
Occasionally, someone will ask me how I managed to transform my career. If you've read any of my previous posts, you'll know that my career began as an Administrative Assistant. While I had the opportunity to support some amazing leaders, I knew at some point I wanted to do something more. The challenging part of knowing I wanted more, was not knowing exactly what more was. It took some time, a lot of soul searching, and I even had to do some educating of myself to figure out if I had the capacity to do something different. I will say that it didn't happen overnight, and if I had it to do all again, I would definitely approach my transition differently. My career migration took a few years. I had some natural progression via work promotions. I even had organizational changes that dropped me in roles that I may or may not have wanted to be in. Eventually, I had to take charge of the direction I was headed to land on the path that I designed. As I think about what ultimately put me on a path to career-happiness, a few critical activities stand out as true game-changers.
1. Know what you DON'T want to do? - while I wasn't certain in the beginning what I wanted to do; I knew exactly what I didn't want to do anymore. Looking at my current role(s), while for most of them, I had skills that made me good at them, I didn't enjoy several aspects of them. When trying to understand what’s next for you, it's important to know what about your current situation, makes you want to do something different. If you are not clear on what’s broken, you are doomed to repeat it again.
2. Complete a skills assessment - This is a fancy way to figure out what you can do. Do you have any specialized or technical skills that would transfer out of your current role into another? A simple exercise is to create a list of your current skills. Then create a list of the skills required for roles you may be interested in.

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