Everything You Need to Know About Your Career North Star
If you’re ambitious and want to build a career that fits perfectly into your life, there’s one career planning concept you need to master: the career north star.
If you’re familiar with my work, you may have heard me discuss this concept before. That’s because as a coach who works with high achievers to build happier and healthier careers, I talk about it a lot.
But, you might still be having that lingering question in the back of your head… “So, what exactly IS a career north star?!”
Let me tell you.
The basics
A career north star is essentially my take on career clarity and direction. It’s a north star purpose statement based on who you are at your best, and it’s our ideal “end goal” for your career. Your career north star is designed as a counter to traditional career planning, which tells you that you should establish a job that you are trying to reach on your path to success, and work towards that. More on why that doesn’t work in a bit…
Your career north star should guide all of your career decisions moving forward. If you’re stuck at a fork in the road, you can ask yourself “which of these options moves me closer towards my north star”?. At its core, it helps you ensure that all of your career decisions are aligned to what would make you more happy and fulfilled.
Why it’s better than the alternative
The problem with traditional career planning is that it often takes the “10 year planning” approach, as I call it. Determining a certain job is your goal and then working ruthlessly towards that. In my experience, though, the 10 year planning approach to careers has 2 main flaws:
Once you determine “your thing”, you put blinders on and sometimes disregard other great opportunities along the way.
Most detrimentally: if you decide you no longer want that goal one day, you’re hosed.
The second issue happens way more often than you realize, and it’s especially common for high achievers. They pick their “dream job” and work on climbing the ladder to accomplish it. Then, one day, they hear a little whisper of doubt in the back of their head saying “are you sure this is really what you want to do?”. Of course, they ignore the doubt because they’ve already made up their mind. And in my experience (as someone who not only helps clients with this but has lived this experience myself), the doubts don’t go away, but instead grow and grow until they become unavoidable. Eventually the high achiever drops into an existential career crisis because they’ve realized that their “dream job” isn’t actually what they want, and it feels like their entire world is bottoming out from beneath them. This realization seems sudden, but in reality there were signs all along that were simply ignored because this person was committed to the 10 year planning approach and their “ideal job”.
See how that works?
The 10 year planning approach is how most people opt to tackle their career, but it’s simply not the best way! Unless you have a super clear internally-determined direction for your career and strong self-awareness, it will probably lead you down a path that you think looks good, but doesn’t actually feel good to you. That’s how we end up with so many high achievers in roles that look perfect externally, but feel like a bad fit.
Besides, I’ve worked with clients who set their “dream job” in their mind as early as 10 years old. Your brain isn’t even fully developed at that point! Who are you to think you’re going to pick your ONE JOB for the rest of your life?!
A north star career approach is way better than this 10 year planning angle, as it still provides you with a direction to move towards in your career, but it also gives you flexibility. It allows you to roll with the punches and adjust to new information, and as much as you perfectionist over-achievers love black and white thinking and a “clear plan”, it behooves you to stay nimble. ;)
How to build a north star purpose statement
When you build your “purpose statement”, it often looks like a description of you at your best. Who are you when you’re most “in flow” at work? How are you showing up? Who are you being?
That may sound a bit heady, but stick with me! Building your “purpose statement” for your career is something I do with every client, and it’s not as complicated as it looks.
For my clients, we work through my signature Interest Mapping process, looking at tasks you’ve done and exploring what you’ve liked, disliked, and why. What can those things tell us about you and your needs? We then use those characteristics to build out your purpose statement about who you are when you’re at your very best.
This is different from a lot of other career experts I’ve seen, as it’s more focused on who you’re being versus what you’re doing. You don’t just end up with a list of strengths or tasks you like (which you have to Frankenstein together into a role). You’re left with a core statement that defines who you are and what’s important to you.
How it works
Once you have your flushed out purpose statement, it should feel like a perfect fit. When you read the statement back to yourself, you’ll think “oh my gosh, I know EXACTLY who that is!”. And better yet, once you’re at a fork in the road you’ll be able to say, “I know exactly what they would do here”.
That, my friends, is what real clarity looks like. It looks like direction that’s based on yourself and what you want, versus what you “should” do.
Having a purpose statement allows you to take your own advice, which I’m sure we’ve all struggled with at some point. It helps you take the wisest, happiest, most engaged version of yourself, and align your decisions to them.
Once you have a purpose statement, it becomes your “end goal” for your career. Every decision moving forward must ladder up to that.
Debating whether you should stay at your job or go somewhere new? Which of those options moves you closer to your north star?
Picking between 2 job opportunities? Which one leans into letting you do the things that are “you at your best”?
Still following?
To get these questions out of your way:
Here are a few things I get asked a lot when it comes to this career approach:
Can I just use a test or personality assessment to tell me this?
I’m a Myers-Briggs certified practitioner so you might be shocked by my answer on this, but no. You know yourself so much better than any assessment could possibly know you, which is why those approaches often miss nuance. Beyond that, they require an extreme amount of self-awareness to do solo and end up “correct”.What if there’s nothing that’s engaging to me? Does that mean I have no career direction?
A lot of people are secretly worried that their lack of career fulfillment at work is “just them” and there’s nothing they’d like more. As I always say, though, to be human is to inherently have access to passions and interests. You just might be really out of touch with what they are right now.I know what’s important to me. Is it as easy as that?
The purpose statements I build with clients to use as their career north stars are way more detailed than anything you’re probably imagining. So while it might feel vague or confusing, know that never, in the last 5.5 years of this work, have I seen two statements be quite the same. It’s not as easy as slapping a few things on a piece of paper and calling it a day. These statements typically take several weeks, hours of coaching, and lots of iterations to be developed.
On top of all of that, one of the key elements of my work with clients is releasing the pressures they feel as high achievers around what they “should” be doing in their career. This is an essential step if you want to build a north star statement that’s truly designed around YOU versus people-pleasing and what you think you ought to do.
To sum it up, this work is complex, but it’s so important! It’s the best way to build a fulfilling career long-term that’s aligned to your wants and needs.
Your purpose in your career is not to do one specific job until the day you die. In fact, I believe you all have the same purpose: to bring more of “you at your best” into your career each day. That’s the lasting path to career fulfillment, alignment, and satisfaction.
So, do you have a north star yet?
To finding yours,
P.S. If you want to take the time to uncover your purpose statement and career north star, I’m here to help! You can click here to apply for a free call to explore working together, or check out my self-study program Purpose Chaser School designed to take you through my process.