My top 3 career lessons
Sharing 3 mantras that my career journey has taught me:
Don’t say anything to the people who tell you something can’t be done. Let your success be the answer.
Your first job doesn’t dictate your entire career. You can always pivot.
You are not confused if you aren’t clear on your ideal role. You are just curious :-)
Let me tell you the story behind each one.
Story 1
I came to Canada to pursue my Master’s directly after my Bachelor’s in Engineering. I had 0 work experience. Just a sales & customer success internship that I did in my final semester. A lot of people told me it will be very difficult for me to get a job in Canada after graduation. But staying positive is my superpower! I kept quiet and believed in myself.
To make matters worse, I graduated amidst the COVID pandemic. I thought that people who had experience will get a job faster than I would, so I am not going to compare myself with them. To my surprise, the majority of the batch got a job later than I did. So, you don’t need to convince anyone of anything. Your success will do the job 😉.
Story 2
I was so happy when I got my first job! It was a billion $ pharma company. I had a fancy title: Project Leader. It looked great on paper! In fact in real life too, but only for some time. I realized I am not even remotely interested in the pharma industry, I can’t see the impact of my work and I can’t just make my work revolve around Excel spreadsheets and PPTs.
When I pictured my career 5 years down the road, I didn’t like the path it led to. So, I decided to make a change. I started applying for Marketing roles and got a government role with the Ontario Govt. in Social Media! I loved the people and the culture there. You can get the idea how much I liked working there that I literally cried while announcing my resignation. But it had to be done as I wanted to devote all my time and energy to my venture and do high impact work of changing immigrants’ lives by coaching them to get their dream job and the salary they deserve.
If you don’t like what you are doing, you can always make a career change. And you should! Life is precious, you don’t want to waste it doing what you don’t like!
Story 3
I used to beat myself up for not having career clarity in life. I was so confused between choosing Medical and Non-Medical. I chose Non-Medical as I loved Maths.
Next, I was so confused about what to do next after +2. I did Engineering because that seemed like the best option in terms of ROI.
In my 3rd year, I started getting serious about applying to foreign universities. Although I didn’t like Engineering and was gravitating towards Business, I had this thought of going for Master’s in Engineering just to justify 4 years I spent doing that. But thank God, I had some sense and decided to go for Business! I chose Master’s of Management, a general degree so that I could get to explore all the business subjects and hoped that would give me clarity of the role I wanted to pursue. Lol, how foolish I was to think theory could teach me about my interests!
I was sharing my career story with my wise ex-Manager and told her how confused I had been all throughout my career, until that point. She completely changed my perspective when she said I don’t think you were confused, you were just curious!
If you’re curious, don’t take the pressure that you need to get the answer right away. Once you try more and more things, you will get to know yourself better and find your interests along the way.
Keep blooming,
Bani