Step 2: Assess
IN THIS LESSON
How do your skills, knowledge, experiences and network compare to what you need for your desired role? Assess, then set some goals.
It’s important to have an accurate assessment of your assets and how it compares to the role you want, so you know how to achieve the role you want, or if you’re ready to apply. Set 4+ goals to get started.
Assess
Now that you’ve reflected and figured out what which career paths appeal to you, it’s time to assess where you’re at in terms of skills, knowledge, experiences, and network for the roles that you’re interested in and assess against the work environment, how you work, and reassess if it’s a part of your career development plan.
Search online for roles that are aligned with what you want to do. This is just to get an idea of their qualifications and skills to assess against. Finding 1-2 job postings for each type of role that you’re interested in will work.
Review the skills, knowledge, and experiences required and beneficial for the role.
Assess, on a scale of 0-5, do you have each one? 0 = not at all, 5 = perfect match. Assess skill by skill, knowledge area by knowledge area, experience by experience. Download the PDF above to assist you in this process.
Reflect. Take a step back and look at where you’re strong and where there are gaps. For the gaps, to you, do they seem critical to the role? Are these areas that you’re interested in growing? If yes, do you want to put together a plan to develop in these areas? If these areas do not appear to be critical, you may still be able to pursue the role.
Overall, do your skills, knowledge, and experiences align to the skills, knowledge and experiences of the job postings?
Then, assess your work environment, how you work best, and reflect against your career development plan.
Assess the work environment and how you work best compared to what you know about the role. Think about everything from work hours, to work setting, remote, in-person, individual worktime, collaboration, flexibility, structure, and other factors that are important to you. Do these align?
Reassess against your career development plan. Does this role move you in the direction of your 3-5-year plan?
Assess your network.
Who do you know that you can ask about the role to gather more information about what they do?
Who do you know that may be connected to someone hiring for the role?
Who do you know that could become a sponsor for you to help connect you to the role?
Who could be a mentor to help develop you into the role?
Think about your network inside your organization and in others.
Decide
Assessing your skills, knowledge, experiences and network will give you a clearer picture of the current situation, so you can define next steps. As mentioned above, if everything aligns, it’s time to pursue the role and start really researching the organizations and roles. If there’s a gap, do you need to fill that gap and what are ways to achieve that? Define what you need to do by when, where you will do it and how you will do it, and the desired impact or results, so it’s very clear on your action plans. Then, block your calendar with each action with an estimated time to achieve it. Tell someone close to you what you are planning to do and ask that they hold you accountable. Define consequences of not completing the action - such as, paying someone money that you really don’t want to. Based on this, what do you want to do first?… get started!
If you’ve decided to pursue a specific role, it’s time to engage in the remaining steps to land a job so you can thrive. Start with researching, then networking, applying, etc. Each of the following lessons will guide you through the process. But, first, set goals.
Weekly Goals:
How many roles do you want to find to apply to each week? Then, allocate time to do so. Block your calendar.
How many roles do you want to apply to each week? Then, allocate time to do so. Block your calendar.
How many people in your network do you want to reach out to daily? Then, allocate time to do so. Block your calendar.
When would you ideally like to have a new role? It usually takes 4-6 months to land a mid-level or senior level role. In order to do this, block time daily for researching job postings and applying to roles. Then, once you’ve applied to a number of roles, start on interview preparation. 1-3+ hours a day is ideal.
Use the goals worksheet below to set your goals and post your goals in a visible location to remind you.
You can also download the action tracker Excel file, to track your weekly progress.
Now that you have clarity, let’s start getting momentum with intentional action!