How to know what you want from your career?

If you’re anything like me, you might have 0 or minimal idea about what you want to do with your career. The thing is, it’s the same for a lot of people, it’s just that you and I are very willing to admit that to ourselves, and others. How do you know what you want from your career? I have been working for 3.5 years in my full-time adult job, and I have experienced a clarity moment.

Background

When I was in year 10 (~14/15 years old), a career advisor came to my school and said ‘If you don’t know what to do, do a STEM degree. They open so many doors for you and give you options.’ Obviously, this was back when getting a degree was still the normal thing to shove down children’s throats. But I carried that sentence all the way to my A-levels. I experienced disappointing my parents by getting rejected by med-school with my average brain. My parents only knew the university way, so I had to find a course, and that sentence echoed in my head. That’s how I landed in Chemistry.

Fast-forward the degree, and I am in my first job, and I am surrounded by different STEM backgrounds, most of which were chemists. I thought I had found my people. And then they gave me the work that they do, and I was disappointed. I looked around and everyone had an gleam in their eyes, that suggested they enjoyed it. They saw value in the work they did, and knew what it meant to them. And I felt like ‘Oh, is this it? Is this what my degree was for? Is this what I wanted for my career?’

What do you know about what you want, right now?

23-year-old me would have answered ‘nothing’. I really thought that if you didn’t know what you wanted, then you don’t know anything at all. But that’ s not true. Even though I didn’t enjoy the work, I was gaining work experience. And even though I didn’t know what I wanted, I did know what I didn’t want. And that was better than knowing nothing.

I didn’t like how the premise of my role was to read reports and maintain the knowledge for use sometime in the future. That part in the future, still hasn’t arrived yet. So, I just know things and have nowhere to apply it. I also don’t have anything else in my role other than taking in information on a specific subject. It’s pretty dull.

How do you find out what you want from your career?

Experiment. You don’t know what you don’t know, so why would you limit yourself, if you don’t know what you will like. Obviously, I like chemistry and don’t like engineering, so I wouldn’t experiment in an engineering role. But I can apply my chemistry background to something else. The company I work for, hires various backgrounds and applies them differently depending on the team. So, there are areas that hire chemists and do different work to what I have been doing this whole time. So, I would go experiment with them.

Take a 6-month development opportunity/secondment, to get some experience somewhere else. Take a course outside of work. Get a mentor in the area of work and get support that way. Even though people might make it seem like it’s wrong, there is nothing better you can do for yourself than giving yourself the chance to experience clarity on what you want to do. And it’s ok if you go somewhere and it doesn’t work for you. Just because the team is full of chemists, it does not mean I will fit right in. We may all be chemists, but we are still individuals and compatibility in a role is just as important as the value you can bring to it.

Reflect on what you want

The mid-year and yearly performance reviews we do are a pain. But they are a great way to get you to reflect. If you don’t give time to think about what has happened, how are you going to improve the clarity of today, to support your future?

There are 4 things you need to do:

1. Identify what you liked and didn’t like.
2. Evaluate why you did and didn’t like them.
3. Plan your next steps and think about whether where you are can serve you.
4. Take action.

When it comes to step 4, this can be done in several ways. Write down those goals and steps. Have the discussions with people to get the correct support. Mentoring/coaching or changing the job all together. Whatever you choose to do, it should be something you find enjoyable and worthwhile. Because 40, 50, even 60 years of working is a long time. Unless you absolutely love where you are, you will reach a point where you will look back on the time you have worked. And do you think you would be happy to know that you stayed in that same team/role/industry, because you didn’t try to find what you wanted from your career?

TL;DR

• That was pretty deep, but I hope you gets you thinking. Because the clarity I have recently been experiencing has helped me feel better about my next steps
• Knowing what you don’t want, is just as good as knowing what you do want.
• Compatibility in a role is just as important as the value you can bring to it.
• How to reflect:

1. Identify what you liked and didn’t like.
2. Evaluate why you did and didn’t like them.
3. Plan your next steps and think about whether where you are can serve you.
4. Take action.