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7 tips for healthy career capital in 2021

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What are your career capital goals for 2021?

Building career capital

Career capital is the combined value of competencies, knowledge and individual personality attributes and other career assets that you have to produce economic value.

Your career assets combined = your career capital; the sum total of your time, talent and potential. You need to consider career capital in terms of its present and future value when thinking about your long-term career prospects. If the internet is an ocean full of ‘fish’ i.e. opportunities, you need the right bait to catch the fish you want. Career capital helps you to do this. What ‘fish’ do you want to catch e.g. a future employer or amazing clients? What is the best bait to catch the fish you want to catch?

Why is career capital important?

In future, in less than 5 years, employers will have reduced permanent headcount and resource up on an as needed basis with individuals and employers rated transparently on-line.

Are you ready for the new world of work? Do you have clear differentiation from your competitors and are you visible on-line?

Career assets

Your career capital is made up of multi-faceted career assets which accrue over time. Career assets include; accolades, academic achievements, endorsements, published works, talent, networks, events, charitable activities, career credibility etc. Here are some examples of each career asset category.

Accolades

  • Patents
  • Awards
  • League table rankings e.g. Chambers
  • Who’s who listing 

Academic 

  • Higher qualifications e.g. MBA, PHD, MSc/MA
  • Links with academia or prestigious universities e.g. guest lecturer 

Endorsements

  • Client testimonials
  • Accreditations
  • Employer references
  • Peer testimonials/endorsements

Published works

  • Articles
  • Chapters
  • Books
  • White papers
  • Videos
  • Podcasts

Talent

  • Multiple mastery areas
  • In-demand skills e.g. creativity, big data management 
  • Languages
  • Good emotional intelligence e.g. empathy 

Networks

  • Professional association involvement
  • Membership of elite clubs
  • Size & diversity of network
  • Quality of network e.g. senior decision makers, high net worths

Events

  • Hosting an event 
  • Speaking at an event 
  • Conference speaking
  • Conference chairing

Charitable

  • Pro bono
  • Trustee post 

Career credibility 

  • Prestige/trophy employers & clients e.g. FTSE 100
  • Senior leadership positions e.g. C-Suite

Miscellaneous

  • Personal brand

What would you add? How would you rate your career capital?

  1. Create a career strategy and ensure your career capital is aligned with it
  1. Define your ‘fish’ – i.e. target employers or clients
  2. Audit your career capital quarterly and define career asset S.M.A.R.T. goals
  3. Ensure you have insights about what is important to and valued by your target audience e.g. who are their heroes/heroines?
  4. Measure stats for your career capital so you can monitor progress
  5. Monitor your reputation – set up Google alerts & track your name/brand on Twitter
  6. Use/monitor LinkedIn stats to evaluate the quality and profile of your network

Get in touch for a no-obligation meeting to discuss your needs: https://www.inspiringportfoliocareers.com/contact-us/

7 tips to think about your career KPIs in 2021

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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.

  1. Define your own unique career KPIs – don’t feel obliged to use standard measures – what is important to YOU?
  2. Track your progress; measure and monitor at least every 3 months.
  3. Know your industry averages so that you can bench mark/negotiate armed with facts and examples.
  4. Build self-awareness; know what motivates you and your personal values; what is important to you.
  5. 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.
  6. Give yourself an annual performance review, or ideally diarise a career review and planning meeting four times a year.
  7. 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 are you creating some sunshine in August?

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Growing sunflowers (Better Business)

August is a great time to catch up with yourself!

Stephen Covey who wrote the classic book ‘The 7 habits of highly effective people’ talks about the importance of blocking out time in your diary for ‘important not urgent’ tasks.

He defines important not urgent tasks as:

• Preparation
• Prevention
• Planning
• Relationship building
• Empowerment
• Self-awareness, learning, exploration & development
• Learning new skills
• Creative thinking
• Networking
• Prioritisation
• Training & development
• Exercise

People are naturally better at some of these and less so at others.

What are your goals for each of these areas? Do you block out time in your diary for these things? Most people don’t. They spend most of their time reacting, fire fighting and chasing their tail!

Why not choose August to create some new habits?

Ask yourself these questions and score yourself out of 100% for these key effective habits:

1. How good am I at managing time well and prioritising tasks for maximum results?
2. How good am I at marketing myself in a relevant, consistent and targeted way?
3. How good am I creating better systems, healthy habits and behaviours?
4. How good am I at developing my skills/knowledge to stay one step ahead?
5. How good am I at reflecting, planning, refocusing and follow up?
6. How good am I at setting compelling goals with plans to achieve them?
7. How good am I at creating and building key relationships to help me grow personally and professionally?

If your total core is less than 400, coaching would be very beneficial indeed to protect your current work position and ensure you are planning your future with more competition. If your score is 400-650, coaching would help you to achieve excellent results faster than you can do alone.

The world of work is changing REALLY fast at the moment and there is less time to do these things but they are becoming more important to create a secure long term future for yourself.

Important not urgent things to do in August:

5 tasks I am focusing on this month are:

• Catching up on sleep and de-weeding the allotment
• Reducing the paper mountain that has built up over a few months of writing and doing events
• Identifying and removing the cause of annoying ‘niggles’
• Reviewing my technology
• Mapping key systems and processes to streamline them

Here are 6 more ideas for creating some sunshine in August:

1. Reflect on your achievements and learnings from the last 3 months
2. Review your career strategy
3. Tag your LinkedIn connections
4. Update your CV
5. Follow more followers on Twitter
6. Research networking and training events for the Autumn

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Get in touch if you are ready to explore coaching with us. Thanks!