Re:locate magazine, winter 2006/7

Spinning in the right direction

If you’re helping a relocating partner who’s looking for work, the Career Wheel, developed to help people identify what they want in their career could prove invaluable. Sue Clarke explains how it works.

“The company wants me to move to Cambridge. It would be a great opportunity for me. What do you think?” As surveys consistently demonstrate, whether a partner’s response is positive or negative increasingly depends on whether that partner believes they will find suitable work in the move.

Work may be necessary simply to earn a second income, or – as is more and more common – the partner has a thriving career and wants the move to promote their career prospects, too. In dual career couples, one partner’s lack of career fulfilment may severely strain a relationship – and derail an otherwise successful relocation.

Career counselling for partners is an effective measure organisations can take to address the partner’s concerns and needs, turning the relocation into a positive career experience for everyone. Working with a career counsellor, partners fully explore and clarify what they want from their career, and build a profile of their priorities for development and change. The Career Wheel, illustrated below, is a tool that a career counsellor may use to achieve this.

The Career Wheel is divided into eight spokes: Talents, Relationships, Control, Growth, Recognition, Fun, Balance, and Values.

Talents: what are you good at – your skills and experience, your knowledge, your natural aptitudes? How well are you using these in your career? Is there anything you want to use more? Use less? Develop? Share? Are you making the best contribution you can?

Relationships: does what you do give you the sort of working relationships you would like? Do you work with the type of people you want to spend time with?

Control: does your work provide enough autonomy – are you given enough responsibility and authority? Do you receive adequate guidance – do you have enough support when you need it?

Growth: are you personally and professionally developing, learning, being stretched and challenged? Does your work engage you? Are you achieving what you want to achieve?

Recognition: do you feel valued and appreciated, in the ways that matter to you? Do you get enough attention and status? How happy are you with the reputation you’re building for yourself? Are the right people noticing you? Do you feel well remunerated for the work that you do?

Fun: how much fun is there in your working day? What’s your energy level like? How much do you fret and worry? How much do you laugh?

Balance: what’s left once you take work out of your life? Are you able to put enough energy and time into your personal relationships, your interests, your social life, your health, involvement in your community, or anything else?

Values: what are your personal standards; who are you when you are ‘really you’, when you feel genuine, natural and authentic? How well do your personal values fit with your work? Does your job lead you to suppress or compromise any of your values? Do you bring ‘you’ to work, or do you wear a mask?

How does your Wheel look?

Rate how satisfied you are with each area of your wheel, from 1 to 10 (where 1 is ‘not at all’, and 10 is ‘completely’), placing a cross at that point on the relevant spoke of your Wheel. So a score of 7 for Talents, for instance, would result in a cross on the Talents spoke at the 7th marker. Once you’ve completed all your ratings, join up the crosses: starting with a line from the cross on the Talents spoke to the cross on the Relationships spoke, continuing round until you’ve joined up all your crosses.

Now look at your Wheel. What shape is it in? Imagine putting two of these wheels on a bicycle and taking a ride: how bumpy would that ride be? What does this tell you about what you want to develop and change in your career? What needs to be different for your ride to be smoother?

Next, follow the same steps, but this time rate the priority of each area of the Wheel to you in terms of having a happy and fulfilling career. What does this tell you about your career priorities, and what you need to do now?

Some Career Wheel results

• Lisa was a successful Trainer with in-depth knowledge of the financial sector. Her Career Wheel highlighted her business expertise and love of building relationships with clients. With this insight, she successfully changed roles to relocate with her partner as a Business Improvement Consultant, specialising in financial services, for a leading business consultancy.
• A native Spanish speaker, Luce had five years’ teaching experience in Chile. Newly arrived in the UK, she was about to apply for roles as a Teaching Assistant – a popular route for overseas teachers without UK teaching qualifications. Through her Career Wheel, she recognised she needed to use her teaching skills fully, and the importance of status and autonomy to her. As a result, Luce decided to capitalise on the demand from parents for Spanish lessons for their children, and set up a children’s language club.
• After graduating, Shreena had worked as a programmer with a global IT company in India for two years. Her Career Wheel suggested she would find programming increasingly frustrating, as she needed a role that was more commercial and customer-facing. Relocating to the UK, she found work with a small, successful web development company where her knowledge of how a global player operated was welcomed, and where she could utilise her customer-facing and commercial skills, too.
• Catherine’s Career Wheel was the catalyst for a total change of career. Bored with her succession of secretarial roles, she identified her need for more fun and balance and to do work in line with her true talents and passion. When relocating she took temporary administrative work to secure an income, while she funded herself to retrain as an Image Consultant, gradually building up her business until she was able to work full time doing what she loved.

While some people, like Catherine, may decide to study for a completely new career, others study to enhance their career prospects in their existing field – choosing, for instance, a full-time degree programme.

Making relocation work

It’s important not to lose sight of the benefits of career counselling – a constructive, practical measure that organisations can take to address partner concerns. By enabling partners to fully explore their career options, organisations can turn the relocation experience into a positive move for everyone involved.

Sue Clarke is a career counsellor with Profile Locations and author Reinvent Your Career: 7 Steps to the Job You Love, Hodder Mobius.