Conducting A Career-Driven SWOT Analysis

Strap Into Reality Town

Are you the CEO of Your Life, Inc.? I’m asking you to ask yourself that.

Seriously.

Are you?

Alright, let’s cut through the bullshit you tell yourself to feel comfortable and get real about self-assessment in your career.

Going SWOT On Your Career

Think of a SWOT analysis as your personal business strategy. You’ve got to be as brutally honest and clear-eyed about yourself as you are about a business case study in a Wharton class. Here’s the breakdown:

Strengths: This is your secret sauce, your unfair advantage. What can you do better than 90% of the people out there? Maybe you’re a coding ninja, a sales maestro, or have a knack for making complex concepts digestible. Identify these strengths with ruthless precision. This isn’t the time for modesty or false humility. If you’ve got it, own it.

Weaknesses: Here’s where most people trip up. Acknowledging your weaknesses isn’t admitting defeat; it’s strategic intelligence. Maybe you’re terrible at time management or your public speaking skills make people wish for a fire drill. Know your weaknesses like you know your ex’s most annoying habits. Only by acknowledging them can you start to address them, or better yet, find ways to make them irrelevant.

Opportunities: Look at the market, your industry, your network. Where’s the whitespace? Maybe there’s a surge in demand for digital marketing skills, and you just happen to be a digital marketing whiz. Or there’s a gap in leadership in your department, and you’ve been honing your leadership skills. Opportunities don’t knock; they whisper. You’ve got to be listening closely.

Threats: This is about external factors that could throw a wrench in your career path. Maybe automation is making your skills obsolete, or there’s a rising star in your team gunning for your position. Being aware of these threats is crucial. It’s not paranoia if they’re really out to get you, or in this case, your job.

Will you take action, CEO?

Now, how do you apply this to your next career move?

Simple.

Easy-peasy.

Align your strengths with the opportunities. Minimize your weaknesses by either improving them or finding roles where they’re not a dealbreaker. And always have a plan for those threats. Maybe you need to upskill, network more, or sometimes, just recognize when it’s time to pivot to a new path.

Remember, self-assessment isn’t a one-time thing. It’s a continuous process. The market changes, you change, and so should your SWOT analysis. In the immortal words of Darwin, it’s not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.

And in the business of your career, you’re the CEO. You’re the star of the show.

Act like it. Don’t be average.

Brian Fink is the author of The Main Thing is The Main Thing. It’s his way of galvanizing your focus to bring your life’s work to reality. Fink’s impassioned wit and humor tackle the highs and lows of dispelling the constant barrage of interruptions, pings, and distractions that take you away from realizing your main thing.