Are Your Career Assumptions Holding You Back?
- Brainz Magazine
- Sep 5
- 5 min read
Written by Britt-Mari Sykes, Career Counsellor
Britt-Mari Sykes, Ph.D., CDP, is a career counsellor and founder of CANVAS Career Counselling, working remotely with clients across Canada.
We all make and hold assumptions. Take a moment to reflect on your career assumptions. Identify a key one and write it down. Consider how this assumption may have influenced your choices, decisions, and work experiences. Has it created new opportunities or limited your options?
Our assumptions shape how we perceive our skills, values, and abilities. They also impact the way we approach future steps when facing change.
Prevailing social, economic, educational, and professional narratives also shape our assumptions about the job market and the future of work. We internalize these broader narratives about what a career should be, how it should evolve, and how it should unfold.
Reflecting on and examining our assumptions can be helpful whenever we feel stuck or need a boost of creative inspiration in our career lives.
Unpacking our assumptions
Assumption 1
“Everyone else seems to have their careers locked down by their mid-twenties. I am falling behind.”
Comparing ourselves to others is unavoidable, especially when it comes to careers. However, many people have not “locked down” their careers by their mid-twenties. In fact, quite often the opposite is true.
Our careers evolve and develop over time, moving through various stages and steps, with inevitable changes and adjustments along the way. Careers do not follow a fixed, predictable pattern.
Many personal and external factors shape what a career looks like, how it changes, and how long it lasts. Our career lives are influenced by our experiences in both life and work, the perspectives and lessons we gain, the personal choices we make, the opportunities that come our way, and changes in the job market or a specific profession. We might face job loss or illness. We may need to prioritize childcare or eldercare at some point in our careers. We could experience burnout. The list could go on, but any of these experiences, or their combinations, can influence what our careers look like, how we work, and even the meaning and purpose that work holds for us.
What we aspire to do and what interests us may require a different timeline, training, or education than the choices someone else makes. Access to and opportunities within the job market are, unfortunately, not equitable, and this inequity can significantly impact the progression of a career regardless of an individual's aspirations, capabilities, and goals.
Remember, we don’t all aim for the same things. We each have different experiences, skills, interests, dreams, and goals. Assuming others have their careers settled by a certain age can create unnecessary pressure and distract you from where you should be, developing, shaping, and building your own career life.
What can you get active with today? Consider the following:
What are your most pressing career questions? Write them down.
What do you hope a career will look like? What do you want to experience?
What interests you in the world or in your community? Why? Are there jobs or professions that have always interested you? What are they and why?
What jobs, professions, training, or educational programs could you start researching?
What kind of support or guidance do you feel you need at this stage?
Assumption 2
“I have had different work experiences, and I hold such a variety of skills. I don’t have a specific expertise, so I don’t think I would bring value to an employer.”
Increasingly, our careers are shaped by a variety of work experiences. We are moving away from a single lifelong career and instead focusing on building and developing a career life. Therefore, don’t underestimate the unique cumulative value of your experiences and the potential you bring to an employer at different stages of your life.
This shift requires us to regularly reflect on our diverse work experiences to help us identify, describe, and communicate our evolving abilities, expertise, and value, as well as provide examples of where our unique offerings can bring value. Admittedly, this is not something we are well-trained in. It requires us to be more proactive in guiding and monitoring the progression of our careers. It also requires us to be more aware of what is happening in the world and in our communities, not just what is listed in job postings.
Adopt a holistic approach to skill development by regularly reflecting on your current abilities and imagining the new skills you will naturally acquire over time. Every experience you have will expand your knowledge, skills, and perspectives. Each experience provides insights that you can use as you progress in your career, including innate talents or skills you have identified, acquired, or wish to improve further.
Keep the following in mind:
Regularly research the changing job market. Stay open to informational meetings and conversations throughout your career.
Stay informed about world events and issues affecting communities. These also influence the job market.
Track your evolving interests and the development of your skills and abilities.
Draw connections between your experiences, increasing value, expanded perspectives, and current trends in the job market.
Practice articulating the link between your value, your offerings, and potential positions or areas of interest.
Assumption 3
“I am over 55. I have extensive experience and a lot to offer. I want to continue working, but no one will hire me because ageism is real.”
Although ageism remains deeply ingrained in some professions, the job market, workforce, stability of certain jobs and careers, and our attitudes towards working or extending our careers beyond the typical “retirement” age are all evolving.
Additionally, certain realities are becoming clear, some individuals over 50 are being phased out of their jobs and careers before they are ready for retirement, some do not want to retire but wish to pursue different work that reflects their experiences and current interests, some seek to contribute in other ways, such as teaching, mentoring, or consulting, some cannot afford to retire financially, and many face a combination of these challenges.
And let’s not forget that not every boss, manager, or director is skilled at, or comfortable with, leading multigenerational teams or harnessing such diverse talents amid all this change.
Despite these changes and realities, experience and perspective can always spark creativity. One way to extend your career is to embrace creativity:
What are you interested in at this stage of your life? Why?
How do you want to work moving forward?
Identify and list three unique skills or abilities you want to offer at this point.
Based on your experiences, what trends have you noticed over time? What has worked, what hasn’t, and where are the gaps that need to be filled?
If you could create a role for yourself, based on your life and work experiences, what would it be? What would it offer, improve, or add to?
For further reflection
Deepening our awareness of the assumptions we hold about careers helps us understand how they shape our approach to career development, maintenance, and change.
What assumptions have you made about your own career journey? How have those assumptions shaped your choices or decisions? Have they affected how you view your career journey?
Have they impacted how you see your skills and capacities? Have your assumptions and expectations been limiting or freeing?
Britt-Mari Sykes, Career Counsellor
Britt-Mari Sykes Ph.D. is a Career Counsellor and founder of CANVAS Career Counselling working remotely with clients across Canada. Britt-Mari offers a reflective and strategic process to clients, one that integrates their lived experiences, values, and aspirations. This experiential approach to career counselling helps clients gain greater clarity and perspective and design practical steps towards a more meaningful relationship with work and career.
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