The Career Equation®: The Formula for Career Clarity

Erica Sosna & Zoë Schofield
  • 5.0 (45)
  • CAREERS
  • UPDATED WEEKLY

The world’s best organisations know how to attract and keep the world’s best employees.  However, even those firms struggle with employee retention. Why? Because their employees can’t see their future there.  The problem with careers in great firms is that employees know what they want but don’t know who to talk about it, and their organisations don’t know what they want and so don’t help them get it ( even though they want to!) The result? Great employees leave all too soon, missing out on all the exciting opportunities in their existing firm.  The tragedy is, this brain drain could be arrested with a simple, powerful career conversation that anyone can master.  Welcome to The Career Equation®, a practical formula for career conversations that helps organisations engage, retain and grow their talent.  Hear how firms like Microsoft, Amazon, and Capital One make use of the formula to enhance career conversations, reduce attrition and unlock internal mobility.  With anonymous Q&A on the juicy career questions talent are afraid to ask, real world case studies from learning professionals, and expert advice from over 20 years of careers consulting, we bring the Equation and all its benefits live and direct to your workplace.  If keeping great people is your biggest challenge, this podcast shows you how The Career Equation® can be the solution. For more information, to book your career conversation assessment or download our free guides on all things career, www.thecareerequation.com/contact

  1. 18 MAY

    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

    1 min
  2. The Multi-Passionate Career Crossroads: Charlotte Tolhurst on creativity, calling and knowing what to choose

    11 MAY

    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

    52 min
  3. Can I Really Become a Digital Nomad? Here’s How to Make It Happen

    7 MAY

    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

    9 min

  4. 4 MAY

    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

    45 min
  5. Should I support my employee's side hustle?

    30 APR

    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

    12 min
  6. The Human MRI: Ellie Ford on Reading People, Walking Away, and Work Life Integration

    27 APR

    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

    48 min
  7. How to Stay Relevant in the Age of AI (Without Panic)

    23 APR

    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

    14 min
  8. The wrong way to survive a layoff with Steve Jaffe

    20 APR

    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

    44 min
See All (84)

Trailer

5
out of 5
45 Ratings

About

The world’s best organisations know how to attract and keep the world’s best employees.  However, even those firms struggle with employee retention. Why? Because their employees can’t see their future there.  The problem with careers in great firms is that employees know what they want but don’t know who to talk about it, and their organisations don’t know what they want and so don’t help them get it ( even though they want to!) The result? Great employees leave all too soon, missing out on all the exciting opportunities in their existing firm.  The tragedy is, this brain drain could be arrested with a simple, powerful career conversation that anyone can master.  Welcome to The Career Equation®, a practical formula for career conversations that helps organisations engage, retain and grow their talent.  Hear how firms like Microsoft, Amazon, and Capital One make use of the formula to enhance career conversations, reduce attrition and unlock internal mobility.  With anonymous Q&A on the juicy career questions talent are afraid to ask, real world case studies from learning professionals, and expert advice from over 20 years of careers consulting, we bring the Equation and all its benefits live and direct to your workplace.  If keeping great people is your biggest challenge, this podcast shows you how The Career Equation® can be the solution. For more information, to book your career conversation assessment or download our free guides on all things career, www.thecareerequation.com/contact

Information

You Might Also Like