As Career Professionals, it is powerful and gratifying when our clients become empowered to articulate their strengths and career aspirations clearly and confidently. Many Career Professionals intuitively facilitate clients toward this outcome, yet few if any consistent and widely embraced methods exist to guide clients toward such an authentic and effective statement.
Increasingly, CareerCycles Associates and trainees have been fine tuning a narrative method of practice to distil what matters from what happened to guide clients toward the creation of their unique Career Statement. Over the past five years, 120 Career Professionals across Canada and the U.S. have been trained in the CareerCycles narrative method of practice. In the same time, more than 2000 clients have benefited from creating their Career Statement, with consistently excellent results and feedback.
What is a Career Statement? It is a concise, client-generated and empowering document that is used as a compass to direct intentional career exploration. Its present- and future-orientation makes it ideal to guide change and forward movement. This is in direct contrast with the backward-looking resume or CV which in many cases can limit change and growth.
How is a Career Statement generated? It is the output of a ‘career and life clarification process’ consisting of one to three individual sessions using the CareerCycles framework and narrative method of practice. Collaboratively, client and Career Professional use the Career Sketch, another working document, to gather and organize what matters from clients’ career and life stories. The client then drafts their Career Statement by selecting the most important entries from the elements that comprise the Career Sketch. Groups may experience the Who You Are MATTERS! career and life clarification game, at the end of which participants draft their individual Career Statement.
What are the elements of a Career Statement?
Here are the six elements of a private Career Statement:
- Desires: Here’s what I want and what’s important to me…
- Strengths: Here are the skills and knowledge I want to do or use…
- Personal qualities: Here’s the kind of person I am…
- Assets: Here’s what I bring with me…
- Other People: People who have influenced or continue to influence my career & life choices…
- Possibilities: These are the possibilities I’m most curious about…
Click here to view the author’s Career Statement.
How do the private and public versions of Career Statement differ?
Career Statement:public version is appropriate for sharing with others during career exploration. Clients generate a public version from their private Career Statement. Personal content, such as a desire to have a child, is removed. And the sequence of the elements, as shown below, is optimized for career conversations and communication. Career Statement:public version is also designed to be shared and viewed online, in landscape orientation, and making use of colour, links, and infographic elements.
- Signature strengths – provide three substantiated strengths
- Future possibilities I’m curious about
- Timeline – linked and clickable
- Desires
- Strengths
- Personal qualities
- Other people and life roles
- Assets – a:education, b:experiences, c:demonstrated interests, d:additional skills
Click here to view the author’s multi-page infographic version.
Click here to view Career Statement:Public Version of one of our Associates.
Career Statement, The Revolution
In the turbulent 21st century, the career landscape is more changeable than ever, and more than ever, individuals need internal clarity and an effective and easy way to communicate that clarity with others. Beyond possessing intellectual capital (what we know), and social capital (who we know), in order to navigate the contemporary career landscape we also need to develop increased levels of what Fred Luthans calls psychological capital (knowing who we are). As Career Professionals, we need better tools, better outcomes measures, and better and more consistent methods to communicate what we do. A Career Statement is one component of an evolving suite of game-changing tools.
The vision at CareerCycles is to enrich the career wellbeing of humanity. A Career Statement in the hearts and minds of everyone aged 16 and up, is a fundamental component to achieve this vision. It is time to revolutionize the way we understand and manage careers, for 2012 and beyond. Join us!
~by Mark Franklin,M.Ed.,P.Eng.,CMF www.careercycles.com
What do you think? Please leave a comment!
Career Statement, Career Sketch, Who You Are MATTERS!®, Copyright © Mark Franklin
*The views expressed by our authors are personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect the views of the CCPA
Very interesting. Do you have a facebook or twitter page I can follow you on?
Mark, thanks for this comprehensive yet succinct description of how to frame and express what an individual possesses and cherishes in creating their career.