How to kick off thinking about your career

We’ve all been through the phase where we grapple with how we want to spend our career, and no one really helps you think through what your options are in a structured way. Below I explain why it’s good practice to start thinking early, and I include some steps you can take to launch your career successfully.

When succeeding in your career, you’re in the driving seat: interesting opportunities will be coming to you and you’ll be more concerned with thinking about how best to use your time, rather than chasing down opportunities to find someone that will hire you.

Making good decisions early on will help you get to that point more quickly and deliver compounding returns later in life. The importance of compounding was popularised in investing (e.g. £10,000 invested in a fund that grows by 8% a year would be worth £21,589 after 10 years, which is good but not mind-blowing. If you left the money in the fund for an additional 30 years and it continued growing at the same pace, it would be worth £217,245; a huge reward for making a smart decision early); similar thinking can also be applied to career decisions.

Here are some of the ways I think about early career planning, that should help get you off to the best possible start:

• Thinking about your career early doesn’t mean you have to decide what you want to do for the rest of your life. You have lots of years to build up expertise, and your very first role is unlikely to be the one you’re most excited by or where your strengths are best utilised. I’d recommend thinking about your first job as one to arm you with lots of valuable skills. Whatever happens, building skills gives you plenty of options when you’re ready to take the next step.
• Research what other people do in the spaces you’re interested in. LinkedIn is a powerful tool for learning about different career paths. When you settle on a space that interests you, find people in the industry on LinkedIn and see what steps they took to get there. You may find a lot of similarities (for example, lots of people that end up with great finance careers start out in accounting at one of the large firms in London).
• Don’t feel limited by the subjects you studied at school or university. A lot of people I speak to feel like they are already wedded to jobs that are linked to their degree. Your time at university is great for teaching you how to learn and be analytical, but it’s rare to hone specific job skills (Medicine is an example of an exception). Often, if you’re applying as a graduate with a degree that’s different to most other applicants, it will help you stand out, e.g. a Journalism student becoming a Product Manager at Facebook, English and History students becoming lawyers at top firms.
• Don’t just rely on advice from parents and friends. Career advice from people close to you can be comforting, but parents may be risk averse and it’s unlikely friends have much more wisdom than you do. As soon as we start our careers, friends take drastically different paths and usually aren’t well positioned to give consistently good advice.
• Seek out good mentors to learn from. Most of the good career advice I’ve had has come from people who have been there and done it before. For my first job out of university, I had the choice between working for an entrepreneurial property developer and an investment bank.
• It was only after speaking to a mentor with many years of experience that I had clarity on the right choice. He advised me that if it didn’t work out with the entrepreneur and we failed two years later, I’d have to start from scratch with a grad scheme. Whereas a stint in banking would give me credibility and keep my options open
• Bear in mind that people often give advice that reflects the choices they made, so it’s always worth considering people’s biases. You can counter this by seeking advice from multiple people with different backgrounds
• If you’re struggling to find good advice, look for people in sectors that interest you on LinkedIn and reach out to them for advice. You’ll be surprised how many people are willing to help! Additionally, advice can often turn into more if the relationship is a good one

This is a brief tour of things you could be thinking about now. If you need more help with planning your career or finding your first job, email me at theo@otta.co

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