The CPD and Career Development Forum

You are busy – you don’t have time to read yet another blog. So I’ll make this as punchy as I can. 

Big data and evidenced-based approaches are increasingly what the world seems to be looking for. Can you use such evidence to help your career? You can now via CareerBurst – and access is included in your DPG Community membership.“

10 years is the average number of years that successful people had stayed with their longest organisation”. Did you know that? Me neither. That’s not opinion, this is the result of interviewing thousands of successful people about their career progression. The chart below shows how long successful people stay in their organisations by sector.

(Don't click on the sections though, it's just an image, you need to go to the site for that interactivity 😉)

This, along with hundreds of gems of information, are at your disposal in CareerBurst. Let me take you through some of the main areas of the site:

Exploring Me

We've all got strengths. Mine include: being technically curious, being diplomatic (really?) and ambitious. There are dozens of online tools that will establish this for me, but Careerbursts goes further. It has helped me understand the most important part: what to do with that information. For example, I now know that I need to maximise my technically curious side, minimise time spent on being diplomatic because it drains me of energy and I see now I need to develop my ambition (by doing things like having a bigger online footprint, which is one reason why I’m writing this – well done me for taking action!).

Detail is what we need when it comes to career advice – not ethereal concepts and useless buzzwords. Careerburst comes to the rescue with explanations of what my strengths mean. Next, I’m asked questioned about my strengths such as:

• How could you use these strengths more in your current role?
• How could you use them to help the team or organisation?

I’m given an open text field to note (and later update) my answers and then the whole thing saves as a report with graphics that I can update and resave as often as I want.

Sounds great. Now all I need is motivation. Oh look, the next item on the agenda is the Think Motivation section! Herein lies a drag and drop exercise which establishes what motivates me and then boils my choices down to a few key notions. I’m shown the pros and cons to my motivations and again I interact with open text fields where I can consider my motivations against targeted coaching style questions. I record my answers and, again, a customisable report is there for me.

Imagine walking into a performance review and presenting a graphical breakdown of your strengths and motivators. “Here you go, boss, this is where I am, what I am good at and where I want to go” -  most managers would give their eye teeth to have an employee arrive for a review this focused and prepared.

So, what’s stopping you?

Believe it or not, this brings me to another part of the site that is super useful: What’s blocking you? Use this section to establish if you are lacking direction, opportunities, development, reputation or one of the other issues found to block success. Learn about them, prioritise them and set yourself goals – all in this one space.

In addition, if you want a mentor, if you want to be a mentor, if you want to build the brand of you or if you want space in the cloud to journal your progression – it is all here. If you want to read, listen, watch or attend live webinars – take your pick.

Maybe you just want to soak up some research, such as the proven benefits of having a mentor or how to network successfully. It's all at your fingertips. Just don’t come crying to me if you fall down a rabbit hole of clicking on to the next piece of research, and the next, and the next…

Then there is the cloud-based CPD log which looks and functions considerably better than a text document. If you want to see what that is about - where have you been? I've been using it in my blog for months! 😉 Click here to jump to my blog.

I’m so keen to get you into Careerburst that I’m delivering a live webinar on how to use it. I’m selling nothing (because it is free to you as a member already). I’m doing it because I see this as an opportunity that is too good to miss.

Here is a link to the event here in the Community: https://community.dpgplc.co.uk/events-to-develop-yourself/the-career-development-and-cpd-tool-careerburst