3 + 1 guidelines for early careerists
Advice I wish I had when I was new to the workforce
On Mondays this semester I teach our “post-practicum” seminar to our seniors. It is the fourth course in a sequence that includes two one-credit seminars I teach each semester of junior year to prepare our students to go out on their internship during the summer between junior and senior year, then the internship is accompanied with a course where the students reflect on what they are learning during that process, and finally when they come back as seniors we have the “post-practicum” or “post-prac” seminar where we build on their experiences and talk what they learned in practicum (the internship), but mostly we talk about planning for life after college. So tomorrow I put on the syllabus that we will talk about “Career planning”. I was mulling over the lesson plan for tomorrow and thinking about what I can tell an early careerist about planning their careers - especially since they will be heading off to different organizations with different goals in mind and different ideas of what success looks like. I will have them work through some plans during class - thinking about goals and what they hope to accomplish over a five year time horizon, and their assignment for next week will be to write a “personal press release” from the point of view of an organization writing about their accomplishments at the five-year mark. I’ve been doing this exercise for a number of years and the students generally like it. But this topic has me contemplating what advice I plan to give them about being an early careerist.
I’ve interviewed more than 80 healthcare leaders for my Health Leader Forge podcast, as well as spent time interviewing some 30 mid-career doctors, about 30 military healthcare leaders who were transitioning into civilian careers, and other individuals to find out about their career journeys for my research. I talk to leaders when that attend the various conferences I go to about their careers as well. From all of those conversations, the common theme is there’s very little in common. Some people set out to be healthcare leaders from a young age, some fall into the field from something else. If there is one thing most of them have in common, it is surprise. Surprise at where they wound up based on where they thought they might be when they started. So in good faith, what do I tell 20-somethings who are about to launch their careers? I came up with three general guidelines and an enjoinder. Here are mine - I’d be interested in what you would say:
Iterate toward value.
To be successful in your career, you have to find the way(s) that you can add value to an organization. You probably won’t know what you are really good at doing for a while. And leadership, which many of my young scholars eventually hope to pursue, requires developing a set of skills that take years of effort to grow. But in the meantime, are you good with managing processes? Are you good with details? Then maybe operations is your future. Are you good with seeing patterns in numbers? Grinding through piles of data? Then maybe an analyst role is for you instead. Are you good at building relationships? Are you resilient and able to bounce back from rejection? Then maybe sales. All of them can eventually lead to leadership roles.
But to find out how you can add value, you have to start somewhere. So get a job in the sort of organization you think you might want to work in, doing the sort of thing you think you might be good at, and try it out. Once you’re on board and have learned the basics, start paying attention to the parts of the job that you are good at, and the parts of the job that spark a little joy in your heart. This is where the iterating comes in: start trying to do more of those parts of the job, without dropping your overall responsibilities. Career theorists call this job shaping. You start to shape the job around what you like and what you are good at. The key to making this work is that your organization has to value the effort you are making. You can’t just go off and do something that your boss doesn’t need you to do and ignore what you are supposed to be doing. Job shaping doesn’t mean that you shape your breaks from 15 minutes into 30 minutes. That’s loafing. Successful job shaping happens when you perceive an unmet need in your workplace that you are good at meeting. If the organization perceives that you are adding enough value, you might eventually get to do that thing full time and the organization will find someone else to fill in the parts of the job you weren’t that into. An example might be that you have access to a certain set of data and you prepare a report with that data and share it out to your team. If your team values that as a contribution, and you like doing that, then likely you will be allowed to keep doing it.
Sometimes you will try doing something additional, and either you won’t like it, or the organization will indicate the thing you are doing isn’t perceived as value added. Then you should iterate. Try something else. And keep trying. Be sure to seek out feedback from your boss and your colleagues about your ideas. You are doing two things with these iterations: first, you are finding the things you like doing, the things that spark joy in you, and you are learning. Second, you are demonstrating your potential as a contributor and eventually as a leader. Organizations need people who can think independently and find ways to improve operations. People who demonstrate that ability and inclination get recognized. Having implemented a variety of innovations, even in an entry level job, gives you something to talk about when you are looking for a next job - whether with your current organization or in another organization.
Iterating implies going for small wins. While the payoffs might be small, the important thing is to keep the risks small as well, unless you have organizational buy-in before you start. Getting organizational buy-in can be tedious. Sometimes it is worthwhile, but especially as an early careerist just getting wins is important for establishing your reputation. It’s easy to beg forgiveness for trying for a small win if it doesn’t work out. Most supervisors will appreciate the effort.
Continue to invest in general-purpose knowledge.
If you are an early careerist and you have just graduated, you have just completed a very expensive and long investment in general-purpose knowledge. All those gen eds you took outside of your major, plus most of the stuff you probably did in your major won’t be directly applicable to an entry-level job (and maybe even less toward a later career role). Hopefully your degree program gave you practice in critical thinking and consuming, organizing, and communicating complex ideas. Those are examples of general purpose knowledge. You might have learned that by taking courses in finance or 16th century Renaissance Italian poetry. It doesn’t matter that much - once you are on the job you can learn the task-specific knowledge your job requires. But as you go along, make sure you continue to make an effort to grow general-purpose knowledge. Continue to read, continue to study. Grab on to opportunities to learn skills that can transcend your current role. Learning how to code in SQL or how to make a sales pitch are examples of skills (I am putting skills and knowledge in the same bucket for this purpose) that can help you in your next job as much as with the current one.
Really, always be learning. Read a national paper, read a local paper, read journals for your field, read books about management as well as history. Get your grad degree in your field after a couple of years, but even then, you can’t stop. A great way to continue the general-purpose journey is to join a professional organization for your field. Which leads me to…
Invest in your social network.
Human beings are social animals. Much of what we know we know through the process of observing and imitating others. As kids we learn from our parents and siblings, then schoolmates, and once you are in the work world, you will learn from your colleagues, superiors, and eventually subordinates. You can also learn from people outside of your organization. You can learn skills related to your work, and you can learn about trends and opportunities that will serve you in the long run.
Not only can you learn from these people, they can advocate for you. They can suggest you for opportunities, and they can tell other people about you and why you are someone other people would want on their team.
When you have someone in your corner who is a superior, who coaches you on skills, who listens to you and provides affirmation or straightens you out if you are going down the wrong path, and who goes to bat for you and sponsors you, we can call that person a mentor. Having mentors is a great thing. I recall fondly a few of my bosses from my military career as mentors. But we don’t need all those functions unified in one person. A rich social network can provide all of those mentoring functions a little here and a little there from different people. In fact, it’s best not to have all your eggs in one basket.
Membership in a professional organization, especially as an early careerist, can provide you access to many senior people who are willing to provide coaching and psychosocial support, and who, if you build strong relationships, might be willing to sponsor you for new opportunities outside of your current organization. This is one regret from my military career - that I did not get involved with professional organizations outside of the military. I heard this from a number of other military retirees as well. Some of them were involved in national organizations, like ACHE, but neglected to get involved with their local chapters where you can really build meaningful relationships. Since I left the Army I have become active with both ACHE and HFMA, especially with the local chapters. Going to the big annual meeting for ACHE is fun - but there are 10,000 plus people there. Instead, getting involved with the local chapter gets you the opportunity to get involved with a smaller group with whom you will have repeat opportunities to interact with. I get excellent professional support from my ACHE and HFMA communities.
Your social network is a constellation of relationships that can have developmental value for you, but you have to tend it the way you tend a garden. It requires regular attention year-round, not just on sunny days when you feel like it.
Finally the enjoinder: Live below your means.
As an early careerist you probably aren’t going to make that much money. You’ll most likely have school loans, rent, a car payment, and so forth. You might be tempted to tell me you can barely make ends meet. My response is to find a way to live below your means and stay below your means. Get a roommate, buy an old car, find ways to make do. By living below your means, and saving, you prevent yourself from job-lock. Job-lock is the phrase economists use to describe when someone wants to leave their job, but can’t afford to do so. If you have a bunch of financial obligations and you are living paycheck to paycheck, you won’t be able to afford to leave your organization, even if it is making you miserable. Remember guideline #1 - as an early careerist you are unlikely to have a solid sense of what your value proposition is. Iterating might include leaving one job and taking a salary cut to try something else. You don’t want to not be able to make that jump because you won’t be able to afford your rent. You also want to live below your means and save in case your organization runs into trouble and you wind up, through no fault of your own, out of a job.
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So those are my 3+1 points of advice.
What advice would you give a 20-something? What advice do you wish someone had given you as you got ready to graduate from college? Tell me in the comments.