Where do you see yourself in five years? Ten years? Better yet, do you know why you see yourself there or what it’s going to take to get there? While these are good questions to ask yourself, it leaves a few important details out. How do your strengths, interests, passions, motivations, and work-life balance goals fit into your career plans?
The WEST community has expressed an interest in diving deeper into the “where do you want to see yourself in five years?” question. WEST is excited to be launching a new series designed to map out your current strengths/skills/experience, determine what you want as part of your career journey, and focus on how you get there (new skills? key projects? new roles?). Plus learn from others who have been plotting out their career course.
The GPS Your Career Series will be a three-part series. The first session, “Plotting Your Career Coordinates,” will start by helping you dig into your current qualifications, your education, your experience, and your strengths and compare them to what you need to reach your goals. In evaluating where you are to where you want to get to, you can fill in the steps in between to fully understand what your roadmap may look like to reach your career goals. After this session, you’ll be able to take away a career mapping template to evaluate where you are and what you want from your next role.
The second session will be focused on “Know Your Why.” Now that you know what it will take to achieve your goals, it’s time to consider your motivations as you move forward on your career journey. Why do you want that position? What motivates you to move to a new function/area/team? Will this position allow for the work-life balance and overall lifestyle you envision for yourself? Taking the time to really dig into these aspects of career mapping will help you determine whether this is the right position for you, or whether you may want to adjust your path in another direction. The best part about taking the time to map out your career is finding that you may have more opportunities available to you than you imagined.
The third and final session in the series will be a panel discussion featuring STEM professionals who have already made unique career changes. The panelists will share about their journeys, what it took for them to make the changes, and what advice they have for someone just starting to think about a big change.
This series will help you create a clear map for your career goals, and have confidence that these goals are a good fit for you. Whether the map you create throughout this series is what you thought it would be, or if you find that there are opportunities available to you that you didn’t even know existed, you can be confident in your pursuit.
Join WEST for the first session on March 12, 2024 at 6:00 PM ET.