A couple years ago I started my list of the most abused business words. The list is not as long as I had expected it to be but continues to grow, some day I will publish the list. One of the words I recently started grappling with is “Career Pathing”. What is a career path? I did a general search on Google and came across the following links…
o Career Journal/College Journal from WSJ
o Internet Public Library for Teens
o Numerous recruiters and internet job forums and boards
o Career sections from National and Regional News papers – NYTimes, ChicagoTribune, etc.
o Various consortiums – Business Education, MBA.com, etc.
o Even some astrology sites…
o & much, much more
A common theme across all of the sites was creating awareness of the kinds of jobs, philosophies on what it expected at those levels, an inventory of the arsenal, tools and methods available at our disposal that we as individuals can leverage and some biographies of successful people who have made it and how. Clearly none had a route to get there only a map of the territory and some anecdotes and stories of previous explorers.
Tere are ten ways from Tuesday to skin a cat and so is true of a career path. There is a clear need to know where you want to be, develop and demonstrate the skills, adjust and sharpen the worn edges, an idea of what is one willing to stake and for how long and lastly what’s the exit strategy incase the goal seems worthless as things evolve. Our coaches and mentors can guide us but at the end of the day you are what you make of an opportunity!
Is there a Career GPS? Can I set my destination and have it steer me to the right destination?
