What We Learnt About Careers in 2021

Wow, I think we all need a rest after that.

Whatever your career situation during the last 12 months you will have been on a journey you didn't expect and at times it will have felt tough.

?2021 was an incredible mix of fear, change, societal unrest, uncertainty, community, growth, support, innovation, and a drive for businesses to somehow become both more digital and more human at the same time. It has also been a time of great learnings with regard to our jobs, careers, and work patterns.

As LinkedIn Changemaker for Careers and Unemployment I spend a lot of time talking about what to expect next and what people can do to set themselves up for greater fulfillment and success in the new world of work. People seem more interested in this discussion than ever before.

?It is an interesting process to work on our careers more consciously and proactively.?Despite often having advisors and apps in place for everything from our fitness to our finances, for some reason when it comes to our jobs we have historically been very reactive.

This is an error and that has become very clear during 2021.?When we are miserable in our careers we are miserable full stop and how we feel about our work can have a big impact on how we feel about ourselves. It is such a major part of our life.

My advice is to take some time out over the festive break to breathe, take stock and reflect. You may like to create a career timeline and write out all of your previous roles and map where you have been most engaged and fulfilled with your work as well as reflect on the key takeaways you have from the last 12 months.?

Either way, have the goal of entering into the New Year in 2022 with a career plan you can work towards.

To help you navigate the next chapter of your career and the ever-evolving landscape we have highlighted our top 5 career learnings from 2021 below:

?1.????YOU HAVE TO BE READY TO GO TO MARKET AT ANY TIME!

So often when I have worked with jobseekers this year, they didn’t see redundancy coming, are starting from scratch, and feel vulnerable and exposed – it is brutal.??To avoid this challenge in the current marketplace you have to be ready to go at any time.?This means updating your CV after every appraisal, investing in personal branding activities, nurturing your network, and creating strong head-hunter relationships in a proactive way so that you don’t need to be reactive if you are blindsided by bad news at any point.

2.????SETTING A CAREER VISION IS POWERFUL

Vision drives decision! A big lesson for many from 2021 has been the importance of setting a meaningful vision for your work life. You can then actively work towards it filling in gaps through training, secondments, and technology as you track your progress. ?One task I love people to do is our “Wiki Result” exercise.?That is where you write down what you would want someone to read on Wikipedia about you if they were to search your name there in the future.

It is also worth noting that 2021 taught us that your career vision is no longer constrained by traditional, linear options. We have seen a rise in fractional and portfolio careers, freelancing, startups, and pivots which has been great to see. To help you work through and research your career options based on the mix of your risk appetite and the breadth of skills we have created a simple Career Success Grid to guide you below:

Whichever part of the grid makes sense to you right now it is worth noting you will move around the grid throughout your career as your skills and risk appetite change but believe me when I say it is all up for grabs!

?3.????THINK ABOUT BUILDING YOUR VALUE PROPOSITION NOT YOUR CV

With technology, automation, and AI permeating our working lives more than ever this year we learned that you definitely want to be strategic about creating value in your skillset.?We are entering a phase whereby soft skills are the new hard skills and it is those you want to develop in order to stay in demand and well remunerated.?So constantly work on EQ, remote leadership, negotiation, decision making, creativity, and communication to ensure you are future-proof and developing the techniques that companies need.

?4.????LEVERAGING LINKEDIN TO ITS MAXIMUM POTENTIAL IS A MUST

LinkedIn, right now, is still a once in a career opportunity.?For me, it has meant 1000 inbound clients, media campaigns, and building a community of almost 90,000 followers. It has also been the platform that has helped our career coaching clients immensely.

Through content, connecting, having a great profile, and networking you can create a powerful personal brand that helps you win business, hire great people, and attract career opportunities on an ongoing basis. It is not just for when you are job seeking and is an ecosystem that has grown and evolved more than ever during 2021.

Start building on here today - you might be surprised by the results.

?5.????WE NO LONGER HAVE TO TRADE JOB MISERY FOR JOB SECURITY

We uttered this line in the recent LinkedIn Changemaker TV advert and feel passionate about this.?The last two years have served as a circuit breaker and I feel we have all learned a lot from it.

For too long too many of us have kept ourselves trapped in a self-imposed prison in jobs we hate doing for people we don’t trust.?This misery bleeds into all areas of our lives and is inescapable and the fast-track to burnout. My advice is to spend 2022 working on a plan towards the job you really want rather than just purely escaping the job you hate.?Give yourself permission to be happy in your work, take some risk and start to align what you are about with what you do.?

Let's not revert to type and let the lessons of 2021 go to waste.

Huge thanks for all your support this year and wish you health and career happiness.

Andrew

This article was written as part of the LinkedIn #Changemakers campaign – a campaign shining a spotlight on individuals using LinkedIn to drive genuine change in the world of work. To find out more about the partnership, read more?here . And if you want to join the conversation, share the one thing you’d like to change about the world of work in a post on LinkedIn with the hashtag?#ConversationsForChange .