Career is a journey, not a destination
Your career is a 40-year journey where the first 10 years are best spent developing your unique map.
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Your career is a 40-year journey where the first 10 years are best spent developing your unique map.
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Career is the second most important external factor that affects your life1. It has an outsized effect on your quality of life, professional impact, and even identity. You get zero training to do it well2. Also, we spend a lot of our time working. Any time we spend planning for your career is, therefore, time well spent.
Career Exploration(before and during University)
When you are a kid, you have your goals set for you. You move up the predefined ladders - Grades 1 to 2 and so on. In high school, you are expected to make a decision on what kind of university to go to - study engineering, medicine, law, commerce, etc. When I get my magic wand, one of the five things I will do is to make it easy for high schoolers to understand the job market that is waiting for them.
Once you get into a university, if you are lucky, it presents you with internship opportunities. One thing I love about Canadian engineering universities is that they have strong internship programs3. Internships are your best friend to develop an appreciation for the length and breadth of the job market. To get a taste of the variety of roles out there, go ahead and search for analyst positions on Indeed. You will see an analyst position that you have not heard of before4.
If you have the option to do a couple of internships, make the best use of them. Actively explore and develop an understanding of the different teams in the company. Talk to team members from other teams. Get into a couple of cross-functional projects, which will give you a taste of the skills required to excel in different parts of the organization. Small companies may be better for this kind of exploration, but you can find similar opportunities in big companies. Big companies will have employees who are specialized, as opposed to smaller companies where there are more generalists.
Talk to older siblings of your classmates. Talk to your alumni. Talk to a lot of people who are 5-10 years ahead of you in the job market. With the internet, you can look up any amount of details. The goal of these conversations is to understand what to look up.
Even with the internships and other conversations, you may not have enough time to develop a deeper understanding of the job market or specifically your Ikigai role. So, you continue your job exploration even after you land your first job.
Career Development(after graduation)
Aryeh Bourkoff, an investment banker, talked about how career is not a linear path, but a path with mountains and chasms. Your first mountain(first job and career trajectory) need not define your journey. With real-world skills, experiences, and new information, you can choose a second mountain. Now, this second mountain of your career can be in the same industry/role or in a completely different role. Reid Hoffman compares career to a startup. Some may have to pivot while others can double down on their first job. Tony Blair, the former British PM, and owner of a fantastic first name, started his career as a rock music promoter5. Andy Jassy, the current CEO of Amazon, had been in the company for 20+ years.
Mountain 1
The First 5 to 10 years of your career are the best suited to start developing your career. Use it to build career capital - which is a fancy way of saying ‘develop your skills and professional network’. You can further use this time to understand your preferences. Tim Urban suggests the following considerations.
Personal - Understanding yourselves and your values are foundational to career exploration. There may be unique reasons why you want to work in a particular industry or geography. Passion and skills from the Ikigai framework would fall into this bucket.
Lifestyle and Practical - Some jobs are better paid than others and therefore leave you with more discretionary income. Other jobs may offer more free time or opportunity to travel or the location of your preference. Your exposure to the job market is going to come in very handy here. You can take a look at the market demand for particular roles, average salaries, and other benefits.
Moral and Social - Think about the kind of impact that you want to have in your professional role. This could feed into your passion for a role. 80000hours.org has some useful resources for career planning for positive impact.
The above framework can help you map out the location of your next mountain.
Mountain 2
Once your second mountain(or mountain ranges) is mapped out, start your journey to get there. There may be twists and turns, but the journey to the second mountain will be more enjoyable. One of the things to stay away from, though, is comparing your career to someone else’s. Everyone is climbing their own mountains.
After you summit mountain 2, there may be mountains 3 and 4 waiting for you. I leave you with a litmus test question to confirm that you are climbing the right mountain.
How excited are you to start your work week on Mondays?
Go ahead and embark on a meaningful career journey.
The first place goes to marriage. I am nothing if not consistent.
As do some Indian universities like BITS.
Baseball Operations Analyst would not be in my top 10 guesses.
Chief Risk Officer to photographer