Your career is a climbing wall

So, for everyone, your job title doesn't matter anymore. And that's terrifying if you've been doing everything right and planning around that job title. But what does matter more is what you've already got. You've got a set of skills that are unique to you that you've developed across those jobs. And that's when you realize that you're not climbing a ladder anymore because it's not clear what the next rung is. You're climbing a wall. And what's liberating about a wall is you might go sideways, you might go down. You're gonna find your own path on your own terms. If you're gonna climb in your own ways in the book, we tell the story of Mo Beck, who's a one-handed climber. Mo is able to climb in a way that only a one-handed climber can climb. That's what you're doing on this wall. You're finding what's a unique path, and there isn't just one path, and it isn't just take the next rung on that ladder. It's gonna be whatever you make of it, but you've gotta be deliberate now about bringing new thinking to it. How should people be thinking about their careers if not rising through the ranks and climbing the corporate ladder? So this generation is gonna have two times more jobs than the generation before. So your career is gonna be a collection of skills that you're gathering, and it's gonna help build your career, but it's not a collection of specific jobs, right? It's not, I'm gonna stay in this job for 20 years and then retire. Your career is a journey. It is not a straight ladder up and down. It is, sometimes you're gonna get a job that is a lateral move. Sometimes it'll be up and to the right, And sometimes it'll actually, you're gonna go down a couple of levels so that you can learn these new skills. It's not climbing up, it's climbing all over. It's like a rock wall. It's challenging and you're not always going to be able to move in one direction or the other, but you have options. You have to be more nimble, I think, right? Yeah, you know, our jobs these days are so dynamic and that's because the skills are changing. I mean, there's some skills that didn't exist 10 years ago. I mean, think about it. Like, okay, we know that AI literacy is one of our top skills. Well, we were not talking about AI literacy five years ago, but now we are. And so that's a good example of how jobs are just changing. And now I think businesses are coming around to the idea that there's actually value in bringing people in from other industries and functions because there's value in having skills that not everyone on your team has, right? Absolutely. So companies are doing what we call skills-based hiring. They're saying, I need this set of skills and I'm gonna look for the person who is going to be the best match for those skills. I think one of the things that people sometimes, they worry about is like, especially when we go back to that rock wall analogy, they sort of say like, okay, I'm here, but where do I go from here? So the first question I have people ask themselves is what gives me energy and what zaps your energy? That second question that we sort of centered on here is like, what is unique about you? Because like, that's the selling point is, is what makes you the right person to do this job? Typically what a hiring manager or recruiter is gonna wanna hear is what business impact have you been able to have on the company that you've worked for in the past? It all comes down to that. Yeah, and the last question that we have here and I would love your perspective on this is where are you going? So the first thing you can do is find someone on LinkedIn and take a look that you really like aspire have that role, their experience, their skillset, take a look at their profile and see what, like what courses have they taken? What skills do they have? What experience do they have? And then you could start mapping, okay, these are the skills I want to acquire. And I think the key is like those three questions, which is like, you know, number one, why do I work? And then, you know, what makes me unique and where am I going? Writing all those answers down and looking at those periodically, but it will really help you in your journey. And you want that comfort, I think.