5 Ways To Get Real About Your Career Potential And Pick Your Next Career Move

Your Career Questions Answered is written by Caroline Ceniza-Levine, founder of DreamCareerClub.com, Top LinkedIn Voice and Senior Contributor to Forbes Leadership. Just launched: the Jumpstart Strategy Session – 2 hours, 1:1 to get you unstuck and moving towards your dream career.

I want to earn more.? I want to learn about what my next move is.? I want to move up in the company.? I want to improve my work performance.?? - Nouman

When you have multiple, simultaneous career goals, you run the risk of diluting your efforts towards any one of them. You also may find some goals conflict, such as moving up in your current company or moving on to somewhere else. Therefore, while it’s helpful to be flexible and keep multiple options open to you, you still need to prioritize your goals, so you know where you’ll focus your efforts when tradeoffs for your time and attention inevitably need to be made.

If your ultimate objective is to maximize your career potential, how do you prioritize among different career goals ? How do you know when your best next move is to go after a raise, promotion, performance on-the-job or something else? How do you get candid feedback on your career potential, so you know you’re not aiming for too much too soon -- or not reaching high enough?

Here are five ways to curate real-time feedback on how your career is doing and what you should be working on

1. Compare your current career trajectory to the future one you want

If you know your ultimate goal is reach the C-level, then there are well-known pre-requisites for C-level jobs – e.g., P&L impact, executive presence, measurable success leading initiatives of strategic importance. Depending on the type of company you want to work for (e.g., big v. small, public v. private) you will need comparable experience in that type of company. If you want a global v. local career, you’ll also need experience outside your home country.

Compare your career trajectory right now to the future job you want, and look hard at the gaps in skills, expertise and experience. Some of these gaps can take years to fill. If you have never managed a P&L, you may need to start with managing project budgets before inheriting a full P&L. If you want to ultimately work your way up a large, public company and your experience is mostly small-to mid-size, you need to pivot sooner than later to avoid getting further pigeon-holed. If you need to work abroad, you need to be in a company where this is an option and in a role where they offer international placements.

2. Conduct a reference check of your previous bosses

You should always have professional references handy, well before you’re in a job search, because references are an important (and overlooked) factor in hiring decisions and you don’t want to be scrambling at the last-minute for something so important to your next career move. Keeping in touch with your references is also a smart way to nurture your network – your references are your supporters, after all. Finally and most relevant to the topic of this post, having open communication with your references gives you powerful insight into your career potential.

The best reference checks are tailored to the specific job. Employers will ask about your superpowers and your performance gaps as related to the job opening you may be filling. When you approach your professional references to get candid feedback, have that ultimate job in mind so you can be assessed against the job you want. Ask your references where you’re exceeding expectations and where you’re falling short. Ask what skills, expertise and experience you should prioritize in your upcoming moves. Don’t forget to thank your references profusely for sharing such valuable information.

3. Ask a recruiter for your market value

If you’re getting recruiter calls for jobs that you don’t want or that you think don’t match your background (e.g., too junior, outside your expertise), then that’s real-time feedback that the market perceives you differently than you hope. This could be a result of an old resume that’s circulating which doesn’t have your latest experience. It could be that you have not kept your LinkedIn profile optimized to match your current value and target roles. Or, your network might be referring you using outdated information, and it's a signal you need to keep in better touch!

If you're not getting recruiter calls already, you’re missing out on the real-time feedback that recruiters can share. It’s worthwhile to try and cultivate these relationships. Start by befriending the recruiters at your current company. Invite them to lunch. Help them with their current openings. Invest in starting a genuine social connection, and once you have something going, see if they’re open to giving you some advice. If you want to avoid the perception that you’re on the job hunt, focus on recruiters at former employers and HR professionals already in your network (if not recruiting-specific). If you have friends who recently landed a new job via recruiter, ask them for an introduction – the recruiter will be more responsive when you can get a warm introduction from someone they have worked with.

4. Poll your friends to pick your ideal career

Your friends can give you a different, but equally valuable, point of view on your career. They know what you’re genuinely interested in – e.g., the things you read about, the activities you participate in purely for fun. Your friends also know your best personal attributes, and these might come so naturally to you that you overlook them and don’t realize they could be valuable professional attributes. Finally, your friends know your habits and preferences – what people you get along with, if you’re a morning or night person, if you’re a procrastinator or by-the-book.

Getting input from people who know you well but aren’t invested in your professional career can give you fresh ideas. If you sense that a career change to a different industry, role or both might be in order, your friends probably have an opinion on that. They may encourage you in a new direction, or they may confirm what you’re suspecting.

5. Ask yourself what you want

Collecting different inputs on the state of your career and what you should do next is helpful to brainstorm options and to ensure you’re not thinking too narrowly about what’s next. However, it’s not a substitute for checking in with yourself and what you really want. Set aside uninterrupted, quiet time to reflect on what you want, why you want it and when you’re going to work on that (if you can’t put a hard deadline to what you’re trying to achieve, then it’s a wish, not a goal).

If, like Nouman, you find yourself listing several substantial goals all at once, force rank them. Is a promotion more or less important than a raise? Is moving up more or less important than gaining lateral experience? Is the chance to work elsewhere more or less important than maximizing where I am? This doesn’t preclude you from changing your mind down the road, as you work towards these goals, but at least you have an initial plan that you can start.

Beware of too many choices

There’s a famous jam experiment which shows that consumers who are given too many options end up not choosing anything (24 jams v. 6). One would think that a wider array of choices ensures that there would be more jams appealing to more people, but the increase in choice just increases the confusion and causes the mind to not do anything at all. Don’t make that same mistake with your next career move. You don’t need to juggle so many options. Invest some time in getting a snapshot of your career potential -- from your future self, old bosses, recruiters, friends and your innermost thoughts. Then prioritize a couple of moves, and go for it. You can course-correct along the way.