Career Compass Workbook
A practical guide to help you reflect, plan, and take charge of your career — one step at a time.
Help individuals take ownership of their career development so they can navigate within your organisation.
In today’s working environment, it’s up to individuals to manage their careers. Your employees need to decide what success looks like for them and what actions they’re prepared to take to achieve it. But they can’t do it alone.
The Career Compass Workbook structures thinking to help prepare for career conversations with managers and others.
It’s practical, simple and easy to use by all employees, no matter where they are in their career and what they want to achieve.
Taking ownership of your career development
Whilst individuals must take ownership of their careers, doing so can be difficult in practice.
Where should they start?
How can they develop clarity on their ambitions?
How can they decide what support they need?
That’s what the Career Compass Workbook is designed to help with.
The Career Compass Workbook is a set of practical templates for individuals to think about their career and professional development. It provides a great set of tools to aid reflection prior to a career conversation with a manager, mentor or coach.
The templates represent a blend of personal analysis, imagination and strategic planning. The Workbook allows individuals to:
- Complete a comprehensive study of where they’ve come from, where they are now, where they want to go next and how to get there.
- Gain wisdom through a review of their career to date and an evaluation of their current role
- Create a picture of future success and define longer-term ambitions
- Uncover their wealth of skills, strengths, achievements and resources that will help them to make progress
- Develop a wish list of satisfaction criteria to help them identify, create and evaluate opportunities
- Identify the skills, experiences and relationships needed to grow and develop
- Choose relevant strategies for raising their profile among key stakeholders and decision makers
- Identify short-term milestones and the first steps needed to make progress
- Prepare for the career conversations that will help them develop their career in your organisation
Whether you’re booking Antoinette to speak at a your company Careers Fair or a learning at work campaign, the Career Compass Workbook is a powerful tool to guide employees for focused conversations with managers and mentors.
Testimonial
“The workbook was useful in setting out my thinking and will be a useful tool to use in the future to remind me of my thought process and to give extra confidence when needed. Whilst I haven’t got a clear direction in the sense of one job title/role etc., I’ve got something arguably more valuable – an understanding of my motivators, values, and needs going forward.”
Sophie D., Projects Manager
What does the Career Conversation Workbook Contain?
Each of the ten tools helps you explore a different part of your career journey — from your past experiences to your future aspirations.
The Career Compass Workbook provides a framework. The templates cover the ten different tools:
- Tool 1 – Career Platform
- Tool 2 – Your Journey So Far
- Tool 3 – Future Success
- Tool 4 – Career Checkpoint
- Tool 5 – Career Kitbag
- Tool 6 – Career Routes
- Tool 7 – Career Kitbag Additions
- Tool 8 – Short-Term Milestones
- Tool 9 – Setting Off
- Tool 10 – Progress Review
Each template provides a structure and guidelines to reflect on and think about a different element of career management.
For even greater impact, pair the Career Compass Workbook with the Manager’s Guide and Toolkit — the perfect set of resources to create confident, engaging career conversations across your organisation.
About the Creator
Antoinette Oglethorpe is an award-winning speaker, best-selling author, and global authority on career development and leadership. With over 25 years’ experience – including roles at P&G, Accenture and Avanade – she’s worked with organisations like the World Health Organization, UN Refugee Agency, NHS and Fortune 500 companies.