Plan to Control Your Career

This question was sent through to Professionelle:

I personally hold a strong interest in the financial and investment market and am keen to further develop myself in this area. I have a Bachelor of Commerce degree, majoring in accounting and finance from the University of Auckland. I also have passed my CFA (Charted Financial Analyst) Level one exam and am preparing for level two exam now. My ideal job is in areas like financial planning, portfolio management, private banking etc, and I am determined to be a qualified CFA one day.

I am currently working as a Team Leader in a Personal Banking branch. Leadership is the major part of my job, which is not really my passion. Although it is a good experience, I feel all my knowledge I learnt from university and the CFA course are not used in practice and I am not adding value to myself. I can't see my future in my current role.

Thanks again for giving me your views and I am looking forward to hearing from you.

Galia BarHava-Monteith offers the following advice:

Thank you very much for this question and for your further clarification. I think it is great that you are so clear about what you want for yourself professionally, especially so early on in your career!

The good news is that being so clear in your mind about what you want, is the most important aspect of successful goal setting and career development. The next important thing for you is to take control of your career and lead it towards a path that will result in you achieving your ideal role involving financial planning, portfolio management and private banking.

The Art of Goal Setting

How do you do that? The most effective goals are ones that:

• are clearly defined
• are written down
• can be measured.

The first thing for you to do is define what success means to you career wise - is it 'in five years time, I want to be a private banker in a major bank with a portfolio of high net worth individuals?' or 'I want to specialise in looking after the investment portfolio of organisations' or is it something else? Give it some thought, and write it down! I recommend either having a written road-map or starting your professional diary. Research consistently demonstrates that the most successful people are excellent at goal setting - they define their goals and they write them down and commit to them.

Next, brainstorm as many pathways as possible for achieving your goal. Pathways are the different routes that can get you to the same goal. Some might involve you staying with your current employer and moving sideways into other areas and others might involve you seeking a new employer and a completely different role. It is best to do that with someone else, a trusted colleague, a mentor or a knowledgeable friend.

Don't discount any of the pathways at this point, and again it is best to write them all down in your diary. An example of a pathway may be to move into a more central branch and take portfolios which might include large net worth clients? It is best to do this exercise with someone who either knows a lot about your work reality (unlike me) or can ask you some insightful questions.

Once you've written them all down, now it is time to evaluate them. Which of them align most with your strengths and your passions? Which of them are the most actionable? Which are the ones you can start on now and which might come later on in your career?

This is an incredibly valuable exercise I use myself for my own career planning. And I revisit my pathways regularly and evaluate their merits again and over time.

Obstacles

It is important to identify potential obstacles in achieving your goal. Once you've done that, use brainstorming again to come up with the best ways for you to overcome them. An example of a potential obstacle in your current work is the time required for you to 'lead' the team, a potential way to overcome that may be negotiating some time put aside towards your achieving your CFA desire. If you know that you can spend time towards achieving your goal whilst taking leadership responsibilities, you will probably find it more rewarding.

As you get closer to achieving your goal you will be faced with new obstacles. The challenge is to recognise them and come up with actionable solutions to them. And also know that at times the obstacles may result in you abandoning a particular path and moving to try a new one. The key is not to punish yourself for failing, but to take the lessons and use them going forward!

This, I can personally vouch, can be very difficult but extremely rewarding. Professionelle came about as a consequence of me being made redundant when I was pregnant with my second child. At the time, it seemed like that was an obstacle I would find incredibly hard to overcome, but once I identified what was important to me - I did come up with completely new pathways and those eventually led to the launch of Professionelle.

Kaizen

I discovered the kaizen principle a while back in a book called 'What Happy Women Know'. It is a Japanese principle whereby you break down a big goal into small manageable chunks and concentrate on achieving one sub-goal at the time. You also take the time to enjoy each part of the process.

I think this is a wonderful way to think about your ultimate career goal.

Communicating

A final thought is: who have you told about your aspirations and desires? Probably you have communicated them to your boss, and perhaps to a member of your Human Resources team. They should be in a good position to help you think through pathways to your goal. It's in their interests to keep a talented individual engaged and moving toward clearly held goals.

If you feel this communication isn't leading to your desired new opportunities fast enough, though, think about spreading the word more widely. You need to do this in a positive spirit, of course!

Specifically, you could look around for networking opportunities. Are there ways you can see to connect with people working in the areas that particularly interest you? Are there projects that you could join that would bring you into contact with people in these areas?

Lastly, ask yourself if there are CFAs you know who might be willing to share their experiences with you, and perhaps even mentor you?

I hope you found this advice helpful.

We'd love to hear from other Professionelle members about experiences you've all had in achieving your own individual professional goals and any advice you might have for the member who sent in this question!

 

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