4 Steps To A Great Career

Guest post by Matt Donatelle.

Step 1 – CAREER PURPOSE – You will determine what you want to accomplish in your career. Your overall and specific career purpose.

Step 2 – VALUABLE SKILL – You will determine what valuable and marketable career skill you are going to develop. This valuable skill will be utilized in accomplishing your career goal.

Step 3  – #1 DREAM CAREER – You will pick a career you personally love, adds value to the world, and pays a good salary. This career will utilize your “Valuable Skill”

Step 4 – 1-10 YEAR CAREER PLAN – You will create a custom written step-by-step 10 year career plan to turn your “#1 Dream Career” into reality.

As an experiment, speak with 3 of your friends that appear to be working in well paying careers they enjoy.  I would wager that most of these friends can provide a reasonable answer to each of these 4 steps.

These are the 4 pillars and your career planning backbone.

Your life and career path is never 100% predictable. 

Fate provides arbitrary twists and turns.

If you develop a compelling career purpose in tandem with valuable and marketable skills you have the ability to handle the many ups and downs in your career.

Let’s say one day you wake up and decide you need a career change. 

If you have developed valuable skills you can easily transition into related careers.   

Employers value your mastery of important skills. 

You will have the ability to pick and choose jobs that are in alignment with your overall career purpose and multi-year career plan. 

It is good to be a “jack or jill of all trades” when you own a house. 

Some think it is also important to be a “jack or jill of all trades” in developing career skills.  For the most part this is not true.  It is impossible to be a true “master” in many different fields.

Your heart surgeon does not do brain surgery.  Superman is only in the movies.

Become really really good at a couple of skills the marketplace values.

This will get you through any economic downturn. 

Apply these skills in a career that adds value to the world and solves a critical problem.

Do this and you will get paid well, feel good about your career purpose, and get positive feedback from those around you.

Don’t settle for less!

Author- Matt Donatelle is a career researcher and certified career coach.  He is the creator of CareerEnjoyment.  CareerEnjoyment offers online career tests and career planning programs.

You can find his free career test at:   https://www.careerenjoyment.com/