Career Audits and Why You Should Do One

I can't remember where I came across the term career audit but it caught my attention immediately. If you Google the term right now, it leads you mostly to careers in auditing except for this and this. For most of us, and most of the time, we take stock of our careers when we are feeling stuck or looking for a change or being laid off or let go. It is not something we think of doing regularly when things are going well or when things are hectic. It is not a piece of career advice I ever remember getting. However in other parts of our lives, we do have audits happen. We pay our taxes regularly, we go for annual checkups, we spring clean and put away the Christmas lights, and if we don't, there are different kinds of consequences.

But being able to assess where you are, what you want and the state of all the other factors that play into a fulfilling career only when you are dissatisfied or in need of a new job is not a neutral starting point. Your assessment is biased and more often than not disadvantaged by your circumstances. There are of course many ways in which we take stock of our careers, even if we don't think of those as audits. We update our resumes (occasionally), we go to a coaching session, we are part of performance review cycles, we attend professional development sessions where we are asked to assess our skills, we take personality quizzes.

Out of all of these, coaching to me comes closest to the outcome of an audit. But coaching can be expensive and is not viable for everyone regularly. A career audit is also an investment of your time, one which will help you, whether you see yourself as someone who is likely to stay where you are for a long time or if you know that you want more. It helps you look at where you are in your career, and think about if this is where you want to be and where do you want to go next? A different field? A promotion? A different organization? Something else entirely?

So.. you have decided you want to do a career audit. Now what? The first time you do one, it will involve more effort upfront, as you take stock of all things career for you. Do the following before your first career audit:

1. Find the latest version of your resume, preferably in an editable format
2. Locate any performance appraisals, and any other formal feedback you have received in the last one year
3. Open your LinkedIn profile (if you don't have one yet, don't worry about it)

You can also choose to do other things such as find the original job description you were hired for, pull together a list of any professional development you have done recently etc. I liken it to spring cleaning for your professional house.

Think of your first career audit and subsequent ones as two different categories. The first time you do this, it will take a little more effort, it will feel a little weird, you may not entirely be convinced that you will benefit from the outcome. Hopefully as you continue to build the practice, it comes more naturally.

In the next in this series, I will focus entirely on the first career audit, and what the experience was like for me.