Top secret career tip: tell people what you want to achieve
I recently announced a fairly significant change to our team structure. One of our engineers, let’s call him Declan, is going to move to Manila to lead the fast-growing dev team in our office there.
Why did I choose Declan for the role? Well, he’s uniquely qualified for it:
❌ Been with Tanda for less than an year
❌ Hasn’t got a degree (finishes uni in a few months)
❌ Never lead a team before
❌ Team he is going to lead doesn’t exist yet, so there’s no precedent
❌ Never been to Manila
Though he did have a few things going for him:
✅ Recently told me that his career goals are to live & work overseas
✅ I doubt he’ll stuff it up too badly
In my experience growing Tanda, I’ve found so much of people being successful in their own careers comes from being able to articulate what you really want to achieve.
This takes both confidence and competence. Declan needed the confidence to decide what he wanted to achieve, and the confidence to tell that to his boss. Then, he needed the competence to prove that he could do a good job of this and that we should take a punt on him.
Interestingly, Declan didn’t come to me and say “I want you to set up a new dev team in Manila, hire a few people for it, and then send me over there to lead it”. I had already decided to do the first part, but I was scratching my head on what a great leader for the team would look like. So when Declan told me his goals, I had my answer.
I called this post a “top secret career tip” because I’ve noticed that lots of people, particularly in Australia, are reluctant to be really open or direct about their goals. If you can overcome that, I guarantee you’ll have a better and more successful time at work. Keeping them to yourself is a good way to ensure that your job never gets more exciting.
ps. what do I want to achieve? My goal is to create the best product ever.
pps. got something you really want to achieve? We’re hiring. Check out https://www.tanda.co/careers-at-tanda/ or email alex@tanda.co
