For you and CareerTruth to work well and inform your purpose to plan, we must begin with the starting point for your future professional potential…your professional mastery. There are two parts of your professional mastery to understand and capture for your current state: your Professional Inventory and your current Prioritized Goals for your career.
Your Professional Inventory is the entire basket of education, experiences, and capabilities you bring to the market today. While your resume or LinkedIn profile may be a start, this Inventory goes beyond a career history and prompts collecting the most significant activities and behaviors that you will continue to build upon in your career to achieve your own professional mastery. You will start by capturing the whole of your more formalized learning, from your education, training programs, seminars, certifications, conferences, and books that have shaped you. This informs CareerTruth of your preferred methods of learning for future suggestions for growth and development. You will be able to add more learning experiences and activities ongoing. Most people are amazed at how much they have already done or how easy it is to log their accomplishments. No matter where you are, you have a starting point and should take credit for the actions you have already taken.
After creating your education and learning baseline, the next activity will be to highlight the most significant moments of your career to date. These are specific projects or roles with wins or losses that are most critical to your professional inventory to date. These significant moments should include your biggest accomplishments and lessons from losses that build your competencies to be used in your future. At CareerTruth we believe in the centuries old concept that we are always either winning or learning. You are the judge on this – no win is too big or too small. We want you to go inside the headline of the win to reflect and document what about you made the achievement what it was and how that experience created real growth. These details create real insights to the unique individual you are in your career. Don’t forget that some of the most important wins in your career were provided when you learned how important it was for you to “show up” or “put in the extra effort”. Not every achievement is registered in public recognition.
Sometimes the biggest learning that benefits our future comes from challenges or losses, which is why we create space to account for them privately here. CareerTruth helps you record these accomplishments and learnings using the STAR method, prompting reflection on the Situation, Task, Actions you took and the Results that were accomplished. This allows not only a good record with detail, but also a chance to reflect on and capture the whole story so it can be told later.
You will also have the opportunity to select key skills you have attained over time. There’s value in knowing and naming your greatest skills – the ones that are observable by others, that you may be recommended for special assignments or projects for, that you get hired on and receive raises around. Having a list of your top hireable skills builds confidence in yourself. You’ll also identify the skills you’d like to focus on in the next year and over time.
The final portion of the Professional Inventory section asks you to rank your professional prioritized goals for the next year. There are 15 types of Professional Prioritized Goals for you to choose that will help establish your purpose, build your professional development plan, and create focus as you move along your journey to achieve mastery with CareerTruth.
Please take the right amount of time and consideration to complete this beginning step of your career ownership process. Invest in yourself with these activities and much will be revealed to you as you build out your career plan – we are confident that if you stop and take stock, you’ll be encouraged. Take the time to work “on” your career, not just “in” your job. It is amazing how little time people spend “on” planning their career. Let’s start now by properly accounting for your current Professional Inventory to enable great planning for you to achieve mastery, seek freedom, and leave a legacy.