Last week we introduced our new Career Discoveries online portal for self-managing your career as we emerge from the shadows of Covid19. This week I want to start a series on the model that underpins Career Discoveries and how we go about career coaching as an integral part of Defy Expectations' offering. First of all, some thoughts about careers and what really matters to recruiters.

Traditional careers advice focuses on helping clients to do things like create a barnstorming CV, practise to ace an interview, develop mind blowing propositions and or getting the 30” sales pitch, as if they were simply things to accomplish or goals to knock over. But we increasingly think goals alone are insufficient. A focus on goals doesn’t seem to work that well, which is why much careers “advice” isn’t worth getting. So we suggest you think instead in terms of systems, not goals.

If you’re at the stage of your career where you’re just wondering how you got here, how you’ll get there or have no idea where there even is, just keep reading. If you left university in the eye of this pandemic, or have been laid off as a result, just keep reading. Most of us started our careers much like balls in a pinball machine, fired with great speed and purpose from education only to find ourselves hit a bunch of unidentified obstacles, set off bells, pick up some knocks and land somewhere miles from where we thought we would. This realisation can be particularly revealing even for senior people 25+ years into their careers.  

Scott Adams, Dilbert creator and all-round good guy, recommends NOT following your passion. Wait a minute, come again? You’re supposed to be a career coach and you’re telling me not to follow my passion?? Yes, we agree with Dilbert. Passion will undoubtedly give you high energy, high resistance to rejection and high determination. Passionate people are more persuasive, too. However, Adams’ point is that banks don’t lend to passionate people, on the basis that they are not objective and dispassionate enough in their decision-making and therefore represent a bad credit risk. He says banks want the grinder, not the visionary.

The point seems to be this: it’s easy to be passionate about things that are working out, and that distorts our impression of the importance of passion. Things that don’t work out tend to slowly drain the passion as they fail. Things that work out become more exciting as they succeed. The problem is that most work is not passion-inducing, is it? Looking back, I suspect lots of people were more passionate about what the job could do for them, not the job itself - rise through the ranks quicker, get paid quicker, leave quicker.  And that’s no bad thing. It’s just you need to be clear about what and who you’re doing it for and why.  If you are genuinely passionate about what you do on a daily basis, that’s all well and good. But our career model is all about helping people build a system - a skillset over time, congruence in choices you make, a pathway easy for a recruiter to understand. That way you become the expert, the go-to person and able to offer yourself to others more easily if you are on the wrong side of a restructure in your organisation.

®Scott Adams

So forget about passion. And while you’re at it, forget about goals, too.

The best advice we can give clients is to think about the job after the next one. Job seeking, like networking, is not something one does only when necessary but should be a continuing process. This makes perfect sense if you do the maths: chances are that the best job for you won’t become available at precisely the time you declare yourself ready. Therefore, getting a job is part of a system, not a goal. The system is continually to manage your skill set, fill up the empty development pots, map what people want and problems you can solve and look for better options to put yourself in the frame. If you’re employed as an expert or technical specialist, systems-based career planning means thinking about your market, your competitive edge, being clear about your performance factors and how you can improve your quality of output vs. the person next to you. If you’re in technology, healthcare or engineering, it might mean thinking more like an ambassador of your firm than an MD or employee, increasing your visibility at forums designed to develop next level thinking. If you’re in a sales role, your career management system should include building awareness of your clients’ preferences and thinking styles as a major component of increasing your numbers. For everyone, it usually means learning more about yourself – your life purpose, values, environments that will suit you. Again, guided self-analysis to figure out your motivated skills will help determine whether you want to stay a producer or become a manager and potentially, a cost.

Do not expect your employer to do it for you. They are interested in keeping you doing what you are doing, thank you very much, especially if you are earning them money or freeing them of hassle. Throughout my coaching life we’ve had my antennae up, looking for examples of people who use systems as opposed to goals. In most cases, as far as we can tell, the people who use systems do better. The systems-driven people have found a way to look at the familiar in new and more useful ways. For example, as we moved into the second decade of this new millennium it was clear the writing was on the wall for many conventional business models – think big box retailing, think Blockbuster, think big chunks of wholesale finance, music or how we sell consumer technology. The clever ones make a choice and put systems into place to transfer themselves to safer ground. Some pick up a new sector, build new relationships and figure out their transferability quickly, some offer to cover a new market or geography and built a defensible franchise, and others retrain. Within 15 years, so much has changed yet so much hasn’t.  Structural upheaval in business is almost the only certainty, especially now, and most of us will run the risk of becoming functionally obsolescent at least once in our careers. Putting systems in place to manage your career by taking regular time out to appraise where your ship is headed is essential.

If you’re out there looking to make your first break into something new, then systems thinking is also essential. The whole deal – clarifying who you are and what you want, targeting employers, writing CVs, dealing with recruiters, networking for information and contacts, interviewing, negotiating and closing – all requires a system as none of these components of a successful job search strategy happens in isolation. If you think through this list with your own situation in mind, you will quickly see how the last item is linked in a dependent chain back to the first. Finally, the old adage about learning through failure is as true as ever. It’s a good place to be because failure is where success likes to hide in plain sight. Everything you want out of life is in that huge, bubbling vat of failure. The trick is to get the good stuff out.

 James Parsons

James is a Founding Partner of Defy Expectations and brings over 10 years' experience in both career and leadership coaching. He works with business leaders, entrepreneurs, founders and third sector CEOs on performance and leadership issues, and individuals on career management, as well as designing career management courses for organisations. 

Access Career Discoveries here

www.defyexpectations.co.uk