Stop Overthinking & Find Career Clarity: 3 Steps to Landing a Role You Love

Ep 58 Solo Career Clarity

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Unlock. We're all about those light bulb moments. I'm talking to people who are still trying to figure out what they're meant to do, coaching them life to reach that magical, yes, this is it moment, and we'll also hear from those who've already found their dream careers and figure out exactly how they did it.

Whether you are looking for inspiration or actionable advice on finding a career you love, I've got you covered time to unlock some career clarity. Let's dive in.

episode ahead for you today, [: 00:01:00

lf scrolling to chalkboard at: 11:47

And that right there is what I call the career clarity gap. And it's where so, so many talented, driven, heartbroken women get stuck. So today's episode is all about cracking that open and finally answering what is career clarity really, because let's clear something up right off the bat.

your Myers-Briggs type, your [: 00:02:00

And it's not just a feeling of like, yeah, I can do this, but man, this makes me come alive. And it's the difference between I'm good at spreadsheets and I wanna be a customer insight strategist at a mission-driven startup where I get to turn data into stories that drive real world change. Boom. That is career clarity.

days. Since: 2020

Stop settling for jobs that drain them and start finding roles that energize them, inspire them, and make them come alive. And in today's episode, I'm going to walk you through what career clarity really means and what it is not.

Why not having career clarity is quietly sabotaging your job search and your confidence . What's really getting in the way of you gaining clarity, and I'm gonna share my three step framework, assess, align, apply so that you can start building your own career clarity today.

By the end of this episode, you'll walk away knowing the difference between qualified for a job and being excited about it.

mless applications and start [: 00:04:00

Uncertainty analysis paralysis for a while. But I promise we are not gonna be reinventing your entire life overnight. We're gonna uncover what's already there, the skills you love using, the problems that excite you when you're solving them. Re both that make you say, wait, that's a real job, because they are, and I'm going to show you how to find them.

So grab your favorite beverage, get cozy, and let's finally answer that big scary, beautiful question together. What do I actually want to do with my career? We are gonna start with defining career clarity. 'cause as I already had said, career clarity is not knowing your skill, strengths or values.

act creativity and autonomy, [: 00:05:00

And it is knowing the types of industries and companies that aligned with who you are. And to me, you know that you have clarity when it feels right in your gut. It's not this feeling of like. I meet their qualifications. I can do this, I should apply. No, it's reading a job description and being like, that sounds so exciting.

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Because if you get excited about brain surgery, but you're quite now an accountant. Well, that's not realistic. I mean, yes, you can go back to school and all of that, but you're not gonna make that a reality in the next year. So that to me, wouldn't count as career clarity unless you're committed to going back to school for that extended amount of time.

But career clarity is a job where you're like, yep, no, I'll take two Coursera classes and I'm gonna talk to a couple of people, but I know I can achieve this and I'm excited to go in that direction. Now you might wonder why I talk so much about career clarity, and it's because it's really, really important.

ns and just hoping something [: 00:07:00

It's probably not. And most likely you're gonna be in the same cycle in a year or two. And career clarity is the one thing that can break this pattern and actually allows you to move towards work that feels aligned and fulfilling. And the beautiful thing is that career clarity actually makes your life easier.

arch so much more efficient, [: 00:08:00

Now, you might wonder what happens if you don't have clarity. Well, that is what I talk to people about every day. It is this forever long, frustrating and exhausting job search where you feel like you're , wasting months or years applying to roles that in the end aren't even right for you. And to give you an example, I recently worked with a client and she came to me after applying four hundreds and hundreds of roles for over a year.

She was getting nowhere. She felt stuck, super frustrated, discouraged. She didn't know what was wrong. Was it her? Was it her resume? What is going on? I had one career clarity session with her. She had this huge breakthrough that the roles she'd been applying to were roles that she was good at, she was qualified for, but they didn't excite her.

y carried in her interviews, [: 00:09:00

That's the power of career clarity. So now you might be wondering, yes, career clarity is great. Why doesn't everyone have that clarity? Well, there's a couple of things that get in the way. And I see those with my clients over and over. But those were also the things that I struggled with myself eight years ago because I had no clue what I was meant to do.

t is the saying? Well drop a [: 00:10:00

I've worked for a car rental company. I've experienced in hr. Right now I'm in recruiting, but what am I supposed to do? Because none of those have felt right so far. How the hell, I'm gonna figure that out. So the three biggest blocks to gaining clarity that I see is one overthinking. That is when we're stuck in analysis paralysis, spending months and months, filling out values, worksheets, taking quizzes, journaling, but never actually moving forward.

eady put into it, even if it [: 00:11:00

You invested your time, your energy, your money, education, even if it no longer feels fulfilling. But you worked so, so hard to get to where you are that you feel like it would be crazy to give it all up and start over. But the really important thing that most people don't realize is that you're not gonna be starting over because , those very same skills and the experience that you build had actually be applied in totally different ways, in different roles, in different settings.

biggest reason people don't [: 00:12:00

Studying career development for years, and then finally developing that coaching program for Career Clarity formula to give people actual guidance on how to find that answer for themselves. But most people don't know where to start. No one teaches us, and there is so much vague and abstract advice. We already talked about it.

Find your values journal about your purpose. And all that is beautiful, but it does not help if we can't translate that into real actionable next steps. So inside the Career Clarity formula, that is where I help people identify what energizes them, and then turn that into a concrete career direction.

That means a roles and [: 00:13:00

First we're gonna assess, which means you're gonna inventory your skills. Second, it's about aligning, identifying the skills that truly energizes you. And third, we're gonna apply. You're gonna pursue roles that truly feel aligned. So let's start as the first step. Assess. That's when we inventory your heart skills, your soft skills, and your hybrid skills, and in order to inventory your skills.

e doing things that you just [: 00:14:00

There's nothing she would wanna even put down on the list of skills she wants to use again. Once you dug into it, she actually realized that she loves helping new hires. She loves training them, she loves taking them under her wings, getting them acclimated, teaching them, training them, setting them up for success.

She wasn't paid to do that. It wasn't in her job description, but yet she had over 10 years experience doing exactly that. So approach this exercise from a wide lens of all the things you do, even if those aren't the ones you're specifically being paid for. And then we are gonna take it in three categories to make it easier to categorize and list all the skills you have.

r first category is gonna be [: 00:15:00

If we, for example, take a marketing manager as an example, their hard skills might include Google Analytics, Salesforce, C-R-M-S-E-O, optimization, marketing automation tools, and so on. The second category are our soft skills. Those are your personal attributes. This is answering the question, how do you naturally interact with people and approach challenges?

s communication, leadership, [: 00:16:00

Now our third categories are hybrid or strategic skills, and they point towards the strategic impact your work has. And the question, the answer is, where do you add unique value by applying both your technical and your strategic thinking. So those are the skills that bridge the technical knowledge, this human judgment or critical thinking.

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One, your hard skills, your concrete abilities that answer the question. What specific tools, software, or technical methods can and do I use two, your soft skills, your personal attributes, answering the question of how do you naturally interact with people and how you approach challenges.

And three, your hybrid and strategic skills pointing towards your strategic positioning, and those are the ones answering the question, where do you add unique value? By applying both technical and strategic thinking. And if you are the type of person who is like, oh, it's so hard to start this list from scratch, can I have a list of skills where I can just check off if I have them or not?

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You have. Now we can move on to step number two, which is called Align. And now we wanna identify the skills that energize and inspire you. Because now we have this long list of skills that you have, which is fantastic. You have a lot of skills, but if you now want to find a job that uses all the skills you have, you're gonna end up in a job that's really similar to the one you're doing right now.

re certain things we do that [: 00:19:00

Think about when you're in that state of flow and you just feel like, I could be doing this forever. Right? It's like your battery fills itself, and then there are things that drain us that zap our energy and we feel like exhausted and tired, and we have nothing left. Those are things that are draining us.

So now we wanna look back at your list of skills and identify for each skill how it makes you feel when you use it for an extended period of time. So our marketing manager, for example, would think, okay, now if I would spend four to six hours SEO optimizing a website or a blog post, how would I feel inside my body at the end of that time?

u. You can be really good at [: 00:20:00

Will you feel drained and exhausted? Would your battery be empty and or do you feel energized, motivated, and empowered? Is your battery gonna be full? This, that visual, revisit the list of skills that you created. Cross out the ones that drain and exhaust you and circle the ones that energize and motivate you.

n. Now, a great tool to help [: 00:21:00

If you've been listening to my show for a while, you heard me talk about this many times, you can take it for free on sparker type.com. And the Sparky Time assessment originated from the decades long experience and research of award-winning author, founder, and business advisor, Jonathan Fields, and it focuses on identifying new unique source code for work that makes it come alive.

I did have the honor of having Jonathan Fields on the show. So if you haven't seen that episode yet, make sure you go and listen to it. It was incredible. And this is a free 10 minute assessment that you again, can take on sparko type.com. Now we're moving on to step number three, apply. This is when we're gonna pursue and identify the roles that feel really aligned to you.

we're gonna go to job boards [: 00:22:00

ompt Act as an expert career [: 00:23:00

As always, AI gives us a great starting point, but it will be up to you to refine it, to edit it, to fill out like, okay, yes, this, this does resonate, this doesn't. I wanna rewrite that. And once you have your own version. You are gonna use a second prompt, and you're gonna say, provide the eight most likely job titles for the following job description.

And then you copy paste your ideal job description in the way you edit it, that it really resonates with you, um, into that prompt. And then you're gonna get a group of job titles that hopefully feel really aligned. Describe the type of work that revolves around all the skills that energize you and make you come alive.

is assess, align, apply. So [: 00:24:00

So we covered a lot today. One important takeaway I want you to remember is that career clarity isn't just about what you can do. It's about finding what lights you. It's knowing the exact roles, industries, and work environments that make you come alive, excited and confident.

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And you might keep wondering, why do I waste all this time in my life doing something that isn't aligned, that isn't meaningful, that doesn't feel like me?

But once you have clarity. Your job search gets faster, easier, less stressful. You can build a personal brand that makes you stand out, that positions you as the candidate these hiring managers are looking for. And you'll know what to say in interviews, how to tell your story because you are not guessing.

re aligned. And best of all, [: 00:26:00

So now if you're sitting here thinking, oh my God, therea, I really want that, but I still don't know how to really figure this out for myself. Don't worry. That's what I'm here for. And this is exactly why I created the Career Clarity Formula, my coaching program, in which I guarantee you career clarity within 30 days.

itles, and find work that is [: 00:27:00

Of course, it's time for you to book a free consultation call with me and my team. We're gonna talk through it, get a feel for where you're stuck, and help you figure out your next best step. Book a time right now on career bloom coaching.com. Limited time spots are available for this month.

And if anything hits home from this episode, I would absolutely love to hear from you. I would love if you give one of the things from this episode a try, maybe creating a list of your skills. Thinking about yourself like a battery, and identifying some things that energize you and some things that drain you.

d be so excited to hear from [: 00:28:00

Thanks so much for hanging out with me and I can't wait to see you back here next week on Career Clarity Unlocked.

And that's a wrap for today's episode of Career Clarity Unlocked, if you feeling stuck in that. What's next? Spiral and are ready to finally break free. Let's chat. You can book your free career clarity call where we'll uncover what's really important to you. Tackle any obstacles holding you back and map out your best next step.

Schedule your free 30 minute call today on career bloom coaching.com and before you head out, be sure to follow us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, so you never miss an episode. If today's conversation gave you new insights and inspiration, please leave a review. It really helps us reach more amazing listeners like you.

ruly means the world. Thanks [: 00:29:00