
The Career Equation®: The Formula for Career Clarity
by Erica Sosna & Zoë Schofield
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- 🇩🇰DK · Careers#953K to 10K
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On the show
Recent episodes
An Update on The Career Equation Podcast
May 18, 2026
1m 11s
The Multi-Passionate Career Crossroads: Charlotte Tolhurst on creativity, calling and knowing what to choose
May 11, 2026
51m 32s
Can I Really Become a Digital Nomad? Here’s How to Make It Happen
May 7, 2026
8m 47s
Your Grad Scheme Works. Your Retention Strategy Doesn't.
May 4, 2026
45m 26s
Should I support my employee's side hustle?
Apr 30, 2026
12m 24s
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| Date | Episode | Description | Length | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5/18/26 | ![]() An Update on The Career Equation Podcast | We're hitting pause on the podcast for a short while — and I wanted to let you know why. Zoë and I are absolutely flat out delivering client projects right now, and honestly, that has to take priority. The podcast takes real time and energy to do properly, and we'd rather step back briefly than give it anything less than our full attention. This is not goodbye. We're going to finish the season and we'll be back as soon as we come up for air. There are some great episodes in the pipeline and I can't wait to share them with you. In the meantime, we'd love to hear from you. Got a question about your career, or about how to build a culture of career conversations in your organisation? Send it over — we read everything. pod@thecareerequation.com Stay subscribed. We'll be back before you know it — and thank you, as always, for your patience and support. Links Free Equation Builder: https://www.thecareerequation.com Book an intro call: https://www.thecareerequation.com/book-intro-call Erica on LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/ericasosna Zoë on LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/zoeschofieldcoach | 1m 11s | ||||||
| 5/11/26 | ![]() The Multi-Passionate Career Crossroads: Charlotte Tolhurst on creativity, calling and knowing what to choose | Charlotte Tolhurst is a food and lifestyle photographer, personal stylist and self-confessed multi-passionate...someone with too many great ideas and never quite enough hours in the day to pursue them all. Sound familiar? In this episode, from our first series, Zoë sits down with Charlotte to run her story through the lens of the Career Equation. From a childhood memory of swapping stickers in the school playground, to the moment she walked away from an office job at a theatre company and picked up a camera, Charlotte's career has always been driven by instinct, creativity and a deep need to make something out of nothing. But right now, Charlotte is at a crossroads. She loves photography, she loves styling. She's even considering retraining as a therapist. So how do you choose when everything genuinely excites you? Through the four components of the Career Equation; Skills, Passion, Impact & Environment, Zoë helps Charlotte uncover the thread that runs through everything she does; helping people step out of self-criticism and light up. Whether she's photographing a plate of food for a brand she believes in, helping a woman find joy in her wardrobe again, or dreaming of a totally different future, that desire to help people see themselves differently is always there. This one is for every multi-passionate, career-curious individual who's ever been told to just pick one thing. Plus if your a coach, manager, leader or career conversation enthusiast...this episode will help you to see the power of The Career Equation in action, a simple and practical career conversation method. You'll hear about: The sticker-swapping memory that reveals Charlotte's core talent for building something from nothing Why loving an industry isn't enough if the environment doesn't fit The difference between being in creative flow with a camera vs. styling someone in person What it really means to work for brands you believe in How to use the Career Equation to stop the "scattergun" and start making intentional choices The honest truth about being a multi-passionate: you can't do everything, but you can do the right things Career Conversations Guide: https://www.thecareerequation.com/career-conversations-guide Free Equation Builder: https://www.thecareerequation.com Book an intro call: https://www.thecareerequation.com/book-intro-call Erica on LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/ericasosna Zoë on LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/zoeschofieldcoach Charlotte's photography: www.charlottetolhurst.com Charlotte on Instagram: @charlotte.tolhurst | 51m 32s | ||||||
| 5/7/26 | ![]() Can I Really Become a Digital Nomad? Here’s How to Make It Happen | It's Careers Q&A Day where we give you some personal attention by answering your questions. Today's question comes from Moira: "I'm in my late 40s, I'm single, and I've always longed to travel. I have a dream of working as a digital nomad, just travelling around the world, seeing different countries as I go. But how realistic is this, and how do I even begin?" What we cover: The explosion of remote working and freelance culture has genuinely opened this up — and Erica answers live from Greece to prove the point. But there's real groundwork to do before you pack your bags. Start with what you already have. If your current role is fully remote, pilot the idea first: go somewhere for a month with the intention to return, and stress-test how it actually feels before committing further. Get clear on your income foundation before you go. If you own a home you can rent out, that may cover more of your costs than you think — especially if you pair it with volunteering platforms like Workaway or WWOOFing that exchange skills for room and board. Know what you're selling and to whom. If you're going freelance, get a few plates spinning before you leave — freelance platforms, former colleagues, and conversations along the way can all be sources of work, but don't rely on figuring it out once you're already travelling. Think carefully about your destinations: cost of living, political stability, ease of getting home, and whether friends can come to you. Build in recovery time if you're planning to move regularly — it's more tiring than it looks. Keep your skills current. Online platforms like Coursera, Udemy, and LinkedIn Learning are your friend, and AI literacy is becoming a real professional differentiator. Send your questions: Email or voicenote to pod@thecareerequation.com Links: Career Conversations Guide: https://www.thecareerequation.com/career-conversations-guide Book an intro call: https://www.thecareerequation.com/book-intro-call Erica on LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/ericasosna Zoë on LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/zoeschofieldcoach | 8m 47s | ||||||
| 5/4/26 | ![]() Your Grad Scheme Works. Your Retention Strategy Doesn't. | You've built a brilliant program. Rotations, mentors, accreditations, real exposure to the business. And then you ask your graduates or apprentices to choose where they want to go next, and they freeze. In this episode, we dig into why that happens and what you can do about it before it costs you the talent you've worked so hard to develop. What we cover: The moment everything changes. We walk through what it actually feels like to move from a structured scheme, where decisions are largely made for you, to a point where you are suddenly responsible for your own direction, often with no tools, no framework, and no one in the business who knows how to have that conversation with you. The gaps most program designs share. Rotations, training, mentoring, and yet almost no curriculum time on how to make a career decision. We make the case that career navigation is not a luxury add-on but a core capability, and that leaving it out creates the exact attrition, burnout, and disengagement that organisations spend significant money trying to solve. The AI layer. Graduate recruitment in the Big Four is down 29%, tech graduate positions have fallen by as much as 46%, and two fifths of employers plan to hire fewer graduates because of AI. We cover what this means for the young people in your programs and why career literacy matters even more in that context. The Career Equation in early careers. We share how embedding three simple questions, what are you good at, what do you care about, and where can you create real value, throughout a program (rather than at the end of it) transforms how young people reflect on rotations, articulate their strengths, and ultimately make confident decisions about where they want to go next. Real results from real programs. We share examples from Dassel STEM, where attrition at the end of their graduate scheme fell by 300% after we introduced the equation, alongside examples from Tallis, a global aerospace and defence business, PJ luxury fashion brands in Spain, and BACB, where even a small organisation used career navigation as a competitive differentiator for attracting and converting early talent. Practical steps you can take now. We close with a straightforward set of actions: where to introduce career thinking in your existing design, how to build a culture of ongoing career conversations rather than a one-off workshop, and how to train managers and mentors so they are ready to support young talent with something more meaningful than a performance review. Links: Career Conversations Guide: https://www.thecareerequation.com/career-conversations-guide Free Equation Builder: https://www.thecareerequation.com Book an intro call: https://www.thecareerequation.com/book-intro-call Erica on LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/ericasosna Zoë on LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/zoeschofieldcoach | 45m 26s | ||||||
| 4/30/26 | ![]() Should I support my employee's side hustle? | It's careers Q&A day where we give you some personal attention by answering your questions. Today's question comes from Siân, a senior manager in a growing organisation: "Should I support my employee's side hustle?" What we cover: Side hustles are no longer unusual - from Etsy shops and Substacks to AI tools and freelance work, portfolio careers are increasingly common. The real question isn't whether people should have them; it's what kind of culture you want to create around ambition and growth. Start from curiosity, not control. Before jumping to risk assessment, get into a genuine conversation: what does this give them that their day job doesn't? Creative expression, new skills, autonomy, extra income? Understanding the why opens a far richer dialogue than leading with policy. Look for the overlap. Side hustles often build exactly the skills you'd value inside your organisation - commercial awareness, marketing, leadership, negotiation, risk-taking. If they were volunteering in the same capacity, you'd likely be enthusiastic. Notice if the anxiety shifts when money is involved. Agree healthy boundaries together. Support doesn't mean open-ended freedom - it means an adult, collaborative conversation about time, energy, potential conflicts of interest, and use of resources. Co-creating those agreements builds trust and means you worry less about what's really going on. Leaders who welcome this conversation tend to build stronger loyalty, not weaker. If ambition outside the business feels threatening, people will hide it. If it feels discussable, they'll stay open - and often bring that energy back in. Send your questions: Email or voicenote to pod@thecareerequation.com Links: Career Conversations Guide: https://www.thecareerequation.com/career-conversations-guide Book an intro call: https://www.thecareerequation.com/book-intro-call Erica on LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/ericasosna Zoë on LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/zoeschofieldcoach | 12m 24s | ||||||
| 4/27/26 | ![]() The Human MRI: Ellie Ford on Reading People, Walking Away, and Work Life Integration | Ellie Ford has worn a lot of hats: anthropologist, documentary filmmaker, startup founder, TimeOut innovation lead, charity sector innovator, and now Chief People Officer at Zinc VC. What connects them all is an unusual ability to read people — a skill her CEO once called a human MRI scanner. In this episode, Erica talks to Ellie about the career conversations that have shaped her, why she said no to a fully funded PhD, and what returning to work after breast cancer taught her about where to put your energy. What we cover: From anthropology to exit. Ellie traces the thread from studying visual anthropology and making documentaries to building a personalised recommendations startup and selling it to TimeOut Group five years later — largely on instinct and a sense of possibility, long before the term ‘good search’ existed. The PhD call that crystallised everything. A professor rang with hard-won funding and told Ellie that nobody would ever invest that much in her again. She said no anyway. What that moment revealed about values, curiosity, and the kind of career conversations that close doors rather than open them. What venture-building taught her about careers. At Zinc VC, Ellie has taken hundreds of founders through a process of prototyping and iteration. Inflection applies the same methodology to people — a 12-week fellowship for mid-career professionals who want to think seriously about what comes next, with a bias towards action rather than theory. The human MRI moment. Returning to work after breast cancer, Ellie walked into a conversation with her co-founders with three ideas for what to do next. One response changed everything — and became a north star for how she now thinks about the relationship between personal growth and business growth. Work-life integration, not balance. Three children, three very different career contexts at the point of each birth. Ellie talks honestly about maternity reentry, the complexity of taking a full year off, and why she involves her kids in her working world rather than keeping the two separate. Why career conversations are becoming urgent. As work accelerates and linear paths dissolve, knowing how to iterate, experiment, and widen your social capital is becoming the new form of job security — something Ellie believes we will all need to revisit every six to eighteen months. Links: Ellie on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eleanor-ford-8b27661/ Inflection: https://inflection.zinc.vc/ Free Equation Builder: https://www.thecareerequation.com Book an intro call: https://www.thecareerequation.com/book-intro-call Erica on LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/ericasosna Zoë on LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/zoeschofieldcoach | 48m 28s | ||||||
| 4/23/26 | ![]() How to Stay Relevant in the Age of AI (Without Panic) | It's careers Q&A day where we give you some personal attention by answering your questions. Today's question comes from a listener called Josh: "How can I save my career from falling off an AI cliff?" What we cover: Careers rarely fall off a cliff overnight — there are usually warning signs along the way. The key is learning to read them. AI isn't simply replacing jobs wholesale; it's reshaping how work gets done, automating repetitive and rule-based tasks while increasing the value of judgment, creativity, communication, and adaptability. Rather than asking "will AI replace me?", ask the better question: which parts of my role are likely to be automated, and which parts are becoming more valuable? That shift in framing moves you from anxiety to agency. Get close to the change — don't avoid it. You don't need to become an AI engineer, but you do need to understand how it's showing up in your world. Which tools are being used in your organisation? Where could AI make you faster and more effective? And which parts of your role genuinely require your human presence, judgment, and creativity? Build AI literacy in small, manageable steps. Experiment with tools like ChatGPT or Claude, explore short courses on LinkedIn Learning or YouTube, and set aside an hour or two a week to explore what these tools can do for you. Platforms like IVDO Jobs can also help you understand which AI skills matter in your specific field. Stop defining yourself by your job title. Instead, focus on your design — your skills, strengths, and the kinds of problems you solve. Keep evolving that story as things change, and you'll find far more flexibility and resilience as the world of work shifts around you. Send your questions: Email or voicenote to pod@thecareerequation.com Links: Career Conversations Guide: https://www.thecareerequation.com/career-conversations-guide Book an intro call: https://www.thecareerequation.com/book-intro-call Erica on LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/ericasosna Zoë on LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/zoeschofieldcoach | 14m 01s | ||||||
| 4/20/26 | ![]() The wrong way to survive a layoff with Steve Jaffe | Most people respond to being made redundant by immediately updating their CV and sprinting towards the next role. But according to Steve Jaffe — author, marketing leader, and four-time redundancy survivor — that instinct is exactly backwards. In this episode, Steve shares the framework behind his book The Layoff Journey and explains why treating job loss as grief is the most practical thing you can do. What we cover: Why a layoff isn't a career event — it's a grief event. Steve maps redundancy onto the Kübler-Ross stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance), explaining why our brains process job loss the same way they process any major life disruption, and why understanding that framework removes shame and creates space to heal. The myth of meritocracy and why it makes redundancy worse. Over 83% of Americans tie their self-worth directly to their career. When the myth that hard work insulates you from being let go collides with reality, the fallout is personal as well as professional — and Steve explains how to separate the two. Radical acceptance as a practical coping tool. Drawing on the Serenity Prayer and his own experience, Steve unpacks what radical acceptance actually means in the context of job loss: not toxic positivity, but a shift from "what if" and "if only" to "what's next" — and why that single reframe changes everything. How to deliver a redundancy message with humanity. Steve's advice for managers in the room: imagine how you'd want your own child to receive this news, and lead from there. He also explores the legal, reputational, and human cost of getting it wrong — including the Glassdoor effect and what layoffs signal to the people who stay. The forced pause as an opportunity. Steve and Erica explore how redundancy creates a rare window for genuine career recalibration — identifying what brings joy, auditing whether your career path has longevity, and exploring pivots or upskilling before the next move. The good conversation and the bad one. In Steve's bad conversation story, he tells an employee with a promising modelling career on the side that she must stay in the office during business planning season — a decision he still regrets. His good conversation story centres on a boss who told him exactly what he was doing well and why, at the height of the 2008 recession, and gave him five years of confidence from a single honest exchange. Links: Purchase The Layoff Journey: From Dismissal to Discovery: Navigating the Stages of Grief After Job Loss Steve's website: https://www.thestevejaffe.com Career Conversations Guide: https://www.thecareerequation.com/career-conversations-guide Free Equation Builder: https://www.thecareerequation.com Book an intro call: https://www.thecareerequation.com/book-intro-call Erica on LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/ericasosna Zoë on LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/zoeschofieldcoach | 44m 04s | ||||||
| 4/16/26 | ![]() Do You Need An Internal Career Coaching Team… Or Better Career Conversations? | It's careers Q&A day where we give you some personal attention by answering your questions. Today's question comes from Greg, who works in talent development in insurance: "Should every business have an internal career coaching team?" What we cover: Not every business needs a formal internal career coaching team, but every business does need to give people access to good career conversations. Those two things are not the same thing. Where internal career coaching services do exist, they are almost always oversubscribed. That appetite is real, but a dedicated team is not the only way to meet it. The risk of a formal coaching function is that it accidentally becomes the only place career conversations happen, which outsources the responsibility for building a career culture to a small group in one corner of the business. A more sustainable and economical approach is to broaden the skillset internally: managers, peers, mentors, alumni, and people-growth enthusiasts can all be equipped to hold good career conversations using one consistent framework. Confidentiality matters. If people don't feel safe speaking openly with internal colleagues, they won't engage, however well-resourced the provision is. The right answer is usually a mix: internal coaches and enthusiasts, trained managers, and a sprinkling of external coaching where needed, all operating from a shared model that makes career conversations familiar and accessible everywhere. Send your questions: Email or voicenote to pod@thecareerequation.com Links: Career Conversations Guide: https://www.thecareerequation.com/career-conversations-guide Book an intro call: https://www.thecareerequation.com/book-intro-call Erica on LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/ericasosna Zoe on LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/zoeschofieldcoach | 13m 55s | ||||||
| 4/13/26 | ![]() Helping Senior Leaders Design Their Next Chapter: A Savills Case Study | Most organisations know how to onboard people well. Far fewer know how to help their most experienced, most loyal leaders transition out with the same care and intention. In this episode, we share the full story of how Savills partnered with The Career Equation to do exactly that, and why it changed everything. What we cover: Why this problem matters. For many senior directors at firms like Savills, work isn't simply what they do, it's who they are. Decades of tenure, deep client relationships, and a career spent largely within one organisation create both extraordinary value and a quiet strategic risk when no transition plan exists. The brief Savills actually gave us. It wasn't "retain these people at all costs." It was "help them transition well, because they deserve it, and so does the business." That different framing changed the entire design of the programme. The three core programme principles. Building trust before anything else (including one-to-one confidential conversations before any group work); using biographical narrative to honour the past before designing the future; and shifting senior leaders from convergent, risk-managing thinking back into divergent, imaginative possibility. What the programme looked like in practice. Across a year: an opening dinner, individual coaching sessions, group workshops, vision board work, worst-case scenario planning, and peer "success circles" to keep momentum alive beyond the formal programme. The range of outcomes. From 2 to 5 year handover strategies to entrepreneurial leaps to joyful retirements, no two next chapters looked the same, and that was exactly the point. The commercial and human impact. Better-planned exits, stronger succession, more structured knowledge transfer, and alumni who continued to refer and advocate for the business long after leaving. Links: Hear from Dominic Grace, former Head of London Residential at Savills and Your Next Chapter graduate, on what the programme gave him and what he did next: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-career-equation-the-formula-for-career-clarity/id1767894956?i=1000671247645 Career Conversations Guide: https://www.thecareerequation.com/career-conversations-guide Free Equation Builder: https://www.thecareerequation.com Book an intro call: https://www.thecareerequation.com/book-intro-call Erica on LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/ericasosna Zoë on LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/zoeschofieldcoach | 39m 35s | ||||||
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| 4/9/26 | ![]() We're a huge business, how can we embed career conversations across it in a scalable way? | It's careers Q&A day where we give you some personal attention by answering your questions. Today's question comes from Diana, who works in a large-scale organisation: "We're a huge business. How can we embed career conversations in a scalable way?" What we cover: You don't scale career conversations by making them bigger, you scale them by making them simpler. The goal isn't a new platform or a 20-page framework. It's a few consistent behaviours that enough people actually do. Structure without behaviour just creates noise and ticks boxes. Give managers a conversation scaffold, not a document. Three simple questions, what does success look like for you right now? What experiences would you like in the next 12 months? What would you like to do more or less of? Asked consistently across an organisation, they will transform the quality of those conversations overnight. Build career conversations into rhythms that already exist. Monthly one-to-ones, quarterly check-ins, project debriefs, onboarding. The less decision-making required to make it happen, the more likely it is to happen. Everybody needs both a question set and a time and place. Measure the conversation, not just the outcome. Engagement scores and retention data won't tell you whether the conversations are actually happening. Ask people directly: have you had a career conversation in the last three months? Does your manager understand your aspirations? When it comes to rollout, both approaches work: go loud and proud with a whole-organisation launch, or identify a pilot group where there's a willing leader or a retention risk and build a good news story from there. You know your culture best. Most managers haven't been trained to have these conversations. Give them permission to be imperfect, to not have all the answers, and to focus on listening rather than fixing. The ownership of a career sits with the individual, the manager's job is to make them feel seen. Send your questions: Email or voicenote to pod@thecareerequation.com Links: Career Conversations Guide: https://www.thecareerequation.com/career-conversations-guide Book an intro call: https://www.thecareerequation.com/book-intro-call Erica on LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/ericasosna Zoë on LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/zoeschofieldcoach | 13m 03s | ||||||
| 4/6/26 | ![]() If You Don’t Have a Career Philosophy, You Have a Retention Problem | If You Don't Have a Career Philosophy, You Have a Retention Problem Most organisations have values, competency frameworks, and learning programmes. What they're missing is a career philosophy: a clear, articulable promise about how progression works and what a career actually looks and feels like inside your business. In this episode, Erica and Zoë explain why the absence of one is so costly — and how to start building yours today. What we cover: What a career philosophy actually is. Not your values page, not your competency framework, and not an aspirational paragraph on your website. It's your organisation's clear promise about how progression and growth happen, what experiences people can expect along the way, and what a career around here should look and feel like. Why the vacuum is expensive. When there's no stated philosophy, employees invent one — and they usually invent the wrong one. The result is stories about favouritism, career-blocking managers, and a culture that says it values innovation but actually rewards conformism. The knock-on effects hit recruitment, internal mobility, engagement, and trust. The business case in numbers. Gallup research shows that highly engaged teams deliver 23% higher profitability, 18% higher sales productivity, and up to 51% lower turnover. Career philosophy drives that engagement — because engagement depends on employees knowing what's expected of them and understanding how to grow. Real-world examples. Erica and Zoë look at how Netflix and Siemens signal their philosophies publicly — what each approach says about progression, what it costs, and what you can learn by running the same audit on your own careers pages. The 10-sentence test. A practical exercise to distil your organisation's existing career philosophy: complete 10 honest prompts, then do it again as employees would over a private coffee. The gap between the two versions is where your strategy has to start. Links: Career Conversations Guide: https://www.thecareerequation.com/career-conversations-guide Free Equation Builder: https://www.thecareerequation.com Book an intro call: https://www.thecareerequation.com/book-intro-call Erica on LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/ericasosna Zoë on LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/zoeschofieldcoach | 44m 45s | ||||||
| 4/2/26 | ![]() Succession Planning vs Reality: Why Career Conversations Matter More Than You Think | It's careers Q&A day where we give you some personal attention by answering your questions. Today's question comes from Mark, who leads talent in a global organisation: "What role does a career conversation play in succession planning and high potential talent retention?" What we cover: Succession planning tends to live in data and spreadsheets, while career conversations live in one-to-ones — and when the two aren't connected, you end up with ready-now lists no one has agreed to, high potentials who don't know they're seen as such, and people lined up for roles they don't actually want. A good career conversation tests ambition properly: does someone want broader scope, or deeper expertise? Do they want your job, or something entirely different? Too much succession planning assumes upward ambition — and that assumption is expensive. Career conversations surface development gaps early, making the whole process more developmental and less reactive — moving from building blocks to genuine dialogue about where someone is now versus where they want to go. When people feel seen and heard, they become relationally invested — and relationally invested employees are far less poachable than those who are simply labelled high potential and left to it. Common traps to avoid: treating succession planning as a confidential strategy rather than a shared dialogue; only discussing the next role when a vacancy appears; overlooking the "forgotten layer" of high performers who don't shout about themselves but could be your strongest succession candidates. If someone is on your succession plan and doesn't know about it, it isn't a retention strategy — it's admin. Their involvement is what gives it meaning. Surprise resignations, flight risks, and people quietly twiddling their thumbs are all things you should already know about. Career conversations, done well, mean none of this should catch you off guard. Send your questions: Email or voicenote to pod@thecareerequation.com Links: Career Conversations Guide: https://www.thecareerequation.com/career-conversations-guide Book an intro call: https://www.thecareerequation.com/book-intro-call Erica on LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/ericasosna Zoë on LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/zoeschofieldcoach | 13m 33s | ||||||
| 3/30/26 | ![]() Transactional to Transformational: What Great Career Conversations Really Look Like | Some career conversations stay with you for years. Others leave you feeling like a statistic. In this episode, Zoë sits down with Anca Cojocaru, a global talent management consultant in the financial services sector, to get personal about both kinds. | 34m 44s | ||||||
| 3/26/26 | ![]() If you’re a tech leader watching key people walk out the door with little warning, you’re not alone. | It's careers Q&A day where we give you some personal attention by answering your questions. Today's question comes from Chris, who works in the tech world: "How do we stop unexpected resignations in tech?" What we cover: Most resignations aren't truly unexpected — by the time someone hands in their notice, they've likely been disengaging for months, quietly interviewing elsewhere, and feeling stagnant or undervalued. The decision has been brewing long before it lands. Tech is particularly vulnerable: high demand, high mobility, remote working, and constant recruitment pressure all thin the emotional ties that keep great people in place. But at the root of most "surprise" resignations is a simple absence of good dialogue about growth, progress, and the future. Stop waiting for annual reviews. At a minimum, build in quarterly career check-ins — and go bold by asking questions like "if a recruiter called you tomorrow, what would tempt you to leave?" Make it a real conversation, not a tick-box exercise. Train managers in career conversation, not just project delivery. Most tech managers were promoted for technical brilliance, not people leadership — they may need support spotting disengagement signals, handling ambition without getting defensive, and creating growth pathways beyond the management track. Make internal mobility easier than external mobility. In many tech businesses, it's actually easier to move to a different company than to a different team — and that needs to change. Visible internal opportunities, secondments, cross-functional projects, and job swaps all help people see a future without having to resign to find one. The goal isn't zero resignations — some turnover is healthy. The goal is zero surprises. If a resignation feels like a shock, the real issue is that the conversation should have happened six months earlier. Send your questions: Email or voicenote to pod@thecareerequation.com Links: Career Conversations Guide: https://www.thecareerequation.com/career-conversations-guide Book an intro call: https://www.thecareerequation.com/book-intro-call Erica on LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/ericasosna Zoë on LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/zoeschofieldcoach | 9m 52s | ||||||
| 3/23/26 | ![]() Why managers avoid career conversations and how businesses pay the price | The fastest way to lose a great employee? Mishandle the moment they tell you they want something different. In this conversation between Erica and fellow careers expert Antoinette Oglethorpe, we unpack what really happens in that moment — including Antoinette's own experience of raising her own concerns with her manager and how easily it can go massively wrong. Most managers aren't confident in these conversations. They avoid them. They freeze. They hope the issue goes away. It doesn't. People just leave. You'll learn: What managers actually want from career conversations and how to help them get started Why they freeze when it comes to career development talks so you can help them get unstuck How both sides can turn this into a retention conversation — not an impending resignation This is the conversation that decides whether people stay — or start planning their exit. We hope you enjoy the conversation! Links: Antoinette Oglethorpe's website: www.antoinetteoglethorpe.com Free Equation Builder: https://www.thecareerequation.com Career Conversations Guide: https://www.thecareerequation.com/career-conversations-guide Book an intro call: https://www.thecareerequation.com/book-intro-call Erica on LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/ericasosna Zoë on LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/zoeschofieldcoach | 44m 10s | ||||||
| 3/19/26 | ![]() How to Make Your Careers Week Worthwhile | It's careers Q&A day where we give you some personal attention by answering your questions. Today's question comes from Natalie, who works in talent development at a mid-size professional services firm: "What do you think makes a great careers week, and what can we skip?" What we cover: A great careers week isn't just about visibility — it's about helping people work out the path from where they are to where they want to be, including how to transfer their skills across the organisation. Employees today aren't asking "how do I get promoted?" — they're asking "how do I stay relevant, evolve here, and what can I try so I don't have to leave?" If careers week doesn't address those questions, it risks becoming a performance rather than a turning point. Start with self-discovery before you start showcasing. A reflection session with a simple framework — what am I designed for, what do I want more or less of, what environments suit me? — gives people the anchoring they need to engage meaningfully with everything else. Platform real journeys, not just polished ones. Brief your speakers to talk about lateral moves, moments of doubt, and the messy middle. That's what makes stories relatable and memorable. Interactivity matters. Live career mapping workshops, ask-me-anything sessions, skills tasters, round tables, and rapid networking all help the week stick beyond the five days. Skip the over-engineered keynote speakers, generic non-interactive lectures, and frictionless success stories. If content can live in a library, put it there — don't make it a live session. Before you book a single speaker, answer this first: what do we want people to think, feel, and do differently as a result? Clarity of intention shapes everything. It's not about quantity — it's about clarity, visibility, and momentum. Send your questions: Email or voicenote to pod@thecareerequation.com — audio messages especially welcome. Links: Career Conversations Guide: https://www.thecareerequation.com/career-conversations-guide Book an intro call: https://www.thecareerequation.com/book-intro-call Erica on LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/ericasosna Zoë on LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/zoeschofieldcoach | 12m 07s | ||||||
| 3/16/26 | ![]() Why Managers Dread Career Conversations (And How to Fix That) | Manager confidence around career conversations is lower than most organisations realise. Not because managers lack care for their people, but because career conversations have quietly become some of the most emotionally loaded, poorly defined, and high-risk conversations in organisational life. In this episode, we name the real reasons managers keep dodging them, bust the myths that make people management harder than it needs to be, and share the reframes and tools that build genuine leadership capability in this area. | 35m 19s | ||||||
| 3/12/26 | ![]() Managers Running Scared? How to make Career Conversations easier (and more effective) | It’s careers Q&A day where we give you some personal attention by answering your questions. Today’s question comes from Hannah, an HR leader in real estate investment: “I would love our managers to take ownership of career conversations, but they are definitely running scared. How can I get them to be up for talking to their people about their next steps?” What we cover: It’s completely normal for managers to feel anxious about career conversations, and a lot of that anxiety comes down to a misconception about what they’re actually for. The moment someone hears “career conversation”, they picture the dreaded “where do you want to be in five years?” which rarely ends well for anyone. The correct framing is this: the individual owns their career, the manager nurtures their capacity, and the organisation enables the opportunities. Managers don’t need to have all the answers, promise promotions, or become internal recruiters. That’s not their job. Much of what holds managers back is myth-busting: the fear that any career conversation will inevitably lead to a request for a promotion or a pay rise. It won’t, and even if it does, that’s a conversation worth having. Career conversations are fundamentally an engagement and retention tool. People stay where they feel genuinely seen and invested in. When it comes to how to run the conversation, the single most important thing is to take the pressure off yourself. Stay curious. Simple opening questions “What does success look and feel like for you?” or “What experiences would you love to have next?” do a lot of the heavy lifting. Sharing a little of your own journey can also help the other person open up. Finally, if you want managers to succeed at this, don’t just train the managers. Consider raising awareness across the whole organisation first so that when someone sits down for a career conversation, both sides know the philosophy, the structure, and what to expect. Preparation on both sides is what turns a good intention into an excellent conversation. Send your questions: Email or voicenote to pod@thecareerequation.com Links: Career Conversations Guide: https://www.thecareerequation.com/career-conversations-guide Book an intro call: https://www.thecareerequation.com/book-intro-call Erica on LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/ericasosna Zoë on LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/zoeschofieldcoach | 6m 29s | ||||||
| 3/9/26 | ![]() From Awkward to Impactful: Rethinking career conversations with Flutter International | Most organisations know that career conversations matter, but few have built a real system around them. In this episode, Zoë sits down with Catherine, a talent development professional at Flutter International, to explore what it actually looks like to make career clarity and career pathways a strategic priority inside a global company. | 30m 23s | ||||||
| 3/5/26 | ![]() Multiple Interests & Stuck: Making Career Choices You Can Trust | It's careers Q&A day where we give you some personal attention by answering your questions. Today's question comes from a listener with a lot going on: "How do I figure out the right career for me? I know I've got loads of interests and could go in many different directions, but how do I know that I'm making the right choice?" What we cover: Having lots of interests is genuinely a good problem to have, the reverse is having none. Start by getting everything out of your head and onto paper: a messy mind map of every passion, hobby, and area of curiosity, however disparate they might seem. Once you have that list, separate what you want to keep just for yourself from what you'd actually want to monetise. Some things lose their magic when they become work, a joy pursued occasionally is not the same as a job done every day. Knowing which is which is an important early filter. At the same time, don't dismiss the surprising ones too quickly. People build careers from things they never imagined possible. Keep an open mind about what "earning a living" could actually look like before you start narrowing down. To test your shortlist, run each idea through four questions: Would it use skills you want to be using? Would it genuinely engage and energise you? Would the outcomes feel meaningful and satisfying? And would the environment bring out the best in you? Stack your options against those criteria and let the list begin to shrink naturally. No process can guarantee you'll land the perfect career, but doing this work makes a grounded, confident decision far more likely than not doing it. Send your questions: Email or voicenote to pod@thecareerequation.com Links: Career Conversations Guide: https://www.thecareerequation.com/career-conversations-guide Book an intro call: https://www.thecareerequation.com/book-intro-call Erica on LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/ericasosna Zoë on LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/zoeschofieldcoach | 5m 26s | ||||||
| 3/2/26 | ![]() 10 Compelling Reasons Every Business Should Embed Career Conversations | Most organisations investing in people strategy are spending heavily on learning cultures, leadership capability programmes, and performance systems and missing the most powerful lever of all. In this episode, we make the full business case for embedding career conversations as a strategic tool that drives employee engagement, talent retention, and real, measurable business outcomes. | 42m 49s | ||||||
| 2/26/26 | ![]() When success isn’t enough and burnout looms: How to know when to jump and plan your next step | It’s careers Q&A day where we give you some personal attention by answering your questions. Today’s question comes from a listener in the media world: ”I’ve climbed the ladder and I’m doing pretty well, but I feel really burned out. When is it time to jump and leave? And how do I make a plan to do that in a thoughtful and stable way?” | 5m 19s | ||||||
| 2/23/26 | ![]() Listen to a Real Career Conversation (And Steal Our Method) | Most managers think a career conversation is about rebuffing awkward questions and requests for more money. It’s so much more than that, and in this episode, we share the exact agenda our clients like Microsoft use to run conversations that grow performance, mobility, and retention. | 42m 02s | ||||||
| 2/19/26 | ![]() When Your Next Role Isn’t Clear Yet: Applying the Career Equation to Emerging Careers | When Your Next Role Isn't Clear Yet: Applying the Career Equation to Emerging Careers It's careers Q&A day where we give you some personal attention by answering your questions. Today's question comes from Nina: "How can you use the Career Equation for roles in the future that are not yet set in stone, they're still evolving?" What we cover: Sometimes you feel stuck because you've been a specialist - "I've only done this, where else could I be useful?" Other times there are too many choices and the decision making feels overwhelming. Either way, doing nothing is still a choice. Your backstory is full of information you're probably overlooking. When have you loved stuff in the past? What have you been drawn to? When did you learn a skill you've not used for ages? Take time to harvest these insights from your story so far. Stop trying to find the name of the perfect job - there are so many titles now it won't help. Instead, think about what kind of experiences you want next. Is it a simple flip? Indoors to outdoors? Screen time to people time? Regulated environment to something more free-flowing? Or something completely different - more impact, being part of a cohesive team, using particular skills? These experiences become your anchor points. When you've got clarity, it's easy to take action. Careers are a series of choices about how what you're good at aligns with how you spend your time and make money. Send your questions: Email or voicenote to pod@thecareerequation.com Links: Career Conversations Guide: https://www.thecareerequation.com/career-conversations-guide Book an intro call: https://www.thecareerequation.com/book-intro-call Erica on LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/ericasosna Zoë on LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/zoeschofieldcoach | 5m 06s | ||||||
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