by Helen Burton
Other industries
If you are considering a change to another industry, refer to the list below and tick which industries you'd like to research further.
Predicted future growth industries
Career Management Strategy Four
Financial Objectives
Current financial position
How much money do you need to meet your current financial commitments? For example, home, insurance, motor vehicle and living costs? If you don't know, consider carrying out an analysis of your financial position. For example, if you decided that you want to make a career change, this may involve taking a reduction in salary for a period of time. Alternatively, if you are looking at self-employment options, this may involve a period of low or no income while establishing your business.
Exercise 4A: Financial analysis
Analyse the results of your financial budget, involving your partner, if applicable. How long can you afford to be out of work, for example, in the case of pregnancy, redundancy, full-time study leave? Consider the best case/worse case scenario:
When do you plan to retire? How much money will you need to maintain an acceptable lifestyle?
Do you have a financial planner? If not, consider whether a good planner can add value to your financial wellbeing?
For a list of reputable financial planners please go to the Financial Planning Association of Australia www.fpa.asn.au
Career Management Strategy Five
Action and Reflection
Exercise 5A
In the Career Summary section below, note the ratings and findings you identified in career management strategies one to four (see overleaf).
Reconsider the career options you identified in Career Management Strategy One. How do they fit in the context of your results summary? For example, one option might be an obvious fit with the skills you have now and those that you want to develop further; another option may not be viable in the short to medium term based on your environmental scan. Identify which options you want to develop further and whether any additional research or analysis is required.
Chaos theory
Occasionally a new career or job opportunity may come "out of the blue", for example, a friend might offer us a job or invite us to venture into a new business, or our current employer might offer us a new project role. If this happens, Options — Viability Analysis Table can form part of our decision making process.
Career Management Strategy Six
Results
Now it is time to bring your career management strategies together and identify your next steps.
In a table similar to below, note down your short-term actions, mid-term directions and long-term aspirations. Remember these are not set in concrete, but the activity of writing down your thoughts will help you clarify and commit them to action. Keep this sheet in your drawer at work or any place where you will be forced to look at it regularly.
Review it at least every six months — when a major change is expected or takes place, affecting your career and life in general.
Remember, it is your career. Take control and be happy!
Character Analysis
The SEEFAR methodology has been designed to be user friendly and logically progressive to help you to develop a meaningful, practical and actionable career strategy. To make it easier to implement we have illustrated how the characters in the story Walking Close to the Edge used the methodology to more effectively manage their careers. We hope that reading about their journey will help you to do the same.
Paul Handy
Paul viewed himself as having “just a job” versus a career, and he was initially sceptical of the career management process until Lou convinced him to give it a go. Paul grew up in the Yarra Valley, in Victoria, where his father managed a major winery in the region. Paul left school at sixteen and started an electrical apprenticeship, after one of his father’s mates offered to sponsor him. After qualifying, he married his childhood sweetheart and worked for five years with various small regional electricians. His marriage broke up, and he moved to Melbourne to make a fresh start, where he worked for a manufacturing company for four years.
When Paul turned thirty, he left Melbourne to travel around Australia for a year, ending up in Central Queensland, where he took a well-paid job in the mines. After six years, Paul had enough money saved to move to the North Queensland coast. He purchased a modest beach cottage with spectacular views and set up his own business, but he struggled to price his services effectively and to recruit and manage a team of electricians. Then, prompted by some poor financial management, including a large unpaid tax bill, Paul decided to scale back his business and contract as a sole trader.
He met Bob Sandbourne of Sandy’s Handyman Services at a regional football game and approached him about some electrical and general handyman work. Bob was keen to reduce his current workload, and with a view to retiring in five years time, he engaged Paul on an “as needs” basis (average of thirty-five hours a week), negotiating an hourly rate.
To date, the arrangement has worked well: Paul’s technical capability has been maximised, while giving him the flexibility he sought, and Bob has been able to allocate more time to manage the workload and increase the profitability of his business.
Career Options
1. Continue working for Bob Sandbourne as a contractor
2. Attempt to re-establish his own business
Paul acknowledged that, after a difficult few years as a result of leaving the security of a well-paid job and struggling to establish his own business, he was very happy with his current work situation. The problems he experienced in running his own business started to make sense when he considered his skills set and personality preferences. Asking Bob and a couple of his old customers what they thought of him, Paul was pleased they praised his trade skills and his friendly, laid-back approach. As expected, they indicated his time management was poor; he was often late for jobs.
Paul discussed his results with Lou. She was keen for him to spend more time at The Edge, but acknowledged Paul wanted to maintain a level of flexibility and independence in the early stages of their relationship.
Paul identified three short-term goals:
1. Focus on improving his reliability. While time management wasn't one of his strengths, he didn't want to be regarded as "slack" and "unreliable". Paul bought a work diary and started to review his day and week in detail. Lou bought him a new watch that kept accurate time. In his personal time, Paul ensured he had flexibility and wasn't tied down by too many plans and deadlines.
2. Maintain his trade qualifications and ensure he was up to date with any new industry standards. Although Paul enjoyed the simpler handyman tasks, he acknowledged the need to keep his electrical qualifications up-to-date. He realised he needed to read trade magazines and maintain an awareness of new developments in his area of specialty.
3. Investigate working opportunities at The Edge and consider committing to a permanent part-time role, for example, ten hours a week, while continuing to work for Sandy's Handyman Services the rest of his work time.
A year down the track…
Paul tried hard to improve his reliability and time-management skills. Although he occasionally ran over time on jobs and took the odd day off when the surf was up, he became greatly improved in this area, and Bob and his customers noticed the difference.
Paul recognised the need to maintain his skills and spent more time reading technical journals. Even though he found this painful at times, he took a renewed pride in his work, and with Bob's encouragement, he was happy to help train a new apprentice in the coming year.
When Paul started working at the resort, he was nearly driven crazy by Lou's high standards and strict timetables. However, after some heated arguments, they compromised and found a way forward: Lou learnt to trust Paul and let him complete jobs without constantly checking and criticising him, and Paul learnt to communicate more around priorities and timeframes.
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Lou and Paul recently married. Lou has written, with Paul's encouragement, a self-help career-development book linked to the traumatic events at The Edge on the weekend of the Medivalue conference.
Kylie Humann
Career review
Kylie wasn't sure what she wanted to do when she left school. Her favourite subjects were English and Geography and neither presented her with an obvious career path. She took a year off to work as a waitress, as well as volunteering for two months as part of a young people's program to build a school in Thailand. It was then that Kylie developed her interest in working with people. She started university studies the next year, undertaking a business degree majoring in human resources.
After completing university, Kylie began work as a Human Resources Officer (graduate) with a government-owned corporation, where the program allowed her to rotate through different allied areas. She left after three years to join a multinational manufacturer of fast moving consumer goods as a Human Resources Officer. After a year in that role, her boss left and endorsed Kylie as her replacement. Kylie believes this opportunity came through her performance, for example, her ability to deliver on deadlines — she describes herself as a naturally organised person — and to develop rapport with people from all walks of life, shop floor to senior executive. She recognises that her boss leaving gave her a lucky break because she would normally have struggled to win a senior role at such a young age. Kylie worked hard to build her profile in the HR industry. She attended industry functions and volunteered to be on external conference committees.
She was headhunted to join Medivalue and was attracted by the opportunity of having decision-making power at the executive table. Arnold Strong was a hard taskmaster, but she admired his business acumen and learnt a lot from him. Kylie was beginning to consider a career in general management, outside HR, and Medivalue offered promotional prospects in this regard.
Career options
1. Senior HR role within Medivalue or outside
2. General management role within Medivalue or at another organisation
3. Consulting
Kylie agreed she is extroverted, self-confident and reasonably organised. Her top three values of leadership, wealth and challenge have been evident in her career to date, which leads to her desire to achieve a general management, and ultimately CEO, role in the future. Personally, Kylie has a boyfriend who is building his career as a financial planner, so both are career-orientated at this time in their lives.
The External image feedback was challenging for Kylie. She was pleased she was regarded as a hard worker who is well-presented and has a good reputation in the HR industry. She was shocked to learn she was perceived as extremely ambitious and as not afraid to "use" people for her own benefit. Ed Senior, having worked through his own personal career-development strategy, was very open with Kylie and said she needed to be careful she didn't alienate too many people, who might then work against her to thwart her next promotion. He also said she was perceived within Medivalue, including by CEO Arnold Strong before he died, as very good at HR but not skilled enough in operations, sales, international business and financial management to take the next step to general management. Kylie's own assessment of her skills in these areas was high. He suggested she readjust her goals to consider a project role outside HR, for example, managing the expansion into the US, before targeting a general manager position.
Kylie was satisfied with her position at Medivalue and recognised her track record made her extremely employable as a senior HR practitioner. She knew, however, a move into general management would be more challenging. Kylie analysed the market and concluded that making the move into a general management role in a new company in her geographic area would be difficult because her career history was all HR. An internal promotion with Medivalue was her best option. Her fallback was to move interstate, where there would be a greater number of opportunities.
Kylie identified three short-term goals:
1. Complete her MBA. She had three subjects to go, including a mini-thesis. Choose a topic for her thesis that would be relevant to Medivalue and improve her general business capability.
2. Change her networking pattern to move away from purely HR associations to ones with a broader business focus.
3. Push hard for lateral movement into a business role in the next twelve months, possibly overseas, to give her international experience.
A year down the track…
Much to Kylie's disappointment, she wasn't considered for the CEO role at Medivalue. Arnold Strong's replacement was Tom Packer, who took several months to get to know his team and the business before sitting down with each of his employees for a career discussion. Tom was familiar with the SEEFAR methodology having employed it in another organisation.
At first Kylie was wary of Tom. She was surprised at the way he referenced the methodology, asking her questions about her values, identity, future options, etc. But she was impressed he took a listening-and-questioning approach and found herself opening up to him more than she planned to, discussing her goal to move into a general management position. Tom admitted he was surprised Kylie wanted to move out of HR. He also realised he needed to find a way of offering Kylie what she wanted in terms of skill development that worked for the business, or Kylie would leave. She was a valued employee, and given the current skills shortage, Tom wanted to ensure she stayed with the company.
Ultimately, they agreed on a plan that she would stay in the HR role for another nine months to help Tom put in place various people-development strategies. Tom promised Kylie that, as long as she continued to perform well during this period, he would allow her to head an offshore project to develop her international business and strategy skills. Kylie was impatient for this opportunity to be available sooner. However, Tom convinced her to be patient, documenting their discussion and his promise, which gave Kylie faith he would deliver.
While Kylie was pleased with this outcome, she continued to implement the other actions of her short-term career strategy to ensure she had other options if, for whatever reason, the Medivalue plan did not materialise. Kylie completed her MBA , met her performance goals and was rewarded with a transfer to the United Kingdom to head up Medivalue's push into this new market. Her respect for Tom grew and he actively mentored her. She also worked with an executive coach so that she was ready to lead a team overseas.
Louise Able
Career review
Lou has a degree in business, with a minor in psychology. She started her career fifteen years ago with a major hotel chain. She progressed quickly through the ranks, accepting several international transfers, as well as changing employers three times within the hotel industry. Lou became dissatisfied with her last role, running a large hotel in Egypt where she had to work seventy hours a week. She yearned to return to Australia and investigated several job opportunities in Brisbane but believed them to be a step backwards career-wise.
Her father was a successful businessman, running his own accountancy practice. He had a client in the tourism industry who was selling a resort. Speaking to Lou one night, he ignited an interest that, after a long research and analysis process, resulted in Lou purchasing the resort.
Lou used the SEEFAR methodology as part of her research and analysis process in deciding to purchase the resort. A year down the track she revisited her results as follows.
Career options
1. Managing Director of The Edge
2. Managing Director of The Edge — less operational hands-on responsibilities
3. Hotel management in general
Lou loves her job, rating her job satisfaction as very high, valuing the autonomy of the role and the challenge of developing a successful business, and if all goes to plan, significant wealth through the sale of a well-performing business. She was happy with the occupancy rates the resort was achieving and its general profitability, which was well beyond her expectations. This success enabled her to pay off her creditors at
a faster rate than planned. After Arnold Strong's death, his wife confirmed continuing funding support.
A publisher staying at The Edge asked Lou about the Medivalue murder weekend and said it sounded like it would make a good book. Lou had always secretly harboured an interest in writing and decided to use the Medivalue team's experiences, linked to the SEEFAR methodology, to develop a self-help book. With the assistance of her mentor, she sent a draft through to a number of publishers and, after five rejections, it was published and will soon be going into its second print run.
Lou's relationship with Paul, coupled with her External image feedback, caused her to reassess her long work hours and her current "do it all" model. She recognised that the resort was now established enough for her to recruit new staff to handle some operational aspects, leaving her more time to devote to marketing, including developing a higher external profile, and a controlled strategic expansion.
Lou identified three short-term goals:
1. Recruit an operations manager.
2. Based on the successful appointment of an operations manager, change the focus of her role to be more strategic and value-adding.
3. Continue meetings with mentor — successful hotel entrepreneur — to assist her develop effective strategic expansion and marketing plans.
