How Should Grads Plan Their Career?
The question of “what to do for a living” is one you’ll be asked most as a grad, and it’s incredibly difficult to answer.
Do you follow your field of study? What about skills? Should you pursue them instead?
It all depends. There are two certainties in this equation. You’ll change, and so will the world.
For all we know, your industry of choice may cease to exist in 20 years, and who’s to say you’ll even be interested in it in 5?
How the hell do you plan for that?
Well, as Eisenhower once said, “Plans are useless but planning is essential.”
Whatever ‘plan’ you come up with will likely change, but you’ll still benefit from having it.
And so begs the question...
How the fuck do I decide what to do with my career?
Here’s our two cents.
Limit Your Options
A common piece of advice is to “keep your options open."
It makes sense. For some, simply getting a job and working to build as much transferable career capital is a sound decision. This is your typical graduate.
On paper, they can then use that experience to pursue more interesting opportunities down the road.
However, reality often differs.
What tends to happen is:
They spend far too long working in a job, often their first, that they know they don’t want to do long term and isn’t relevant to their long term goals.
They stop committing and pursue a middle-of-the-road job that gives them some flexibility, rather than going for something that would give them outstanding career capital and ultimately better options in the future.
They avoid having to think hard about what’s best for them.
Have a Long-term Vision
Although the future is uncertain, it still helps to have an idea of where you want to end up. Let’s call this your ‘long-term vision.”
This should be broad enough that it won’t constantly change but narrow enough to provide some direction.
Think about 1-5 roles or types of work you’d like to aim towards.
These should be defined by a broadly impactful skillset, such as organisation builder, communicator, or writer.
Remember, this isn’t where you’re going to end up. Rather, it’s to help you spot opportunities and guide career exploration.
Work Backwards
Consider your long-term vision, or in other words, where you’d like to end up and identify the most direct routes to get there.
There are a few ways to do this.
Talk to people. Ask people in the field how someone with your background can advance quickly. Maybe it’s a family friend. Perhaps your university tutor used to work in the field. Get talking.
Think about what types of career capital will be most important. What are the building block skills and experiences you’d need to succeed?
Look for examples of people who have advanced unusually quickly and figure out how they did it.
Work Forwards
Most great careers involve working forward — being alert to the opportunities in front of you, following your nose, and going with what’s working, even if you aren’t sure where it’ll lead.
Why?
Because career success is inherently unpredictable. It’s a fallacy to turn down a great opportunity because you’re convinced a better or more relevant one will present itself.
Take the time to consider the opportunities that may be hiding under your nose. There’s a lot more out there than what’s posted on Linkedin.
Consider:
Ask your friends or colleagues working on interesting problems what opportunities they know about. The best opportunities are usually found through people you know.
Are there any opportunities, areas to learn about, side projects, or people you feel especially excited about right now?
Is there anything you’re doing right now that’s going better than expected? Could you spend more of your time on that?
Backup: The A/B/Z Plan
Sometimes, shit hits the fan, and there’s nothing you can do about it.
That’s a lie. There is.
Insert the A/B/Z plan, developed by LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman for this very scenario. It looks like this.
Plan A: Perfect world
This is your best guess at the route you’d most like to pursue.
This could be a particular vision you’re going to bet on, and the next step that would imply.
Your plan A could also be to build valuable career capital (learn people management, get a degree/qualification in statistics), and then reevaluate your plan later.
Plan B: Nearby alternatives
These are promising alternatives you could switch to if your Plan A doesn’t work out.
Ask yourself:
What are the most likely ways your Plan A doesn’t work out? If that happens, what will you do?
What other good options are there? List any promising nearby alternatives to Plan A, which may be other promising longer-term paths or different entry routes to the same paths.
Then, come up with two or three alternatives.
Plan Z: Temporary fallback
This is your temporary fallback if everything crumbles.
How will you pay the bills and get back on your feet?
Having a Plan Z can not only help you avoid unacceptable personal outcomes, but it can also help you get more comfortable with taking risks — knowing you’ll ultimately be OK makes it easier to be ambitious.
Plan Z includes sleeping on a friend’s sofa, living off savings, going back to your old job, moving back in with your family, or taking a job you find relatively undemanding.
There you go. Cya.