A5: Articulate your career vision

Introduction

Most career coaches will tell you that you are most likely to feel motivated, proactive and positive about a career change if you have real clarity on what you want.

Stephen Covey, in his book The 7 habits of highly effective people, wrote that people who are very effective in managing their lives and careers always ‘begin with the end in mind’. They are able to clearly articulate what they want, why, and what it would look like when they have achieved it.

Another author, Simon Sinek, explains in his book Start with Why that having a good understanding of WHY you do what you do enables you to be more purposeful and inspired in your work.

Taking time to envision and describe our future is something we should all do periodically – it keeps us focussed on what is truly important, helps us to set and review our goals and also to determine how far away we are from realising those goals. It also helps us to articulate our goals to others, who may be able to help us by finding opportunities or providing encouragement.

Your sub-conscious knows a lot about what you really want from a career. It knows your VALUES (as explored in section A1: Determine your core values) and MOTIVATIONS (as explored in section A2: Discover your career motivations). You could try ‘free-writing’ about what an ideal career and life would look like for you in 5 years’ time. Another powerful exercise is to do a guided visualisation or meditation exercise, which will help you to picture the most important things that you want from your work.

It doesn’t appeal to everyone, but it is absolutely worth a try!

Activity

Download the following guided visualisation:
· Perfect job - visualisation - 8 minutes
2. Find a quiet, comfortable private space to sit or lie down to listen on your headphones or somewhere you will not be interrupted. Get some notepaper ready to keep nearby to take notes after the exercise.
3. Close your eyes …and just listen.
4. Make notes of what you saw, sensed, felt or heard. Write down your reflections on what these things mean for:
· your job searching
· choice of job and its purpose
· how you want to work
· who you want to work with
· what is the best use of your time

Case study quotes

If you’re afraid there won’t be a job waiting for you when you finish, you are right. You won’t hear that from your committee because they genuinely have no idea how bad the academic job market is. Listen to yourself and your concerns. Look at those academics around you and pay attention to
how unhappy so many of them are. Think about how narrow their experience is and how little they know about the world. Then spend a minute imagining doing what you like to do, be it researching, writing, lecturing, teaching or doing analysis, or even something completely different. Then imagine all the other places in the world that kind of work happens. Yes, you can leave the university and yes, you can be happy. Sam Ladner, Senior Researcher, Microsoft. From PhD to Life case study.

I see so many graduate students and recent PhDs sacrificing things they want—having a family, pursuing outside interests, expressing their beliefs—in order to meet other people’s expectations. They base personal decisions on others’ empty assurances. This is a terrible way to live. Sarah Kendzior, From PhD to Life case study.

Further resources and reading

jobs.ac.uk careers advice: What does success look like for you?

Blog: Why You Should Make It A Habit To Visualise Your Ideal Future

Blog: The Skeptic’s Guide To Visualizing Career Success

A: Know yourself Return to Career Planning Toolkit Map