Author(s): Michelle Gibbings

Business

The world is changing. How we work is changing. Now more than ever people need to be comfortable designing and orchestrating their own career path. The days of a traditional, linear career are long gone. We are approaching a crunch point as the pace of change outstrips the development of new roles. In the next twenty years, estimates are that 40% of roles that currently exist will be automated or done by robots. No role, profession, industry or geography is inoculated from this impact. People entering the workforce now, are likely to have at least 17 different employers, and five different careers during their lifetime. This is only going to increase. What is also different is that employees will need to adapt to a paradigm shift in terms of what it means to be employed. As the level of freelancing increases they may work for multiple employers at the same time, or more frequently move from job to job and in to different roles. The 'gig economy' is well underway, and yet workers are unprepared. Why? Because they are stuck in the past; holding on to an outdated view of what a career path looks like, or a limited view of what having a successful career entails. They are stuck on the idea of a typical career path encompassing the following phases: entry, exploration, establishment, maintenance and retirement. In practice this meant that people moved, for example, from entry level roles through to middle management and then ultimately retirement. Careers don't work like that anymore. They are far more fluid, flexible and adaptive. Essentially they aren't aware they need to find the right balance between whether they focus their time on their present job or their future, and whether they focus on their career passively or actively. By failing to find those balances they end up being one of:

• Apathetic - They are so focused on the present they spend no time preparing for the future. Ultimately, they get left behind.


• Anxious - They let their fear of failure, fear of the unknown, fear of the future cause them to make easy and less risky career decisions. Ultimately, they get so overwhelmed that they drift.


• Arrogant - They are so confident of their place in the present that they don't take the long term view of their career. They ignore the fact that the world changes, and therefore they fail to see that they always need to continue to learn and be challenged. Ultimately, through their over-confidence they lose their way.

Consequently, they are failing to ready themselves for a working environment that is demanding unprecedented levels of career reinvention, deliberate decisions and ongoing action. To thrive in this new working world, people need to be ready, willing and able to leap into the unknown.

This book provides the reader with a way forward. It sheds light on the choices they can make and the steps to take to reignite, reshape and liberate their career. It provides the techniques and practices needed to enable the reader to have the confidence to change, and the capability to make career leaps. Get Career Fit introduces the reader to the career reinvention cycle, guiding them through its four phases and the 12 key steps they need to follow to successfully leap from one career to another. You can't future proof your role, but you can future proof your career.