#479 How To Manage Future Career Fear

Squiggly Careers

The Squiggly Career

Management, Careers, Business

5 • 809 Ratings

🗓️ 13 May 2025

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In a recent survey, many of our listeners told us that their biggest career worries are around learning new skills and staying relevant. But what skills really matter most for your future career? It’s a big question — and one that can feel overwhelming when you’re juggling a busy job and facing constant pressure to keep up and reskill. In this episode, Helen and Sarah share practical and reassuring ways to take ownership of your skill development, so you can navigate your squiggly career with confidence and control. You’ll learn how to identify the skills that matter most to you right now, which ones to invest in for your future self, how to stretch your strengths, and how to make space for learning — even when time feels tight.

00:00 What skills matter most for your future career?

03:32 Identify your skills

13:47 Learn skills from others

16:54 Stretch your strengths

19:10 How to find time to improve your skills

21:09 How to skill swap in your team

26:08 Find a skills sponsor  

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, I'm Sarah and I'm Helen and this is the Squiggly Careers podcast. Every week we talk about a different topic to do with work and share ideas and actions so that we can all navigate our squiggly careers with that bit more confidence and control.
0:15.8	And if you haven't already, it is worth signing up for Squiggly Careers in Action. That's our weekly newsletter that comes out every Tuesday. Sarah's borrow brilliance with lots of the things that she's been listening and learning to as well. And we also got some of our free toolkits.
0:39.4	We will put the link to Squiggly Careers Action in the show notes or you can go to our website, Amazingif.com, and sign up there.
0:45.2	So today we're talking about what skills matter most for your future career, which I feel like is quite a big promise that we might be making.
0:52.3	You know, as soon as you said that, I was like, wow, is this going to be one of those podcasts that really dates?
0:57.3	Yeah.
0:58.4	Well, I think that's almost the point, and we decided to not be scared of it as a topic, because there is lots of noise and I think lots of pressure to feel like you are learning and re-skilling.
1:13.6	And there's lots of talking organisations about the skills that matter i've seen so many different skills matrices yeah yeah really long lists of skills
1:20.1	that i think can feel quite overwhelming for people and you're looking at it and going, well, how do I make a decision about which skills to overinvest in?
1:31.2	Do I do what my organisation tells me to do?
1:35.1	How do I learn these skills?
1:36.7	Like, where do I start?
1:38.2	So though I do think this will change, this is a dynamic thing, right?
1:42.1	You don't do this once and go, well, that's what I'm going to stick to. I do think taking some ownership and being intentional and having some
1:49.1	agency over skills as a kind of, for you and your squiggly career, what are the skills that
1:54.8	matter most for me, maybe right now, which are the ones that I really want to invest in?
2:00.0	I think that helps you to feel more
2:01.7	confident and more in control if you've at least asked yourself some of those questions.
2:05.7	Well, the idea for the episode as well, it came from, we did a survey with our community where we
2:09.8	asked them lots of different questions and I think one of the questions was sort of what worries
2:13.4	have you got about your career at the moment. And lots of people said, you know, I'm worried about how much I'm going to have to learn
2:20.0	and when I'm going to fit it in or what I need to learn in order to say relevant.
	...

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