The Ultimate Step-By-Step Guide to Building a Career Strategy for Parents
Discover the game-changing roadmap for parent career triumph! Delve into expert tips, practical steps, and proven strategies to navigate the balance between family and professional success. Embrace your journey to fulfillment with a personalized career strategy - start paving your way today.
Being a parent is hard.
Being a parent who’s spending 40 or more hours a week at a job that they hate and then coming home from work to two crying kids every night who are hungry and tired can be even harder.
How can you break out of your personal prison when you barely have time each day to eat?
Here’s the answer: Develop a Career Strategy.
Before you go any further, I will say, his isn’t going to be easy. The good news is though, that if you actually spend the time and effort to build your career strategy, the seed you plant will eventually grow into a tree of happiness. (that almost sounded like a fortune cookie).
If you’re ready to put in the work, here’s what you’ll get in the rest of this article:
· The Definition of a Career Strategy
· Why Parents Should Have a Career Strategy
· A Step-By-Step Guide to Building a Career Strategy for Parents
What is a career strategy?
Webster’s dictionary defines a “career strategy” as, a plan individuals create to manage and advance their careers effectively. It involves setting goals, identifying key steps, and navigating career decisions to achieve long-term success and fulfillment.
If you want to get more information on what a career strategy is and how to build it around your passion, read this article on How to Build Your Career Strategy Around Your Passion.
Now, let’s answer the question on why parents should have a career strategy.
Why should parents have a career strategy?
· Provides a clear direction as parents handle childcare responsibilities.
· Maximizes time and resources for career growth.
· Balances professional aspirations with family commitments.
· Enhances a parent’s ability to adapt to changing work and family dynamics.
· Fosters a sense of purpose and fulfillment beyond parenting roles.
Before we get into the steps of building a career strategy for parents, it’s important to understand The 5 Foundations of A Career Strategy.
Ok, now that you’re an expert career strategist and understand what it takes to put together a career strategy, let’s take a look at the steps for building one as a parent.
The step-by-step guide for building a career strategy for parents
Step 1: Identify your priorities
Before you start surfing the job boards, it’s a good idea to figure out what you want in your career.
What to consider when building a career strategy
1. How much money do you need/want to make
2. Do you want to spend more time with your kids than you do working?
3. Do you want to work remotely or in an office?
4. Do you want to have a flexible job?
These are just a couple questions you should ask yourself before you even start trying to figure out what career you want to get in to.
Maybe your current job demands that you’re in the office 50 hours a week, or you have an extremely long commute, and you hate it, and it makes you miserable at your job.
What you want and don’t want from a career should all be considered in this first step. It will set the foundation for the rest of your strategy.
Step 2: Set clear goals
According to Gallup News, about 40% of Americans ages 18 to 34, 35% of 35 to 54 and 25% of 55 and older adults set goals in 2023.
You don’t need to be a math wiz to figure out that those numbers aren’t great. Everyone should be setting goals. Plain and simple.
For your career strategy to be successful, you should set clear and actionable goals.
What to know when setting goals
1. It’s important to make your first few goals fairly easy to attain. Do this so you build confidence at the start, and then you can set longer term goals that are more difficult so you can push yourself.
2. Make your goals actionable and not so vague that you don’t know where to start.
Here’s an example:
Vague Goal: I want to get a good job with great benefits.
Clear and Actionable Goal: I want to get a job in the fashion industry that has a 401k and health benefits.
The clearer you make the goals, the more likely you’ll be to achieve.
3. Set a deadline for your goals. Don’t make things open ended. Have an idea of when you want to achieve the goal and hold yourself to it.
4. For a great resource on how to set goals, read this article on the relationship between short term goals and long term goals.
Step 3: Assess your skills and strengths
Before Eminem became a rap superstar, realized at a young age that he was able to master the English language and write lyrics that connected with people. He used his skills to build an extremely successful career.
He was a poor kid who lived in trailer parks and didn’t graduate from high school. Yet, he understood himself and the abilities he had.
Even if you don’t like rap, Eminem or music, this should inspire you to take a look at yourself and figure out what your skills and strengths are. Once you’re able to figure that out, there’s no limit to the things you can do.
How you can figure out your skills and strengths
1. Make a list of the things you like to do.
2. Think about what areas you’re knowledgeable in.
3. Ask people closest to you what they think you’re good at.
4. Try doing the things you like to do to understand if you’re skilled at one or more of those things.
Step 4: Explore flexible work options
As a part flexibility is an important aspect of any career path you take.
If you don’t think that’s true, ask the people who live in New Jersey and commute to New York City and have to be in the office five days a week. There’s not much flexibility on Wall Street, and you don’t see too many professionals over there picking up their kids from the bus stop every day.
*I will note that if you identified in Step 1 that you wanted to be in an office five days a week, this step probably won’t pertain to you. I’d also note, if you’re a parent who wants to be in an office every day instead of finding ways to be around your family, you might want to re-evaluate things.
Anyway, here’s a couple ways to find flexible work opportunities:
Finding Flexible Work Opportunities
1. Research companies you’re interested in to see if they have hybrid or remote work options.
2. Ask during an interview. This may sound extreme, but if you’re a parent, it’s a good idea to lay most of your cards out on the table so you know exactly what you’re getting into before you get the job.
For more help on flexible and hybrid work, check out this article on What is a Hybrid Work Schedule.
Step 5: Build a support network
A support network comes in a lot of different shapes and sizes when you’re a parent.
Have you ever heard the saying, “It takes a village to raise a child.”?
That saying couldn’t be truer. If you don’t have a supportive network around you when raising a child, you’re going to have a difficult time.
Who should be in your network:
1. Family and friends
2. A professional mentor
3. Co-workers from past jobs
4. People from the industry you want to be working in
If you’re not sure how to build a professional network, read this article for strategies to building your network.
Step 6: Invest in ongoing learning
It’s important to note that the word “investing” in this case, doesn’t mean spending lots of money on training.
We are at a time in history, when knowledge is at your fingertips. With YouTube and podcasts, you could learn skills in half the time you would at traditional colleges.
Here’s an expert tip:
After you put the kids to sleep or during nap time, you should be listening to something that’s going to be improving a skill you want to improve. Wasting 3 hours at night falling asleep and watching TV is going to get you nowhere. Instead, spend that time before you go to sleep doing something productive.
Step 7: Create a schedule and routine
A schedule and routine for your kids is crucial to being able to pursue your career goals.
If you’re trying to develop a career strategy and improve your current work situation, you’ll need to budget time to do it.
This is especially true if you’re the parent of young children. You won’t have much time to yourself if they’re awake, so you’re going to have to find all the hours in the day that you can, and this works best when you and your family are on a solid schedule.
*It’s important to note that the schedule will most likely change as your kids get older, so you are going to have to be able to adapt.
Step 8: Communicate openly
Communication is crucial to just about everything we do in life, so building a career strategy as a parent shouldn’t be any different.
The more you can have open and honest communication with the people around you, the better you’ll be at handling the challenges that come up….and trust me, challenges will come up.
Step 9: Delegate and outsource tasks
Sometimes as a parent, you try to do everything.
I’ve gone almost 2000 words and haven’t mentioned Full House yet, so here we go.
If you’ve never seen a show and live under some rock, it’s about a dad raising his three daughters with help from his brother-in-law and best friend.
Anyway, in one of the episodes, the dad, Danny Tanner (RIP Bob Saget), tells each of his daughters that he’ll be at their events, which happen to be almost all at the same time. He says he’s “super-dad” and plans to make it all work out.
*Spoiler alert* he doesn’t and winds up falling asleep and missing all three events.
I say this not so I can spend time talking about Full House, but to use it to show that you can’t do everything by yourself, and you need a little help from your friends.
So, talk with your significant other, your family, and friends, to make sure you have a plan for childcare, tasks around your house, etc. Remember, it takes a village.
Step 10: Practice self-care
When you get on a plane, just before you take off, they show you the safety video and say, “Put on your oxygen mask before helping others.”
Practicing self-care is how you put your oxygen mask on first as a parent. It may sound selfish, but if you don’t have any oxygen left, it’s going to be hard to take care of your family.
Ease Self-Care Strategies
1. Eat healthy
2. Exercise
I’m only giving you two because those are the two most important. They also aren’t tremendously hard to do and will make you feel great on a daily basis (especially eating right).
What to do after building your career strategy
Once you’ve gone through all these steps, it’s important to take time and revisit each one where you can. A career strategy is a continuous plan for improvement, and as long as you’re a working parent, you should be trying to improve all aspects of your life.
If you need help figuring out the career strategy that’s best for you, just click here and sign up for a free discovery call with one of our expert career strategists.
Now that you’ve made it to the end, you should have all the tools you need to be the best parent you can be.