Your Career Portfolio; How Diversified Are You?
Just as it is critical to have a balanced investment portfolio, it’s equally important in one’s career to be developing diversified skills, experiences and credentials beyond one’s immediate job and/or industry. Particularly, in today’s fragile economy and with peoples’ careers spanning up to 7 decades, there are opportunities and imperatives for one to be ramping up in a related or different field/job, even as one collects a steady pay check from a current position.
And full time positions are on the decline in general. In December 2010, the New York Times wrote a fascinating article, Weighing Costs, Companies Favor Temporary Help, which reports that more than a quarter of the 1.17 million jobs added to the private sector in 2010 were temporary positions.
While this is a frightening proposition for many, it also creates new flexibility and opportunity for individuals to reinvent the what, the how, and the “who for” of work. This is particularly true for many women and men who want a new model of working while raising a family or entering retirement years.
Undoubtedly, it takes discipline and patience to build out a fulfilling income in the true portfolio model. For example, I recently spoke with a college professor who mentioned that it has taken her three years to build out her portfolio of teaching, consulting and freelance writing to a point that it is just becoming synergistic, fulfilling and economically viable.
Even if most people aren’t ready to embrace this cornucopia approach to working, many friends and colleagues are naturally diversifying their career portfolios by taking on classes and side projects and work in areas such as real estate, photography, interior design, and writing. This enables experimentation with little risk, and is a great way to nurture a little more creativity and balance, particularly when a day job is only cutting you a pay check and not a soul check.
So, how does your career portfolio look today? What are you going to do this year to further diversify? Are you earning a pay check and a soul check?

