Lessons Learned: Starting a Career journey without a Career

This was either you at some point or you right now… You are about to graduate, you are soon going to move from undergraduate and unemployed and you have absolutely no idea what you are going to do with your life now. You are probably studying an engineering course that you chose because you were good at maths and everyone just shoved you into the department. It made sense then but now it doesn’t. It has been five years and you are not sure you know what you want to do with that degree. Expectations are all around you, parents and lecturers are all there just blatantly assuming that you have your life together and are going to land a big job in Shell just because you scraped by and got a First class. Jokes on them…wait...jokes on you too. Convocation is finally here, 5 years of school are over! Yay! but whilst you are excited, you can’t help the memory of future joblessness flashing through your eyes and the dread of certainty working its way up your spine even as you dig into the convocation rice. I felt this dread even though I did a course that people told me will be easy to find a job with. ‘Is it not mass communication, you can work anywhere’, they told me. Alas! It was all a lie. There is good news though. I will have you know that I and some people have been able to successfully navigate this strange reality and are now settled in our different career paths. Congratulations to us…we made it! I am happy for us but for some who are yet to figure things out or those for who this will soon be their reality, sit tight and read this closely. I gained a lot of experience in this and I am happy to share. I started my career journey armed with nothing but a pocket full of random experiences, a degree, no connections, and absolutely no street sense whatsoever. I don’t even know why people trusted me enough to go out looking for a job just because I earned a degree. Why??? I was expected to begin my career journey but I had no idea about what I wanted to do or what I could even do. I can assume that this is the case for a whole lot of graduates and here’s what you need to know…it is fine, it is not the end of the world. You might suffer a little than those who already have their life figured out but the fun thing about not knowing what you want to do is that you are more open to gaining experiences in more fields and exploring more industries than others. The good news is that once you figure things out, you’ll be armed with a wealth of knowledge from all your trial and error. Now here’s where my advice starts The first thing you need to know is that you do not need to have a career path to start a career journey, you just need to start doing something and then figure it all out on the way. My biggest worry was that whilst my mate were working towards a clearly defined goal because they had clearly defined career path, I was doing all kinds of jobs that I was relatively good at and so it felt like I didn’t have a career. After 4 years of wandering however, I can boldly say that it makes sense now…and when I apply for jobs now, I can choose from as many selections as I want or combine them in one and demand a higher pay. The second thing you might need to jot down is, try hard not to panic if you were like me. Instead, sit with yourself and take note of the following things. First, identify what it is you like doing or what you are good at or what you are willing to try at the moment. It doesn’t matter whether or not it applies to yur degree or who you dreamt you will become in future. Find the closest space to your current self and start your career journey from there. For me, I had just completed a very impressive research project for my final defense and so the first career thing I started was working as a research assistant with my supervisor. I know this doesn’t look as glamorous as it sounds but you will ne surprised how far I was able to go by being in that space and how much impact it has on my current career journey. What you will need to do next is to begin a self discovery journey whilst you have a stable job. Find out what you hate about what you are doing currently, what you love about it, what you would change and what you would rather be doing. When you figure this out, it will help guide the skills you would learn, the experiences you would have and how to apply for your next job. I moved from being a research assistant to a teaching assistant as the opportunity came and I learnt a lot about myself. The experiences I gained in this position gave me the opportunity to apply as a social media manager at another company. I can hear you thinking? How did that even connect? Think about it deeply, what does a researcher and teacher have in common with a social media manager: Research, writing, ideation, creating content, monitoring trends, gathering data…and a lot more. Working as a social media manager allowed me to realize that I enjoyed creating content especially visual content and so I applied next to work as a graphics designer and then a design associate as things progressed. Long story short, I now work as a marketing manager and all of these random jobs have come together to make me appear as someone who is well rounded and knows what she is doing. Let me even shock you further, I ammoving from a marketing manager to a UI/UX writer next. Yes, I said it. So for you who is worried that you keep going around different fields, fear not, it will make sense in the end. The final advice is that you remain intentional about your journey whether it is on the same path or across different paths. Take note of every stage you are in and evaluate yourself constantly. What do I hate about this job? What would I rather be doing? And a whole lot more. There is more advice but I’ll keep that for part two. Until next time!

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