Find Your Career Character: How to Define Your Strategic Advantage

There’s a reason that the Career Character Lab, my process for supporting you to discover your career character, doesn’t start with a work history or career goals. It’s the same reason I no longer teach networking scripts.

Because the work that you do differently from everyone else is specific to you, and can’t be gleaned from your work history.

Or from how you used to talk or write about yourself, even if you wrote your new bio last week.

So before you start searching job boards, reaching out to recruiters, or writing a single LinkedIn post — there’s a more fundamental question to answer.

It’s not “what should I say to get hired?’ That’s a positioning question, and it tends to produce answers that sound good on paper until everyone else says the same thing as you.

Not “should I get a job or start my own business?” That’s a career direction question, and you could be happy doing both. Seriously.

The action that starts the process of finding your career character and what your differentiator is: Who is your career character?

What is a Career Character, and does that steal your authenticity?

When you hear the term “career character,” you might think that this is a character that you falsely play to have career success.

A career character is similar to a career brand, except you add elements of characterization. I liken it to taking your career brand to an acting class. This is where your career brand meets physical and vocal animation and becomes a living expression.

I like to keep things simple and say we have two characters.

You have a “core character” who is the person you believe yourself to be, especially out of work. This is who you are when you are at home, at the grocery store, or meeting up with a friend. Core you.

You also have a “career character” who is a version of you that exists at your work. It has some similarities to your “core character” but some big differences too.

Now, if you have the urge to skip this article in favour of raw authenticity, allow yourself to read two sentences from the book, “Don’t Be Yourself: Why Authenticity is Overrated (and What to Do Instead) by Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic.

“Encouraging employees to intertwine their identities with their work can blur boundaries and amplify vulnerabilities, leaving individuals exposed to greater disappointment and burnout.” (123).

“Whatever you may hear about the virtues of authenticity and “just being yourself,” the fact of the matter is that most people work in teams and organizations that actually reward strategic self-presentation (the internal act of putting on a carefully rehearsed and choreographed professional self, especially so it comes across as genuine) over unfiltered self-expression.” (7).

A career character is your “best work self.”

Now, at first glance, it can sound like a watered-down version of your core self.

But I teach the opposite.

A career character is your best playground for discovering and expressing yourself.

Make the intangible tangible

Career Character work has one main goal: to make the intangible tangible.

All your inner dreams, ideas, possible selves, and desires to make an impact live inside of you. These are parts of you that no one else can see, unless you share them with words. They are largely unseen, unexpressed, and often unknown even to yourself. Can you imagine how much richer your life and work would be if you worked artfully with these intangibles?

And how might your life change if these unseen aspects of your deep self were not only explored, but expressed in your work?

How would that change your career?

That is Career Character work. You learn how to use aspects of the inner self to build out a remarkable career character that you get to live in for hours every day.

If we can be anyone at work, why choose what we are outside of work?

Deep within ourselves are buried tremendous creative powers and abilities. But they remain unused so long as we do not know about them, so long as we deny them.” Michael Chekhov

Why are psycho-physical exercises the most impactful tools for career transitions?

Psycho-physical is a term developed by the great acting instructor, Michael Chekhov.

“In our technique there are no purely physical exercises, all exercises are psycho-physical. The outer physical action awakens an inner psychological response. – Michael Chekhov

Nothing keeps you more stuck in your job or job search by limiting yourself to their current narratives, beliefs, and roadblocks. My clients that work on the external, alongside the internal, land quicker and have more exciting opportunities. The clients who say they want something better, but want to keep the same resume and feel uncomfortable updating their business acumen, have a harder time landing new work or being taken seriously.

Humans are psycho-physical.

If your career development only focuses on external scripts, without an aligned internal psychology, it’s going to come off as false. Similarity, if you have an expansive and interesting inner psychology, but your delivery is flat, it doesn’t have impact. In Career Character Lab, you work on both at the same time, so there is no disconnect between the inner and the outer.

Why experts struggle to figure out their strategic advantage

The more you know, the harder it is to see what makes you unique.

When you have been doing the same work for years, you don’t notice how far you have come from the basics. It is so natural and obvious to you that it’s hard to have a beginner’s mind. You are working with such nuance and depth that when simple questions are asked, it’s hard for you to answer them earnestly. You’re at a different level.

I have this experience within the career development field. Even this article, I’m writing about your two selves, Career Characters, and some guy named Michael Chekhov. You might be asking, “But, Kerri — what is a strategic advantage and do I need one?”

I glossed right over that.

By the way, “strategic advantage” is career coach and recruiter talk. We’re asking, “What is special about the way you do your work?” “How do you do your work differently from anyone else?”

The answer is not “I have done it longer.”

What you want to know and share is the how. The way you work is automatic for you. You likely do something in your work with such ease; it’s your strategic advantage. This is what you want people to know and see in you. Often, the stories that feel too basic to talk about are the exact ones hiring people want to hear.

Sharing your strategic advantage, merged with a well-developed career character, will elevate your presence and impact.

Michael Chekhov’s three centres and your career character

Today, I’d like to gift you a starting point for your career character work. If you have an urge now to start writing about your career character, I’m asking you to stop.

Put the pen down.

Get up on your feet.

And let’s diagnose where your current career character (the one showing up for interviews and on LinkedIn) leads from in your body.

In Michael Chekhov’s method, there are three main centres. Later in his (and my) work, we’ll explore other centres, but there are the three main centres:

Thinking

Feeling

Willing.

How to identify if your current Career Character has a Thinking centre:

Thinking occurs in the head, neck, and shoulders. If we were to give it a flavour, we would say cool blue. It is a character who is analytical, makes connections that other people don’t, sparks ideas, and has clarity.

If most of the time at work, you’re thinking, analyzing, bringing clarity, or conciseness. You move from a thinking centre.

How to identify if your current Career Character has a Feeling centre:

Feeling occurs in the chest and heart area. If you were to give it a flavour, we might say it radiates warmth and connection. It is a character that is warm, empathetic, loving and intuitive.

If most of the time you’re at work, you connect with others, listen, consider, maybe even advocate for others, then your main centre is Feeling.

How to identify if your current Career Character has a Willing centre:

Willing occurs in the pelvic area. If we were to give it a flavour, we might say it has some fiery heat and motion, like butterflies in the stomach. It is hot and found in a character that driven, ambitious, who likes to move things forward and make things happen.

If most of the time at work, you are constructing strategies, getting people mobilized, moving projects forward, and working to always improve things, your main centre is Willing.

Next steps for your Career Character

Once you know which centre your current career character moves from, you get to make a choice.

Do you want your Career Character to keep moving from that centre? Is it working? Are you loving who you are at work?

Be honest.

Because at this stage of your Career Character development, you get to choose.

I’ve loved seeing clients who are ultra-relaxed and expressive in their core character choose to be a Thinking Career Character at work. They say, “I know what it’s like to be casual and expressive at home, but at work, I like the challenge of caring about the details and using the analytical side.” Since this is just the start of the Career Character, you get to add more layers, gestures, and qualities to round things out. But, where does your Career Character move from as a main identity?

Play with this. Try on the different centres and see how they feel in action.

I recorded a training on this, which walks you through the step-by-step experience of the three centres. Watch it here: https://courses.career-stories.com/career-character-centre

You don’t have to outwit, outnetwork, or outresume someone to have a successful career transition.

You just have to become your Career Character– and show your strategic advantage, so the people who want to hire you can see what you’re made of.

If you’re not ready for Career Character work yet, and you’re trying to figure out what makes you awesome, try the: