Do You Need a Professional Development Loan?
Career Coach Qualifications: When looking to make a change in your career is a professional development loan what you really need? Let me explain my question further. There can often be a sense of going right back to square one if we choose to make a career move. When we are at a crossroads in our work then all sorts of questions will naturally arise: “which way now?’. ‘What qualifications do I need”. “Am I capable of this?” and “How do I afford this?”. What I notice is that rarely does a client sit before me, eager to reflect on what they already have.
HR review here gives the stats for staff turnover as of 2018:
research reveals that more than one in five (21%) of workers plan to leave their current position in the next 12 months, with a further 29 percent admitting that the threat of financial insecurity is all that’s keeping them at their organisation
This shows a total of 47% of the UK working population are at least considering a career change. The ‘career for life’ has slipped back over the horizon behind us and into the past. Now we must learn how to manage our own careers, navigating shorter contacts in a rapidly changing professional landscape. This is ok, we can do this if we attend to another important element. What we need to do is to assess what we bring to the table. To learn to identify and claim the skills we already have enables us to trade effectively in the employment market. If we do not know what we bring then we cannot negotiate.
“Career Coach Qualifications: Take a good look in the mirror. Claim what you already know. Maybe you won’t need that professional development loan after all!”
This is where there can be a cultural disconnect. If you were raised with the belief that you would qualify in a subject and have a linear journey up through your chosen field, then there was no need to self-reflect so regularly. There was no need to bring the levels of self-awareness needed in order to navigate the shifting sands of career development today. If you were educated in the 60s, 70s or 80s then it was seen as rude, brash or outright dangerous (does the phrase ‘pride before a fall’ trigger anything for you?), to be able to name your skills, knowledge or personal attributes. It was very in-British to boast!
Career Coach Qualifications
The reality today, however, is that if we don’t learn to boast a little bit then we will be overlooked. Shrinking violets are just not seen. A major part of any career transition needs to involve engaging with a really honest and objective inventory of all you have gained in your professional journey thus far. Engage with this process rigorously and you will be surprised at just how much you already know. You may need to rename or repackage these skills on order to step into another sector or your next role. You may nevertheless find you have 99% of what you need already. This means that any need professional development loan might well be negated entirely.
Take a really good look in the mirror and notice what you see. Do the work to claim what you already know and your next career move will be eased. Perhaps you won’t need that professional development loan after all…..