Episode 8, Building your Career
The next few episodes will centre around the topics job, work-life balance and financial planning. These topics deserve special attention since we spend a great amount of time with our profession. I am going to start with some thoughts on building your career. No, this is not a “how to be successful in 10 steps” guide. Let me detail what I mean and get started!
You will already have noticed from the previous episodes that I am fan of goals. The reason is that I would feel lost without them, I need orientation in my life. Obviously, I use goals to build my career as well. My plan is to become a sales director by the age of 40. I have not reached this goal yet, but I am doing ok. There are two things that complicate sticking to this goal and I guess I am not the only one facing these hurdles. The first one are hilariously exaggerated expectations on applicants. Did you ever check the “your profile” section on a job description at LinkedIn? In summary, you must have 20+ years of leadership experience across multiple positions, companies, and nations. Of course, you are open to relocate and you enjoy travelling four days a week and working on Saturdays because there is no chance to handle the workload from Monday to Friday. But what really bothers me is the focus on one single product or industry. You want to become a sales director for SaaS? So, you must have done this for your entire career. As if it is not possible to sell software if you have sold cars or any other technical items before. The problem I see is that companies do not want to invest in terms of giving you the time to understand the new product or industry. In my opinion this is a big mistake because you have much broader knowledge when you have worked across a few different industries.
The second thing that might complicate sticking to my goal of becoming a sales director by the age of 40 is a shift in priorities due to having a family and raising kids. Personally, I am not yet in this position. And I know that there are many people out there who pursue their career plans with the same effort they always used to even after they have children. I had an interesting conversation with my brother-in-law who just became father for the first time. He is the prototype of someone who always plans big. Having his own business since he left university, he basically wanted to make a lot of money and retire early- not that this is a bad thing! But he admitted that his daughter made him shift priorities. Nowadays, it is more joyful for him to spend as much time as possible with her instead of solely focusing on his career. If I am being honest, I may be prone to such a shift, too. And again- not that this is a bad thing!
What I wanted to illustrate is that setting career goals is fine. But what happens on the way is your life and this sometimes brings the need to adjust the direction here and there. I think that this is fine as long as you are fine with yourself.
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