Are you a student having trouble identifying the right career path for yourself or someone struggling in your current role and trying to discover the best-fit job for yourself? What does an ideal career roadmap look like? What steps can you take now to define your upcoming professional life? If you’re looking for answers to any of these questions, continue reading.
Let’s visualize, define and achieve career goals together!
Please note this article is a pure inspiration from Elaine Welteroth’s master class called “Designing your career”. Elaine is an American journalist, a former teen vogue editor-in-chief, and a television host. She’s the second person from the African-American race to hold a title like this in Conde Nast’s history. Her debut book “More Than Enough”, is a bestseller and talks about profound lessons and struggles of being a barrier-breaker while building a successful career, first as a young beauty director and then as editor-in-chief at Teen Vogue. I hope you can gain inspiration from Elaine’s ideas, just like myself and take that first step towards designing and defining your career.
“when the world tells you to shrink, expand” — elaine welteroth
In the upcoming paragraphs, I’ll be sharing the major lessons learned from Elaine Welteroth’s masterclass and what actions can people like us take to reduce anxiety about what the future holds in store for us.
01 Discover your zone of genius
Your zone of genius lies at the intersection of your skills, talents, passion, and values. Discover it, hone it, live by it!
To discover your skills, think about all the experiences that you’ve had in the past and what did you learn, cultivate and improve along the way.
Talents are innate. Some people, including myself, can find it extremely hard to list their talents. Thanks to imposter syndrome! One thing that you can do in this scenario is to reach out to your friends and ask “What are the three things that you think I’m really good at?” Document the list and sleep on it for a few days.
I often hear high-achieving people say “I don’t know what my passion is”, no matter how wonderful they’re at doing their thing. Surprising right! Ask yourself, what’s that one thing that you’d do for free for a night if someone tells you that all your bills are paid and you’re financially secure. That’s your passion, my friend!
When thinking about values, think about what matters to you more than money? It’s really important that you shape your career in the direction that resonates with your values. Sooner than later, it becomes mentally exhausting if your values mismatch with the workplace and/or colleagues. To quote an example, if you’re a strong advocate of collaboration and respect others' opinions and ideas, but are stuck in an environment where there’s no mutual respect, people shit-call each other and prefer working in silos, believe me, you need an exit. Go, find your tribe, look for the energy that amplifies yours. Growth and development become so much more simple when you’re surrounded by the right set of people who are enthusiastic about the same things as you are.
02 Excavate your childhood
Uncover what you were before the world told you what you’re allowed to be and start putting labels and limitations. Go back to your childhood and reflect on little moments that gave you joy. Did you ask too many questions? Were you the kid in the corner who enjoyed breaking an old TV set to see what goes inside it? or were you the quiet one, vibing with your room’s silence while deeply engaged in doing art or writing journals? Excavating your childhood will bring new ideas to life, maybe you’d get back to doing some things that made your feel energized. You might as well discover strengths that you never knew, existed before today.
03 Build your network
Defining a career roadmap ain’t easy. It takes a village. Here’re some things you can do to build a strong network of people you can confide in. To start with, appoint your board of advisors and tell them you’ve appointed them. This is also something I learned while interviewing with one of the big techs almost a year back, when I was graduating — “Have multiple mentors, be open about what you’re seeking, and learn from their experiences.” Now, the next big question is how? Mentorship is a two-way relationship and demands time and effort from both, the mentor and the mentee. If you come across anyone that piques your interest, take the courage to make the move and ask for 15 mins of his/ her time. Do your homework — research about their background, their current, and past roles, and be mindful of their time. One thing that really stood out from Elaine’s masterclass is “Don’t just look up, look around” and you can find mentors within your friend circle who might/ might not be senior to you, look for digital mentors online who approach the world as you do and it’s totally justified to find mentors outside work.
04 Build your career roadmap/ blueprint
There are a bunch of ways in which you can build your career blueprint. Elaine sees it as an illustration of your long and short-term goals, where the long-term goals give an eagle-eye view and short term goals give a hawk-eye view of your career. Some things to consider before you document your career blueprint are finding the right role model in your space. Find out what their journey looks like and what did they do to achieve success. Also, look at different industries and career paths and narrow down the spaces where’d like to play. Create a mind map with your purpose at the center and all the spaces of your interest surrounding it. Once your mind map is ready, create a list of the tasks to be done in the shorter and longer-term, both sequential and operational, and log them with due dates. Use a paper and a pen, if you’re more into traditional journaling or go digital and use tools like Trello or Miro to create Kanban boards and mind maps. One small tip, add as many granular details as possible. This will pop up new questions for you, ignite curiosity and motivate you to constantly improve your career blueprint over time.
Happy career road-mapping!
