Career Search Engine – How to Create a Career Blueprint

Career Search Tips

Before you start with your next career search, why not sit down and develop a career blueprint first? A career blueprint is a plan where you intend to be in 5, 10, 15 or 20 years from now. It should also be a roadmap to assist you to make career search decisions at different stage of your life.

Our aspirations and view towards life change at different stage of our career lives. When we first graduated from college, we may search for a job that allows us to learn new things. As we proceed in our career and in life, the remuneration and the exposure would probably be the main search priority. This priority may change when we reach mid-life and it will also be different as we enter into our retirement stage. We also search for different goals out of our career when we face crisis in our lives.

A career blueprint is especially useful when we start with our career search. It is also extremely useful to help us make career change decisions later on in our lives as we develop our career. In a nutshell, a career blueprint should be the road map to help us to proceed with our career lives.

What does a career blueprint consist of?

Identifying your career goals

The first step in creating a career blueprint is to identify what are your likes, dislikes and what would be fun for you. Think of your previous job. What do you like and what do you dislike about your previous job? Make a list for several segments. These segments can include:

- Employer
- Industry
- Nature of Work
- Office political environment
- Size of company
- Salary
- Culture
- Client
- Office Facilities
- Stress Levels
- Location of work place from home
- Job functions

This is not supposed to be a 15-minute exercise. Think about each of the segment carefully. We suggest that you work on what you dislike first. This way, you are able to identify better what you really like. This is called clarity through contrast method.

Your contrast list – what your dislike about your job

Your contrast list may look like this:

Disliked about boss:
- Always micro-manage details
- Over-critical
- Do not motivate staff
- Treat staff as slaves instead of colleagues

Disliked about the industry:
- Too contractual
- Over-focus on production rather than on quality
- Low level of ethics
- Hazardous

Disliked about the Job Nature
- Too competitive
- Have to constantly generate fresh ideas
- Too monotonous
- Not able to see the bigger picture
- Not enough exposure to international business environment

Clarity List - What You Like About Your Job

Based on your contrast list, build your clarity list – what you would like to have about your job. Note that your clarity list is “must-have” list. Your clarity list may look like this:

What I like to have about my future boss:
- Allow me to manage my own work
- Encouraging
- Always motivate staff
- Treat staff as colleagues

What I like to have about my work industry:
- Non-contractual
- Focus on quality of works
- Ethical
- Non-hazardous

What I like to have about job nature
- Challenging but not over-competitive
- Well-defined job functions
- Variety of different job functions
- Able to participate in the larger picture of the whole industry
- More exposure to international business environment

There is another list which you need to generate. It is called the “Career Fun List”. While this list is not a definite must-have, it will be great to have it. Your career fun list may look something like this:

Boss
- Like to hang out with us
- Occasionally treat us to sumptuous dinner
- Like to be called by his first name

Industry
- Provide on the job training to visit other factories
- Respected by the public

Job Nature
- Flexible working hours
- Opportunities to travel overseas

After you have created the above three lists, study each of segments carefully. Study the patterns of your previous jobs that make you happy or unhappy. This is a soul-searching exercise and adequate time should be given to ponder over each item on list carefully.

Next, you should write your job statement based on the clarity and fun list that you have created. For eg., the statement related to your boss may look something like this: I like to have a boss who is understanding, encouraging and allows me to manage my own work. It is great to have a boss who always motivates the staff to work for the benefit of the company and for the staff themselves. I like to have a boss who treats us like his colleagues instead of as a subordinate. It will be fun if he always likes to hang out with us and treat us to sumptuous dinner occasionally.

You should build this statement for each of the segment mentioned above. Remember that the results for this exercise are different at different stage of your career life. Hence you should do these exercises each time you intend to pursue a career change.

There is one more final exercise that you should do. Write an essay about your ideal first day at the job. You do not need to be realistic in this essay. Write whatever that you think would make you feel happy. You can write that on arrival at your office, you are shown into a 500 square feet room which shall be your work space. You are then introduced to your personal assistant who is gorgeous. Put in a lot of fun elements into your essay.

As what we have said during the first part of this article, all of us look for different things during different part of our career lives. The main thing that we want out of our career lives may look something like this:

Age: 24 – 35 Opportunity to learn and be exposed to different work environment. Good salary is not the most important factor but it would be fun to start getting high pay.

Age 35 – 45 Managerial role that require leadership skills. No longer looking forward to “donkey-works”. Potential for salary increment is important as there are now more commitments due to family life. It would be fun to have occasional overseas travel for business.

Age 45 – 55 Senior managerial role is preferred. Job stability is important. Freedom to have own working time without being bound to strict working hour is important.

Age 55 and beyond Advisory role with constant income without even reporting to work!

If you are able to develop a wonderful job statement and the ideal first day at work for every different stage of your career, then you would have develop the perfect career blueprint for your life.

We suggest that you review and make adjustment to this career blueprint every 5 years of your working life. Things may change and the work industry may change. The work industry that you would like to get involved in may not even exist anymore!

Good luck in your career search exercise!