What's your career equity?

As we progress through our career, it’s useful to understand the components of our career equity: the value that we’ve accumulated over the course of our career. This helps us to understand where we are and where we’ve got to so far. It also gives us the opportunity to spot any weak areas of our game and to create a plan to improve all aspects, building towards our broader career goals and vision. In this week’s blog, we’ll look at the 7 key components of your career equity.

Expertise

This is the most logical place to begin - what skills and expertise have you acquired over the years? This might be through formal training and qualifications, or it might simply be skills you’ve acquired on the job.

Achievements

Your career equity is deepened if you’ve not only gained expertise, but if this has also translated into tangible, quantifiable successes and achievement. This is important to think deeply about, particularly if you look to make a career move as prospective employers will want to understand how you can evidence your claims to expertise in your field.

Reputation

How you’re regarded by those you interact with in your field of endeavour has real value. Hopefully, you’re seen as someone who has deep levels of expertise, is successful, acts with integrity and does the right thing.?This will pay dividends, especially as you look to move on to your next role.

Network and Relationships

Assuming that you’ve developed those areas already mentioned, your network and professional relationships become one of the critical factors in progressing with your career. Your ability to build great and real relationships, both within the firm you work for and beyond, will often mean that you’re sufficiently visible and highly regarded enough to be considered for future roles and, perhaps, promotions.?

Financial recompense

To an extent, the value that someone has developed in their career is reflected in their level of compensation. This, of course, is relative and needs to be seen in context of someone’s professional field.

Influence

Another key indicator of someone’s career equity is the degree to which they’re able to influence. That may be related to their role and title within an organisation, or beyond, into the wider industry. It will also be determined by their personality, mindset and skills of persuasion.

Growth

This implies a trajectory and a desire to keep learning, with ambitious career goals that will demand an ever growing level of responsibility and challenge.

Then - take stock, score, plan and build your career equity

With these ideas in mind, it might be useful to understand your level of career equity. Use these elements as a starting point in creating a set of KPIs and score yourself against each. Having understood those scores, you can list those things that you can build on and achieve that would improve your score. Then, create a plan to move forward and continue to develop your career equity. This would constitute your personal Career Development Plan.?

From this, you might choose to see how your current employer can join you in the development plan, perhaps by providing further training, giving you stretch goals, and opportunities to work in projects and in roles that are beyond your current level of competence and, therefore, comfort zone.?

The final point to note is that although your amount of career equity needs some context to give it meaning, I’d suggest being away of the maxim: “to compare is to despair”. So, understand where you are and find ways to move forward and improve by comparison with where you were. Progress is happiness.

Closing thoughts

Understanding your career equity is central to approaching your wider career with clarity, control and confidence. Giving yourself time to reflect on the equity you’ve built so far also allows you to identify room for further growth and self-improvement. Your career is a long-term investment, so by continually developing your career equity, you can better ensure you’re best positioned for your next smart career move.