Figuring out what the next right move for your career is only half the battle- the other half is to stay the course, and keep focused on doing the hard work, either by reskilling and upskilling, or by looking at the next job or industry to switch to that will serve your personal and longer-term career goals best.
But staying motivated can be a challenge, and while we have friends and family to be our personal life-cheerleaders, who’s in your corner when it comes to your career?
That’s where a good career coach can help, and to meet those, you might want to check out personalised career programmes for Singaporeans such as Polaris.
It’s a suite of personalised career guidance programmes delivered by Workforce Singapore (WSG) and its appointed providers, Ingeus and AKG.
It is designed for those who are:
- Exploring career opportunities;
- Seeking clarity before making crucial career decisions;
- Looking to move up in their career; and
- Contemplating to hone their expertise in a specific role.
Two months ago, I had my first session of the three-session programme. The first session helped me understand myself both as an employee and person, and figure out whether my current career was bringing out the best of myself in both aspects (you can read more about this here).
The second session a month later focused on helping me discover my real personal and professional competencies, and also how much I hated using Microsoft Excel and Powerpoint (again, you can read more about how Polaris can challenge your professional assumptions here).
And here we were now at our third and last session, with only one thing left to truly discuss: What’s next for my career?
Have you met your career development plan? I hadn’t.
Joey, my career coach on this three-month journey, had observed from my past two sessions that my career goals had kind of changed, and told me as such.
“At first, it was about job security, given you were worried your craft of being a writer and editor was going to be taken over by ChatGPT”, she said.
“You also looked at your career based on your job function in the editorial industry, rather than a set of skills that were able to be utilised across other industries that required such communicative background and experience.
“But now there’s been a mindset shift I see, and a more defined understanding of what next, in terms of your career goals, and what to do next.”
I nodded my head.
We then went into a detailed discussion about my career action, and Joey helped me break it down into these action steps:
- Talk to my boss about my career goals, and look for more responsibilities. Understand what’s lacking and what do I need to do in order to take up more stretch projects
- Consider communication courses on how to deliver messages without being so direct and learning to balance the art of being diplomatic over “Saying it as it is”
- Develop and strengthen my existing skillset by checking out what are the schools and courses that I can attend and establishing a start date to attend them. The goal is to prioritise the execution, not to do everything at once, as it can get overwhelming, especially since I’m already juggling work during the 9-5 hours.
Action goes hand-in-hand with emotional motivation and balance
Joey then raised a good point as she talked about being overwhelmed, and she asked how close I was to burning out.
Thankfully, I still feel centred and comfortable in my current career. Still, she reminded me that if I didn’t, there would also be professional counsellors who would be capable of listening and helping me in any time of career trouble.
“It depends from client to client, of course- some do feel like crying from burnout, but thankfully, you don’t seem to be suffering too bad a case of this,” she said while acknowledging I was feeling physically quite tired after a long work year while juggling recuperating from a cervical spinal surgery but still trying to keep to my career goals.
She concluded the session by asking me to write down those career goals with a pen and paper.
“You’ll be hearing my gentle reminder some months down the road, asking you where you’re at with your goals, and I hope you’ll be closer to them than when we started this journey”, she said.
So do I, Joey, so do I!
Note: The writer, Kelvin Tan, is a Principal Manager at Workforce Singapore. He received complimentary access to the Polaris career guidance programme for the purposes of this article. You can use your SkillsFuture credit for Polaris by WSG, and register here.
