#87: On Learning How to Manage Your Career
How I went from feeling lost as a new employee to learning how to manage my career
Hey Folks,
This week, I launched my newest Podcast The Edge of Work. I’d love it if you would listen to a few episodes and let me know what you think!
Welcome to this week’s edition of The Work in Progress Newsletter. Here is what we have:
Learning How to Manage Your Career
What We’re Watching
Career and Leadership Advice, Manager Edition
⛰ Learning How to Manage Your Career ⛰
I’ve been reflecting on my first job recently, partially because of the work that I do, but also because my experience and story was recently featured in Shana Lebowitz Gaynor’s new book, Don’t Call it Quits: Turn the Job You Have Into The Job You Love. I encourage you to buy the book, or at the least, listen to my interview with Shana, but the summary is that my first few years in the workplace got off to a rocky start mostly because I had zero clue how to intentionally manage my career.
In a culture of high performers, I constantly felt lost and insecure that I was behind and not qualified to be there. After a few so-so to below average performance reviews, I finally got the courage to ask a manager what I was doing wrong, and if she could help me correct not only my performance, but also, how I could structure and push for my own career growth and development.
I was fortunate that she took the time to coach, teach, and guide me on some specific actions and behaviors I could start taking that led to short-term improvement, as well as longer term strategic direction.
After a few months, things started to improve, and my performance reviews got better. Furthermore, since she was my manager, she got to see my work, and she started making some tweaks to the roles I got on the project which allowed me to use strengths and skills that I had. This was a virtuous cycle, as because I was in and got work that I enjoyed, then I started doing great work, and the great work that I did (with her help and with my own sense of ownership of my career) started getting noticed and seen by other people, which then got me more opportunities.
Before long, my friends and peers started coming to me for advice, and I became an informal career development career expert amongst other junior staff, either because they were in a similar situation, or wanted to find out how to plot their own path to career growth. Eventually, during my time in business school I became a career coach where I got to advise students on these same questions and for how to navigate the job search.
This eventually led to me becoming a career coach, keynote speaker and trainer after business school as well as writing a book and being an expert in the career and leadership development space, having given talks, training, and keynotes to thousands of employees on how to grow their careers, and how leaders can develop their people.
I want to go back to the first job and the challenges I faced with figuring out my career. After thousands of conversations with employees of all walks of life about their careers I don’t think my experience is alone, especially for people in their 20s and 30’s which is also why I agreed to share my story with Shana for her book.
Reflecting back, I see the immense privilege and opportunity I had, to figure this out. I’ve literally been talking about work and careers with my family since my first job at 12 years old, I got a college degree from a top institution, and joined one of the top companies to work for which had plenty of resources, and despite all of this, I still felt lost.
Many others never get all (if any) of those advantages, so if it was hard for me, I know it’s hard for others. This doesn't negate the journey that I went on or the hard work that I put in, but rather, speaks to the fact that nobody really teaches you how to manage your career, and unless you’re like me
But trying to reflect back and dig deep, I can point to a few things that I did that I think helped along the way
Found People to Learn From - One thing I realized early on was that other people had figured this out before and so could I. In my looking outward, I came across the work of individuals like Lindsey Pollak, Jenny Blake, and Erica Dhawan. Reading their work gave me the confidence that I was not in fact alone, along with the encouragement to keep going and trying. In a very cool twist of life events, I also feel privileged to say that each of these individuals has both served as an inspiration for my current career path, and has been an informal mentor to me on my journey.
Looked Outward - Along my journey, I also came across other people who were talking about career development in a way that resonated with me. Back in 2012, at the time, LinkedIn was really only for professional profiles and outside of individual blogs there really weren’t places that provide career advice. Today, the career tooling and infrastructure is just so much more robust. You have places like Teal (job and career tools) Career Contessa (career development for women) 81Cents (Compensation Equity) not to mention, Blind, Glassdoor, and Fishbowl.
But back in 2011, The Muse filled that void. The Muse began as a career advice website and blog and eventually morphed into a full on career development platform. I used to read their articles and even found ways to contribute to writers who were looking for quotes and stories. And when I graduated business school, I wanted to continue my path toward career coaching.
I joined their Career Coaching Platform to advise individuals on career and leadership challenges. Finding my people and my places outside of my company gave me more opportunities to learn knowledge, build relationships and gain additional reps that fueled creativity as well as opportunity.
Found a Career Community - I’ve written previously about the idea behind career communities, but The Muse was my Career Community. It gave me more avenues to develop and grow and opportunities that I wouldn’t have gotten otherwise. Places like On Deck, Round, Medley, Chief, Kindred are all examples of paid career communities that can fuel your professional development and opportunities. But there are also plenty of free career communities, such as Pavilon, Product Marketing Alliance, and Product School.
And finally, for those who want to make career transitions or upskill, programs like Aspireship, Pathstream, The Commons, and Pathrise all provide communities of people going on their journey with you to provide guidance, and support along the way.
As much as I’d like to believe that we should all be taught the principles and mindsets of career management in the beginning of our careers or in college, I very much appreciate and understand that part of life’s journey is figuring things out through trial and error. That said, I think there is a better solution between 100% perfection and what we have today.
Career development is a force for fueling human potential, but it’s also a chance for for economic opportunity and mobility especially for the marginalized and underserved. Empowering (and pushing) leaders for doing this in their workplaces and individual professionals the tools and skills for managing this is what excites me about the work that I do.
There are lots of opportunities to make work “work for more people.” When we teach them how to manage their careers, we give them the tools and agencies to make that a reality.
👀 What We’re Watching 👀
The Muse Raises $8M to Improve The Hiring Experience - The Muse, Led by Founder and CEO Kathryn Minshew, announced an $8M raise from what looks like to be a hybrid VC/PE fund to build on their product in matching candidates with companies and hiring managers. While this is not a new problem nor a new space, I’ve followed The Muse For 10 years (Disclosure below) and am interested to see the direction that they are taking. Their website ranks very high in google search and they get a ton of traffic from their content, but there are many other websites and career sites today than when they started this journey 10 years ago.
Hone Raises $30M For Online Career Training and Upskilling (BI Prime) I’ve profiled Hone a few times in my newsletter (including #86) but to refresh Hone is a training and leadership development company that teaches courses and workshops on key soft skills for leaders and managers. They recently shared their pitch deck with Business Insider that they used to raise their latest round of funding which details both the story they are telling as well as how they see their market and customers. I’m sharing one slide that I thought was especially interesting as it shows how they see and view their sweet spot. Right now, when L&D Buyers want to “upskill’ or offer learning to their employees, their default options are large content libraries (ex: Udemy, LinkedIn Learning, etc) (Note: if you want to see the article and can’t, DM me)
Source: Business Insider
Citi offers Free College For It’s Workers (CNBC) - Citi is the latest company to partner with EdAssist and Bright Horizons to offer tuition reimbursement to accredited degrees as a benefit. With over 38,000 front line employees, Citi is looking to provide career and economic mobility to it’s employees, and joins many other of it’s peers who have large populations of front-line workers in a move to not only attract talent, but also to show that they will add value and a path for mobility to these workers.
Salesforce Invests in Workforce Development (Salesforce) - At it’s Dreamforce Conference last week, Salesforce made an announcement of some investments in its workforce development efforts. One of those the expansion of it’s workforce development efforts with a Partner Program to support 500+ Workforce Development Partners and to help them build their brand and scale their efforts. Pathstream, who I have covered previously is an example of one of those partners - they provide training to students (and employees) on Salesforce along with career coaching to help them A) get certified in Salesforce and B) land Salesforce jobs. A big challenge with all of these programs is that while many of them are effective, it takes effort and resources. Having a company like Salesforce make the investment in time, resources and support is meant to help supercharge the efforts of their partners in the ecosystem.
📙 Career and Leadership Resources 📙
I’ve been doing some research and work on manager training lately, so this weeks resources is all about management.
Work Trends: Make Hybrid Work Work (Microsoft) - Microsoft launched it’s latest version of it’s Work Trends and some of the stats that made the headlines include: 87% of employees think they are productive but 12% of managers believe their employees are productive…
Podcast: Quiet Quitting Speaks Loudly About Bad Bosses - Kim Scott and the rest of the Radical Candor podcast crew take quiet quitting to task in this podcast. If you’re a manager or leader, this is a good podcast to listen to as they get into the nuance and discussion around effective ways to be a good manager despite the conditions.
Podcast: Measurably Improving Managers - Russ Laraway’s book When You Win They Win is a guide to being a manager that is backed up by data and science. If you’re not able to read the book, this is a good podcast to listen to in order to learn how to be an effective manager
Article: Your Role as a Manager Has Evolved (Humu) - Humu, the startup founded by Lazlo Bock (Former Chief People Officer at Google) did some research based on it’s platform and software about what employees are looking for in managers, and shared 4 key traits managers should exude to effectively manage their employees
Article: What Does it Mean to be a Manager today? (HBR) - Companies and leaders agree that the role of the manager has changed, but are still behind in helping the organization and managers adapt to these changes.
That’s all for now. If you listen to the podcast please let me know what you think!
Have a great week
Al
Disclosure: I have served as a Career and Leadership Coach on The Muse’s coaching platform as well as written articles for the Muse since 2016. I do not have knowledge of their internal strategy or fundraising efforts