Sign inAbout the career path explorer
Most people pick their next role from a short list: the title above theirs, or whatever a recruiter happens to send. That misses the sideways moves, specialist tracks, and adjacent fields where your current experience already counts for a lot. This free career path explorer starts from your current role, years of experience, what you enjoy, and what matters most right now, then suggests next roles that build on what you already do.
Each suggestion names the role, why it fits, and the skills or experience you would need to add. Use the list to decide which paths are worth testing, not as a verdict. The guide below covers the types of career moves, how to compare paths fairly, and how to test one cheaply before you commit.
How to use it
- 1
Enter your current role and experience
Use your actual title and years in the field. Experience changes which moves are realistic: a three-year specialist and a ten-year specialist have very different next steps.
- 2
Describe what you enjoy
List the parts of your work you would happily do more of, such as fixing tricky problems, training people, or building spreadsheets. This matters more than your job description.
- 3
Choose your top priority
Pick higher pay, more impact, better balance, or leadership. The same starting role leads to different suggestions depending on what you are optimizing for.
- 4
Shortlist two paths and test them
Pick the two suggestions that interest you most, then check them against real job posts and talk to someone in each role before making a plan.
Four kinds of career moves
Career paths are not just ladders. Most next steps fall into one of four types, and each one asks something different of you. Knowing which type you are considering helps you judge how big the gap really is and how long it will take to close.
The explorer mixes these types on purpose. If every idea you consider is a promotion, you may overlook a lateral move that pays as well, fits your interests better, and opens more doors later.
- Vertical: the next level in your current track, such as specialist to senior specialist or team lead. Smallest skill gap, but limited by openings above you.
- Specialist: going deeper instead of up, such as a generalist accountant moving into tax or systems. Good when you want expertise and pay without managing people.
- Lateral: a different function at a similar level, such as support to customer success or teaching to instructional design. Your domain knowledge transfers even when the title does not.
- Pivot: a new field entirely. Biggest gap and usually the longest timeline, so it helps to find a bridge role that uses some of your current experience.
How to compare career paths
Once you have a shortlist, compare paths on the same four questions so you are not swayed by whichever title sounds most impressive. Score each path roughly, even just high, medium, or low. The point is to make trade-offs visible.
A path with a small skill gap and strong fit with what you enjoy is usually the best near-term move, even if another option pays more on paper. A bigger leap can be the right call, but plan it as two steps with a bridge role in between.
- Skill overlap: What share of the target role's job posts describe work you already do?
- Gap size: How long would it take to close the gap with courses, projects, or a stretch assignment at work?
- Evidence: Can you build proof at your current job, or do you need outside projects?
- Priority fit: Does the path actually deliver what you chose, whether that is pay, impact, balance, or leadership?
Test a path before you commit
A suggestion from any tool is a hypothesis. Before you spend months retraining, run a few cheap tests. Start by reading ten real job posts for the role and highlighting the requirements you already meet. Then look the occupation up in the Occupational Outlook Handbook from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, which describes duties, training, pay, and outlook for hundreds of occupations and lists similar occupations on each profile. O*NET OnLine, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Labor, lets you browse occupations by skills, knowledge, and job zone so you can see what transfers.
Next, talk to two people who hold the role now. Ask what a typical week looks like, what surprised them, and how they got in. Finally, try a slice of the work: volunteer for a cross-team project, shadow a colleague for a day, or complete one small portfolio piece. If you still want the role after all that, it is worth a real plan.
Turn your chosen path into a plan
A path becomes real when it has a next action and a deadline. Write down the target role, the two or three skills that make up most of the gap, and one project that would prove each skill. Then set a timeframe and break it into short-term goals you can check off.
Update your resume and LinkedIn profile as soon as you have evidence, not after you finish every course. Lead with the experience that overlaps most with the target role and use the job post's language for your transferable skills. If the move is internal, tell your manager what you are aiming for. Managers can open doors to projects and introductions that are hard to find on your own.
Examples
Technical support engineer: you already troubleshoot complex tickets. Add API basics, log reading, and SQL, then take escalations from your current tier-2 team.
Customer success manager: your product knowledge and calm with frustrated customers transfer directly. Build skills in account planning, renewals, and usage reporting.
Implementation specialist: you enjoy getting new customers set up. Learn project scoping and data migration, and volunteer to run onboarding for a few new accounts.
Support operations analyst: you like improving how the team works. Learn help desk reporting, workflow automation, and spreadsheet modeling, and own one weekly metrics report.
Instructional designer: lesson planning maps closely to course design. Learn adult learning principles and an authoring tool such as Articulate Storyline, then build two short e-learning samples.
Learning and development specialist: you already train and assess people. Add facilitation for adult audiences and learning metrics, and run a workshop for a nonprofit or local business.
Curriculum developer at an education company: your classroom experience is the main qualification. Build a portfolio of standards-aligned units with clear learning objectives.
Customer education specialist: software companies need people who can teach users. Learn one product deeply and create a short help video series as proof.
Senior accountant, then accounting manager: the most direct route to managing people. Ask to own the month-end close checklist and review a junior colleague's reconciliations.
Financial analyst (FP&A): you know the numbers behind the reports. Add budgeting, forecasting, and presenting variance analysis to department heads.
Finance systems analyst: you enjoy automating reconciliations. Learn your ERP's reporting tools and lead one process improvement project from start to finish.
Internal audit associate: your controls knowledge transfers. Study for a certification such as the CIA and ask to support the next internal controls review.
Tips for better results
- Describe what you enjoy in concrete tasks, like "rebuilding messy spreadsheets," since vague interests produce vague suggestions.
- Run the explorer more than once with different priorities to see how the paths change.
- Read ten job posts for any role before you commit, and count how many requirements you already meet.
- Look for a bridge role when the gap is large, so you can move in two steps instead of one leap.
- Talk to at least two people in a target role before you spend money on training for it.