Mapping Your Career Trajectory

Best career options, career alignment, career strategy, career trajectory… Are these topics that occupy a big portion of your thoughts? If so, you’ll love this strategy for getting your career trajectory aligned with your life fulfillment.

Mapping your career trajectory in a way that leads you to fulfilling and purposeful work requires a few key actions.

One of the first steps in the process is compiling a list of mastered skills, talents, and gifts that are unique to you, AND that you enjoy doing.

Having a clear picture of the things you do well and also enjoy will serve as a useful guide to optimal career alignment. It will allow you to discover (and even create) the best career options for you and your values.

Following is a great strategy for obtaining such a list:

1. Take the job you had most recently. This can be a job you are currently working in or a job you have recently left.
2. Break the job down into all the skills and actions you engaged in. For instance, if you were a sales manager, some likely items on this list might be:
   • Team leadership
   • Proposal writing
   • Relationship building with prospective clients

   These are the broad categories.

3. Break each broad category down into more specific actions, skills and attributes that were required for that part of the job. Continuing with the example of sales manager, possible items on this list may include:
   • Team management
   • Team inspiration
   • Persuasive writing
4. The last step is to break all the subsets into things you enjoy doing and things you don’t enjoy doing.

Now you have a starting point for discovering your best career options because you have a list of things you are capable of doing and that you enjoy.

This is a good first step to building a comprehensive list of the strengths, gifts, and talents that you want to take forward on the path toward career alignment.

The picture that begins to emerge from doing this exercise can be a motivating and inspiring start to building a career path that really lights you up inside.

Is your work situation frustrating you? Do you hate your job, but have no idea what to do instead? Attempting to navigate those waters without support is not fun (yes, I do know, but that’s another story). I’m excited to announce that I’ve created The Job I Love Toolkit, with all the resources you’ll need to finally clarify how to get paid to do you.^TM To be the first to hear more details, join the VIP Wait List.

And if you know a friend or neighbor who could use hearing the advice in this article or needs The Job I Love Toolkit, please forward this to them.