How to Choose the Right Career Path and Career Decisions

Why Listen To This?

• Eliana Goldstein is a Certified Professional Coach (CPC) working with ambitious millennials who are ready to create the necessary mindsets, learn the key strategies & set the goals needed to move to the next level in their careers. Her coaching combines the 10 years of professional experience she has gained in the corporate world of ad tech sales and building her business with the skills and training she has as a Certified Professional Coach.

Learnings

• ‘3 — Considerations for career selection:
  • Areas of engagement:
    • What activities have you liked doing, and which you’d like to do more of
  • Areas of disengagement:
    • Things that you have dreaded doing.
  • Values:
    • Career values are more important than passion when choosing a career
    • Eg. If you’re a creative person and join an organization that doesn’t support it, then you’re going to be miserable.
  • Zone of Genius:
    • Your unique superpower which you can leverage.
  • State of flow:
    • Things which when you do, make you lose track of time as you’re so into it.
    • Do more of these.
• ‘7 — Focus on Transferable skills more than degrees.
  • Eg. Communication skills, Excel skills, attention to detail, organizational skills, etc.
• ‘9 — Signs to probably change your current job or career.
  • When growth is stagnating or enjoying the work you’re doing and don’t see any way to overcome that. In such cases, lead to less engagement and it spirals from there.
  • Is there a growth path in the company, that you see for yourself?
    • Eg. If you’re not aspiring to be anything at the company, there is no point in continuing to be there.
• ‘22 — On Networking:
  • More like a relationship-building exercise.
  • Consider it more like market research:
    • Find people whose career path seems good to you.
    • Talk to them, learn about them, and get to know what they did to get there.
      • Understand the pivots that they made, skills that they have learned, and show genuine interest.
  • This way, we get the information we need and build that relationship as we give more importance to them in the conversation.
• ‘30 — On recession-proofing yourself:
  • Before accepting a job, talk to someone inside the organization to get a perspective about them.
  • Focus on what you can control as an individual:
    • Always be on a passive job search:
      • Have continuous, productive, market-research call with people.
    • Be proactive and put yourself in front of your network so that, if at all you’re laid off, you have something lined up.
• ‘33 — How to ask for a raise:
  • Right when you join, talk to your manager and get a clear idea of what is expected of you and what you can do to get to the next step.
    • As you accomplish those goals, let your manager know that you have done that.
    • Get it done and communicate the results.
  • Personally, be aware of your achievements:
    • Note your achievements and things you’re proud that you did in your job, down in a Google doc.
    • During periodic reviews, communicate those to your manager.
• ‘47 — On mindset and strategy:
  • Mindset > Strategy.
  • Control the story you tell yourself to change your mindset to your favor.
  • Once you have the right mindset, work on the strategic details.