Career prospects

7 tips to think about your career KPIs in 2021

December 31, 2020 By // by Rachel Brushfield

Career KPIs – what are they and do they matter?

“A key performance indicator (KPI) is a metric used by business to evaluate factors that are crucial to the success of the business.”

How do you measure career performance specifically? If you are employed, your employer may use very different measures to what is important to you and if this is the case, it may be a good time for a job or career rethink.

If you are self-employed, is it the rate per day, how many paid days you work a year, enjoyable work, prestigious projects, number of referrals, client testimonials, repeat business, value per transaction/project or number of new clients?

Here is our definition of career KPIs for individuals:

“Career key performance indicators” (KPIs) are metrics used by an individual to evaluate and measure factors that are crucial to their own perceived career success and progress.”

Types of career KPI

Here are types of KPI with examples of each.

Financial; salary, rate/day, rewards, bonus etc.
Progress; speed of promotion, increases in responsibility.
Work life balance; flexible working hours, sabbaticals taken, no of days holiday/year.
Fulfillment; feeling satisfied and enjoying your working hours and career, and having a sense of well-being with low stress.
Reputation/career capital; being seen as an expert, testimonials, being sought after, e.g. headhunted and needing to do less marketing over time.
Fit; a role that plays to your strengths and in which you feel ‘in flow’.
Purpose; giving back, making a difference to the world, involvement in corporate social responsibility (CSR), working for an employer with clients in the charity sector or social enterprise.
Academic; membership level e.g. fellow in professional organisation, grade for further qualification attained.

What are your top 3 career KPIs?

KPIs may change with life stage e.g. needing to fund children through school or university can make salary or a pay rise very important even if you are not that motivated by money, whilst flexible working is essential if you have young children and work for example.

7 tips to think about your career KPIs.

Define your own unique career KPIs – don’t feel obliged to use standard measures – what is important to YOU?
Track your progress; measure and monitor at least every 3 months.
Know your industry averages so that you can bench mark/negotiate armed with facts and examples.
Build self-awareness; know what motivates you and your personal values; what is important to you.
Get a career coach to protect time to focus on your career and help you to see your full potential, something people often can’t do as they are too close themselves.
Give yourself an annual performance review, or ideally diarise a career review and planning meeting four times a year.
Grade your KPIs; primary and secondary or ‘must do’ and ‘nice to have’.

Get in touch for a no obligation 20 minute meeting:

https://www.inspiringportfoliocareers.com/contact-us/

How to create a career breakthrough

December 9, 2020 By // by Rachel Brushfield

This exercise below is perfect for end of year reflection and thinking about 2023. 10 self-reflective questions. Block out some time in your diary between now and the beginning of the year. It is one of the action planning exercises in Chapter 4 ‘How to change career direction’ in my book “Career Management for Lawyers. Practical Strategies To Plan your Next Chapter” for the Law Society:

https://bookshop.lawsociety.org.uk/p/career-management-for-lawyers-practi-paperback/

What specific career breakthrough am I seeking and by when?
What is the significance of this career breakthrough for me personally?
What actions have I taken in the past 5 years to influence this career breakthrough to happen?
What are my learnings for the future about how I plan for my future career breakthroughs?
What qualities do I have to help me to achieve a career breakthrough?
What actions can I take in the future to positively influence my desired career breakthrough?
Who do I know in my network who can help me to achieve my career breakthrough?
Who do I know who has successfully achieved a career breakthrough in the last 6 months whose advice I can seek?
In what way and with whom will I celebrate my career breakthrough?
How could a mentor, coach and/or sponsor help me to accelerate my career breakthrough?

How can we help you achieve an uplifting career breakthrough?

Get in touch to discuss what career change you are seeking. If you don’t know yet, don’t worry. This is partly how we help our clients – creating clarity from insights, internal (you) and external (the market.)

https://www.inspiringportfoliocareers.com/contact-us/

Wasted at work

November 30, 2014 By // by DigitalJenIPC

My eyes opened more widely recently, more than usual, and I am not talking mascara.

It was a discussion in a workshop of high growth microbusinesses about waste.

Waste is everywhere, sometimes obvious, sometimes hidden until you shine a light on it.

Common waste includes:

• Having a gym membership and not using it
• Buying too much food and throwing it away
• Meetings with no agenda where nothing is decided
• Houses where nobody lives when many are homeless
• Procrastination because of fear and worry
• Lack of focus when spreading yourself thinly
• Queuing – for anything
• Cars on the move with one passenger stuck in a traffic jam
• Energy worrying about things you can’t influence

A lot of the time, waste in many situations is preventable or reducible.

What is your biggest waste?

What is it costing you? Time, money, potential?

Waste of talent in business and in careers is scarily common too:

• Talented mothers leaving careers because of inflexible working practices
• Employees feeling disengaged because their skills are being underutilised or promotion prospects blocked
• Graduates doing a menial job because there can’t get one of a higher level
• Cruising in a dead end job because of lack of confidence or fear of change
What would you add?

No wonder self-employment and portfolio careers are growing!

Research recently got my brain ticking over faster than a lawnmower’s first outing in Spring. Employee churn is reducing, employee engagement reducing, stress increasing, trust in management declining.

So where are the policies for job redesign, where do portfolio careers fit in workforce planning? Where are the career conversations around an individual’s values? From the outside looking in, hasn’t the world of work as we know it passed its sell-by date?

Do you feel your talent is being wasted, for whatever reason?

If so, isn’t it time we talked? My job is a talent liberator; I do what it says on the tin. Get in touch. rachel@liberateyourtalent.com

For more insights and tips, follow us on twitter:
https://twitter.com/talentliberator

“It isn’t where you came from; it’s where you’re going that counts.”
Ella Fitzgerald

Big data or big questions?

December 31, 2013 By // by DigitalJenIPC

Big questions are a useful tool to mine insights and utilize the capacities of our minds to analyse big data, solve problems and think better.

Open self-reflective questions or ‘self-coaching’ costs nothing, can be done anywhere and usefully, your mind works on them while you are doing something else.

Here are some big questions for you:

What do I really want?

Who do I want to become?

How do I lose time?

What would make my life/work more fulfilling?

How can I minimise stress?

Where do I waste money?

What does happiness mean to me?

What does success mean to me?

What needs to change?

What is my career strategy?

What am I avoiding that needs resolution?

What fears hold me back?

What goals am I committed to?

What is my role in helping the world?

Self-reflective questions are very powerful, but it is action that creates the change, which is why having a coach is beneficial to achieve more faster; time and space to think, accountability and a supportive yet challenging sounding board.

For more insights and tips, follow us on Twitter: @talentliberator If you are ready for change, get in touch about how our coaching can support you.

Happy 2014 to you!

My inspiring clients. Part 1 of 4.

October 27, 2013 By // by DigitalJenIPC

Most people don’t realize how amazing and talented they are, and hide their light under a bushel. My job is to help them to see their talent & uniqueness, work with them to define a career vision, strategy and plan and support them to market themselves and get to where they want to be, overcoming actual and perceived hurdles.

My clients inspire me so much and I learn a lot from them, getting new ideas that help myself and I can share with others. This is a 4 part blog series each sharing 5 current client scenarios and 5 success stories to inspire you.

5 current client scenarios:

• A female lawyer with a young baby who doesn’t want to return to work in private practice but wants a prestigious career which can be combined with growing her family

• A salesman in his 30s’ who has never enjoyed his career and wants to work out what career would fulfill him so he can enjoy the rest of his working life

• A finance manager in his 30s who chose to leave his job in the city because of a values mismatch and to become self-employed with better work life balance

• A female in her 60s who ran her own successful law firm for 30 years who now wants to enjoy a different second career rather than retire

• A talented female lawyer in her 20s with a young baby treated badly by her employer wanting to rebuild her confidence and find a new firm where she will be happier

5 inspiring client examples:

From employee to self-employed consultant (Chris)
http://archive.constantcontact.com/fs042/1102862873131/archive/1108094305074.html

A mid life career reinvention (Anne)
http://archive.constantcontact.com/fs042/1102862873131/archive/1108092201346.html

Child friendly self-employment and getting started (Sarah)
http://archive.constantcontact.com/fs042/1102862873131/archive/1106786138068.html

Defining USP (Alison)
http://archive.constantcontact.com/fs042/1102862873131/archive/1106787432800.html

Employment to contracting (Tony)
http://archive.constantcontact.com/fs042/1102862873131/archive/1106770362848.html

Are you ready to create your own success story? Get in touch.

For more useful insights, follow us on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/talentliberator

What’s your career strategy and plan? Part 5 of 5.

May 3, 2013 By // by DigitalJenIPC

This is the last in a series of 5 blogs about creating a career strategy and plan. In an uncertain world with static growth, you need to think more intelligently than others and be adaptable. Knowing where you are going helps you to get there, even when things change and you get busy.

Even just 20 mins in your diary once a week to focus on your career can move you forward to where you want to go.

12 tips and useful resources for your career strategy and plan
Here are some useful resources and tips to help you make it happen:

1. Get a career coach
2. Read autobiographies of people whose career inspires you, blogs and career self-help books
3. Look at Cedefop for future skill trends
4. Ask yourself self-reflective questions (self-coaching) to help you get clear e.g. “What would make me feel I had achieved career success?”
5. Be aware of long term work trends and how they impact on you e.g. read ‘The Shift – the future of work is already here’ by Lynda Gratton
6. Know why and how to market yourself e.g. read Reid Hoffman (founder of LinkedIn) ‘The start-up of you.‘
7. Block out time in your diary regularly to focus on creating your career vision and plan
8. Diarise quarterly career reviews
9. Set up a savings account to invest in your personal and professional development
10. Commit to taking responsibility for your own career, don’t rely on your employer to do this
11. Imagine being at the end of your life and look back – what do you want from your career?
12. Write your CV for 5 years time

What tips would you add?

The world of work is changing fast. Make sure that you have a career strategy and plan.

“If one does not know to which port is sailing, no wind is favourable.” Seneca.

In case you missed them, here are parts 1-4 in this series:

Part 1: Why don’t people have a career strategy and plan?
http://liberateyourtalent.wordpress.com/2013/04/07/whats-your-career-strategy-and-plan-part-1-of-5/

Part 2: Why it makes sense to have a career strategy and plan
http://liberateyourtalent.wordpress.com/2013/04/13/whats-your-career-strategy-part-2-of-5/

Part 3: How to create a career strategy and plan
http://liberateyourtalent.wordpress.com/2013/04/19/whats-your-career-strategy-and-plan-part-3-of-5/

Part 4: Opportunity cost of not having a career strategy and plan
http://liberateyourtalent.wordpress.com/2013/04/27/whats-your-career-strategy-and-plan-part-4-of-5/

To receive free Energise bulletins on Career strategies, smart living and working and self-promotion topics, visit this web page and opt in:
http://www.liberateyourtalent.com/cms/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=79&Itemid=106

For more useful tips & insights, follow us on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/talentliberator

What’s your career strategy and plan? Part 4 of 5.

April 27, 2013 By // by DigitalJenIPC

This blog post is part 4 of 5 and looks at the opportunity cost for you of NOT having a career strategy and plan.

“Control your destiny or someone else will.” Jack Welsh.

Opportunity cost of not having a career vision and plan

What are the implications of NOT creating a vision and plan for your career?

You dislike your job
You feel frustrated
You get left behind with your peers succeeding
You leave yourself vulnerable in the world of work
You don’t feel resilient
You experience frustration and anger from being unfulfilled which has a negative impact on your relationships and health
You feel anxious and disempowered
Your talent is unliberated – what a waste!
Your career options and choices are restricted
You are on the back foot (reactive), rather than the front foot (proactive)
You don’t realise the potential you are capable of
You provide a poor role model for your children that you can have meaningful and fulfilling work that plays to your strengths, not just ‘a job’

What would you add?

In case you missed them, here are the other blogs in this series, parts 1, 2 and 3:

Part 1:

http://liberateyourtalent.wordpress.com/2013/04/07/whats-your-career-strategy-and-plan-part-1-of-5/

Part 2:

http://liberateyourtalent.wordpress.com/2013/04/13/whats-your-career-strategy-part-2-of-5/

Part 3:

http://liberateyourtalent.wordpress.com/2013/04/19/whats-your-career-strategy-and-plan-part-3-of-5/

The next and final blog post in this series will share tips to help you create your career strategy and plan.

To receive free Energise bulletins on Career strategies, smart living and working and self-promotion topics, visit this web page to view previous topics and opt in:

http://www.liberateyourtalent.com/cms/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=79&Itemid=106

For more useful tips & insights, follow us on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/talentliberator

What’s your career strategy and plan? Part 3 of 5.

April 19, 2013 By // by DigitalJenIPC

This blog shares some tips about how to create a career strategy and plan.

“Goals that are not written down are just wishes.” Anon.

How do you go about creating a career strategy and plan?

It is a mixture of internal and external exploration and thinking and includes:

Having a clear S.M.A.R.T. goal
Creating a timing plan
Breaking down long term outcomes into small shorter steps
Having self-awareness; your needs, wants, values, motivations, skills, qualities etc.
Diarising time to review and update it
Reviewing published data on skill shortages and job/career trends
Researching employer needs e.g. changing competencies
Looking at market, economic and industry changes and trends
Creating an image board – a pictorial representation of what you want from your career

What tips would you add?

In case you missed them, here are parts 1 and 2.

Part 2 looks at why it makes sense to have a career strategy and plan:

http://liberateyourtalent.wordpress.com/2013/04/13/whats-your-career-strategy-part-2-of-5/

Part 1 explores why people don’t have a career strategy and plan:

http://liberateyourtalent.wordpress.com/2013/04/07/whats-your-career-strategy-and-plan-part-1-of-5/

Part 4 of 5 will look at the opportunity cost of not having a career strategy and plan.

To receive free Energise bulletins on Career strategies, smart living and working and self-promotion topics, visit this web page and opt in: http://www.liberateyourtalent.com/cms/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=79&Itemid=106

For more useful tips & insights, follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/talentliberator

What’s your career strategy and plan? Part 2 of 5.

April 13, 2013 By // by DigitalJenIPC

This is part 2 in a 5 part series about career strategy and planning.

Part 1 explored why people don’t have a career strategy and plan. This blog looks at why it makes sense to create a career strategy and plan.

“Purpose serves as a principle around which to organise our lives.” Anon.

Why create a career strategy and plan?

Here are some reasons why creating a strategy and plan is a good idea.

Increases the chance of career fulfilment
Making conscious decisions rather than falling into jobs or leaving your career to chance is wise
What you focus on is what you get
Having a career plan helps you to narrow down information and networking options in a world of growing information overload/overwhelm
Trends show that in future, people will need a higher level of skill and qualification so it helps you plan the time and money to achieve this
Competition is increasing with well qualified cheaper hungry to learn talent from ‘people rich’ countries e.g. India, Brazil, China
More and more jobs are being replaced by technology
Layers of management have been stripped out making getting a job for middle and senior management more competitive; differentiation and self-marketing is essential
It provides a horizon towards which you are always moving, whatever life/work throws at you
Helps you say ‘no’ to things so you avoid wasting time/energy
Stops you going down the wrong path and having regrets
Means you are less likely to make a mistake
Gives you a sense of control and purpose in uncertain and unpredictable times
Prevents other people/external events determining what happens
Helps you evolve your career and be proactive rather than reactive
Ensures a good fit between you and your work

What would you add?

Further blogs in this five part series will examine how to create a career strategy and plan, the opportunity cost of not doing this and some tips to help you.

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” Mark Twain.

For more insights and tips, follow us on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/talentliberator

In case you missed it, here is part 1 of this 5 part series:

http://liberateyourtalent.wordpress.com/2013/04/07/whats-your-career-strategy-and-plan-part-1-of-5/

What’s your career strategy and plan? Part 1 of 5

April 7, 2013 By // by DigitalJenIPC

A high proportion of people fall into their career by accident. A few, by chance, enjoy their work, but many don’t, which is a shame as it represents such a large proportion of our time and it has a big knock-on effect on other areas of our lives.

Having a career strategy and plan is like being in a boat where you can use a motor, oars, paddle or the sails, with a compass to steer you towards the horizon to the destination of your choosing, whatever the weather. It makes sense to think about your career strategies and have a plan A, B and C and to make time to think about your career choices.

“Your aspirations are your possibilities.“ Anon

This blog, part 1 of 5, explores how having a career strategy and plan gives your career choices and thinking about your career strategies is wise.

Why don’t people have a career strategy/plan?

Their parents were ‘hands off’ about their career
They received no/inadequate careers advice at school or college
They are too busy/don’t make time to reflect
They are unsure about how to go about it
They live ‘in the moment’/naturally think short term
They find it easier or comforting to focus on immediate priorities of life; eating, sleeping, shopping, doing their current job
There are more and more distractions that get in the way e.g. social media
They have never thought about how they can influence their future

“If you don’t know where you are going, you might not get there.” Yogi Berra.

Visit next week for the next part in this 5 part blog series.

To receive your free Energise bulletins on Career strategies, smart living and working and self-promotion topics, visit this page:

http://www.liberateyourtalent.com/cms/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=79&Itemid=106

“Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.” Reggie Leach.