The Career Compass

In 2005, career counselor Mary Robins and I began collaborating on The Career Compass. I am one of many who worked on The Personal Compass and was delighted to create a new personal-development tool. Some of you may be wondering how The Career Compass differs from The Personal Compass. When Mary and I began designing, it became clear to me just how different the two tools would be. First of all, The Personal Compass is designed to guide you through an introspective journey. Most, if not all, of the information individuals fill in the templates comes from what is already in their heads.

The result of completing The Personal Compass is a deeper sense of life’s purpose and a plan for the future. The Career Compass focuses on work, while still giving users a big-picture view of their career in the context of their whole life. The result of The Career Compass is a new career direction; be it a new job, a new position or the decision to get additional education. After I explained the two workbooks to one client, she said, “The Personal Compass is for your heart, The Career Compass is for your head.”

While designing I learned about the overwhelming amount of information available to anyone wanting to make a career change. We therefore designed The Career Compass to help people take an organized, strategic approach to the various kinds of research needed in career planning. Mary also wanted templates that would be flexible enough to work with other tools available in the career-counseling industry. The Career Compass therefore complements various tools and resources, such as assessment tests (MBTI®, Strong, and SkillScan, to name a few), and several career-related websites. Mary did a wonderful job of compiling all of her favorite tools and websites, and they are all referenced in the binder. We also wanted to design templates for specific, yet sometimes complicated, tasks that individuals often do in career planning such as networking, organizing informational interviews, applying for jobs, and so forth.

After four years of designing, writing and testing, we are very pleased with the outcome.

I would love to hear your comments or questions about our new Career Compass.