Find Change
Allie Bertrand
Graduating college can be equally as frightening as it is exciting. Up to this point in a student’s life, just about everything has been planned out — grade school, then high school, then college. Afterward, the expectation is to go into the world with no set path. While this can often make things seem intimidating or overwhelming, it is one of the best positions to be in.
Nuno Pedro, vice president of global marketing technology at Calvin Klein, shared his story and the many changes he made throughout his career. These changes ranged from positions in technology, business and marketing, and he shared what inspired him to walk through the many doors he went through to get to where he is today.
Before arriving at Calvin Klein, Pedro grew up in Portugal and attended college there. Similar to many students, he struggled to choose his major and decide on what he wanted to do.
Pedro focused on his interests, and followed his gut to communication engineering. Not knowing and trusting himself ended up being a very common theme throughout Pedro’s early career and young adult life.
Pedro said that in his current position, he really doesn’t use much that he learned from his college major, but one thing his education taught him was how to learn.
“I learned a lot of difficult topics that taught me how to learn new things with relative ease,” Pedro said. “If I have to take something away from that degree that has been the key asset that’s added to me as a person, it was really learning how to learn fast and not be afraid to really cover new topics or be confronted with things that I have no idea about.”
It was this skill that allowed Pedro to jump from his first job coding in Java to realizing that he wanted to go into business. He took a job at Enensure merely because he wanted to learn about the business world and have a better understanding of it.
“As long as you’re learning and as long as you feel that you are experiencing something new that’s adding to your experience, everything is fine,” Pedro said. “If you have learned and mastered a given skillset, then those people in the job will ask you to repeat what you have learned before. That’s the point in time when you should think about doing something else.”
From Pedro’s perspective, early career changes and changes in desire are okay and should be followed. In his mind, a student’s first few jobs are not supposed to be the end all be all of their careers, but rather the next few classes they are taking. Jobs are supposed to teach us what we like and dislike, what works for us and what doesn’t. The first few jobs are the last teachers that get us to find where we belong.
Pedro encourages exploration early on in careers. Do not be afraid of being in the wrong place because there is no wrong place. What is most important is taking the time to learn and experiment in order to find out where you really want to end up.
Your main focus should be on finding your true passion within your career. Pedro reminds us that, “if you discover what your passion is, work will not be work. It will be fun. And if it will be fun, then you will be better than others, and that will be recognized.”
