Identify Your Career Path and Key Skills to Grow

You're doing great work. You're delivering results. You're solving complex problems. But here's the uncomfortable truth: doing great work isn't enough to advance your career.

In today's competitive job market, progress requires visibility of the right skills—not just doing great work behind the scenes. Recruiters and hiring managers need to see evidence that you possess the competencies required for your target role. They need proof, not just promises.

This is where most professionals get stuck. They know they're capable, but they haven't systematically demonstrated the skills their target role demands. They haven't made their capabilities visible through their LinkedIn presence.

This guide will show you how to identify your career path, map the key skills you need to demonstrate, and create a strategic plan for making those skills visible through your content.

Why Defining a Target Role Changes Everything

Before you can demonstrate the right skills, you need clarity on what those skills are. This starts with defining your target role—the position you want to be in 12-18 months from now.

Clarity on Which Capabilities to Highlight

When you don't have a target role defined, your LinkedIn content becomes a collection of random updates. You might share an interesting article here, comment on a trend there, but there's no strategic thread connecting your posts.

With a defined target role, everything changes.

Suddenly, you know exactly which skills to highlight. You understand which experiences to share. You can see which insights demonstrate the competencies your target role requires.

Example: If your target role is Engineering Manager, you know to highlight leadership, team development, and technical strategy—not just your coding skills. Every post becomes an opportunity to demonstrate these specific competencies.

Makes Content Purposeful and Measurable

Without a target role, you can't measure whether your LinkedIn presence is actually advancing your career. You're posting, but you don't know if you're posting the right things.

With a defined target role, you can create a content strategy that's both purposeful and measurable:

• Purposeful: Every post demonstrates a skill relevant to your target role
• Measurable: You can track which skills you've demonstrated and identify gaps

This transforms LinkedIn from a social network into a strategic career positioning tool.

The 7-Skill Framework

After analyzing thousands of successful career transitions, we've identified that most roles can be represented through seven transferable competencies. These skills transcend specific job titles and industries, making them universally valuable for career advancement.

1. Leadership

What it means: The ability to guide, influence, and develop others toward shared goals.

How to demonstrate: Share experiences leading projects, mentoring team members, or making difficult decisions. Show how you've helped others grow.

Example post topic: "Three lessons I learned from leading my first cross-functional team..."

2. Communication

What it means: The ability to articulate complex ideas clearly and persuasively to different audiences.

How to demonstrate: Break down complex concepts in your posts. Show your ability to explain technical topics to non-technical audiences, or strategic concepts to execution teams.

Example post topic: "How I explain [complex concept] to stakeholders in 30 seconds..."

3. Strategic Thinking

What it means: The ability to see the bigger picture, connect dots, and make decisions that align with long-term goals.

How to demonstrate: Share how you've connected insights across different contexts. Show your ability to think beyond immediate tasks and consider broader implications.

Example post topic: "Why [current trend] matters for [long-term outcome]..."

4. Technical Depth

What it means: Deep expertise in your domain, whether technical, functional, or industry-specific.

How to demonstrate: Share insights from your area of expertise. Show that you understand not just how things work, but why they work that way.

Example post topic: "The mistake most people make with [technical concept] and how to avoid it..."

5. Collaboration

What it means: The ability to work effectively with diverse teams, navigate different perspectives, and achieve shared outcomes.

How to demonstrate: Share experiences working across functions, resolving conflicts, or building consensus. Show your ability to bring people together.

Example post topic: "How I got engineering, design, and product aligned on [challenge]..."

6. Delivery

What it means: The ability to execute consistently, meet commitments, and drive results.

How to demonstrate: Share how you've overcome obstacles to deliver outcomes. Show your systematic approach to getting things done.

Example post topic: "We had 48 hours to [deliverable]. Here's the framework that saved us..."

7. Vision

What it means: The ability to see future possibilities, inspire others, and create direction.

How to demonstrate: Share your perspective on where your industry is heading. Show your ability to think about the future and inspire others to join you.

Example post topic: "Where [industry/field] is heading in the next 3 years, and what it means for [audience]..."

From Senior to Lead: A Practical Example

Let's see how this framework works in practice. Imagine you're a Senior Engineer targeting an Engineering Manager role.

Current Role: Senior Engineer

Skills typically demonstrated:

• Technical Depth (primary)
• Delivery (strong)
• Collaboration (moderate)
• Communication (moderate)
• Strategic Thinking (limited)
• Leadership (limited)
• Vision (rarely)

Target Role: Engineering Manager

Skills required:

• Leadership (critical)
• Strategic Thinking (critical)
• Communication (critical)
• Collaboration (important)
• Technical Depth (important, but different focus)
• Delivery (important)
• Vision (important)

The Gap Analysis

Skills to develop visibility:

1. Leadership — Need to demonstrate ability to guide and develop others
2. Strategic Thinking — Need to show ability to see bigger picture beyond code
3. Communication — Need to demonstrate ability to articulate technical concepts to non-technical audiences
4. Vision — Need to show ability to think about future direction

Skills to maintain:

• Technical Depth (but shift focus from implementation to architecture/strategy)
• Delivery (but emphasize team delivery over individual delivery)
• Collaboration (continue demonstrating, but at higher level)

Content Strategy

Based on this analysis, your LinkedIn content should prioritize:

1. Leadership posts (40% of content) — Share experiences mentoring, leading projects, making team decisions
2. Strategic thinking posts (30% of content) — Connect technical decisions to business outcomes, show systems thinking
3. Communication posts (20% of content) — Explain complex technical concepts simply, show ability to bridge technical and non-technical audiences
4. Vision posts (10% of content) — Share perspective on where technology/engineering is heading

This creates a systematic approach to building visibility for the skills your target role requires.

How to Measure Your Skill Visibility

Knowing which skills to demonstrate is only half the battle. You also need to measure whether you're actually making those skills visible through your content.

This is where the concept of Career Gap Analysis becomes powerful.

What is Career Gap Analysis?

Career Gap Analysis is the process of mapping what's visible in your LinkedIn content versus what's expected in your target role. It helps you identify:

• Skills you're demonstrating well — Keep doing this
• Skills you're under-demonstrating — Need more content here
• Skills you're not demonstrating at all — Critical gap to address

How It Works

1. Define your target role — Specify the role you want in 12-18 months
2. Identify required skills — Map the 7 skills to your target role's requirements
3. Analyze your current content — Review your recent LinkedIn posts and identify which skills each demonstrates
4. Calculate the gap — See where you're strong and where you need to focus
5. Create a content plan — Systematically address the gaps through strategic posting

The Visibility Score

For each of the 7 skills, you can calculate a visibility score:

Visibility Score = (Number of posts demonstrating this skill) / (Total posts analyzed)

Example:

• Leadership: 2 posts out of 10 = 20% visibility
• Strategic Thinking: 1 post out of 10 = 10% visibility
• Communication: 3 posts out of 10 = 30% visibility

If your target role requires strong leadership visibility, but you're only at 20%, you have a clear gap to address.

Using Postune's Career Gap Analyzer

Postune's Career Gap Analyzer automates this process. Here's how it works:

1. Input your target role — Tell Postune where you want to be
2. Get your skill map — See which of the 7 skills your target role requires
3. Analyze your content — Postune reviews your LinkedIn posts and calculates visibility scores
4. See your gaps — Get a clear visual of where you need to focus
5. Get recommendations — Receive specific suggestions for which skills to highlight in future posts

The result? You know exactly which skills to demonstrate in your next post, making every piece of content strategically valuable.

Building Your Skill Portfolio

Think of your LinkedIn presence as a portfolio of your professional capabilities. Each post is a piece of evidence. Each post demonstrates a competency. Together, they create a comprehensive picture of what you bring to your target role.

The Systematic Approach

Instead of posting randomly, use this systematic approach:

1. Week 1-2: Focus on Leadership posts
2. Week 3-4: Focus on Strategic Thinking posts
3. Week 5-6: Focus on Communication posts
4. Week 7-8: Mix of all skills, with emphasis on gaps

This ensures you're building visibility across all required skills, not just the ones that come naturally.

Quality Over Quantity

Remember: One strategic post that demonstrates a key skill is worth more than ten generic updates.

Don't post daily just to stay visible. Post weekly or bi-weekly, but make every post count. Make every post demonstrate a skill your target role requires.

The Strategic Advantage

When you systematically demonstrate the skills your target role requires, something powerful happens:

Recruiters and hiring managers can see evidence of your capabilities before they even talk to you.

Your LinkedIn profile becomes a portfolio. Your posts become proof points. Your content demonstrates competencies, not just claims them.

"Visibility of skills is the first step toward recognition."

This quote captures the essence of strategic career positioning. You can't be recognized for skills that aren't visible. You can't advance to a role if hiring managers can't see evidence that you're ready for it.

Getting Started

Here's your action plan:

1. Define your target role — Be specific. "Engineering Manager" is better than "leadership role"
2. Map the 7 skills — Identify which skills your target role requires most
3. Analyze your current visibility — Review your recent posts and see which skills you're demonstrating
4. Identify the gaps — See where you need to focus
5. Create a content plan — Systematically address gaps through strategic posting

Don't try to demonstrate all skills at once. Focus on 2-3 skills per month. Build visibility systematically. Measure your progress. Adjust your strategy based on what you learn.

Your Next Step

If you're ready to identify your career path and measure your skill visibility, Postune's Career Gap Analyzer can help you get started. Our free tool analyzes your target role, maps the required skills, and shows you exactly where to focus your LinkedIn content.

Try the free Career Gap Analyzer →

Start building visibility for the skills that matter. Start positioning yourself for your target role. Start advancing your career strategically.