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name: career-development-strategist
description: Use this skill when a request calls for structured career strategy — planning a path to a target role, preparing for a compensation negotiation, or deciding whether to make a career change. Use it to produce a rigorous first-pass analysis quickly while verifying any legal, financial, or contractual specifics with a qualified professional.
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# Career Development Strategist

> **What this is** — a repeatable, AI-assisted working method for taking a request in career strategy and decision-making, often beyond one's own formal training, and producing a rigorous, well-structured first pass quickly, with a qualified professional kept in the loop.
> **What this is NOT** — not legal, financial, immigration, or HR advice; verify compensation data and any employment/contract terms with the relevant qualified professional. Every output is a draft for review before it is relied on.

## When to use this
- Planning a move from a current role toward a specific target role and needing a sequenced, evidence-backed development plan.
- Preparing for a salary or offer negotiation and needing comp research, a walk-away position, and ready-to-use scripts.
- Weighing a career change (new company, function, industry, or geography) and needing a structured, honest decision analysis.
- Deciding what to build or ship next so that progress toward a role is demonstrable rather than asserted.
- Comparing multiple offers or paths where trade-offs are unclear and emotion is high.

## Operating principle
AI plus structure produce the legwork and the first draft fast: competency gaps are mapped, comp bands are gathered, and decision matrices are built in minutes. Human judgment governs what is relied on, and where legal, financial, immigration, or contractual specifics are involved, the relevant licensed professional governs the final call. The aim is speed to a defensible draft — not replacing the expert who signs off on terms.

## Capability 1 — Career-path planning
**Goal.** Convert a target role into a sequenced 6–12 month plan with concrete proof-of-work milestones.
**Inputs.** Current role and level, an honest inventory of skills and shipped impact, and one or two clearly-named target roles.
**Method.**
1. Build a **skills/impact inventory**: list competencies, and next to each, the strongest piece of shipped evidence (not aspiration).
2. Define the **target-role competency model**: pull the real expectations for the target role/level from job descriptions and public leveling guides.
3. Produce a **gap map**: for each target competency mark Strong / Partial / Missing, with the evidence gap named.
4. Prioritize gaps by **leverage** (impact on hiring signal × feasibility in the window).
5. For each prioritized gap, define a **proof-of-work milestone** — a concrete artifact or shipped outcome that would close it.
6. **Sequence** milestones across 6–12 months with rough dates and dependencies.
7. Add **feedback checkpoints** (mentor review, mock interview, portfolio critique) at intervals.
8. State assumptions and note where the plan should be pressure-tested by someone in the target role.
**Output.** A gap map plus a sequenced 6–12 month plan, each step tied to a proof-of-work milestone.
**Quality bar.** Every gap references real target-role expectations, every milestone is a verifiable artifact rather than a vague goal, and the sequence is realistic for the time available.

## Capability 2 — Salary-negotiation scripts
**Goal.** Enter a compensation conversation with researched bands, a clear walk-away position, and ready scripts.
**Inputs.** Role, level, geography, and the components of the offer or current package.
**Method.**
1. **Research comp bands** across level, geography, and total-comp components (base, bonus, equity, benefits); use multiple public sources and flag ranges, not false precision.
2. Establish the **BATNA** (best alternative to a negotiated agreement) and a concrete **walk-away** number and terms.
3. Set a **target** and **anchor** grounded in the researched band, with reasoning.
4. Draft a **base-salary counter** script that states the ask, the justification, and the evidence.
5. Draft an **equity counter** script addressing grant size, vesting, and refresh where relevant.
6. Draft a **competing-offer** script that references the alternative professionally without bluffing.
7. List **non-comp levers** (signing bonus, start date, title, scope, remote terms, review timing) as fallbacks.
8. Add a short **etiquette checklist**: get offers in writing, do not accept on the call, thank and confirm timelines.
**Output.** A negotiation brief: comp band summary, BATNA/walk-away, target/anchor, and scripts for base, equity, competing offer, and non-comp levers.
**Quality bar.** Bands cite their sources and are presented as ranges; the walk-away is a real number; every script is specific and defensible. Comp figures and any contract terms are flagged for verification with the appropriate professional before use.

## Capability 3 — Career-change decision analysis
**Goal.** Make a high-stakes change decision with a transparent, weighted analysis instead of gut alone.
**Inputs.** The options under consideration, the criteria that matter, and honest financial runway.
**Method.**
1. List the **options** (including "stay") as columns.
2. Define **decision criteria** (compensation, growth, mission fit, stability, learning, location, risk) as rows.
3. Assign a **weight** to each criterion (e.g., summing to 100) reflecting real priorities.
4. **Score** each option per criterion on a fixed scale, noting the reasoning behind each score.
5. Compute **weighted totals** and read the ranking — then sanity-check it against intuition (a large mismatch means a weight or score is wrong).
6. Run an **opportunity-cost** pass: what each option forecloses.
7. Run a **downside/runway** analysis: worst-case financial and career outcomes and how many months of runway exist.
8. Apply the **reversible-vs-irreversible** frame: reversible decisions can be made faster; irreversible ones warrant more diligence.
**Output.** A weighted decision matrix with reasoning, plus opportunity-cost, downside/runway, and reversibility notes.
**Quality bar.** Weights and scores are explicit and justified, the runway analysis uses real numbers, and irreversible risks are called out. Financial, immigration, and contractual specifics are flagged for a qualified professional.

## Worked example (illustrative)
*Illustrative only.* A senior designer is deciding between staying, a lateral move to a larger company, and a startup lead role. **Capability 1:** for the lead target, the gap map shows Strong on systems and Partial on cross-functional leadership; the milestone becomes "lead one visible cross-team initiative and document the outcome" within two quarters. **Capability 2:** for the startup offer, comp research shows base below band but equity above; the brief sets a base counter with a market-band citation, an equity clarification script (grant size and vesting), and non-comp fallbacks (title, review timing). **Capability 3:** a weighted matrix scores the three options across comp, growth, stability, and mission; the startup wins on growth but a runway analysis shows only four months of buffer, so the reversibility frame flags it as the highest-diligence choice. All comp and equity terms are marked for verification with a financial professional before any decision.

## Guardrails & escalation
- STOP and route to the relevant qualified professional for anything touching employment law, contract terms, equity/tax treatment, or immigration — these are outside scope and must not be decided from a draft.
- No compensation figure, contract clause, or equity term is acted on without independent verification.
- Uncertainty is flagged in the output: comp data is shown as sourced ranges, assumptions are stated explicitly, and every artifact is labelled a draft for review.

## References & frameworks
- Weighted decision matrix (criteria × weights × scores) — a standard multi-criteria decision-analysis method.
- Total-compensation components: base salary, bonus, equity, and benefits — the standard framing for comparing offers.
- BATNA (best alternative to a negotiated agreement), from Fisher & Ury, *Getting to Yes*, and the wider negotiation literature.
- Public compensation-benchmarking sources and role/leveling guides, used as ranges rather than precise figures and verified before reliance.

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*Part of Ed Chen's AI skill set — how one designer absorbs unfamiliar, C-level work quickly by pairing AI with rigor and professional review. https://edwson.com*