Exploring Career Paths
Do you have a plan for your career? Not sure where to even start? Today, let’s talk about how to get you moving in the right direction.
Figure out what’s within reach. Create a series of lists. List your top personality traits, the things you’re good at, the things you enjoy doing, and most importantly the career paths available to you. The career paths can be based on your education, interests, experience, technical ability, licensure, company, etc. You’ll have to decide for yourself if additional education or certifications are within your reach or not. Cross check your lists and find which career paths look like they could be a match. For my career exploration, it looked like I had three paths in front of me.
A big boss: Someone who manages an entire office, this can be within a larger company or my own firm. This means being the face of the company and being a good seller. The job would include managing profitability and your employees. I could decide what projects to pursue, who to hire and fire, office specifics like location or even decor, and where to distribute raises and bonuses.
A project manager: Someone who manages projects. This means keeping track of project financials, communicating with clients and stakeholders, delegating tasks to my team and subconsultants, and all the other things that it takes to keep a project on budget, on schedule, and generally successful.
A technical lead: A technical guru of sorts that stays away from the non-technical elements of project management. I could manage technical portions of a project, such as the structural design. I could also be the go-to person to talk to about a niche subject, like ice loads or dredging.
Dig with an interview. Make connections with people who have the jobs you’re exploring. This can be a great way to learn about the pros and cons of the job from the people actually doing it everyday. You can see similarities between your personalities, to see if the job will fit your vibe. Plus, if nothing else is gained, you’re making connections and expanding your network. For my interviews, I asked the following questions:
Can you define the job in your own words?
What are the daily tasks?
What do you like about the job?
What do you hate about the job?
What personality traits do you think fit the job well?
Do you have any tips on how I can learn more?
Shadow people on the job. To really understand what the day-to-day truly looks like, you’ll want to shadow someone. Hearing how much a task f***ing sucks during an interview is way different than seeing how much it sucks in action. By shadowing someone, you can learn valuable tips and tricks that you’d only learn from someone who’s been doing the job for years. You can get a little leg up by stealing their tools, templates, and processes that allow you to work more effectively and efficiently. And you can see first hand how someone else handles getting fifty emails per minute (all somehow marked with high importance) while trying to finalize a jacked up cost estimate in the fifteen minutes between meetings.
Learn what you can. By now you should have a pretty good idea of which way you want to go. Armed with a plan, you can start learning as much as you can. You can start working on getting any additional certifications you might need. At this point in my own journey, I found that the project management track looked like the right fit for me. I watched tutorials on how to use Microsoft Projects, I watched webinars on project management tips on the company’s intranet, and got a training session from my supervisor on managing project financials. You could always learn on the job, but I like giving myself a healthy head start.
Try it on for size. Once you have some knowledge and tools under your belt, it’s time to give it a try. Tell your plans to your supervisor, your mentor, and whoever else can help you get where you need to go. I told my supervisor that I was interested in pursuing this career path and asked to be placed as an assistant project manager on a project. Now I’m working as an assistant project manager on a big project with lots of moving parts, learning on the job, and getting a foot in the door for future opportunities.
Change your mind. With all this said, at the end of the day, you’re free to change your mind. It’s a good idea to make the plan in order to ensure you’re moving forward in your career. But just because you make a plan, doesn’t mean that your plans won’t change in the future. You could find out you actually hate the job for an unforeseen reason and decide to reroute. You could get really inspired to explore alternate opportunities. You can decide you want to create your own hybrid mix and match of responsibilities and tasks. Wherever you end up going in your career or however many times you change directions, I hope that you find something that makes you happy.