Career Management Step #1: Find Your Core Competencies.

Well, this question should be self-explanatory by now! To improve on your career management and find the sweet spot in the job market where you will best develop yourself, you need to figure out where and how you can produce the most value, working also on your professional development.

What does this mean in practice? Well, there are three components to it (Figure 2). Firstly, you need to find your core competencies. Watch out: these competencies don’t necessarily need to have much to do with the professional activities that you are spending the most time on at work!

Core competencies relate to your biggest strengths, unique capabilities and activities most joyful to you. They are the combination of skills, knowledge, expertise, talents that you have developed over time and that your competitors cannot reproduce easily – as these skills are typically the result of your investment in yourself, training, your professional and personal  development and other initiatives completed in the long run.

Core competencies can be those of your talents that you would never place on your resume, such as “the ability to listen,” “strong work ethic,” or “the ability to learn something new in every situation, even while standing in a queue to a grocery store.” Core competencies will give you a competitive advantage in the job market.

It’s not necessarily what you communicate to the hiring manager in the recruitment process – it’s what you know about yourself, and what helps you make career decisions and build your career path.

Career Management Step #2: Find The Right Role To Play.

Secondly, you need to know what is your preferred role toward other people, or, in other words, your value-building profile. You already know what you enjoy doing at work—but in what role? Are you a type of a role model? Or rather, a highly-specialized problem-solver? Or perhaps, a contributor that prefers to solve problems in teams and build projects from the back seat?

As a matter of fact, as a hard-working and intelligent person, you have a free choice of which roles to choose, but in some of them, you will naturally perform better than in others – as they better fit your work style, personality, values and strong work ethic. Please find more information related to this topic in our article “How To Find the Right Role To Play in the Team“. 

Also, most white-collar jobs will require juggling multiple roles. The whole difficulty is to develop a strong work ethic and find a position where the portfolio of roles that you need to play well corresponds with your natural potential.

Please also find more information dedicated to discovering your profile as a value builder in the blog post “How Do We Build Value in the Job Market? Alfred Adler’s Theory and How You Can Profit From It.”

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Career Management Step #3: Find Your Flock.

Lastly, you need to figure out where in the job market the people who think like you are. Or, in other words, your flock. Let’s say that you are good at data analysis and you prefer to work as a specialist.

Even knowing this fact about yourself, your quality of life as a professional might vary depending on whether you choose to work in a corporation, a consultancy company, or a startup.

Or perhaps, you decide to launch your own business. You will only be appreciated in an environment where others share your values, your strong work ethic, and your attitude to life and work. Please also find more information dedicated to looking for your tribe in the blog posts “Finding Your Flock As a PhD” and “Safety vs Freedom: The Landscape of Post-PhD Careers.”