Learning How to Manage Your Career
How do you learn how to effectively manage your career? Advice from those on the front lines
In my first job after college, I showed up my first day ready to work and take on the world. I was a fresh college graduate starting my career at Deloitte as an analyst, and while I felt confident in my abilities and talents, I was certainly nervous about making a good impression. I threw myself head first into the opportunity and was completely overwhelmed. I’m sure I’m not alone in this, but the transition from college to the real world, and a challenging role working in consulting was not an easy transition, but I eventually found my way, got some wins under my belt and was able to quickly learn and adapt. I had a few big wins on the project I was on and I had built great relationships with my client.
I remember at the end of my first year filling out the performance evaluation forms fully confident that I was going to get the top performance rating. After all, I got rave reviews from the client and my project manager told me I was performing exceptionally well, which is why I was shocked to find out that when I walked out of my performance review I was missing the mark.
I remember leaving the meeting feeling embarrassed and questioning how I could be off base from my own reality and expectations and eventually went onto the next project trying to shake it off, but it bothered me in the back of my mind
On my next project, I had a manager who I began working with and we hit it off right away. In addition to building up a good working relationship, we also had a similar sense of humor and mutual interests. She just seemed like someone I could trust. One day, as I was still thinking about the miss on my performance review I decided to ask her for guidance.
I told her about the first project, how I thought I was doing, and how far I was from reality after going through my first performance evaluation process. She listened intently and after I was done, showed an incredible amount of empathy and compassion by telling me that I was not alone and that there was no reason to be ashamed. From there, she told me that if I was willing to put in the work, she’d be more than happy to provide guidance and coaching so in addition to becoming a better consultant and worker, I could also learn how to manage and develop my career.
Working under this manager I began to thrive. Not only did I get better at the job, but I also learned critical career management skills that would serve me well. Under her guidance and with her coaching, the next year I got the top rating. From then on, I never looked back.
In hindsight, the first year and the total mismatch on my performance level was a blessing in disguise. However, my story of how I learned how to manage my career is not something new.
After helping hundreds of people learn the fundamentals of career planning and career development and talking with numerous people who I would consider to be successful in their career development I’ve learned that this is a common experience.
School Doesn’t You How to Manage Your Career
Learning how to effectively manage your career or to take control of your career development is not something that you learn in college. Furthermore, while companies are waking up to the fact that many employees seek companies that provide training and leadership development opportunities others still fall short. Finally, the act of career development or managing your career is often something that is paid lip service. Consider the following statistics:
49% of employees say career development, mentorship and training is sorely lacking during the pandemic.
41% of people said their career development stalled during the COVID-19 pandemic
Over the past few months, I’ve spent time speaking with numerous high-achieving professionals across different industries and functions to learn more about how they’ve learned to manage their career. At the end of the day, you have to own your career, and I wanted to learn how others learned how to do it. Here are some of the insights I learned from speaking with others about learning how to manage your career.
How did you learn how to manage your career?
Building My Playbook - Jeff, PM, Tech
“Very few managers are going to actively develop you. That’s rare and something to value. So it comes down to understanding where you want to go and building a playbook for how to get there. I really like the analogy to athletics and think this article is gold (Dave Perrell article on Lebron James)
Trial And Error - Kevin, Tech
“Trial and error. I still don’t think I am good at it, but I’ve learned more and more through experience. For me it was trial and error to find out what I liked, didn't, and what I wanted out of a job. Required going through bad managers and bad situations to figure it out. Learned that for me I need work that is interesting/challenging to keep me engaged otherwise I will get bored and I need good people/managers.
The actual subject area in itself is not that important and I also don't necessarily view my career in the lens of promotion timelines (not that promotion isn't important), but I ask myself each month whether I'm still learning, challenged by the work, and enjoy what I'm doing. If the answer is consistently yes, I let the title/promo part take care of itself. It might be a naive way of thinking about it, but to me having the title of VP for example can mean so many things at different companies, so why chase titles when scope and job is more important, in my opinion.”
Learning From Others Over Time - Jasmine, Non Profit
“It's honestly been a very gradual (and ongoing!) process for me of learning from mentors/managers who I've looked up to. At a really high level, I've studied and learned from the pivots they've made, asked them about their thought process behind their own major career decision points, and extrapolated what might apply to my own career.Podcasts, books, etc. are helpful too, but I honestly have learned the most from (and naturally retain more from) cultivating meaningful, long-term relationships with people over time through actual work / collaboration and conversations.
This means making a very intentional effort to stay in touch with former colleagues, say long after a job ends, or with classmates years after undergrad / graduate school is over. This is because people play just as if not more of a role in helping you get jobs -- or advocate for you internally at a company - as your own experience, skill sets, etc.”
Prioritization and Balancing Proactivity and Organic - Jodi, Tech
Am I "managing my career" or is it managing me? I think I've always prioritized different things as my career has progressed, and I've just "managed" my career according to what was important to me at the time. I went to business school so that my career could be more strategic. I took a role at my current company so that I could get the title and company name I wanted on my resume, in order to propel my "career" forward later on.
Some career moves happened proactively because I was no longer challenged and wanted to do something different or wanted to move locations, whereas other career moves happened completely organically, like growing a team. I think how you "manage your career" changes based on what you're prioritizing at the moment, and you just sort of have to realize that what you want out of your career will change as your career evolves.
Saying Yes and a Growth Mindset - Blake, Management Consulting
“I don't think I'm actually the best at this, as I haven't always been 100% intentional in truly managing my career. I believe I get to do what I do because of three things; a series of very fortunate "right time at the right place" scenarios, a natural growth mindset that triggers me to say yes to opportunities, and a stable of mentors I've been able to rely on when I'm out of my comfort zone. I actively haven't chased titles, promotions, or monetary rewards. I believe those have come from curiosity, hard work, and hunger to learn.”
Mentorship and Proactive Outreach - John, Marketing, Tech
The biggest thing for me was asking people who I thought were successful in their careers. Lucky to have had some good manager and mentors who made it clear to me that I was responsible for my career and had to be proactive in shaping what I wanted it to be
Finding a Guiding North Star - Jason, Tech Marketing
“Have a North Star. North stars can be a title (for me, CEO), or they can be thematic (Artificial Intelligence). When evaluating next steps, I always ask myself, how does this next step get me closer to my North Star? Early in my career, it was about picking up a wide skill set. Middle of my career it's testing my ability to lead and set strategic vision.”
Learning The “Career Pyramid” - Chris, Talent, Consulting
“I was fortunate to have some great mentors at Ernst and Young where I started my career in the IT Risk Advisory practice. They taught me a critical lesson - doing your job well is the foundation of your pyramid. Without that, everything else falls through. But doing your job well, alone in a silo, is not enough to meaningfully advance your career. You have to build on top of that - spending time outside of your key responsibilities to get to know people in the organization, contributing to firm-building such as onboarding, mentoring, recruiting etc, and taking on a role in social responsibility efforts. To reiterate, if you are working on those and your pyramid base (doing your job responsibilities well) falls apart, the whole thing can break. Building it takes time and learning as you add.”
Intentional Learning - Corrine (Tech, L&D)
“Early in my career I was very achievement focused, so checking boxes and gaining skills was top of mind. As I progressed, I got lucky and have had several impactful experiences -- Grad school that focused on career dev being one -- as well as impactful relationships (mentors, sponsors) who helped me think through next steps, what I wanted, and how to ask myself (or find people who will ask) the right questions to figure things out. I also am a nerd for podcasts and career dev articles and career focused conversations with peers and this has 100% accumulated to help me stay current and on my toes.”
Managing Your Career with Career Development Skills
While hard skills and soft skills are important, I also think that having a set of career skills are also critical to success. These career skills help you combine hard and soft skills to achieve your career goals, get promotions, seek new opportunities and experiences, and ultimately help you have the career and work that you desire. To better understand what the most important career skills people should develop, I again turned to my panel of experts:
If you could name one skill that’s important to career development, what would it be?
Empathy - Jeff (Tech, PM)
“Empathy, but not in the cushy BS sense. Look at the situation from the opposite side of the table. No one owes you anything. So focus on the doing, not the being. Who do you want to hire/promote? The person already doing the work with genuine curiosity and vigor OR the person who wants “to be a director.”
Stakeholder Management - Kevin (Tech, Strategy & Ops)
“Knowing how to effectively manage stakeholders. Working in a company you have to work with others, this is especially true when you work at a large company. You won’t get support unless you know how to do this.”
Proactive Ownership - Jasmine
“Being proactive/generally taking things into your own hands. I think career development will not happen to you unless you actively and consistently dedicate time to it yourself. You have to be super intentional about it and I would even go so far to say as to be selfish about putting your needs first; no one will care about your own career development -- or know your true goals and intentions - as deeply as you.”
Storytelling - John & Corrine
“Being an effective storyteller. Incredibly important to know how to sell yourself whether it is getting a new job or moving up in your current company
I can't stress this enough. You have to get comfortable being uncomfortable talking about yourself -- and (gasp!), maybe even make it fun! People LOVE stories. People including acquaintances, potential mentors, friends of friends, your HRBP, the recruiter who has 15 mins for you. Getting good at storytelling helps to humanize the working experience - that gap on your resume - how experience X that is seemingly unrelated to new gig B is actually complementary and a unique advantage.
Mastering storytelling puts you in the driver's seat and gives you an opportunity to bring others along and make your key points and interests and curiosities easy to follow/understand. A very close second that's less of a skill and more of a mindset is to stay curious. Once you start to anchor on a title or org or xyz tangible it's the same as putting blinders up that shut out the possibility to learn more about what you don't know - and perhaps discover an entirely new adventure along the way.”
The Landscape of Incentives - Chris
“Understanding the "landscape of incentives". Meaning - how is your boss incentivized/rated/paid? How about their boss and the team above them? Anything you can do to meaningfully make your boss look good (or address their biggest pain points) will help you out tremendously. And knowing how they are evaluated will help you as you work on other initiatives and where to focus.”
Networking - Blake
“I feel this is a bit trite, but I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t think it was critical and important.”
Conclusion
From my research and conversations, learning how to manage your career and to be intentional about your career development is something that you just have to learn once you join the workforce. While you may encounter learning this in a similar fashion to how I did, it doesn’t have to be that way. As my panel of experts concluded, being able to go to others for guidance and advice, seek out guidance from peers, and to build relationships with others and study their paths is a great start, wherever you are in your career journey.
Furthermore, having a set of career skills such as the ones shared by our panel, can help you set and achieve your desired career goals as you navigate through your career.
Finally, if you are someone who has learned a thing or two about managing your career or achieved some level of career success, make sure to go out of your way to pay it forward and help someone else learn it along the way, just like someone probably did for you.
Additional Resources
Want more guidance or to explore this further? Check out these resources to further your learning on this topic.
Special thank you to Jeff, Jasmine, Jodi, John, Corrine, Jason, Blake and Chris for contributing to this post.