How I Carved Out My Own Career Path at CBC
The Digital Strategy & Product department of CBC is committed to providing their people with the support they need to build their development plans to foster career growth and progression. By taking on exciting new roles, individuals are able to experience and learn other aspects of the business, broaden their perspectives, and acquire new skills and competencies. The series Jumping Across Career Streams at CBC invites people who have taken the courageous leap to tell the story of their journey, highlighting the support they received and opportunities discovered along the way.
Three years ago, if you had asked me what I wanted to do with my career, I wouldn’t have been able to give you a straight answer. The only thing I was certain of, was that I wanted to learn and develop as much knowledge and as many skills as I possibly could.
I began my career at CBC as a Senior Machine Intelligence Developer. I worked with a newly formed team, on a brand new product and I had to learn a new tech stack. Needless to say, I had my work cut out for me. However, as a naturally curious person, I wasn’t okay with only doing what was required of me without understanding the overall picture. I wanted to learn everything I could about CBC and how it functioned as an organization. So I started by reading through the strategic plan and tried to understand how all of the Digital Strategy & Product teams fit into this bigger picture. At that time, there was no document I could reference that detailed each person’s role and their responsibilities, so I had to find a way to figure it out myself.
I took the initiative to set up several casual meetings with various people from different teams; people whose roles ranged from Senior Manager, Product Manager and Agile Team Lead. Through these conversations, my goal was to figure out what team(s) each of these roles work with, which products those teams work on, what cross team collaboration makes it all possible, and how their roles play a part in it all. This is when I realized that the lines between these three roles were blurred and that my next step would be to figure out what makes each one different from the next.
Through further conversations I set up with other colleagues, I learned about secondments. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this term, a secondment is a temporary assignment to a different role for a specific duration of time. Once that time is up, one of two things can happen:
- Option 1: You go back to your original position prior to the secondment.
- Option 2: The temporary role becomes permanent if there is a business need. The manager of that role thinks you are qualified and offers you the position.
Basically, if you are unsure of what career path to take, secondments allow you to have a refund policy on a career move. If you aren’t happy with the responsibilities of your new role, you would still have the option of going back to your original position. The best thing about this is that even if the new role didn’t become permanent, you were able still to experience what the role is like hands-on and you were still able to learn or strengthen different skills which could potentially help you get that role in the future.
Personally, I love the idea of secondments, but that’s speaking from a biased perspective. Over the past 3 years at CBC, I have taken on two secondments: One as an Agile Team Lead (ATL) and the other as a Product Owner (PO).
The first secondment as an ATL allowed me to work with different teams and products from a people-focused perspective. I loved that the role broadened my awareness of how the department functioned. As a bonus, having a developer background helped me connect the dots between different teams and products. This resulted in allowing me to find new paths to collaborate and innovate. That’s when I realized my passion for product strategy.
As a developer, one of the aspects I enjoyed about the role was thinking about requirements, thinking of several ways to satisfy the requirements and poking holes in those ideas to finally come up with the best solution. There are so many similarities when thinking about new products or features that you want to create.
When a secondment role for a PO opened up with the CMS team, responsible for the technology used for creating and housing the content (text, images, and links to media) that is displayed on the site and apps, whom I previously worked with as an ATL, I was hesitant about taking the opportunity. This role was new and there were not many PO roles in the department. I just wasn’t sure if it would be the right fit for me or if I would be the right fit for the role. However, after reminding myself of the “return policy”, I decided to take the leap and I’m so happy that I did. This role allowed me to have more opportunities to provide input into the team’s product strategy.
Throughout my career, I have always been transparent with my managers and colleagues about what my goals were. This was a key part of my journey. If I wasn’t open about what I was doing, then I wouldn’t have learned about secondments or been given a heads up when secondments became available. This transparency also provided me with so many opportunities to take on certain responsibilities that didn’t necessarily fit into my current role.
The great thing about CBC is that they promote professional growth and offer many resources to assist you in developing skills that can be transferable to many roles. So if I had to give you one piece of advice, it would be to put yourself out there and not let fear keep you stagnant. Be assertive and take advantage of every opportunity available. You’ll only ever get better by taking chances.
To join our teams at CBC, check out our current openings here.
