At the start of a new year, many people are re-energised, raring to go and keen to put new career plans in to place.  However, without being ‘bah humbug’, it pays to be realistic. 

In simple terms, it becomes a trade-off between the things that you want - to satisfy your own needs, ambitions, values and personal preferences - and the capabilities you have that an employer will pay for. The trick is to sell your skills and experience into an environment where you can use them and where you want to be. 

The present looms large in any consideration of what you want from your future working life. A career review has to embrace where you are now, what is going on around you and the external factors that will shape your decisions.

In our last post we looked at the ghosts of careers past and how tracking your career to date reveals not only skills and knowledge you have acquired but also personal attributes, preferences and values, and the things that matter to you.

Here we consider the ghosts of careers present - the negative factors that cause frustration, stress and discontent, which may be a spur to change, and also the important positives that may act as constraints but which are also sources of strength.

‘Tis the season…..of career changes.  As the festive season progresses from Christmas into the New Year, many will use the break to reflect on the year just passed and to think ahead to the year to come.  Like Scrooge in A Christmas Carol, we may be visited by the ghosts of past, present and future.

In this, the first of a three-part series on careers past, present and future, we look at the ghosts of careers past.

For us, the busiest time of the year when it comes to career coaching is always the first few months of the New Year.  Refreshed by the Christmas break and full of hope and renewed ambition for the year ahead, many people are thinking come January about a change of career or direction.