Four Vague Ideas about Careers That People Are Very Much Into

I meet people from all over the world. And I found there are 4 ideas about careers that people are interested in talking about. I also found these are vague ideas that people actually don’t know what they are talking about when they talk about them.

Career Path

I see many students ask: what’s the career path look like in your firm? This is not a good question, for two reasons:

(1) there is no career path. As Steve Jobs said, you cannot connect dots forward; you can only connect dots backward. Ask other people what your future look like is a dumb question

(2) the person either tells you you’re on your own once you get in, or tells you your career path looks great. In both cases, it’s not helpful.

A predictable future sounds great because it gives people a sense of control of their life. It creates goals and signifies progress. While interviewing the firm, you see a splendid future ahead of you. Isn’t that great?

But only organizations that have rigid structures have so called career path, such as military, professional firms. They have predictable career path simply because their business change so little, which I don’t think is a good thing in today’s business world.

The question you should ask is, going forward, what trail you want to blaze? What career you want to create for yourself? Logically, if other people can set a career path for you, you can create your own.

Innovative / Fast Paced / Entrepreneurial

These are three words you often hear during a company presentation or when you ask what kind of culture your company has, or you often say when you’re asked why you choose our company. It turns out that most companies and most people are not innovative and entrepreneurial, and they don’t like fast paced environment.

But, these are great words. Think of this, no matter who you are, job seekers or employers, what would you say? Would you say”our company is great! we’re not innovative, we move slow to make sure everything is right, and we’re not entrepreneurial because that causes a lot of chaos inside company” Of course you would say your company is very innovative. I like the fast paced environment and entrepreneurial spirit.

When you hear these words, just ignore them. You won’t get the answer by directing asking whether they are / they like fact paced, entrepreneurial environment. You need to get answers indirectly. For job seekers, one method is to observe how the company treats failed projects. Do they start another initiative quickly or not? do they move people from the failed project to other new projects or lay them off? Do employees’s performance evaluation be affected? If a project failed, and people who work on it transit to other new projects, you can say this company encourages entrepreneurial initiatives. If projects failed and people get laid off, no matter what you say, people won’t believe you second time. Obviously, they don’t want to entrepreneurial to lose their jobs.

For employers, if you hear these words from job seekers, just ask them what’s the boldest move they’ve ever made in their work or life.

Own the Business / Strategy

I don’t believe this. Period. Many MBAs out of school want to work on strategies, M&As, or want to own the business. It’s great ambitions. But the truth is, you won’t be able to do that early in your career. Unless you are the CEO or company founders, no one( investors, your peers, board of directors) would have faith in you and put the fate of company/ business in your hands. Let’s just be honest, if you own the strategy or business, what does your boss own? If a company offers you — a fresh graduate — a job that allows you to own a business or own strategy, it’s probably not a good career choice.

More likely, you will be part of a team, or part of team of team, to (1)help do analysis that will form strategies, (2) do due diligence to help a M&A project, (3) own a feature or a few features that contribute to the overall product / business success.

That’s why I don’t suggest MBA choosing management consulting or corporate development(M&A) careers right out of school. What do you consult for? You haven’t been managing anything. Choose positions that can give you hands-on projects, or experience. The more solid results you can deliver, the sooner you will be owning strategies or business.

Every Day Is Different.

This one is on the top of my list of career “BS”. I remember when I was back in school, I talked to a recruiter and also a school alum from a big pharmaceutical company. I asked him what does it feel like working there. He spoke about some daily activities and ended up with “it’s a lot of fun. every day is a different day”. He said that in an easy and charming way, so I felt I bought that at the time. Later on I heard this “every day is different” saying many times and I wonder, what does it really mean? More than that, why you want every day to be different? what’s benefit of that?

I tend to believe that people who say this haven’t really thought through. If they mean there is always challenges to solve, always problems to solve on the job, they can just say it directly. If they mean they got lots of ad-hoc requests on a daily base, then saying every day is different is a nice way to put it. So if someone tells you “every day is different”, ask him/her to describe his or her day in detail. what kind of work they do from 8am to 8pm, then find out how much control they have on their agenda. If they drive their agenda to solve problems, then it’s good your every day is different. If their agenda is controlled by other people( they spend most time responding to request), then it’s bad your every day is different. You just have no focus.

What You Should Look For Instead?

Instead of asking for career path, you should look for products you want to work on in the new few year. Look for something that you want to invest your time; something you ‘re proud to tell your friends about.

Instead of looking for innovative/entrepreneurial, you should look for recent initiatives and what happened to those initiatives. You should look for how they make decision during projects.

Instead of looking for jobs that owns business or strategy, you should look for jobs that have clear measurement for success. Ask: how do you measure success of this position.

Instead of looking for an environment where every day is different, you should look for environment where each day counts. You should look for places that can constantly give you challenges.

Finally, if a job place doesn’t offer these things. You can create them. Be the change agent. Don’t sit there and wait a good environment will come.