Location & Scope

CORE CONTENT | 1.9 min read

Location

Many people fail to consider the location—and resulting geographical parameters—of their target career. Of course, this is more prescient in some careers than others. With the boom in remote work since 2019, many jobs allow you to work from home, circumventing this consideration entirely. Whereas you could be a marketing executive anywhere, you’ll still need to live near a body of water to have a fruitful career in marine biology. Even for careers that you could do from anywhere, if you want to access the most networking and growth opportunities, it’d be beneficial to work within that industry’s hub. Think, going to Wall Street for finance or Silicon Valley for tech entrepreneurship.

Moreover, physical location profoundly influences your day-to-day life. That’s everything from the cost of living to the political climate to the local schools. Are you okay living in a metropolis; what about a remote, rural area? Reflect on your preferred living environment, whether it's urban, suburban, or rural, or near specific natural features like water, mountains, or forests. Evaluate your willingness to relocate if your chosen career requires it. Or, on the flip side, if you want to live somewhere specific, consider if that place is conducive to your career goals. How would this impact your personal life?

Scope

Yet another overlooked aspect of careers is scope. The scope of a career refers to its potential for growth and opportunities and the degree of variety within that. Scope is a major factor in long-term professional trajectory.

Some careers offer vast scopes, allowing for upward mobility, diverse experiences, and opportunities for specialization. An example would be academia. Professors, for instance, can conduct research, publish, mentor, and teach at an advanced level. Their jobs often have the scope of a university department at the smallest, growing to that of the entire institution or community on the larger end. Professing, like many careers, also lends itself to leveraging technology, practically unbinding scope. Other jobs have more limited growth prospects. One such example is certain service or retail work; a cashier position has very limited scope. Assessing the scope of a career helps you set realistic expectations, plan for future advancement, and make informed decisions about your career goals.

Though a career may have a limited scope in and of itself, it may offer transferrable skills or status, which also serve to allow growth and open opportunities. The job of a professional athlete, at its core, has a pretty narrow scope, focused almost exclusively on playing (and sometimes coaching) their specific sport. However, the pseudo-celebrity status associated with being a professional athlete can dovetail nicely with work in social media, advertising, or public relations.

REAL WORLD EXAMPLE | 0.3 min read

Tula had a deep passion for sustainable agriculture, and she understood that her chosen field required proximity to rural areas where farming communities thrived. She made the deliberate choice to settle in a countryside town, immersing herself in the farming culture she admired. She also carefully planned her career's scope, opting for roles that allowed her to not only work directly with local farmers but also advocate for sustainable agricultural practices on a broader scale.

KEY TAKEAWAYS | 0.2 min read

• Location refers to where the job physically is and concerns that place’s geography, culture, climate, cost of living, and other characteristics.
• Scope refers to a job’s breadth and growth potential.

PRACTICE | 14 min activity

1. | 3 min | Bullet point 5 characteristics of the kind of lifestyle you’d like to have in the future. For this list, prioritize those items which are most important to you. Moreover, prioritize things which are not accessible anywhere/in most places (So not clean water, internet connection, etc.), unless you intend to work in a field specific to emerging, disenfranchised, resource-constrained, or poor locations where such things are not guaranteed.
2. | 3 min | In a separate list bullet point 5 goals you have for your career. This can be advancement, salary expectation, work-life balance, or anything else.
3. | 3 min | In a final list, write 5 things that describe the kinds of place or, if applicable, specific places that your career path requires. For example, a commercial fisherman may jot “Ocean Access,” “Stable Weather Patterns,” or even “Alaska.”
4. | 5 min | Finally, see if you can reconcile these lists. Are there any locations which satisfy all 15 items? If not, which items are you willing to compromise on?