Building Your Career Roadmap: How To Unapologetically Design Your Future
In 1999, Brazilian soccer player Edson Arantes do Nascimento was awarded World Player of the Century by the IFFHS, or International Federation of Football History & Statistics. Edson, known to most of the world as Pelé, is the most successful goal-scorer in soccer history, with a tremendous history in athletics. Those who know the story of Pelé know that his achievements were no accident.
Pelé grew up in extreme poverty. His dream was to play soccer professionally, so he often practiced with whatever resources he had available. Sometimes, it was a grapefruit or a ball of fabric. Eventually, he started to play indoors at a club. He was one of the youngest players and struggled with the more formal structure of soccer.
Despite the challenge, Pelé persisted. He practiced relentlessly and listened to the guidance of his coaches and mentors. He climbed up the ranks until he joined Brazil's national soccer team, fulfilling his dream. His inspirational story is a prime example of the power of routine, discipline, and goal-setting.
Pelé's approach is no different to how you should obtain success now. Some of the most influential figures started with dreams of greatness and adapted the determination necessary to accomplish a great number of goals in their lifetime. You can create a career roadmap with the same methodology to gain incredible success in your chosen field.
How To Create A Career Roadmap
“Setting goals is the first step in turning the invisible into the visible.”
When you create a career roadmap, it's similar to planning a trip. You choose where you want to go and figure out how to get there. Your ideal career is an intended destination with a few necessary and strategic stops along the way. Because with no direction, you wander. You do not follow a specific route and make stops that delay progress.
That's why you need a career roadmap to get the career you want. You can start your career roadmap with a few foundational steps, such as:
Step #1. Take Your Personal Pulse
In business, a baseline is the average of your progress in the past few months. When using a baseline for your career roadmap, you want to document where you are right now, as it relates to your current position, as well as your progress in obtaining the qualifications and skills you need to get your dream job.
For example, if one of the requirements is a master's degree, and you've already been in school for two years pursuing it, you're more than halfway there. For every qualification needed for your ideal job, you want to be honest about how close or far away you are from adopting the skills and specific experience necessary to succeed.
Step #2. Know Yourself And Your Values
To create a realistic career roadmap, you need to enhance your self-awareness. Otherwise, you will build a plan that doesn't take your habits and values into consideration.
If you're not an experienced runner, for instance, and you set a goal to run the Boston Marathon next year, you will fail without considering your current skill set. You need to slow down and determine what needs to be done to adjust your current system of discipline and exercise to effectively prepare.
Otherwise, you will fail. As James Clear, author of Atomic Habits says:
““You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.””
To find a career that inspires you, you also need to understand your values and allegiances. You can identify your values by looking closer at your core beliefs and day-to-day behavior.
Do you recycle relentlessly?
Do you refuse to use plastic at all and bring canvas tote bags to the grocery store?
These behaviors may indicate that you're passionate about conservation. You can use those insights to identify 3-5 core values that feel meaningful to you. These values can help you hone in on a potential industry or career path that will feel like the right fit.
Step #3. Own Your Strengths And Don't Dwell On Your Weaknesses
You should celebrate and embrace your superpowers and skills. Focus on those superpowers and improving day-by-day. If you only focus on things that you are weak, you will spend too much time judging yourself.
Them, once you know your strengths and weaknesses, make a plan with the most appropriate training and skill-building. If you're not sure where you're skilled and where you need improvement, try a strength assessment or taking personality tests to dig in deeper. With this insights, you can create a roadmap that has a better chance of success.
Step #4. What Causes Inspire You?
Before you think of an ideal job or career, think about the problem or cause in the world you would love to solve or serve. Who you are helping? Who is with you, and what impact you are making? What careers and jobs are inline with that path?
If you already know those causes and potential career path, you're ahead of the game. If you need more guidance, this exercise will be helpful. You will need a whiteboard, blackboard, notebook, or journal to record.
First, write down all of your ideal careers, no matter how ridiculous they seem. You can go back to your childhood or high school years if necessary. The goal of this first step is to document every job you feel would be fulfilling. The sky’s the limit here, so be creative.
After recording those jobs, list out your values in a separate column. Take the two lists and find connections. If saving the environment excites you, you may consider environmental law. However, if building things gives you energy, you may want to look into engineering. Determine what paths map closer to your values and strengths.
By the end of this exercise, you should have a few options of potential career paths you could take. To move forward, select the one that you feel best aligns with your values and purpose. If you did this right, it will call out to you and stand above the other options.
Step #5. Match Real People To Your Dream Job
Once you determine the job you would love to have, find 2-3 real-world examples of people who already have it. If you can't find a person or job title which matches your desired position, select two people who have jobs that are similar or within the same field. You can use the job title to find this person on LinkedIn, through Google, or even Facebook or Twitter.
If the job title you came up with was Nature Photographer, for example, you could also find them through well-known, relevant organizations, such as National Geographic. Find the photographers who link to National Geographic in their Twitter bio, online resume, or LinkedIn profile.
They may not be on every platform, but if you figure out where they connect and engage online, you can find a few examples.
Step #6. Research The Roles
After you find 2-3 people who already have this job, you want to tap into why they have it. How does it map to who they are and what their values are? Does this job align with their passion? In some cases, you can find these insights through articles they wrote, interviews, the questions they answer on Quora, etc.
You also want to compile a list of their qualifications and skills. Where did they go to school? How much education did they get? If they are investing in personal branding, what kind? Where have they worked? Have they ever received an award or honor?
By answering these questions, you will have a comprehensive list for each person that contains their characteristics, strengths, attributes, and turning points in their career.
You can also get answers to these questions if you reach out and ask for their time. You can email them specific questions or get them on the phone. The more you learn about how they got to where they are now, the better.
Step #7. Find Commonalities
Once you have a detailed list of qualifications, find where the skillsets and backgrounds of those individuals align. Do they all have master’s degrees? Are they all published authors? If you can identify the training and education these people have, you can find commonalities.
For example, if you're dreaming of becoming a professor for a university, you will discover that all of your models have PhDs and have written a book. These commonalities will help you draft the requirements that you need to fulfill this role.
Using these requirements, you can build out stops on your career roadmap and determine where you need to invest time and resources.
Step #8: Outline Your Long-Term and Short-Term Goals
Using your pulse and necessary qualifications, you want to record your long-term goals to achieve each one. Start with the overarching goals, such as acquiring an internship at Google or getting your master's degree. Once you have 4-5 of these umbrella goals, you want to break them apart into smaller steps.
Take each large goal and work backward. To become an intern at Google, for instance, you will need to get an interview. To get an interview, you will need to meet all of their qualifications to become an intern. What are those skills? You want to keep listing out action items until you arrive at your pulse, or where you are now.
Step #9: Create A Timeline
When you have your goals, you want to create a very realistic timeline of how long it will take to accomplish each one. How challenging is each goal? Do any of them have dependencies that must happen before you can accomplish them?
You want to assign a realistic start to finish date and a duration. Be honest about how long these will take. If you're going to learn 30 phrases in Spanish, for example, don't blindly assign the goal of three months.
How long will it take to complete the Spanish lessons? When will you take the lessons? Where will you take them, and when do those classes start?
You want to determine the timing for your short-term goals first. This way, you can set realistic deadlines for your long-term goals. If those dates aren't ideal, go back and re-examine your short-term goals. But keep in mind that if you're too aggressive with finishing short-term goals, you can quickly lose traction when you do not finish them in time.
The Keys To Long-Term Career Fulfillment
If you can identify the type of career that will genuinely make you happy, you can obtain incredible fulfillment from work. No amount of money or status can replace this kind of satisfaction. When you find fulfillment at work, you're energized and can use that energy to reach unbelievable heights.
However, deciding what you want to do with the rest of your life is no easy feat. It requires self-awareness and clarity about where you are now, and where you want to be. If you need additional guidance on your career path, check out our Career Clarity Assessment. By answering a few questions, you can move towards creating a realistic career roadmap.
