The Most Important Project of Your Career

I knew one thing for certain when I started college, and that was that I had no idea what I actually wanted to do with my career. The omnipresent options in books and TV shows - becoming a doctor or a teacher or a lawyer or a firefighter - didn’t appeal to me. There wasn’t something that I dreamed of being as a kid that fueled my ambitions. How can you pick a direction when you don’t know where you want to go? 

Submitted for the consideration of the Midday Society:

A Guide to Developing Your Own Career Roadmap 

To help define a path for myself, I started paying attention to what caught and held my attention. And when I encountered something that piqued my interest, I started asking questions and seeking answers. For me, the  questions that started my career were, “wait she works where? Do they need an intern?” and then me following up regularly with “hi again, are there any internship opportunities, yet?” to my contact. I saw and chased opportunities that led me to the rad people of the video game industry. 

A career is a lifelong project. Checking in on progress periodically helps us understand how a project is going. What we learn along the way may change our direction or help us realize we need to expand or focus our ambition. Being honest about what we see and about what we want is crucial to creating informed next steps.

Whether you’re established in your career or you’re just starting out, here are some ways to visualize your path forward.

• Pay attention to your gauges
  • Just like in a car - how’s your fuel? Are you running hot? Does it seem like you’ve put more miles in than you expected?
  • Listen to your gut and really consider if you are where you want to be
• If you don’t know your destination, think about your next stop
  • Sometimes it’s easy to get caught up singing along to the radio, you may not realize you missed a great place to exit
  • Set a quarterly meeting for yourself, or for you and your mentor, to spend time considering the next step or two in your career 
    • If you’re happy where you are, is there anything you want to get better at?
    • If you want to continue to grow in this role, what do you need to do to move ahead two roles?
      • Aiming further than the next role can help you set yourself up for success longer term
    • If you want to change roles, what do you need to do to make that possible?
      • Even if that’s just update my resume, you now have an action you can take
• Consider what view you want 
  • Someone once asked me how I wanted to spend my days -  I had never considered this as part of what could shape my path
    • She was a traveling nurse and her answer was - on her feet, helping people, with a chance to move and live in new places frequently
  • If you’re currently at a desk job, but you really want to be working in a garden consider the best way to make that happen
    • Remote work so you can work in your own garden?
    • Going back to school for botany?
    • Volunteering at your community garden on weekends?
• Know who you want along for the ride
  • The people I’ve met and had a chance to work with along the way have mattered so much to me in my journey
  • Find the team, company, or individuals who make your journey more enjoyable and who will cheer for your progress
• When in doubt, stop and ask for directions
  • Find a mentor or a career coach
    • Your company may have programs available, ask HR
  • Leverage your network to ask for informational interviews
    • See how someone else got there!
  • Talk to your friends about your ambitions