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Step 1
My portfolio career: Is it for me?
‘My life’s my work and my work is my life and I love every minute of it.’ Heather Jackson
A portfolio career can open up many paths for you. This assumes, of course, that you don’t want to stay on the straight and narrow! Having more options keeps you viable and having a diverse portfolio of skills increases your value in the market. Managing your career as a portfolio allows you to take risks, remain flexible and – most importantly – to thrive in any economic situation. After every recession in the past 30 years, there has always been an immediate growth in self-employment.
Below is a questionnaire, a checklist, which should help you decide if a portfolio career is something you might like explore and to which you might be suited. We’ve isolated a set of characteristics by analysing our interviews with portfolio career workers. We’ve also drawn on the few academic studies carried out on people who’ve adopted this career pattern.
Questionnaire
For each statement below, ask yourself how strongly you agree with it. If you strongly agree, give yourself a score of ‘5’. If you strongly disagree, write in ‘1’. 2, 3, 4 are points in between.
| 1 | I′m an excellent time manager. | | |
| 2 | I work well under pressure. | | |
| 3 | Financial security is less important than doing fulfi lling work. | | |
| 4 | I′m not afraid to take risks. | | |
| 5 | I′m good at multi-tasking. | | |
| 6 | I get bored easily. | | |
| 7 | I manage stress well. | | |
| 8 | I love learning new things. | | |
| 9 | I learn from my mistakes. | | |
| 10 | I like working to deadlines. | | |
| 11 | I enjoy meeting new people. | | |
| 12 | I′m not a perfectionist. | | |
| 13 | I enjoy change. | | |
| 14 | I′m self-directed. | | |
| 15 | I believe that what happens to me is largely up to me. | | |
| 16 | I enjoy variety. | | |
| 17 | I have a high energy level. | | |
| 18 | I cope well with ambiguity. | | |
| 19 | I can improvise when not fully prepared. | | |
| 20 | I like being my own boss. | | |
| 21 | What happens in my career depends primarily on me. | | |
| 22 | I like being able to decide when and where I work. | | |
| 23 | I don′t worry too much about the future. | | |
| 24 | There′s little separation between my work and the rest of my life. | | |
| 25 | I can take tough decisions if necessary. | | |
| 26 | I enjoy revealing that I′m someone with many different sides to me. | | |
| 27 | I can be impulsive. | | |
| 28 | Overall, I feel good about myself. | | |
| 29 | I like new projects to work on. | | |
| 30 | People would describe me as assertive. | | |
| | | TOTAL | |
If your score is:
• Between 115 and 150, you should be a natural for a portfolio career.
• Between 65 and 114, you could have a portfolio career but you’ll need to think and plan very carefully before taking the plunge.
• Between 30 and 64, you could find a portfolio career very demanding and stressful and might be better suited to a single-track, serial or lifestyle career.
Look at the questions on which you’ve scored less than three points. What is that telling you about yourself?
People who thrive on portfolio careers will strongly agree with the statements and share a number of general characteristics. They’re likely to be self-starters, excellent time managers who organise their lives very well, believe they’re largely in control of their own destiny, don’t like to be bossed about, have a huge need for independence, are high energy, prepared to market themselves and actually enjoy connecting. They like change and variety, are not frightened to take risks, cope well with stress and pressure, feel positive about themselves, quite like having deadlines, love to learn, are not driven purely by money and are not over-anxious if they have insufficient funds at some times. They are also assertive, can multi-task, live with ambiguity and often blend their work and free time. The reason that perfectionists have problems with this career pattern is that there simply isn’t the time to always get everything right.
On the downside people who have portfolio careers also talk about living permanently with smartphones or diaries in their hands. They can sometimes get fed up with constantly having to market themselves. There are often real financial risks to begin with and there may be greater pressure on immediate family for support. Holidays can be interesting:
‘It’s harder to do proper holidays. That doesn’t really bother me. Because I’m happy in my working life, I need to holiday less. I’m celebrating each day. I always ask myself what was good about today? Mind you this approach isn’t always popular with your family.’ Richard Maude
Some people report feeling lonely as they’re mainly working on their own. And of course you now have to find not one but a number of jobs to apply for and you have to find employers willing to hire you and who will accept your chosen workstyle.
Heather Jackson was very clear that you should only ever take on a job if it plays to your strengths. We have much more to say about that in Step 3.
We’re not trying to put you off a portfolio career. We just want you to make a realistic choice as to whether this is right for you at this time in your life. As it happens, almost all of the people with whom we’ve spoken wouldn’t choose another career pattern. Two of them returned to a single-track career at some point and reverted back to their portfolio careers within two months and four months respectively.
On the plus side we have Helen saying, ‘Having this way of working makes me different and I like that.’ And Lisa Milnor extolling the fact that, ‘It’s just me – I like that!’
Lisa also saw the huge plus of having the ‘flexibility to live your life so you do what you believe in and feel passionate about. It also gives me time to do other things – like a triathlon and qualifying as an aerobics instructor – something I’ve wanted to do since I was 12.’
Katie said, ’Fifty per cent of my time I can dictate when I work. Very useful if you have two small children and a husband who also has a portfolio career. I also don’t have some idiot manager who I don’t respect telling me what to do.’
Betty Thayer, chief executive of www.exec-appointments.com, said: ‘In the past people used to l...
