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I was inspired to write this article by the book The Squiggly Career by Helen Tupper and Sarah Ellis, and the Squiggly Careers podcast. I highly recommend you check these out, as they’re super interesting and contain exercises for you to try too.

What is a ‘squiggly career’?

A “squiggly career” is a career that’s essentially fluid and flexible, as opposed to linear and predictable. 

Many of us are now stepping back and re-evaluating what we want out of a career and opening ourselves up to new opportunities that we might not have thought about before.

Over the last few years, careers in general have become much squigglier, where there are so many opportunities available to us to seek out what genuinely excites and fulfils us, even if it deviates from the path most travelled.

There are a lot of cool things that I want to do with my life and career, so being open to greater career flexibility is doing me well. I’ve found writing jobs, autism advocacy opportunities, speaking appearances, and much more. I might’ve missed these opportunities if I was less flexible with my career.

Ask yourself this, at university, did you take on a part-time job? Maybe you worked behind the bar at the SU, waited tables, or sold tickets to nightclubs or events? Chances are your career is squiggly and you didn’t even realise it!

It’s always good to keep an open mind about your life and career. But what do you need to think about to develop and make the most of a squiggly career?

Check out this LCN Says on non-legal work experience!

Strengths

These are the things that you’re good at. This could be anything – relationship building, presenting, coding, creative problem solving, you name it.

The key here is to focus on your strengths rather than weaknesses and accept that we can’t all be great at everything. The authors of The Squiggly Career suggest splitting your time 80/20 in favour of optimising your current strengths. The 20% should be used to develop skills that could be useful in the future.

Also, if you can pick out two or three strengths that make you stand out in a crowd and talk about them, you can build your confidence and other’s confidence in you too!

Values

These are what motivate and drive us. If our strengths are what we do well, our values are who we are.

There are no right or wrong values, so it’s important to be honest with yourself and be confident when it comes to what’s important to you. Also, be aware that your values can work for you or against you.

Values are for life, not just for work. Behaving in line with your values at home and at work will make you happier and more fulfilled. Don’t worry if you don’t have it all figured out right now. It can take time, even years, to fully understand what your values are.

Confidence

This is about having belief in yourself and inspiring belief in those around you. Confidence is a skill, and it needs time and practice to develop. What can help is:

• Identifying limiting beliefs and practicing keeping them locked up.
• Having the right people around you. No one gets confident on their own.
• Recognising and celebrating your successes, including during the tough times.

Networks

Building relationships is the whole point of networking. It’s about people coming together to make human connections and friendships.

For example, you could start with the question ‘how can I help?’ If you’re a helpful person, it’s likely that your circle will grow and more people will want to engage with you in the workplace.

Remember I wrote about making a Relationship Action Plan? Well, this is a good time to make one or revisit one you made earlier. Think about what you want to achieve in the next few years, in the next 12 months and work out who can help you achieve those goals. Start identifying those people, seek them out (LinkedIn is great for this), say hello and start a conversation with them. You could even ask them if you can help with anything and keep in touch, so they remember you.

A network is unique and they’re individual to us all. So, it’s important that you identify how this works for you, your personality and working style.

Possibilities

Given that careers are more fluid and flexible now than they have ever been, it’s important to have an ‘explorer’ mindset and be curious about what else is out there.

At this stage, you might well be thinking about the next rung on the upward ladder. However, a sideways move can be just as effective and could give you the chance to develop new skills and gain confidence.

You can also find these possibilities through your network. As you learn more about what the people around you do. Whatever you do, it’s important to be alert to as many opportunities as possible that can really enhance your growth, confidence, network, and happiness at work.