Don’t Be A Drifter — Design Your Career Path

By Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter

As a career coach, many people come to me for advice and direction about making job changes. They have been sending resumes to firms without much, if any, response. They have interviewed for jobs that have left them feeling depressed about their future. They enter into their search without a clear idea of what they are looking for and thus jump up onto an employer’s conveyor belt to be turned into sausage.

It is no wonder they feel miserable about their prospects. After all, they have no target and have surrendered control of their professional lives to employers who can’t be trusted with their careers. After all, time and again, employers prove themselves unworthy of this trust by transferring people into work that doesn’t serve their careers and by firing them when they are no longer needed.

What can you do instead? Design your own informed career trajectory by thinking, researching, investigating and actually deciding on what is right for you and your interests, rather than being like a feather drifting in the wind, landing wherever someone decides you should land. The likelihood of landing in a place that is worthwhile for you and your interests is so slight under those conditions. So here are some tips for helping you plan your own informed path: