How to Craft a Career
I want to craft a career, not do a job.
I don't even want to build a career. Building involves knowing exactly what you're building, having an end state in mind and following a blueprint.
Building is rigid and stale.
Crafting is different.
Crafting is art. Crafting is using your skills and experience to create something unique that didn't exist before. It's the process of making changes while you go, making mistakes, learning from them, and using your newfound knowledge to craft your next move.
So stop building your career, starting crafting it.
What is Career Crafting?
My definition of Career Crafting is:
The process of improving multiple aspects of your career in a way that aligns with your natural strengths, supports your lifestyle, provides fulfillment, minimizes risk, and gives you optionality.
Career Crafting is not about doing a job, checking off boxes on your job description, or getting a good rating on our yearly performance evaluation.
It's about crafting something that supports multiple aspects of your life in a way that helps you perform at a high level.
How to craft your career
These are the most important aspects of crafting a career.
- The ability to bounce back after a layoff.
- Choosing a career path that's aligned with your natural strengths.
- Building strong relationships.
- Building skills that can be transferred to other domains.
- Having hobbies that give life meaning outside of work.
Lets take each one in turn.
Bounce back after a layoff
You're not indispensable and most things are out of your control.
If you get laid off, you need the ability to bounce back asap. If you don't have a plan or an idea of how you'll get back on your feet, your career is weak.
Spend time figuring out how you will handle a layoff, even if it never comes.
Align your career path with your natural strengths
Your career should be based on what you do well.
You'll be more successful (and happier) if you're career uses your natural strengths. Pay attention to your inclinations and you will learn what path suits you best. You may have to try multiple jobs to figure out what aligns with you.
That's part of the crafting.
Build strong relationships
Your career doesn't exist in a vacuum.
The more people that are connected to you, respect you, and want the best for you, the more people can help you. Take every opportunity to build relationships and expand your network. Meet more people at your company, make connections on LinkedIn, and meet people in person.
It's easier to make moves when you have people in your corner.
Build transferrable skills
Don't be one track minded.
Build skills that can go anywhere your career takes you. Leadership, communication, relationship building, project management, process improvement, etc. These skills apply to any domain, any company, and any industry.
Build skills that are timeless.
Meaning outside of work
Your career shouldn't be your whole life.
If you have no hobbies or significant interests outside your career, you'll be devastated when it doesn't go as planned. When you care about something outside of work, you are balanced. You come back to work refreshed, with new energy to make progress.
There are infinite ways to craft a career.
These, to me, are the most critical.
So are you crafting a career?
Or are you just doing a job?