With only 31% of workers aged 18 to 34 completely satisfied with their job, and 16% utterly dissatisfied, it’s safe to say that young workers aren’t really happy at work. According to research, the two contributing factors to job satisfaction are “high meaning” and income — meaningful work that pays enough to afford more than just the necessities of life.
But making a meaningful career shift can be as frightening as it is exciting — whether you’re looking for personal fulfillment, professional growth, or a new sense of purpose. Navigating the transition requires careful consideration. Milan Kordestani, co-founder and chairman of Audo, knows this. He has made it his business to help young professionals make the right move in their careers.
Audo uses artificial intelligence (AI) to help professionals make meaningful career shifts based on their personalities, interests, and goals. Using the integrations in the app, professionals can take courses to learn valuable skills and earn certificates. AI technology finds gaps from where you are to where you want to be to make its course recommendations. The same sophisticated AI tools help job hunters with personalized job matches. Lastly, the app prepares you to ace your interview with AI-powered insights.
Generative AI is nascent — it has only really been around since OpenAI released ChatGPT on November 30, 2022. OpenAI set the stage for AI to infiltrate the way business is done, including job hunting.
Today, there are several AI resume builders and job-matching tools to choose from, but only Audo uses their technology to consider the whole person. A recent Joblist study showed that personality plays a role for those who job-hop versus satisfied employees who stay put. The study found it’s essential that a person’s job be a good match for their personality, including their work environment. The Business Group on Health echoes these findings: workers who are satisfied with the working environment directly relates to improved employee attendance and productivity.
But even as powerful as Audo is in matching personality traits, upskilling opportunities, and job matches, there is still some legwork to make a meaningful change in your career. Here are Kordestani’s expert tips for taking the leap from a moderately satisfying to a fulfilling career:
1. Learn what your inherent strengths are to guide professional growth.
Knowing where you are and where you want to go helps you spot opportunities for improvement, whether that is working on soft or hard skills. Kordestani says, “Take inventory of all your strengths that lie at the intersection of what you’re good at, what people will pay you for, and what you’re motivated by.” Your inherent strengths are your core skill set. Use these to curate a meaningful career.
Many people focus on the skills required for specific roles or careers instead of how they can apply their core strengths to find a fulfilling career. Your core skill set provides a general direction of where you are and where to look in your career. Use your inherent strengths to map a career path.
The Gallup’s Clifton Strengths assessment is designed to evaluate your inherent strengths. Gallup advocates that “You are successful because of who you are, not who you are not.” Put into practice, many of us focus on our limitations rather than our strengths. Gallup found that people rule out career options when they lack the requisite experience or education. This self-defeating process limits professional growth.
DISC assessments and Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) tools help you identify your inherent strengths based on your personality types. A DISC profile is a measure of interpersonal behavior based on four dominant personality types: dominance, influence, steadiness, and conscientiousness.
The MBTI helps individuals identify how they take in and process information. The MBTI identifies 16 personality types based on opposing pairs: extrovert versus introvert, sensing versus intuition, thinking versus feeling, and judging versus perceiving.
These assessments are tools to help guide you in your career and in your life.
2. Discover what intrinsically motivates you.
Understand what inspires and motivates you in your professional life and use those insights to guide your career direction. Motivation plays a critical role in career satisfaction. Kellogg professor and Pritzker Group Venture Capital venture partner Carter Cast breaks down motivation into five fundamentals:
- Achievement. People who are motivated by achievement want to improve or accomplish meaningful goals. Achievement-motivated individuals want to make a significant impact. These individuals exert great effort over extended time periods and accept the challenges along the way to add value to their lives or those around them.
- Affiliation. This person values collaboration or competition; they’re the true “team player.” Team players act as the glue in the workplace. A Harvard Study found that the team player effect accounted for 60% of the motivation to complete individual task-specific skills.
- Power. A person energized by status, recognition, and control is motivated by power. Power-motivated people make great leaders or influencers. They tend to be confident and believe in their abilities.
- Autonomy. People who want control over their own work and direction are driven by freedom in the workplace. Studies show that perceived autonomy significantly improves individual and group productivity, especially when autonomy is an intrinsic motivator.
- Purpose. A purpose-motivated person wants to be part of something bigger than themselves. And Gen Zers tend to be more purpose-driven than older generations. Purpose-driven people have the highest level of motivation.
Understanding which of these motivators is more or less important to you is the secret to success in your career. No one practices this more than Kordestani. Purpose-driven capitalism is his compass. Kordestani established Milan Farms to humanely raise poultry and grow saffron in high school. As a freshman and sophomore in college, he founded a trio of companies designed to solve problems he saw in the world around him. Audo is no different. He is still solving problems in a purpose-driven manner.
Kordestani is driven to help young people learn as much as possible about emerging fields: “The future is ripe with career growth opportunities for those who are willing to apply their skills to various emerging industries and learn on the job. Stay curious about how you can climb your way to your most ideal career over a period of years, rather than trying to nail it with the first, or easiest, job you land.”
3. Make a commitment to ongoing learning.
Your transferable traits are the skills you have today that can be used in your future career. These are the prominent skills often listed on your resume. However, only a commitment to ongoing learning will propel your career forward.
Kordestani believes maintaining flexibility is necessary in this ever-changing job landscape, but that doesn’t mean sacrificing earning potential. The Audo app bridges the gap between learning and earning. The AI-powered assessment provides users with a personalized pathway to discover gaps in their resumes as they work toward their dream career. The app works with leading course creators like Coursera and EdX, leveraging certificates from Google, Amazon, and META to build robust resumes and land job interviews.
Workers who complete company-sponsored upskilling programs earn an average of $8,000 more than their peers. That figure is higher for self-funded learning programs, resulting in an average salary increase of 15.3%. The same study found that 75% of individuals who actively participated in skill development programs advanced in their careers.
Research shows lifelong learning has many other benefits aside from monetary gains. Lifelong learning keeps your brain healthy. Cognitive function and memory decline with age, but research shows that ongoing learning keeps our brains healthier. The Harvard study contends that just as exercise engages your muscles to improve physical fitness, learning engages your brain to improve mental acuity.
Kordestani measures his work by social impact. He strives toward making the world a better place through positive change. To that end, he believes in empowering the next generations of socially conscious entrepreneurs and workers to make an impact using technology.
But before taking on the world, you need to understand yourself, where you are, and where you want to go.
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