Articles
8 Steps To Determine Your Next Career Move
If you are like me, you often wonder if your career is where it is simply due to dumb luck, good or bad. Maybe it was “destined to be” or more likely, it is what it is because we LET it happen that way!
Somewhere deep down we argue within ourselves about how we got to where we are professionally and if it makes sense to continue heading in the same direction. If you, again, are considering another career move, either by choice or not, why not take an analytical look at your future career alternatives?
How Significant Your Career Really Is
When you think about how much of our lives are actually spent getting ready for work, driving there, being there, returning home, coupled with life’s other main event, sleeping, (at work or elsewhere), it really leaves little time for anything else. If you are going to spend so much of your “awake hours” working, why not make it the best opportunity it can be? Choosing your next career move can be difficult when either you are not certain of which career path to take or your choices are diverse or numerous. The following eight steps will help you make your next career choice much easier.
Start With a Pencil and Paper
Many years ago I was in business with an attorney and one of the most significant things I learned from a lawyer’s perspective was the value of writing things down, putting important thoughts down on paper, no matter what! Not only did it force me to organize my thoughts but it was really the only way to improve upon the matter at hand. I learned if a thought, concept or plan wasn’t written down it was very difficult in practice to improve. It is very difficult to define, analyze and choose among current and potential career choices without a simple, written analysis tool. Herein lies the fundamental concept of systematically approaching your next career move with a pencil and paper.
(See Final Matrix Below for Help in Understanding Each Step)
Step 1: Start with listing all your existing AND potential, realistic career alternatives.
Limit yourself to your top five choices to simplify your analysis.
Examples:
- Real Estate Agent
- Buying a Business
- Working with my brother-in-law
- Staying with my current employer
- Working for a competitor
Step 2: List all the decision criteria you can think of relative to the above choices.
You can have an unlimited number of decision variables:
Examples:
- Benefits
- Level of $ risk/ reward
- Level of workload required to achieve success
- Intellectual challenge
- Personal interest in the job content
- Time required to be effective, make a living
- Level of dependency on others for success
- Income consistency
- $ liability
- Level of competition
- Socialization opportunities
- Logistics (daily commute)
- On the job travel
- Your spouse’s priorities
- Fit with long term goals
- Potential to relocate
- Work hour flexibility
- Level of $ investment required
- Physical/ health ramifications
- Overall quality of your to-be-boss
Step 3: Put a numerical “weight” on each of the Step 2 career Decision variables
Put a number from 1 to 10 next to EACH of your decision variables, a “1” would be a LOW priority decision variable for you, a “10” would mean this decision variable is HIGH in value, absolutely critical to you when choosing your next career move
Examples:
- Put a “1” next to “benefits” if you are already covered by your spouse’s benefits.
- Put a “10” next to “Potential to relocate” if you REALLY want to move .
- Put a “5” next to a decision variable that you are ambivalent about.
Step 4: Arrange your career decision analysis format:
- Put your information in steps 1 through 3 in this format:
- Use these column headings:
| Decision Variable | Varialble Wght | Grade Scale | Career Choice 1 | Score Choice 1 | Career Choice 2 | Score Choice 2 |
| (per Step 2) | (per Step 3) | (per Step 5) | (per Step 1) | (per Step 7) | (per Step 1) | (per Step 7) |
(SEE EXAMPLE MATRIX AT END OF ARTICLE)
Step 5: For EACH decision variable in Step 2, establish a “Grade Scale”:
ALL grades are from 1 to 5 in scale, (don’t be confused!) ... you WEIGHTED each of these same decision variables before in Step 3, now you are setting up a grade scale for each decision variable so you an “grade” each of your career alternatives you have to choose from)
A “5” grade ALWAYS represents the BEST, HIGHEST or MOST possible condition for any given career alternative situation, (See example matrix below)
Write in your grade rating for EACH decision variable in column #3, under “Grade Scale”, remember the BEST situation relating to a specific decision variable = “5”.
Examples:
- For the specific decision variable, “Benefits”, literally write in “5 = best” in column #3, “Grade Scale”, getting excellent “benefits” from any given career alternative is BEST FOR YOU – the BEST condition always = “5” grade!
- For the specific decision variable, “Potential to relocate”, literally write in, “5 = Move” in column #3, “Grade Scale”, because for you, moving or relocating IS THE BEST possible condition for you in any career choice … getting to relocate because of a career choice, for you, is a “5”, the best possible scenario!.
Step 6: Now “grade” your FIRST career alternative you defined in Step 1
In column #4, we will look at your 1st career alternative you defined in Step 1, (make it your column #4 heading), like in our example, “Real Estate Agent”, go to your first career decision variable listed, in this case, “benefits” and give being a “Real Estate Agent” a grade from 1 to 5, based on the grading scale you established for that decision variable: “benefits” in column #3, “Grade Scale”.
Continue going down the list, grading you becoming a Real Estate Agent, (grade only from 1 to 5), for each of your listed career decision variables in column #1.
Once you have a 1 to 5 grade for each of your career decision variables listed in column #1, for career alternative #1, start grading your second career alternative (from step 1) in column #6, (make this career choice your header in column #6 )
Continue grading all your career alternatives from step 1, once finished go to step 7
Step 7: Score each of your career alternatives from Step 1
In column #5, “Score”, simply multiply your written grade in column #4 for the career decision variable “benefits”, by the WEIGHT value you wrote in column #2 for that same “benefits” variable.
If you recall, in step 3 we weighed “benefits” as being only a “1” weight because you are already covered by your spouse’s job benefits.
Multiply your column #4 grade by 1 (your weight value in column #2) to get your “score” for that decision variable and put that score under column #5, “Score”. Continue this multiplication of column #4 times column #2 for EACH career decision variable until you have a complete list of scores down all of column #5, “Score”.
Step 8: Add up your scores to see how each of your career alternatives ranks!
Simply add all the numbers in column #5, “Score”, put the total at the bottom of the column. Do the same for column #7, “Score”. Add more "Career Choice" Columns as needed along with a "Score" column for each. The TOTAL number of each "Score" column represents the ranking of each of your career alternatives.
The career choice WITH THE HIGHEST NUMBER is logically your best choice!
EXAMPLE: Completed Career Decision Matrix:
| Decision Variable | Variable Weight | Grade Scale | Real Estate Agent | Wgt Score | Buy A Business | Wgt Score |
| Benefits | 1 | 5 = Best | 3 | 3 | 4 | 4 |
| Flexible Hours | 1 | 5 = Most Flexible | 5 | 35 | 4 | 28 |
| Personal Interest | 3 | 5 = High | 4 | 12 | 2 | 12 |
| Level of $ Risk | 10 | 5 = Low Risk | 4 | 40 | 1 | 10 |
| Relocation | 4 | 5 = Move | 5 | 20 | 5 | 20 |
| $$ Liability | 8 | 5 = Low Liability | 3 | 24 | 1 | 8 |
| Fits with Goals | 5 | 5 = Best | 2 | 10 | 4 | 20 |
| Spouse Preference | 9 | 5 = Best | 3 | 27 | 3 | 27 |
| Challenge | 6 | 5 = High | 3 | 18 | 5 | 30 |
| $$ Investment | 7 | 5 = Low | 5 | 35 | 1 | 7 |
| Workload | 4 | 5 = Low | 3 | 12 | 1 | 4 |
| ***SCORE TOTALS*** | 236 | 164 |