Welcome back to Lunch Break, a weekly newsletter + modern guide to a meaningful career from career coach Janel Abrahami. Brought to you by Pivot With Purpose career coaching program.
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So, you want to find a job that’s aligned with your values, right?
You want to work for an organization or boss that lives their values?
You want to contribute to a values-based mission?
Awesome! But, what does that actually mean?
In the recent cultural shift from “succeed at all costs” to “work with intention,” there’s been a dramatic uptick in conversation about personal values, company values, and connecting to the “why” behind what we do for 80,000 hours of our lives.
Values, it can be said, are having a big (deserved) moment.
What we mean when we talk about values in a career context, though, can be quite different from our overall life values.
👉 Example: A lot of us value adventure in life. We love to travel, have bucket lists in our Notes apps of local haunts to try, and get excited at the idea of a spontaneous trip to somewhere we’ve never been (as long as we have time to make a detailed itinerary). But how does adventure fit into our work lives? Does it just mean working with travel-focused companies or having the ability to travel for work a lot (something I’m guessing you’ve done a lot of already and know it’s not very adventurous). These values aren’t super helpful in informing our career decisions.
👉 A Different Example: One of my top five values in life is dependability. To be able to depend on something or someone is hugely important to me. But how does that translate in a way that helps me design my career? I could prioritize working with companies that stay true to their word (not sure how I’d measure that), or that create dependable products or services. Okay, getting closer, but still not entirely helpful.
Thankfully, there’s actually a group of work-specific values that are directly applicable to our day to day experiences, developed by O*Net, a recognized source for updated occupational information and labor market research:
✨ Achievement: related to using your strongest skills and abilities to succeed
✨ Independence: related to creativity, responsibility, and autonomy
✨ Recognition: related to advancement, authority, and social status
✨ Relationships: related to social service, moral values, and lack of competition with co-workers
✨ Support: related to supervision and leaders that stand behind their people
✨ Working Conditions: related independence, security, the kind of activity you do on a daily basis, the physical environment you work in, the variety in your work, and how you’re compensated.
With these parameters, you might find, as someone who worked on Pivot With Purpose did, that “support” at work means “parent-friendly,” and prioritize your job search around companies that actually walk the walk on supporting parents at work and at home!
Which of these work-specific values are your Top 2-3? Why?
Janel Abrahami, Career Coach
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👀 ICYMI
Are you…
〰️ Stuck in a corporate career you’ve outgrown?
〰️ Not reaching your full potential or making a meaningful impact?
〰️ Ready to make a lasting career change?
Then you’ve got to join me on Wednesday, October 19th at 6:00 PM EST, for a completely FREE strategy session on HOW TO FINALLY FIND A CAREER THAT FITS!
Who’s it for?
✨ The millennial who feels disillusioned, bored, and burnt out of their current careers, but don’t know what else they could (or want to) do next
✨ The corporate go-getter who is ready to figure out what kind of career will help them make the impact that really matters to them & a company culture that lives their values (like the ones you pinpointed above)
What will you learn?
✔️ The subtle- yet significant- shifts required to find career fulfillment
✔️ Why you’re constantly starting from scratch in your job search
✔️ My proven three-step process to make a lasting, empowering career change
📌 COOL JOB (remote-friendly + mission-based)
Title: Enablement Program Manager
Company: AtoB
Location: Remote, US and Canada
Description: As the first Enablement PM hire, this person will create the catalog of knowledge, work with engineering and product to develop an ownership model and update cadence, identify tooling to support our knowledge catalog, and develop our external help center supporting customer self-service. As a part of our Sales Enablement function, this person will work closely with product, operations, and management teams to identify learning objectives and develop solutions that help us achieve our selling targets. Success in this role requires strong relationship building, prioritization of execution among many projects, agile project management, scoping or tools, and a strong vision of success for our knowledge management programs.