Launch Your Career On the Right Rocket Ship 🚀
So you’ve got a great graduate resume filled with academic accomplishments, extra-curricular activities and co-op/internships. You’ve got some ideas of where you want to work but lots of places appeal to you.
Maybe you’re on your second or third job, gathering valuable skillsets in different work environments. The place you’re at now has been getting stale, you’ve stopped learning and feel there’s not much room for growth.
If you’re the former or even the latter, you’ll probably find yourself asking: how do I find the career I want?
Know you’re not the only one. Throughout my own career, I’ve had these feelings and helped others get through their challenging times. When you’re this early in your career I want you to know you don’t have to have all the answers, but let me share some advice with you I’ve learned along the way.
Find a Career, not a Job
A job is a place that's a stopgap. A place where you’re there to collect a paycheck and sometimes utilize skillsets you’ve acquired along the way during school or work. It’s a place that when you wake up, you’re sort of okay with going in but don’t see yourself happy with for the rest of your life (but really, who knows at this point in time what you want to do forever?). It’s a place that is limiting your growth because it does not challenge you.
A career is a place that you’ve committed to. You can see yourself being there for at least 2 years because it’ll take the company up to 6 months to ramp you up, 6 months for you to master your craft and (at most) a year with each other to figure out where you’re going next inside the company. It’s a place that you wake up every single day excited to go to because you’re challenged, have never stopped learning and love the people and growth around you.
Find a Mentor, Keep that Mentor
Go to industry events, read thought leaders blogs, scour LinkedIn companies and profiles and find a mentor in the industry you can respect. Someone you can see being in 5–10 years. Reach out to that person and ask them to have a coffee.
A good leader will always have a roster of mentees in their stable. You’d be surprised to how open some people are to being your mentor. If you can show that you’re someone who is really driven to enter their industry and want advice, a 10 to 15-minute coffee sometimes can go a long way to getting your foot in the door.
Once you’ve started the relationship, it’s important to establish that relationship with a regular cadence. Don’t just meet your mentor when you have problems but set goals and checkpoints to make sure you’re on the path to where you want to be.
Some advice to really engage someone to respond to you for mentorship opportunities:
- Do your research on their company and what their focus is. If you find yourself messaging someone about job opportunities, then you haven’t done your research and searched their job board first.
- Talk about what you want to get out of the mentorship and ask smart questions right off the bat. Think of it as an elevator pitch: if you’re trying to get a sales job, for example, you need to be able to peak their interest quickly as if they were a customer
- Add a personal touch as best you can. Did you meet them at a conference? Do you have some mutual connections? Some examples for myself would be: Did you like my Rick and Morty notebook during my winning presentation with Carter Grant at the Great Canadian Sales Competition? These little things go a long way to show attention to detail and that you’re really targeting finding the right mentor, not just any mentor.
A Culture of Learning and Development is Crucial
You’ve spent the majority of your life in an education system that’s been about curriculums and going from one grade to the next. Find a company that understands this. The most prepared companies will have a well-structured training plan, onboarding for your first 30-60-90 days and ongoing coaching from your manager with regular check-ins. Early in your career, you need as much feedback as you can as you gain good habits and remove bad ones.
Ensure the place you’re going to has the career development you’re looking for. Understand if they’re looking for a body in a spot or looking to invest in you as the potential future of their team. Are you the cog or the engineer?
Questions to ask during your interview to find out if you’ve got a good spot:
- What’s my first couple of weeks look like?
- What’s your methodology for training new employees like myself?
- Do you have examples of people within your career that you’ve helped move into new positions in the company?
- What were some of the things you’ve done for the training and development plan for [company name]?
Look for the rocket ship, get on and don’t ask where it’s going.
Find a place that’s going through extreme growth, or join a startup that’s still/constantly figuring things out. When you’re this early in your career you can take risk within your life that you may not be able to make in the future. Put yourself in an environment that’s going through hyper-growth and you’ll likely find opportunities and doors will open for you if you come in with the right attitude and execute for them.
Once you’re in, everything will seem like a blur in terms of pace, and expectations may be sky high. It might even go from 100 employees to 500 overnight. You’ll know quickly if you’re cut out for it and you’ll adapt stronger than ever. In the end, it will all be worth it when you’re looking back and seeing all the incredible things you’ve done.
Take example of some of the account representatives at Uber who are now launching Uber Eats in Nairobi, Kenya, and Lisbon, Portugal or jumped into Sales Enablement. Maybe you want to get into sales from account management?
If you’re looking for this type of opportunity, Uber Eats is hiring in Toronto!
We pass through this world but once. Few tragedies can be more extensive than the stunting of life, few injustices deeper than the denial of an opportunity to strive or even to hope, by a limit imposed from without, but falsely identified as lying within. — Stephen Jay Gould
Folks, I’ve just presented your first rocket ship invitation.
While you’ll find many more out there with their own bells and whistles — remember to always know your worth. You’ve learned to aim for a career, choose and engage the right mentor, find the perfect environment and are now ready to jump aboard.
Take the first step — you owe it to yourself.
Did you find any of these tips helpful? Have more advice for those seeking a place to call home? Feel free to share your comments below. Love shares as well — the more we help spread the message, the better it’ll be for our talented future leaders.
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