wide range of amateurs then talk to at least one professional. Career planning is a profession now, has been for about 15 years and we're good at it. I watch people take career advice from a teacher or a parent or some bloke down the pub and think would you let them do brain surgery or build you a rocket? Amateurs will have bright ideas but they basically don't know shit about careers. They don't even know how to think about careers.


So sound out amateurs, get free professional advice from somewhere like https://nationalcareers.service.gov.uk/about-us read up how career planning works, make a mind map of careers that appeal to you, inventory your professional strengths and transferable skills.


It's the perfect time to do this.


Or you can sleep on this, stumble into the first job that'll have you and hope you get really really lucky.

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