I believe that you are more likely to achieve your goals (finance, career, personal) when you write them down. Well, I should say that I started believing writing down goals because I started this personal finance journey blog.
This post is inspired by a blog post I came across at Making Sense of Cents. The questions to ask yourself is from MindTools.
My full time job is in digital marketing for a multi billion dollar company and I want to take a step back and complete a job and career SWOT analysis. I completed my first financial SWOT analysis because I want to be held accountable.
Here is my first attempt at my job and career SWOT analysis.
My job and career mission statement – I am currently in my mid 30s and have nearly 10+ years of experience. I currently make a good salary and am satisfied in my current full time role as a VP, Digital Marketing at a Fortune 500. I absolutely love digital marketing and I will strive to stay on the digital marketing track as a long term career. My current role allows me to continue learning and developing. I envision opportunities to be able to take on more strategic responsibilities and move up in my career.
Rather than a traditional SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats)analysis, I am taking a different approach. I am listing the questions you should ask yourself as you think about your SWOT and analyze my job and career based on 7 factors.
Job and Career Strengths
Helpful questions: What do you do well? What unique resources can you draw on? What do others see as your strengths?
Job and Career Weaknesses
Ask yourself these, and similar questions: What could you improve on? Where do you have fewer resources than others? What are others likely to see as weaknesses?
Job and Career Opportunities
What opportunities are open to you? What trends could you take advantage of? How can you turn your strengths into opportunities?
Job and Career Threats
External factors to consider: What threads could harm you? What is your competition doing? What threats do your weaknesses expose you to?
7 factors I am analyzing for my current job and career ambitions
- Salary
- I am satisfied with my current annual salary and annual bonus. Company benefits and company match 401k are good. That said I know based on conversations with recruiters that if I left my current company, I could make at least 30-40% more. As soon as I hit my 6 figure salary goal in my 20s, my motivation shifted from an annual salary number to the other factors stated below.
- Job responsibilities
- I have a genuine passion for digital marketing and have a genuine love for learning. Digital marketing is ever changing and fast paced and even after having over 10 years digital marketing experience, I am still learning new platforms to leverage for the company. Just as importantly I am enhancing soft skills especially around developing leadership qualities, communicating especially with senior leaders and executive leaders, managing others, and presenting to both cross functional leaders and to audiences up to 100 marketers as part of digital training training sessions. I have open conversations with my manager and that person knows my career ambitions.
- Job location and commute
- I live a few miles from the office. That said I do not like taking public transportation. I took the bus my entire time in college and did not want to go back to that. Unfortunately I am putting a financial burden on myself because 1) I am having to drive every day, which on average takes 15 minutes and 2) I have to pay a monthly fee for garage parking downtown. Money moron moment I know. My ideal job location is actually in the suburbs because living in the city is not ideal for me even though I am single. My comfort zone is in the suburbs having never lived in the city until this job. Some days it feels like living in the city in my current place just seems out of place for me and more of a temporary location.
- Team and coworkers
- I really enjoy my team and coworkers. All are very motivated and it helps that we are all striving to achieve the same goal. This is in part because of the great company culture. I have varying levels of personal conversations and know for a fact that at least 1 team member will leave the current role, which actually presents a big opportunity for me to get a higher VP level role. At this time of writing, I do not feel I deserve that role because I have some obvious opportunities to prove to myself that I am ready for that increased responsibility.
- Company culture and atmosphere
- I think my company has a genuine interest in its employees…as long as you perform. Not that unique in that respect though, right? I have several years in the company so I had to learn to adapt. I have been a part of a handful of companies prior to my current company and I can honestly say that the existing company culture is by far the best I have experienced. My biggest fear and 3 reasons for not jumping ship for a much higher salary are 1) my future manager will not have my best interest 2) my team and coworkers will not be as motivated and driven and 3) the company culture will not be of one striving for the same goal aka passive aggressiveness or backstabbing and cutthroat.
- Flexibility
- My job offers lots of flexibility. I am not sure if it is because I have 10+ years of experience with several years of employment with the same company. In either case I have 5 weeks of vacation, a couple weeks of “sick” days available, and standard holidays. I also tend to work from home once a week, but ideally I would want to work from home twice a week. As an introvert, I need time to re-energize and get some alone time and I am exhausted by faking it and presenting myself as more of an extrovert. I have had several people tell me that they do not believe I am an introvert. I really am an introvert.
- Career advancement
- I was promoted into my current role and there are varying levels of VPs. If I was presented the SVP role right now for 3x the salary I am making today including stock options, I would honestly decline. I know I am not ready. The organization is highly matrixed. All that said, I do have career ambitions with this company. For example within a year, I want to get promoted to a higher VP level doing more broader, enterprise level strategic initiatives and then within 5 years I want to either get an SVP role or be on the verge/next employee up for that big jump to an SVP. Ideally all of this would happen within Digital Marketing. I am thankfully getting coached to get experience leading an enterprise strategic initiative to help me get ready to make these career jumps. It is very clear to me that I can do the job required at higher levels; however, I have obvious soft skill opportunities to develop.
What does your job and career SWOT look like? Post on your blog and comment here with the link. I would like to include a running list of job and career SWOT analysis. I think it will help readers see different SWOTs with various years of experience and ambitions.
