5. Telling Your Career Story_ Interests and Assets

You are listening to career compass, aHimalayan learning audio course. Be sure to check out all of the other awesomeexclusive content in the Himalaya app or on himalaya.com. Welcome everyone.Thank you for joining us today. This is an, a rate of Salinas, your host forcareer compass, an audio course for those on a journey.

[00:00:28] To find work that moreaccurately aligns with their career compass,

[00:00:36] but you've listened to episodezero through four, and you've been introduced to a variety of tools throughboth the recordings and the notes. At the end of each episode, I hope you'vehad some time to use a few of these tools to help you identify your values,interests, strengths, skills, and other assets.

[00:00:56] Our past guests, Daniel Harlan,and Irma, Venkatesh shared some valuable perspectives and insights to give usthe courage and confidence to do this very important work. As I mentionedbriefly in our conversation with Irma, the end goal of all this introspectionis to end up with an overview of your introduction or your career story.

[00:01:19] Having that database of storiesthat Irma talked about in our previous episode. So you can have the right storyfor the right audience. And the right format is very important. This collectionof stories will also be very useful for interviewing. And it will also allowyou to begin to see the emerging themes that surface about your talents.

[00:01:42] So you can integrate them intoyour career story.

[00:01:49] In this episode, we'll delvedeeper into the first components of a career story model that I mentioned inthe previous episode. In brief. I like to have my clients break their storydown into three parts. These are my interests. Here are the assets I bring tothe table and here's where I want to leverage them interests, assets, where Iwant to leverage them.

[00:02:15] This career story will be theevolving career compass that guides your next career transition. For thisepisode, we'll delve deeper into the interests and assets portions of thecareer story model. I cannot stress this enough. The more you create anarrative that is true to your authentic self, the more you create a narrativethat aligns with your genuine values, interests, and talents, and therebyincreases the probability of finding opportunities that also align with you.

[00:02:47] It rarely happens overnight, butbit by bit, you begin to shift closer towards your true North.

[00:03:02] Coming up with a narrative.Intro is not so hard. You're all smart, accomplished people who can string yourpast experiences into a believable story. But doing so with an authenticnarrative that is built on the hard work of introspection that you have doneand will continue to do throughout your lives takes real work.

[00:03:23] And this model of interestsassets and where you want to leverage them is one model that can serve as aplace to hold the findings of your introspection and become a summary of yourevolving career compass. So let's get started. When you think about yourinterests, we're talking about the areas you want to impact or a job functionthat you're especially interested in.

[00:03:48] These areas may have beenrevealed by your hobbies, aha moments, life-changing experiences, things you'redrawn to, or things that really bother you. All of those questions and promptsthat herbalists shared with you and that Daniel's curriculum perhaps surfacedfor you would contribute to identifying your authentic interests.

[00:04:12] For example, you might be reallyinterested in working with a specific population. Perhaps you had a sibling orrelative that was diagnosed with a certain learning difference or disease, andyou saw the potential that the right type of education or treatment delivered inthe right way could have on a person.

[00:04:31] Perhaps positive impact, perhapsnegative impact. So you really want to focus on working with delivering thesetypes of valuable interventions to members of this unique community. Thisstrong sense of calling may lead you to want to help or improve a service orproduct for this community. I've worked with several students and alumni wheretheir own life experiences and growing up with a sibling that had autism ordown syndrome really fueled their desires to want to help create better futuresfor these communities.

[00:05:05] Sometimes this entailed careersin medicine, sometimes in policy or in business, it really depended on theindividual's talent, but the interest was the same helping this specific communityimprove. Or perhaps you've really struggled financially as a young adult andyou have had to learn a number of personal finance lessons the hard way.

[00:05:27] So now you really want to sharethose lessons with others in a systemic manner so that they have these insightsearly on in their lives and avoid some of the pitfalls that you wish someonehad helped you avoid in interest can also be less about a topic and more abouta functional area. User experience designers or UX designers have become much morepopular.

[00:05:51] In the past few years, I oftenmeet clients who are less concerned with where they exercise their skill set atthis point in their lives, but really just want to gain experience in aparticular function inside an organizational environment where the position isvalued, understood, and truly mentored within the organization.

[00:06:13] You may have several interests,but for the purposes of this exercise, creating your career story, you're goingto focus on one or two of them and keep them to something that will allow youto earn a salary. So although you might be drawn to writing and the power ofthe written word, you may decide to put off the novelist career until you're ina more financially stable position.

[00:06:36] But some of those writing skillscould be used to write grants or market messaging for an organization whosepurpose aligns with something you believe in. Yeah.

[00:06:52] Once you have your area ofinterest, you want to move on to your assets, your assets are your skills,strengths, networks, knowledge, and other things you bring to the table. Okay,we're going to talk about each of these in greater detail. First, let's startoff with our skills. Skills are things you can do, such as planning, planning,a project planning and event planning, a program or product launch, orcreating, creating a budget, creating a process, creating a product.

[00:07:24] If you're on the moretechnological side, it might be programming, website creation or management.Some aspect of supporting technological infrastructure. It can also be moregeneric, such as organizing, communicating, writing, if it can be done oranyone ever might need it. It's a skill. Now, keep in mind that oftentimes youmay be sitting on skillsets that you don't even realize you possess.

[00:07:52] This is why it's especiallyimportant to think about what you like doing. And to also ask others with whomyou work, what they think you're good at, and to make note of these things. Onething that I've noticed, especially with talented, intentional people who havebeen out in the workforce for several years is that they may not realize how tothink about their more elevated skill sets.

[00:08:18] This is why talking to othertrusted individuals who you work with is such a key part of this process.Others can often see your talents more clearly than you can in your nextmeeting with your manager or a cross-functional superior, take five minutes toask them what they most appreciate about what you bring to the team or to a particularproject.

[00:08:41] You might want to raise thequestion and let them think about the answer until your next conversation. Youcould also tee it up in an email. If they ask why you want to know, you cantell them that you just want to better understand what they most value aboutyour contributions so that you can do more of it at the same time, write downwhat they say, even if you don't understand it so that you can think about itand possibly look it up or learn more and revisit it in future conversations.

[00:09:13] So, if they say you're reallygood at upper management or creating institutional memory, and you've neverheard these terms before, and you don't feel there's a lot of time to ask,follow up questions, write them down, research them on your own, and then bringsome followup questions later. If you need to.

[00:09:32] If you're in college or gradschool group projects are often a part of your courses and there are greatlearning opportunities with regards to what skills you bring to the table. Youcan broach the same conversation with your group project team that I justmentioned above. This might be a really rich place to get feedback.

[00:09:53] Once the project is done, have adebrief meeting and share with each other, what you most appreciated about eachother's contributions to the team. There may be roles that you play skills thatyou bring that you're not even consciously aware of. Let me give you anexample. Remember when I mentioned earlier, not being able to perceive your ownelevated skills.

[00:10:18] I have several colleagues who atthe start of a meeting, just jump into taking notes. They'll ask, is anyonetaking notes? And if no one is, they just jump in now, perhaps you're likethis. And you think to yourself, Nereda, I'm just a note taker. But when youtake these skills to the next level, you're a creator of institutional memory.

[00:10:38] These are people who take highlevel notes, make sure they're filed away in a place that everyone's aware of.Bring up the same document at the next meeting. So we don't spend 10 minutestrying to figure out who was supposed to do what from last week, institutionalmemory champions are the ones who help us remember what we said last week, whatwe were supposed to do and where we're supposed to go this quarter.

[00:11:03] You may find that you're good atsomething, but you don't have the right words to explain it. And that's okay.Just make a note of it. I really want to stress this, make a note of it and theright language will come about later. Depending on where you want to leveragethese assets. This is really important.

[00:11:22] And we'll circle back to this inthe next episode.

[00:11:31] So back to the conversationabout assets, another asset is your strengths, which the Clifton strengths wementioned earlier is a great tool to help you surface. These are strengths orcharacteristics that you possess and that you bring to the situations youencounter. Perhaps you are really analytical.

[00:11:50] You may change jobs or even jobfunctions, but your analytical skills will probably be one of those things thatyou find yourself using naturally. You just can't help it. If you're arelationship to build there by nature, you'll find that you just do thisautomatically. It's hard for you not to. And it's a very valuable asset tohave.

[00:12:10] However, be aware that aparticular characteristic may be more valuable in one job function ororganization than in another. It may be appreciated more by one manager thananother, or in some work cultures over others. For example, if you're a reallycreative person and you're always coming up with new ideas for how to improvethings, some managers will really appreciate you raising new ideas at any pointin the year and encourage you to try new things.

[00:12:41] But other managers in workenvironments prefer to stick with the current way. Things are done for avariety of reasons. So you may be the same person with the same strength, butit is more welcome and encouraged in one environment versus another. And thisis something to keep in mind, as you consider different types of teamenvironments.

[00:13:00] Yeah.

[00:13:05] Asset you bring to the table iscontent knowledge. This can result from your having worked in a field for anumber of years or taking classes on a particular subject area. But the pointis you have expertise on the subject, whether it's from a theoreticalperspective or from an experience perspective.

[00:13:25] This might be something morenarrow, like program evaluation or product marketing, or it might be somethingmore broad, like building humane practices around supply chain management in aninternational environment. The point is you have real world knowledge andacademic knowledge or both as to how something gets done.

[00:13:48] It's important to note thatcontent knowledge can be on both very formal topics and very informal topics.If you were born and raised in a particular city, And you're one of theintentional people listening to this audio course. You probably have a great dealof content knowledge as to how to go about getting things done in the city.

[00:14:08] And that has value. Especiallyto a company that might be looking to build a satellite branch or headquartersin the city, and may be looking to have a critical mass of employees whounderstand the local culture,

[00:14:26] closing this session just aboutanything can be an asset. It can be a degree from a specific institution,especially if the hiring manager or organization leader might have attended thesame institution and had a valuable time there, it might be a network thatothers have trouble accessing, but which you have deep long-term relationshipswith, or it might be deep knowledge about a city or geographic area.

[00:14:50] As I mentioned earlier, It couldbe a language or culture that you're intimately familiar with. And that allowsyou to give marketing and sales, certain insights, even if you're not in thosefunction areas. If you're a culture builder who knows naturally gets energyfrom bringing people together throughout the work day or after hours, everysmart organization knows that it needs a few of these individuals who justenjoy building community.

[00:15:20] Your past history might alsogive the organization or the unit, some legitimacy. For example, educationtechnology is an area that has been growing tremendously. However, what manyC-level executives and ad tech have begun to realize more recently is thatprogrammers and UX designers can create great products.

[00:15:41] But if you don't have individualswith significant K-12 teaching experience on your team, you will not accuratelyunderstand the obstacles to product adoption for K-12 teachers. If you do nothave individuals with district experience on your team as employees orconsultants, you're not going to understand the complex sales process thatoutside entities need to navigate when selling to school districts.

[00:16:07] My point is that anything is avaluable asset. If it adds value to the position you were trying to move into,or if the hiring manager or a larger company leadership, see it as an asset. Soonce you have your interests and your assets drafted, you can start thinking,given what I'm interested in and given the assets I bring to the table, wheremight, I want to leverage these.

[00:16:33] Where might be a place that Ican grow using these assets that I enjoy using while at the same timecontributing to the organization's growth. This is what we'll focus on in ournext episode.

[00:16:50] I hope you enjoyed ourconversation on interests and assets. Today. If you go to episode notes, you'llfind a brief summary of our career story framework. I hope you find thesehelpful in creating your career compass. Thank you for listening to episodefive of career compass, Himalaya learning audio course.

[00:17:09] Be sure to check out all theother awesome exclusive content in the Himalaya app or on himalaya.com. .