Don’t choose your next job - choose your direction

Finding the best career path isn’t easy, whether you’re coming out of higher education or choosing to take a change of direction mid-career. There are so many factors at play when making this decision: gaining career traction, monetising your skills and knowledge, the influence of friends and colleagues, and concerns about longevity, especially in light of AI.

In this short read, we’ll consider some ideas which may help, whatever your situation.

Start by studying the paths others have taken

There are plenty of ways to find inspiration and broaden your thinking by looking at what others have done. Asking what other people who got the same degree as you have done with their careers will begin to provide some answers. Using platforms such as LinkedIn for research, you’ll notice patterns forming and well-trodden paths will appear.

Not only that, but you may also find individuals who have gone before you, taken a different route and forged their own careers. This might be the inspiration you need. Equally, if you’re changing tack mid-career, you’ll find these patterns too. Moving from the sell-side to the buy-side, or equity analysts moving into investor relations, are examples.

Work backwards from the bigger picture

In addition to looking at the paths others have taken, it’s also important to look at the bigger picture. Doing some deep thinking about what you want from your career, what you want to achieve, what you enjoy doing, what you’re good at and can monetise, and what work-life balance you want can all be considered.

All of these issues, and others, will help you to design a career and life that you want to live. There will, of course, be constraints and compromises to be made. If, for example, you need to earn at a certain level, then your choices become narrower.

Then, there’s the debate about following your passion and building a career around that versus building and becoming world-class at a particular skill. I’ve heard good and convincing arguments from both sides.

Having an understanding of this bigger picture will help with the next idea.

Turn career decisions into a structured exercise

Finding the right career path is an important decision. Using ‘feelings’, intuition and guesswork may lead you to poor answers and ultimately, the wrong decision. Therefore, finding a simple decision-making framework and using it will be helpful.

Decide on your criteria in the context of your bigger picture and come up with three or more options that need to be evaluated. As you work through your framework, several things will start to happen. You’ll see where compromises may have to be made. You’re likely to generate many questions that you now need to research about each option before you can truly come to a view, and you’ll have begun to think through the likelihood of success. Nothing is for certain.

Get out into the real world and test

Before coming to any firm conclusion, it’ll be worthwhile to test and validate the thinking that you’ve done on paper so far. That means identifying individuals who have already chosen one of the paths that you’re looking at and asking them what they think.

What is good and bad about it? Ask them how they got into it, what skills are required and, if you’re considering a mid-career move, what transferable skills they brought with them and how highly those skills were valued. Remember that if the career path was taken some time ago, things change. Perhaps an area that was once growing is now in decline. Adjacent areas might prove to have better prospects for the future. The key thing is do your research - speak to enough people to get a true and fair view of what that world offers, without putting too much weight on any one opinion.

Conclusion

There’s rarely one right path for anyone, but using some or all of these ideas, along with a structured approach to coming to the best decision based on the best, if incomplete, information, will help you get to a pretty good answer.

None of this needs to be worked out alone, or on a spreadsheet at midnight. If you're weighing up a career decision and want a second, experienced perspective on the framework, the options, or the research — that's exactly the kind of conversation I have every week. Get in touch here and let's start to work through it together on a free, 15-minute coaching call.