The career of many professionals no longer consists of lengthy, closely consecutive periods of time spent at a limited number of organisations. Today people have what I refer to as Tetris careers. Bear with me on this one. Let us imagine the time you spend at a company or at an activity is a Tetris block. The varying shapes and positions of these Tetris blocks is determined by the timing, length and intensity of that commitment. Some shapes lie on top of each other, some alongside, some shapes are difficult to fit in to the rest of the neat rows you might have made, there are gaps. To truthfully map this out would be quite a visual melee as you can see in the illustration below and LinkedIn does a good job at forcing you to simplify things by insisting on a strict chronological format. However, this is an oversimplification in my opinion and does not accommodate those people with more complex or Tetris careers. A career where commitments overlap, where there is important entrepreneurial activity outside of work, where someone takes time off for family, to retrain or to travel. Is this important? I think so. It's not an easy interaction design problem to solve. Suggestions welcome.
2 Comments
Kathleen
20/8/2013 03:10:45
Exactly. As my career has matured I've kind become three things all at once. HR, lifecoach and wedding cake maker. Lifecoaching is where my passion lies and where I see my future going but it's hard to give that the right focus on my LinkedIn profile.
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20/8/2013 05:15:09
I've just seen the timeline on Tribal DBB's website. I think this could be an excellent, innovative way for you to express your career milestones and highlight projects, time commitments or other interests. http://www.tribalddb.nl
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