There are many people I’ve had the privilege to receive advice and mentorship from. Both formally and informally, I have learned from folks older and more experienced as well as younger and wiser. I try and return this favour to others when I can. This article shares the best of career advice that’s been given to me, so far, and some of my personal experiences. I readers find this helpful.
Who are you?
Often I’m interacting with folks who are in the early stages of their careers and who are looking to get into sustainability. They, like me, care about the environment, nature, the progress of humanity. Many are wondering how can they make their mark on the world. Emotion states are mixed between ambitious, passionate, curious, tentative, overwhelmed. But all of them are trying to figure out what career path to go down.
Firstly, what are you interested in and why? Is it the social mission that draws you in, technical challenges, prestige? Do you know what you hold most important? Are you conscious of your personal values and what you hope reflects in your work?
The straightforward career path is a dying breed. Yes, they still exist and hold importance in society. But more and more pathways are becoming zig-zagged as technology and human innovation grows exponentially. As the world’s problems balloon beyond our previous imagination limits. Think about the ‘new’ jobs you hear of today, and if they even existed 10 years ago. In 10 more years, there will be that many more newly created career paths.
What good is university?
To the adults of my youth, university was an opportunity to better yourself. To learn valuable academic lessons that you could then apply to your career. Your one career you picked in your early twenties that progressively became more advanced through the rest of your working life until retirement. If you could afford it, university was a no-brainer. Even I was given adequate space to make my own decisions, there was significant societal pressures I felt to take the path I did.
I think I bettered myself in university, but in a more of a roundabout way. There were a lot of lessons learned in the classroom, but I can say wholeheartedly that very few of them have been applied in any of my varied work experiences.
Social positives
One of the biggest, most impactful parts of university for me, was the social aspect. I loved the four years I spent completing my engineering undergraduate degree at Queen’s University. Suddenly, I was surrounded by people I felt a kinship with. Who thought in numbers and equations, like I did. People who could be both a ‘nerd’ and a ‘jock’ at the same time. I made more friends than ever before. The shell I had built up as a child fell completely away as I explored early adulthood, living away from home.
Problem solving
University gave me the opportunity to face real-world problems, but in a safe and somewhat controlled setting. There were countless professors, student leaders, and peers to look out for me and help me when an experiment didn’t go well. Like the time I tried (and failed) to deliver a presentation on 2 hours of sleep and a Tim Horton’s double double.
Developing problems solving skills, is the probably the single most useful ability I applied early on in my career. And I use the same problem solving skills daily now.
Developing team dynamics
Taking part of several teams, clubs, and student organizations let me continue to develop my teamwork skills. In engineering school, everything is a group project. We were encouraged to join labs and tutorials, working in groups to come up with the right answers. This was all good practice for going into the real world. Where you’re rarely working on something beginning to end on your own. Just like in the real world, you don’t always like your teammates, but your final outcome depends on them. Teamwork continues to be a huge aspect of every job I have.
I didn’t learn how to be an engineer in university. University gave me a transitionary period between being a child and being an adult. To figure out how to feed myself and exercise and contribute to society, in slow and methodical baby-steps. I learned how to learn, to work as a team in professional settings, and how to balance cognitive decision-making with lack of sleep. While these skills could have been learned elsewhere, I am eternally grateful to have had the opportunity to develop them throughout my undergraduate years.
Does your first job matter?
The world is moving fast. Things will change faster now and in the near future than at any other point in human existence. Jobs are no exception. I remember some sage wisdom a career counsellor once gave me. “Whatever career path you start down, know you’ll change your mind at least 3 times.” I’m now on my 4th different trajectory since leaving university, and every change has been for the best.
Whether your first job is something completely different than what your career ends up being, or it’s the start of a long and fulfilling career path, how much does it really matter? Every experience, paid or not, is just that. Experience.
Your first job is likely to introduce you to professional curtesy. Customers. Bosses. The exchange of currency for goods and services. You may encounter workplace politics for the first time. Perhaps it’ll be the first time you have to work with someone, and get along, that you really don’t like. Any experience can be learned from, good or bad, and used to be better at your next career challenge.
You don’t need to love your first job
When discussing career paths, I always advise to pay attention to the work you’re doing. What do you like about your work? What do you not like about it?
Try and steer towards the things you like, and away from those things you don’t. It won’t ever be perfect. It’s called “work” for a reason. You’ll always have aspects of your work you don’t want to or like to do, but you’ll persevere. What you can do, is be aware of those aspects you dislike, and try to do them less often or steer away from them completely if possible.
Hate travelling for work? don’t do jobs where travel is a requirement. Love travelling for work, but it’s not part of your role? look for and ask for opportunities to travel, like helping out with a field project or a conference. Sometimes you’ll have to do the thing you don’t like, but if you’re aware of that – you can work your way to doing them less and less.
How do I get opportunities?
One of the best pieces of advice given to me in my early twenties, was: “be open to the weird stuff.” A friend’s dad once gave me that advice as I pondered what to do with my engineering degree. He said he didn’t ever imagine himself doing the jobs he did. The projects he’d worked on and positions he’d take weren’t part of some grand plan. If you looked at it from the outside, they seemed extremely random, but each made sense at the time.
He told me he always wanted to be the person thought of when a new, likely unconventional and potentially strange, job came up. Early in his career, he’d volunteer for everything and anything. Eventually, he built up a reputation for reliably delivering on ‘weird’, random work. Which made him top of mind when people would consider, ‘who should I ask to do this job?’ or ‘who could do that?’.
I took that advice to heart, and it’s taken me on adventures. To different countries, all over the BC wilderness, and has landed me working for eccentric founders bordering between genius and crazy attempting to solve climate change.
Getting outside your comfort zone
Putting my hand up for strange things has given me great experiences, as well as helped me figure out things I really don’t like to do. Volunteering for something new wasn’t a big stretch outside of my comfort zone. What has, and remains, to be challenging for me, is asking for work.
On my first day as a full-time engineer-in-training, I remember one of my colleagues giving me all sorts of advice on how to succeed (and survive) the job. One thing I remember distinctly learning from him, was that he encouraged me to ask for work. I had experienced in my summer work terms that if you wanted to work on progressively more interesting (and more challenging) pieces of work, you had two options. (1) Plod along until someone notices you doing a good job and that there might be potential to do more. And (2) talk to the people managing the work.
I had to work up the courage to ‘bother’ the senior engineers or project managers, ask them if they had anything I could help them with. Over time, I’d prove myself useful and capable, so they would start asking me to pick up stuff too.
Building up this nerve to ask for work as a junior EIT, is actually pretty similar to what I’m doing now as an independent contractor. I reach out to people, some of whom I know, and some who I don’t really know. I give a little intro of myself, and ask if there’s anything I can help with. All I’m looking for is an opportunity to take a little bit off their plate, and in return I’m gaining experience and the hope at a future opportunity to work with them. If I can help 20 people with something small, and one of them eventually turns into a customer, I’m thrilled!
Reflecting on what’s important to you
I find the ikigai philosophy of finding fulfillment, a great reference for achieving job satisfaction. It’s difficult to achieve the middle, and unrealistic to be there all the time. However, you can pay attention to which of the four quadrants are most and least important to you at any given point in your career. Priorities changes as you change, and you can use this diagram as a touchstone, to check in with yourself on what matters most in a given period of your life.
My brother is a great example of someone who didn’t thrive inside the university box of academia. He didn’t fit the mold of the university environment. It was too confined, too constraining. He needed to be free of any structure and figure out his path through hardship he created and experienced rawly on his own. He dreamed of starting a fashion empire. Once he started out on that path, there were many bumps and blockages.
I remember the day we were sitting in our parent’s backyard. He said to me, “there comes a time when you have to decide whether to pursue your passion. The creative side. The fun stuff. Or get down to business, in hopes that one day you’re successful enough to enjoy both.” For him, it was deciding whether to be “an artist” or a “businessman”. He knew he had to put aside what he enjoyed doing, for a time. Maybe forever. But he made the decision knowingly and it’s paid off.
Don’t forget about your energy level
I fixated on liking and disliking what I was doing for so long, I didn’t pay attention to how the work made me feel after. Ignoring the importance of energizing work. Does what you’re doing give you energy or take energy away? Energy can be viewed as a 3D component on this diagram. If it gives you energy, you’ll be able to do that job for longer or to do other things more readily. Such as having energy after work for things you actually want to be doing. If it takes energy away, no matter how much you love doing it, then that’s about all you might be doing in a given day.
It’s not what you know, it’s who you know
I’m often asked how to navigate the all too common ‘entry-level job needs 2+ years experience in the role’ conundrum. How are you supposed to get experience when you don’t have any, and all entry-level jobs require having experience? It‘s a cycle of nonsense. I used to hate this while applying for jobs. So much, that once I became a hiring manager, I worked with the other managers to strike the years requirement from the company’s job postings.
Some companies are adopting more inclusive recruitment practices. Such as putting the salary range on job postings; keeping must-have bullet points to 5 or less and nice-to-haves capped at 3. But I do see a lot of job applications with paragraphs of unnecessary words. Keep in mind, for most job ads, they don’t expect you to be a master every requirement on the ad. I hope hiring and recruiting practices continue to improve. Emphasizing ‘can they do the job’ rather than ‘have they done the job’.
Build your network
Testing for potential is hard
But, testing candidates for potential is difficult. So even when companies put bias-limiting hiring processes in place, they typically fall back on referrals. Someone you trust vouching for someone else, is lower risk than making a ‘gut’ decision.
Job experience in a specific field, and region, grows your professional network as much as it grows your skillset. These loosely linked references and contacts, especially now in the days of LinkedIn and Google searches, add to a person’s credibility. Rightly or wrongly. It also allows for recruiters and hiring managers to lean on data points, other than their interview process, to vet a candidate.
A colleague of mine was looking to fill a marketing role. Reading the job description, it seemed like a junior level position, but with the opportunity to grow quickly with a small organization. I had just spoken to a woman who could have been a great fit. But my colleague wanted reassurance I had worked with her before and vetted her myself. Which I hadn’t. My attitude was “interview her, and see how she does.” But he had already formed a bias, he had “interacted with her once, briefly, and wasn’t impressed” so he didn’t want to spend more time on them unless someone gave him good reason to.
Be gracious
But how to build your network? You may think.
Ask questions. Meet people. Try to give just as much as you take.
I know there are many cultural differences, and I’m just as biased as the next person. I strongly encourage people to be outwardly appreciative. I’ve never been annoyed at someone for being ‘too thankful’ or ‘too nice’ in a mentoring opportunity. But I’ve definitely felt disinclined to help someone when I couldn’t feel their appreciation or effort. This may be just me, but when I get the impression someone is looking for a handout, it’s a huge turn-off. I’d much rather connect, chat, and develop a bit of rapport first. Then ask me if I can help you.
Be helpful
But I have nothing to give, you may think. You are more useful than you think you are. If you truly have nothing to offer, you may need to rethink the jobs you’re going after. Consider, genuinely, asking if there’s anything you can do to help the person you’re hoping to connect with.
During 2020, I went through a reclusive time, like a lot of people. I stopped networking near the end of the year, and wasn’t in the mood to provide mentorship outside of my direct reports. But early in 2021, one of my colleagues emphatically asked if I’d please please please agree to a call with a classmate of hers. I was extremely reluctant. At the same time a family friend asked me to do the same for her friend’s daughter. I left the messages in my inbox for a few days, mulling over how to reject them. Eventually, I agreed to meet with both young ladies. And I am so glad I did. They couldn’t have been more different from each other, but they renewed a bit of hope in me for the future of the world after a long year of despair.
One of them surprised me by her insistence of doing something to help me. At first, I wasn’t sure if she wanted something from me. But upon reflecting, I realized how little that mattered. She seemed to genuinely want to help, with anything. This behaviour helped develop trust, and when relevant opportunities come up I now have her in mind.
Attend meetups, conferences, and webinars
When you’re early on in your career, it’s the best time to put yourself out there professionally. People will be much more likely to support you, give you their time, and advice, if you’re in school or recently starting out in the workforce.
Industry events are a great way to connect with like-minded individuals, meet potential future employers, meet and learn from peers. These learning opportunities give you something interesting to talk about in your future networking discussions and interviews. People are expecting inexperienced folks to come up to them (or message them, if the interactions are online) asking questions, so it’s low risk to be quizzical.
Always be learning
My personal mantra is to always be learning. There is always more knowledge to obtain and use constructively. If I’m not learning, that means I’m either not looking/hearing, or I’m not challenging myself enough. Being open to learning, means no matter what level of experience you attain, you can always be a student. There’s always someone who knows more than you. And there’s always a way of doing things you won’t think of, but someone else will or has already.
It’s the little things that people will remember. Like “Jack always takes on the weird stuff”, or “Meg’s always keen to help”, or “Sue gives great advice”, or “Mike gives great feedback”. Small but meaningful things like these help you build your network and reputation, leveraging both to keep growing throughout your career.