Discover the power of career coaching

Garreth Hanley:
This is INTHEBLACK, a leadership, strategy, and business podcast brought to you by CPA Australia.

Jacqueline Blondell:
Hello. I'm Jacqueline Blondell, and welcome to another episode of Career Hacks. In this series, we bring you the latest strategies and tips to help supercharge your career. Today, we're speaking to Zoe Badalassi, who began her working life in the corporate world. About 6 years ago, she pivoted to career coaching and portfolio career planning. She guides clients through career stages from stepping into senior roles to rebounding from career setbacks. Welcome to the podcast, Zoe.

Zoe Badalassi:
Thanks for having me, Jacqui.

Jacqueline Blondell:
First off, can we ask, why is planning your career so important in this day and age especially?

Zoe Badalassi:
Yeah, it's a great question. I think for a lot of people, they plan a holiday with more time and effort than they do their career, and for a lot of us, your career tends to just roll on. And that's great if that's your experience, but in this day and age, what I see is that the work and life paradigm has shifted quite significantly. And so, for most people, particularly for those in later career or life stages, they have been educated to a three stage life. And what I mean by that is you studied, then you got a job, and for some of us, one job for life, and then you retired.

Yet, that approach isn't relevant for the world that we live in. In fact, with technological advancements, digital transformations, more of an unpredictable and unstable world, the world of work is changing. And so, we need to be able to plan our careers with that in mind. No longer is there a job for life, but we may have lots and lots of different transitions and perhaps different roles according to living longer, which we are doing. And so, we need to have more of a sustainable approach to our careers, and therefore planning is really important.

Jacqueline Blondell:
Do the fact that skills are constantly changing also play into this equation?

Zoe Badalassi:
Absolutely. Significant accelerations in terms of digital skills, and everyone knows about AI and automation. And that isn't going anywhere. So certainly, there's a rapidly evolving skills landscape. Lots of research and studies have been done about that, but also how we're needing to enhance our human skills in order to make better use of these technologies to make our work more efficient and more productive and more impactful.

So I think we'll see a real change to rather than having a job with a specific job title, we will in fact be moving to more of a skills-based world of work where a portfolio of skills will be needed and then deployed to solve different problems in almost more gig-type working. Even if you do have a permanent job, you're on more project-based work, which requires different skillsets. So absolutely, we have to have a real learning thirst and an agility around learning new skills.

Jacqueline Blondell:
Well, take then the uncertainty in the world and the need to keep learning new skills. Where do you start when you start your career plan? Even if it's say midway through your career, you go, "Right, I'm going to forget about holidays and start planning my career instead." Well, how do you start?

Zoe Badalassi:
Doesn't sound as exciting as planning a holiday, that's for sure. But the irony with that is we all link to a finish line to get to our holidays, and perhaps there's something in that. Perhaps if our careers and our jobs were a little more fulfilling or we designed them a little more deliberately, we wouldn't be so desperate in need of a holiday. But back to your question, it certainly can feel overwhelming, and I think the most important thing is to start to think about this. And your plan can be as comprehensive as it may need to be, but the fact is stopping and thinking, "If I am going to be working for much longer, we need to have a plan or we need to at least be thinking about it, start to talk about it."

So in my work, I use a model that I call the Five C Model of Career Planning. And so, really, that's just getting really clear on your context. So, what is happening around you, what are the trends in your industry, what are some of the shifts or the opportunities that are in your world, wherever you are in your career and in the world? The next thing will be around getting super, super clear on your own skill levels, your interests, your experiences, your values, the things that make you you. Where have you been, where are you now, and where aspirationally might you want to go to?

Then it's around looking in terms of the choices that you have. So the third C in the model, which is around what are the choices, what are the pathways, what are the options, and exploring those. The fourth element is really building your courage mindset. A lot of people talk about confidence in career planning or job search, certainly if your role has been impacted by redundancy, but we really need to think about how can we be courageous in exploring some of these new things, which may feel a little bit unnerving or a little bit stressful when we're thinking about the next move in our career. And finally, community. We need a cheer squad around us. We need different people across our lives, family and friends, colleagues, et cetera, to build a community to support you.

So I think if you've got those considerations, even scribble down somewhere, "Do I have those five elements, and can I put some time and effort into thinking about that," to set you up for the future.

Jacqueline Blondell:
Say you started your scribbling, does it change over time, this plan, from say when you first start out, perhaps after you graduate, through to your mid-career, and then onto the time when you're thinking about changing things and working towards your retirement?

Zoe Badalassi:
Yeah, it does, and it should. And look, I'd encourage the scribbles. I'd encourage a revisit. Annually is probably enough to, again, examine, "Has your context changed? Have your skills and your interests changed? What are the different options and pathways?" But most certainly, we increasingly will move through different stages of career and life. And typically, as I mentioned earlier, we had this three-stage life, which was around studying, getting a job, staying in that job, and then retiring. So the lived experience of somebody having this conversation now may be different to somebody who started their career 30, 40, 50 years ago.

What we do know is that life stages are a bit blended now, a little bit different. But we can say in your early careers, so perhaps in your 20 to 30s, really what the plan is there is to try and explore as many diverse opportunities as you can, gain different skills, talk to different people, start to build your network. And this is a really good way to build a foundation for your career by being curious, by being flexible, being open to new and different experiences. So really, for folks in that stage, you're trying to acquire new skills, you're trying to deploy them in different contexts, and really try and discover where some of your passions lie, align to what the world needs at the time. Experimentation, self-discovery, that's what my advice would be for those folks earlier in their careers.

Moving then into more mid-career, what I typically see, and this happened in my own personal journey, but certainly with a lot of the folks that I work with, I call it this sort of plate-spinning period. So, sometimes folks have moved into more leadership positions or managing more complex type roles. They may be juggling family commitments. They may have older parents or caring responsibilities that are quite broad. They may have mortgage responsibilities. There may be health and lifestyle considerations here as well. So there's a lot going on for our mid-career folk. This is a really important time to not only think about your own career planning, but also that of your partner or people that you may live with to see what sort of support systems are in place. Does one need to accelerate their career while the other pulls back for a little, or how does that work? It's often a time when folks do consider career breaks, so what does that look like? Do you have the financial means and the space to be able to do that? So definitely some unique challenges in what I refer to as mid-career.

Jacqueline Blondell:
We hope you're enjoying INTHEBLACK. If you're interested in the latest news, analysis, policy updates, and business insights, you should check out CPA Australia's With Interest podcast. Join us as we dive into the news and delve into the business issues of the day. Each week we talk to thought leaders from across the accounting, finance, strategy, economic and business spectrum, and you get their expert opinions. Now, back to INTHEBLACK.

Zoe Badalassi:
And then moving into your later stage of perhaps career, you may not be at later stage of life, particularly if we are living longer. This is where you may have lots and lots of experience at work. It's a really good opportunity to assess your mental and physical fitness. So really looking at how can you continue to engage in hobbies and in activities that will keep you working longer and contributing, but there may be a bit of a rebalance around moving to say some part-time work or wanting to go out on your own. It may be wanting to leave a legacy and working in a slightly different way with the organisation that you might be working with, but typically more of a focus on work-life balance, sometimes increased travel, and different components of a later stage life.

Jacqueline Blondell:
Do the three stages have anything in common, or a few things in common in terms of attitudes towards planning?

Zoe Badalassi:
I think a lot of people, or certainly in the work that I do, we see a lot of planning early career. That's often part of graduate programmes or other things that organisations deploy for their early career talent. Universities do a great job of doing that as well. So we typically see a bit of a spike in career planning or career awareness in the earlier stages. Mid-career, things tend to get a little bit, lots of competing interests. So again, in my experience, not a lot of planning goes on. It's often just trying to get through.

And then we see a little bit more, perhaps, knee-jerk planning as folks move into that later stage. Their world may be changing, their organisation may be changing, there may be some fears or concerns that their role will change in a way that doesn't necessarily suit them. So we do often see a bit more panic planning. "I want to retire. I can't afford to. My role may be changing. I do want to retire. I'm ready for that, but what does that look like?" So I would encourage a bit more of a balanced approach across the three stages.

Jacqueline Blondell:
In terms of your attitude, your attitude should be the same. That should be open to change, shouldn't it?

Zoe Badalassi:
Absolutely. Regardless, really, of your career stage, being adaptable, being curious, and really wanting to learn and uncover new skills, absolutely is essential across those three broader stages. And I think the ability, I mentioned adaptability, but to be agile and to consider the broader context, to consider what's happening in your industry, what's happening within you in your life stage, and how can you then consider that openness with planning. So yeah, it's a great point. Really being open and curious to the planning is essential.

Jacqueline Blondell:
So what should the plan actually look like?

Zoe Badalassi:
It's a good question. I think having the same plan is helpful. It's probably a bit more efficient. Probably some of the content just changes a little bit. So if you use the Five Cs Model that I mentioned before, really just saying, "What's my context? What information do I currently know about my life, my job at the moment, the industry that I work in, my family circumstances?" And that will look different, perhaps, across those three stages. For the clarity section, really understanding, what are your current skillsets? What are the things that you love to do and you want to keep doing in the future? What are your interests? What are your values? What don't I want to do more of? That's important as well. Then looking at your choices, which really is the overlap between the context and the clarity. So, what are the trends that I see? What am I good at? Therefore, that might dictate what choices you have ahead of you.

Thinking about how you feel in terms of your career is really important as well. Doing a bit of a pulse-check on that courage piece. And what do you need to help you act with courage, to network, to interview for roles, to ask for a promotion, to consider a career break? Those are big, big moves. And then the community, and this is one I see people probably struggle with a little bit, particularly in that mid-career and certainly into later stages. And that is, not necessarily investing their time and effort into the community that they have around them. But if you use those five sections across your career, I think that's a really sensible and holistic way of planning your career, no matter the stage.

Jacqueline Blondell:
You talk about having curious work conversations. Is this where the community piece comes in?

Zoe Badalassi:
Absolutely. We need more curious conversations in general, I think, Jacqui, but certainly around work. Yeah, we need to be talking to people within and outside of our own organisation, family and friends. So it's definitely something that I would encourage everybody to do. I suppose my tips for having more curious conversations is to write a list. Write a list of all of the people that you know, you studied with, you worked within the past, you work with now, family, extended family. Who do you know? How did you meet them? And perhaps, what's a memorable experience or a connected experience that you had working together? That way you'll be familiar with them and what to do when you ask them. So start with a networking list.

Second thing to do, plan out what's a question that you would like to ask each person on that list. It could be something about, they may have made a career change, they may have taken a career break, they may have been 20 years in the same organisation. There's going to be something interesting about almost interviewing them. There's a range of topics that you could ask somebody in these networking meetings or curious work conversations, and the easiest thing to do is to get other people to talk about themselves. So I would encourage some of the topics to be around perhaps how they have navigated an internal promotion, perhaps when they've felt most courageous in their career, perhaps when they've felt most satisfied in a job or a career. Trends that they're seeing in their industry, whether they are planning for their own retirement and what does that look like, and perhaps asking them a little bit about how they've transitioned from early to mid to late career. So there's plenty of topics to dive into. It's important to think about the lived experience or be curious about the lived experience of that other person.

Jacqueline Blondell:
Let's talk about a really difficult topic, redundancy, which is obviously one of the career downsides. How would you recommend someone address work life after being made redundant?

Zoe Badalassi:
The big thing here is to recognise that redundancies are ever more frequent. And so it is highly likely, if you haven't had your role made redundant, that it will happen to you, and maybe multiple times. Using that career planning model will be really helpful to be able to articulate what your skills and your experiences and values are. It helps with the courage, but more importantly, it will help you identify what other roles or opportunities may be suitable for you. So I would really encourage folks, if you're in that position, to really take stock of what you love doing, what you're good at, and what experiences you have to back that up. And that will stand you in really good stead to begin the next phase of your career post-redundancy.

Jacqueline Blondell:
Well, thanks so much for sharing your insights today, Zoe.

Zoe Badalassi:
You're welcome. Thank you so much for having me on.

Jacqueline Blondell:
You've been listening to INTHEBLACK Career Hacks. If you're looking for more great career content, please check the show notes from this episode for links to CPA Australia's Career Resources.

Garreth Hanley:
If you've enjoyed this episode, help others discover INTHEBLACK by leaving us a review and sharing this episode with colleagues, clients, or anyone else interested in leadership, strategy, and business. To find out more about our other podcasts, check out the show notes for this episode, and we hope you can join us again next time for another episode of INTHEBLACK.