Follow your heart through career maze

Author Heather Carpenter. Photo / Paul Taylor

New Zealand author Heather Carpenter is no stranger to the changing world of careers in the 21st century. She has had various roles including educator, career counsellor, lecturer, researcher and now writer.

A mid-life move to Hawkes Bay to "tend a vineyard" with lawyer husband Brett gave her many opportunities for re-invention.

The fertile environment was conducive to writing; Carpenter began her PhD research on older workers' careers and then wrote her first book, The Career Maze: guiding your children to a successful future, published in 2008.

Carpenter says transforming your career path is what her second book, Your 21st Century Career: new paths to personal success, released this month, is all about.

With the insight of a counsellor, the pragmatism of a management consultant and the succinct delivery of an experienced pedagogue, Carpenter offers a guide to career selection and management that melds current career theory with exercises. The book seeks to help the reader become more self-aware. I caught up with Carpenter in Wellington recently, where she was presenting at a national career research symposium.

What motivated you to write the book?

I enjoy seeing people light up when they get new insights. I have seen it teaching at tertiary level; I have seen it with clients and in workshops.

Students say, "How come we never knew about this?"

They love it. The light goes on: they see themselves differently.

So I was highly motivated to put these ideas in a book for a wider audience.

The book pulls together powerful ideas about 21st-century career behaviours. We are in a new paradigm of careers; still, many people are just coming to grips with what that means.

I wanted to take research that affirms the very best practices for today's changing environment and present it in a way that people can enjoy assessing themselves and learning from it.

What do you think will be the one thing people will gain most from the book?

The realisation that you can take charge of your career progress. There are ways you can improve with just a little more knowledge. People have freedom now to create the career and the success they want, but they must understand self-management.

You mention the changing environment of the workplace: what would you say is the greatest challenge for New Zealand workers?

I think the greatest challenge is in understanding the complexity of the skills we must aspire to, especially in communication.

In today's digital age, we have to be better at writing and communicating because the speed at which we work demand advanced thinking and writing skills.

So we have to think, write and use technology at complex levels, at speed and at the same time. Those who can do this well, along with excellent verbal communication, will stand out.

And the most essential "career competency" that this environment demands?

"Knowing how" - not just knowing your craft and improving your skills but knowing how to stay sure of yourself, or "career confident", in unpredictable times. The world can change but "knowing how" means you can develop a certainty about yourself.'

You say, "Good choices bring about better chances and they lead to the best career opportunities."

What would you say to someone who says, "I've made a lot of bad choices"?

I'd say probably they have responded to opportunities without taking time to work out what they really want. Careers don't just happen, we create them.

When people talk about wrong choices, it usually means they haven't considered important things: does this really interest me, will I get a chance to develop my skills, is this my kind of workplace?

People often take jobs for the wrong reasons and it just doesn't work out.

I work with many tertiary students who have made bad choices; they have tried to do subjects that they think will make them more employable but they end up hating them and not achieving. The answer is always the same: attraction and interest is what leads to motivation, achievement and success.

That's the path we must follow to develop our potential and our productivity, in study and in work.

Carpenter's premise is that we all need to find our "path with a heart".

In the final chapter of her book she comments that much of traditional career advice is one-dimensional - "involving lists of how to behave, look, interview, write a resume - but typically these tasks neglect the reality that, first and foremost, a career is the vehicle of the self - and we are only truly satisfied when our career behaviours are integrated with our life and our self."

So how do you know when you have the life worth living? Carpenter quotes writer Herb Shepard, who coined the term "the path with a heart".

There are three steps:

Tone - you will feel energised, alive and truly yourself, and feel good in your entire being;

Resonance - you will feel good about your relationships, in harmony with your environments, aligned with what suits you;

Perspective - you will feel good about your choices because your life has balance.

We need to be clear about what we have to offer. According to Carpenter, we can increase our employability by understanding how we work best, keeping ourselves flexible and creative and taking chances to up-skill.

It's worth remembering that people who are happy with their career choices are much more likely to achieve and be productive.