Hello Squiggly Career, Goodbye Corporate Ladder đź‘‹
A growing number of people are embarking on squiggly careers — they just don’t know it yet. As jobs for life become a thing of the past, workers are increasingly moving between roles, industries, and even locations. Making a side-step or re-training in a new profession can reap more benefits than climbing the ladder, and it can be more fulfilling. But what are those benefits, and how do you know if a squiggly career is right for you?
Sarah Ellis and Helen Tupper, co-authors of The Squiggly Career, are on a mission to demystify unconventional career paths. Earlier in the year, we invited Sarah to host a Grow & Tell talk at iTech — on Zoom, of course. She told the story of how the two of them came to launch an award-winning career development company.
Having had success in leadership roles at Barclays and Sainsbury’s, Sarah found herself feeling unfulfilled as she climbed the corporate ladder, rung by rung. Finding the courage to step outside her extensive marketing background wasn’t easy, but when a role in Corporate Social Responsibility came up, it was the perfect chance to pivot.
Knowing what her greatest strengths and values were helped Sarah look past the confines of her comfort zone, and helped her say yes to jobs that would allow her to flourish. Our main takeaways were that squiggly careers require a commitment to learning, understanding how to play to your strengths, and nurturing a healthy network of people.
Sarah’s talk got us thinking about how our Arcs’ careers led them to iTech. We had a chat with Rahul, our Content Marketing Manager, to hear about his squiggly career journey:
“I moved to London in 2000 with dreams of being the next Thierry Henry. However, my love of KFC Crispy Chicken Wings quickly put an end to that!
I’d always had a passion for the media industry — so at college, when I wasn’t downing snakebites and Jägerbombs, I was lucky enough to touch on a few elements of the industry. Being born in Kenya, I was keen to be involved in wildlife documentaries, but after a few small jobs I realised I’d be making the teas for a long time — it just wasn’t for me.
Next I became a labourer for a building firm, then to telesales and then to working in a kiosk at football games on weekends — basically anything I could do to afford a flight to Malia, Magaluf or Zante. But a Champagne lifestyle on a beer budget could only go on for so long. After university I started making cheap websites for local businesses which eventually led me to getting an SEO internship. I decided to leave after six-months and this is where my iTech Media journey began as a Junior SEO.
Through lots of SEO training, I found that I really enjoyed the thrill of getting links and managed to bag some big ones. It opened up the opportunity of trialling a new side of the business… content marketing! This was new to me, but I’d been told that if I didn’t like it, I could come back to SEO. So, I thought YOLO, let’s do it. I gave it a go, did hours of training, started coming up with campaigns… and I loved it!
iTech helped me by not only being patient while I was building a new area of the company, but by spending money on resources to get me there. External companies were brought in to share their expertise and, and on top of that, I was able to use my ÂŁ1,000 training budget to improve my skills at the same time. Now we have a whole Content Marketing team who all have the same amount of passion as I do.
I moved to a new section of the business purely because I had a passion for it, and to this day it’s the thing that gets me hyped. Next I want to build the team even more, have mini teams for each brand and really work on offsite marketing too! So, this is my career — it has been pretty squiggly, but I love what I do, and it’s the reason I’m sat here now writing my story!”
