8 High-Flying Secrets to Planning your Path to Career Success

Career success is no accident. It’s the result of strategic thinking and planning, growing your competency skills and experience, building the right network, and taking advantage of career-advancing opportunities when they arise.  

The best place to start is by answering the most important career question: On your retirement day, looking back at your career, what will you have accomplished?

That’s a tough question that few people can answer completely. The following eight secrets will help you visualize and plan your path to career success.

1. Are You Physically Fit to “Fly?”

Just as in flying, you need to start your planning with a brutally honest physical self-assessment. A man who weighs 130 pounds probably won’t be a successful pro-football player. Someone who can’t tolerate the cold will be a poor ski instructor. Make sure you have the basic makeup to do the job.

Some initial physical barriers to your dream career can be overcome. When I was a teenager, I wore glasses. I thought that ruled out a career as a pilot because, back then, the airlines had strict uncorrected vision requirements.

Years later, the demand for pilots skyrocketed. Some airlines began to drop requirements like four-year college degrees and strict vision standards. As that barrier disappeared, my career path appeared. 

In any career, it’s important to make sure you possess the raw, physical qualifications for the job, with an eye on the ever-changing job prerequisites.

2. What Do You Enjoy?

Put pen to paper (or finger to keyboard) and capture everything you like to do. It doesn’t matter whether it is work-related or not. Don’t edit yourself: write everything down. Do you like to wear suits or jeans? Do you like the outdoors or prefer working in an office or lab? Are you a city person or a country person? Do you like working with others or alone? Do you want to be the person buying goods and services or selling them? Just let the ideas flow, and be specific. Don’t write “fishing” when you can write “trout fishing in a stream in Colorado.” You should end up with at least 100 items on your list.

Next, go back and refine the list. Group items together by category. Lastly, go back and strike out items that are duplicates or are a little too unreasonable. For example, if you wrote down “travel to another galaxy” you may want to strike that--at least for this century.

From that list, you will be able to define your passion, the thing that gets your juices flowing. If you are having trouble, ask a close friend to help identify things that excite you, and that you speak passionately about. You may not notice it yourself, but others may be able to help. 

One tip for determining your most personal desires is to look at childhood clues. For example, when I did my self-assessment, flying was always something on my list. As a child, I was also interested in becoming a physician. My father was a doctor and a pilot, so we had copies of the Journal of the American Medical Association and Flying Magazine around the house. I distinctly remember looking at both publications on the table. Which one did I routinely pick up? Flying Magazine. I was lucky that I identified my passion early.

3. Test yourself

There are a number of free online career tests that can help you determine your strengths, weaknesses and job preferences.

1-2-3 Test: Gives insight into your career personality. Based on a characterization of your personality in terms of Holland Code personality types, you will learn what kind of work environments and occupations suit you best. The results of this career test provide you with a list of professions and occupations that fit your career personality.

Keirsey Temperament Sorter: Divides people into four “temperaments:” guardian, idealist, rational, and artisan.

MyPlan.com: The Values Test can help you learn more about your underlying work needs and motivations and can help you decide what is important to you in a job.

Big Five: Divides people into five personality traits: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism to help you determine your work preferences.

16personalities: helps you determine whether you are an introvert or extrovert.

iSeek “Clusters:” Rates activities you enjoy, your personal qualities and school subjects you like. Then you can see which career clusters are a match for your interests. 

MyNextMove, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Labor, asks you to rate how much you’d enjoy performing very specific work tasks.

4. Is money one of your goals?

Are your goals mainly financial? If you want to make a lot of money, it’s more important to choose a career that offers that potential. The best school teacher in the world makes about $80,000 a year. The worst investment banker probably makes about $500,000! 

Money can only solve the problems that money can solve. But if that is your motivation, choose a career that has high-earning potential, like Financial Services or a similar profession.

5. Stick Your Toe in the Water

One of the best ways to try out a career choice is to expose yourself to it without making a long-term commitment. That’s what school is all about. It allows you to sample various fields to see if you like them. Sampling different fields by taking classes is a low-risk way to find your path. It takes courage to jump in, but you have to make a choice, even if it turns out to be the wrong one.

Another great way to find direction is to get a part-time job or internship in your field. Interested in Law? Get a job as a clerk or an intern. You will get the feel of a law office, see what lawyers really do and make a few bucks in the process. Even more valuable will be your informal conversations with attorneys and staff members. Ask a lot of questions because people who truly enjoy their work like to talk about it. 

I chose journalism as my major in college. I was able to line up an internship at a local television newsroom (no pay, but four units of undergraduate credit and a great experience). Being a TV intern helped me rule out broadcasting as a career and solidified my resolve to become a pilot.

6. Surround yourself with people who believe in you.

My first flight instructor told me I was too uncoordinated to be a pilot. Thank goodness I didn’t listen to him! I changed to an instructor who encouraged and supported me, and went onto a career in aviation.

As a civilian pilot, many people told me I’d never get hired by an airline because they only hired ex-military aviators. I chose a great mentor who told me that I could do anything.

Don’t waste your time with detractors. Find people who will support your career goals and advise you along the way.

7. Don’t be afraid to change careers.

Many people fall into a career by default. Often driven by money, they get locked in a field with low pay, poor working conditions and little chance for promotion. These dead-end jobs can kill your career and suck the joy from your life. Companies are really good at giving you just enough of a pay raise each year to keep you locked in a job. They hope that each year your expenses will raise—new car, mortgage, children—which makes it difficult to change careers.

How do you know if you are in a dead-end job?

You stare at the clock all day, can’t wait to go home, loathe that you have to return the next day, and have lost whatever passion for the job you once had. If you are having an unusually bad day, it is normal to ask yourself those questions. If you find yourself asking them every day, you are in the wrong business.

8. Find Your Place

Put yourself in an environment where you can excel. Some like the structure of corporations, other are entrepreneurs. In what environment do you produce your greatest value? To thine own self be true.  

Summary

Follow these eight secrets to unlock your career potential. The sky’s the limit!