Work It Podcast: Can you plan your career?

Career planning can help people commit to their goals and desires. But what if the best laid plans are derailed by changes in your life? Chris Lau, principal career coach from Workforce Singapore shares his personal journey about his career plan with hosts Tiffany Ang and Gerald Tan.

Jump to these key moments:

• 7:13 Importance of career planning
• 9:48 Challenges and misconceptions in planning
• 18:33 Gen Z goals and desires
• 20:19 Planning for retirement
   

Here's an excerpt of the conversation:

Chris Lau: The most common cause of unhappiness for most people at the workplace is a misalignment of their personality, their preferred work behaviour, their interests, their beliefs, their values, with what they are doing, day in, day out. A lot of people imagine, what career planning is, it is about me making the next move on my chessboard. Me making a big change, and this big change has got to drive certain kind of outcome for me (a bigger pay or supervisory position).

Tiffany Ang: Yeah, nothing wrong in that.

Chris: But before you embark on diving into (this), career planning begins with you prying open that personal war chest of yours and rediscover what's in the war chest. What are you made of? What are your interests? What are your values? What's your value proposition? What are your strengths?

Tiffany: But (in deciding what you want), you're asking to check so many boxes at one time. I have to have good colleagues. The company has to have the right values. I have to find value in the job. I have to get a promotion every, say, hopefully five years. Gen Zs will probably just be like, as long as one box doesn't check, I'm checking out. So what then is a feasible plan for them?

Chris: Interesting that you brought out Gen Zs ... A large majority of the people that come through my doors are Gen Zs and they are very curious about themselves. They are curious about whether they can actually go the long haul, and they are very ready to listen to what you can actually tell them about themselves that they do not know about. Traditionally, the appetite was, how much money can I make out of this? It has now shifted to a little bit more of how happy (am) I doing this? How much meaning can it bring to me? Slowly, the conversation is now shifting. 

Gerald Tan: This just means that there's even more need for career planning. Companies will need to shift towards helping their employees. How do we engage you so that you want to continue working in this company?