Best Career Methodology
The Integrated
Career Methodology™
A structured methodology for understanding who you are, what matters to you and which career directions make sense.
It combines self-exploration, whole-life context, career analysis and decision-making.
Different Best Career tools apply the methodology at different levels of depth.
Five perspectives. One career decision.
Good career decisions rarely come from looking at experience alone. The Integrated Career Methodology™ looks at five connected areas.
Self
Who are you?
Your strengths, patterns, motivations, identity and the ways you naturally work.
Life
What does your life need?
Your priorities, constraints, energy, relationships, finances and the realities your career needs to fit around.
Possibility
What could you do?
Career directions that connect your experience with new possibilities.
Reality
What could work?
The market, your credibility, transferable value, risks and what it would take to move.
Choice
What feels worth pursuing?
Bringing the evidence together and deciding where to focus next.
Closing a gap
Between coaching and consulting
The International Coaching Federation defines coaching as a thought-provoking process that helps clients maximise their potential. It also distinguishes coaching from consulting: coaching supports the client’s own thinking; consulting brings technical expertise and advice.
Each has limits when used alone for career decisions. Reflection without analysis can leave someone self-aware but still unsure what to do. Advice given too early can shape the answer before the person has fully explored their own thinking.
The Integrated Career Methodology™ sits between these two approaches - bridging coaching and consulting to turn complex insights into clear, realistic career options.
The principle
Discovery before interpretation.
The methodology does not begin by suggesting jobs. It begins by gathering evidence about the person, their career, their life and what they want next. Only then does it look for patterns, tensions and possible directions.
- 1
Gather evidence
- 2
Identify patterns and priorities
- 3
Explore possible directions
- 4
Test them against reality
- 5
Decide what is worth pursuing
The aim is not to generate more options. It is to make better sense of the options that could genuinely fit.
Human-designed. AI-enabled.
Human-designed. AI-enabled.
The methodology was developed by Anna Soelberg from work across careers, psychology, coaching, leadership and organisational development. AI is used to apply the methodology, not to define it. It helps process individual context, recognise patterns and adapt the experience to each person.
AI does not decide what you should do. It helps the methodology respond to your individual story at scale.
Human insight
AI capability
One methodology. Different levels of depth.
Best Career products use the methodology differently depending on the question someone is trying to answer.
Career Discovery
The full methodology.
A deeper exploration across Self, Life, Possibility, Reality and Choice.
Designed for people who want to understand not only what they could do next, but what would genuinely fit them.
Career Directions
A focused application of the methodology.
It uses your experience, selected priorities and career context to identify realistic directions you could start exploring now.
Designed for people who want a faster answer to: What else could I do?
Built on established career and coaching principles.
The Integrated Career Methodology™ sits within the wider field of career development and draws on principles used across coaching, career development, psychology and organisational practice. It is designed to support exploration and decision-making, not to replace individual judgement.
The methodology is independently developed by Anna Soelberg.
One methodology. Different career questions.
The Integrated Career Methodology™ is the foundation behind Best Career. Some Best Career tools use the full methodology. Others apply selected elements to solve a more focused career question.