From Geek to Star #40 - How to evolve towards your “perfect” career

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🗓️ This Week – Episode 40: is the next career opportunity bringing you closer to your perfect career?

Tomorrow 2nd of March 2026, I will make a step towards a “perfect” career. I will be joining an Asian group whose long-term vision is to offer regenerative hospitality (hospitality that gives back more to communities and to the planet than what it consumes), aspiring for tech to be an enabler to the business and to positive impacts. At the same time, I will be able to keep my solo venture "The Way Forward” as a side activity as I also very much enjoy doing mentoring and sparring partner services.  

How is that moving towards a “perfect career” you may ask? Hospitality is not the most tech advanced industry you may find, this is not a job at a big AI Tech company in the Silicon Valley, etc… but yes, you will have guessed, there is not just one perfect career. The perfect career is first and foremost THE perfect career specifically FOR each of us, because we are all different. 

Alignment in values

The question is then: “how do I know if a career opportunity helps me to go towards my perfect career"? 

I believe that the biggest driver towards your perfect career is an alignment with your personal values. The more a company and/or your direct boss is close to your personal values, the more probability there is that you will be able to develop your full potential. Why? Because recognition is based on achievements related to intrinsic values. 

Take these two successful companies: Amazon and Patagonia. Amazon, a successful worldwide company driven by an obsession of continuous improvement and total efficiency. Patagonia, also a very successful company, driven by a purpose (“The Earth is our only shareholder"). The values that drive each of these companies are different, and a high performer in one may not necessarily be a high performer in the other one. 

The first thing is therefore to be crystal clear on what your core personal values are. And be honest about them: it is an exercise that you keep to yourself, so no need to be politically correct. 

My personal values are the following: sharing and transparency (that is why I am also a big proponent of opensource), meritocracy, freedom of initiative, collective success over ego, respect. What does it mean for me? It means that while I believe in excellence, and that excellence should be rewarded, I don't believe in “ruthless excellence", where only the result matters even at the expense of the collective. Some companies believe that internal competition between employees or departments is good because it is a “Darwinian approach” of letting the best ideas come up. Given my values, I would probably not thrive very long in this kind of environment. Others would. And that's ok: it is not about moral judgments on values. It is about knowing you well so that you can identify how much alignment there is with your surrounding professional alignment. 

And don't get me wrong: it is not about being picky and only waiting for the opportunity matching completely your values. A career is not linear, sometimes you need to make pragmatic choices because you have a responsibility to cater for your loved ones. But keeping in mind your values and identifying when you have a good fit can really help moving towards your perfect career.

SHINE: a compass towards your perfect career

The other dimension to look at on whether a career opportunity is pushing towards your perfect career: employability. Whether it is for an internal opportunity in your current company, an external opportunity in another company, an opportunity to launch your solo business or your company. The immediate next jump may seem very appealing, it is always good however to have a compass that can help you to assess your move and possibly also negotiate the scope. 

A good compass to keep in hand when you do your assessment of your career opportunity: your SHINE radar. If you are a long time reader of this newsletter, you are already familiar with the SHINE framework. If you are new to this newsletter, episode 20 describes what SHINE is, and feel free to browse the newsletters tagged “SHINE framework” to know more. 

Draw your current SHINE, with a scale of 0 to 5 on each dimension. Give yourself a score on each dimension based on how much you think people at work would rate you on your Soft skills, Hard skills, Industry knowledge, ability to do good Networking, ability to leverage on your Experience.

Now, given the career opportunity you have, assess each dimension again assuming you succeed well in that opportunity. This shows you a possible future SHINE state. Looking at your existing SHINE radar and the potential future SHINE radar, you can see if your career opportunity seems to push the radar in the right direction for you. 

For example, in my new role of VP Digital and Technology in the hospitality company I am going to join, I already know that I will need to be hands on building some AI capabilities for the teams. And I am very happy with it because I had identified one year ago the need to further develop my H pillar: as a senior tech executive in a large group until last summer, I had seen that my hard skills were eroding. That's one of the reasons why I then decided to open my solo venture, to have more opportunities to brush up my Hard skills around AI. And as I evaluated this new full time job opportunity, I estimated that this role would require me to be also “boots on the ground” around AI adoption, which is actually something I welcomed as part of my SHINE growth. 

As you can see, the SHINE framework is not only a tool to help in your personal development in your current position to keep you relevant and increase your impact, and therefore your recognition. It can also be used as a compass if you have to make some choices in terms of career opportunities. 

And it can help in your discussions when offered a career opportunity. In my case, it helped me to identify that this job opportunity was indeed positive for my SHINE on top of being super aligned with my values. And it also made me realise that to reach the level of SHINE I want to in a longer term, keeping on the side my activity in The Way Forward, around “from Geek to Star”, would be beneficial for me and the company hiring me. This was therefore part of my discussions during the recruitment process and it turned out positively - confirming also the alignment of value around “freedom of initiative”. 

🙏 I’d Love to Hear From You

How close are you today to what you would define as your “perfect career”? What may be missing and what do you think can help you fill the gap?  

Reply to this email, I read every note.

Follow me on LinkedIn for more reflections and “behind-the-scenes” thinking between newsletters. Don’t hesitate to comment or reshare,  it’s one of the best ways to grow your SHINE 🌟. If you want to know more about how I can support you or your teams to thrive in a tech career in this AI-age, have a look at my offerings here.  

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✨ May the SHINE be with you!

From Geek to Star by Khang | The Way Forward