Navigating Your Profession in Times of Uncertainty: A Guidance
During my initial job interview, I was asked to share my future ambitions. My naive response was, "I'm not sure. What about you?" The interviewer's puzzled expression informed me that I had likely made a significant blunder in my career path. Unsurprisingly, I didn't secure the job.
This question often ranks among the least favorable in the realm of inadequate interview queries, alongside the infamous "What's your greatest weakness?" However, it made me ponder. Why couldn't I have suggested aspirations like leading a team, managing a substantial portfolio, or becoming a CEO? Wouldn't that have come off as intelligent, ambitious, and career-driven? Instead, I committed career suicide during my first job interview.
Why Your Future Self Feels like a Stranger to You
There are scientific studies that indicate humans have trouble envisioning their future, often prioritizing short-term benefits over long-term goals. This behavior can be attributed to temporal discounting, the inclination to value immediate rewards less than immediate ones. The appealing career opportunity at hand might appear more appealing than the potential for career growth in the long run. Consequently, we often engage in career-related activities in pursuit of smaller, quicker victories rather than long-term fulfillment.
Hal Hershfield, a professor at the UCLA Anderson School of Management, led a remarkable study comparing neural activity in subjects' brains using an fMRI machine. The researchers discovered that the neural patterns evoked when contemplating the future self were most similar to those when contemplating another person. Essentially, when we think of our distant future selves, it feels like we're thinking about a stranger.
If you cannot recognize your future self in 10 years, how can you envision yourself in a career in 10 years?
As the job market becomes increasingly unpredictable, here are three strategies to help you build a fulfilling career:
1. Focus on Your Strengths
A popular Confucian saying is, "Choose a job you love, and you will never work a day in your life." Although it remains unclear if Confucius actually said this, the sentiment is inspiring. Although you may not always have the opportunity to select your career or future path, building your job around your strengths can lead to increased fulfillment. According to Gallup, this approach boosts job satisfaction by about six times and enhances overall quality of life by three times.
So, if I may, I would like to rephrase the Confucian quote as follows: "Choose work that plays to your strengths, and you will love every day of your job."
To center your work and life around your strengths, consider the following actions:
- Research roles or industries where your strengths are in high demand.
- Eliminate distractions and focus on activities that highlight your unique abilities and passions.
- Seek feedback on your strengths from friends, colleagues, mentors, and coaches.
- Set career goals that capitalize on your natural strengths.
- Expand your skill set by learning complementary skills that can enhance your strengths, such as refining public speaking skills if you're an effective communicator.
2. Visualize Your Mission
Visualization can be a powerful technique for shaping your career goals. However, visualization is more than just projecting desired outcomes; it's about understanding why those outcomes are important and how they align with your personal values. Here are some questions to help you visualize your mission:
- What motivates your passion for your chosen field, and how can it shape your future career decisions?
- How does your work contribute to a larger purpose or mission that resonates with you? What impact do you hope to make?
- When you envision your future career, what legacy do you aspire to leave behind, and how does it inform your daily actions and decisions?
- How can your work align with your life objectives and aspirations beyond your career? What role does your job play in your overall fulfillment?
- What moments of inspiration or significant experiences have shaped your sense of purpose, and how can you incorporate those insights into your future?
- How can revisiting your sense of purpose serve as a source of motivation and resilience as you pursue your career goals?
By anchoring your career journey in your sense of purpose, you can navigate the uncertainties of the future with a deeper, more meaningful sense of direction.
3. Emphasize Experiences over Career Advancement
In many instances, climbing the corporate ladder is believed to be the path to career fulfillment. However, focusing on career advancement over experiences may leave you feeling empty and unsatisfied. By prioritizing experiences that challenge and inspire you, you'll be able to create a fulfilling career path that aligns with your values and passions. Consider the following strategies:
- Pursue opportunities that allow you to grow and learn, even if they don't include a clear career progression.
- Engage in projects or collaborations that highlight your unique abilities and interests, regardless of their potential for advancing your career.
- Seek out mentors and role models who have found success by prioritizing experiences over advancement.
- Embrace adversity and learn from it, rather than viewing setbacks as obstacles that prevent career advancement.
- Cultivate a sense of curiosity about the world and the people around you, as this can open doors to exciting experiences that you may not have sought out otherwise.
By prioritizing experiences over career advancement, you'll be able to create a fulfilling career path that's tailored to your unique strengths, interests, and values.
For numerous individuals, our professional journeys might have deviated from the anticipated or conventional paths. Many of us have veered off course and ended up in professions or jobs that are remarkably different from our initial aspirations or academic backgrounds. It's frequently these deviations that offer us exposure and possibilities to explore uncharted territories of expertise or even foreign geographical landscapes.
Cultivating an insatiable curiosity and treading unconventional routes, placing experiences over titles, is growing more essential. Pose these questions to yourself to contemplate less conventional but lucrative career shifts:
- Which traditional career avenues could you postpone for a while, preferring instead significant and transformative experiences?
- Where (and how) can you procure these experiences?
- What particular life lessons and leadership abilities do you aspire to attain?
- How will your performance and standpoint alter after securing these experiences?
Roads Less Trodden
Selecting the lesser-known path isn't always the wisest decision, but it's usually worth pondering. Inherently, we are inclined to seek comfort in the familiar or foreseeable. However, the modern work environment is becoming more intricate and unforeseeable, making a straightforward or sequential career progression less probable.
Based on various studies, approximately 80% of individuals are not currently in jobs they deeply adore or view as their “dream job.” While not everyone is fortunate enough to live their dream professions, actions can be taken today to shape the career that suits you best—one that may not mirror your initial dream but offers personal and professional satisfaction.
Opt for curiosity, prioritize experiences, and align your abilities and purpose. Gradually, you'll unveil a career path tailored specifically to you, constructed not by inflexible objectives (or dreadful interview questions) but by significant achievements throughout your journey.
In the context of building a fulfilling career, it would be strategic to focus on one's strengths, as this approach can significantly boost job satisfaction and overall quality of life. Instead of committing career suicide by not sharing ambitious career goals during an interview, demonstrating aspirations such as leading a team or becoming a CEO could have been perceived as intelligent and career-driven.
Leadership plays a crucial role in shaping a fulfilling career. By focusing on strengths, individuals can seek roles or industries where their unique abilities are in high demand, thereby centering their work around their passions. This approach can help them unlock their full potential and create a satisfying career path.
