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Crafting Your Career
You have been building your career since you were 10 years old only you did not know it. When I work with my 5 th grade attending son on his math, we do so to make sure he has an opportunity to attend a higher level class in 6 th grade. When we work on his science project involving Pavlov and our family pet Raman we do so to build on a scientific interest. All that we do is done to craft a career path. The difference is at 11 years old the path is as wide as the beach front in Florida and now we all face narrower and less defined paths to choose. Choose wisely and you will not be making a mistake.
The first element that you must have in your career to craft it properly is a mentor. Choose your mentor wisely. It should be someone that respect and not only someone powerful and influential. A mentor is someone that can give you solid advice on your career. Look at a mentor as a member of your personal Board of Directors. Certainly having him on your team carries some clout but there needs to be substance of input for you to build upon. How many mentors should you have? As many as you can manage. Start with one and go from there.
The second part of your process to crafting your career properly is to have a non-biased assessment of you and your abilities. Know not only what you wish to be when you grow up but also what you are capable of. You might be better in projects than in long term. You might be better in technology than in operations. Use a professional organization to help you with this. Understanding you is paramount to building your career.
The third part of your process is to identify your next possible goals. Don’t identify simply one position that you strive for but rather several. Find out what it takes to fulfill this next step and build away. Use your mentor for this input and use your better understand of who you are. Make your path choices as wide as possible. Identify the correct experiences, education and characteristics of these roles and start to incorporate all of these into you.
The final aspect of this project is document for you. Start a blog or a diary or a journal. Put together your thoughts as you go. When you start to think of the path that your taking versus what you initially desired to take it will help you understand your next move.
Remember the most important aspect of your career is your position now. Do this job poorly and others will be making career decisions for you. As we do our math homework together, I constantly remind my son that I am not trying to make him a Mathematician someday but rather I just want him to have that choice if he someday decides to be one. It also includes all the other choices he might have that come from learning to succeed in school but that is for a lesson another day.
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