I received some fabulous advice when I was early in my HR career about balancing my CV with the right qualifications to support my experience.

A leader I greatly respected said to me that while I had plenty of HR experience, it wasn’t backed up with high level HR qualifications (apparently a Degree in Agriculture wasn’t relevant, who knew?).

That set me off on the path to a Post Graduate Business Diploma majoring in HR Management through Massey University in NZ to provide me with the latest HR theory and best practice to support my day-to-day activities.

More than 10 years later (during a downturn when I was making lot of roles redundant), I trained as an Executive Coach, as I wanted to learn how to build people capability instead of making drastic changes to people’s lives to the negative.

As a Career Strategist, I often work with people who haven’t thought about the depth of their career and how qualifications, professional memberships or networks would level up their CV. Also, they may not have considered that one day they may want to do something different. It is distressing when they realise how lopsided their career experience is when they come to change direction or step into a promotion for which they don’t have the qualifications or professional networks to secure.

“People spend more time planning their holidays than they do planning their career”.

It is in the above situation when it becomes apparent that the lack of career planning may trip you up. You don’t have to have a five-year or a ten-year plan (or you might, if you’re that way inclined), however thinking about what you want to do when you grow up is a useful exercise.

A fabulous resource is James Fairbairn’s book Career Karma (you can get it on Amazon) to help you think about your career journey and plan to achieve what you want.

If you have no goal and no plan, then you get what you wish for (the definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different outcome). You might have an over-arching goal or know only the next step on your path (e.g. joining a professional body). If you take that first step, you are already further ahead than today.

In 2003, I got good advice to level up my career. In response, I intentionally took a series of actions which set me up to be ready to step from HR Management to Leadership Coaching more than 20 years later.

Did I have coaching as my ‘final’ destination? No. I took each step and opportunity as they came up. However I constantly assessed each one to ensure it would add value on my career journey.

And I am still doing this today as I continue to invest in my professional development to be a better Leadership Coach.

What are you doing right now to level up your CV and future proof your career?