You Don't Have a Career. You Have a Series of Jobs. There's a Difference.

One day, you realize in your career that for a number of years, you've been doing the exact same thing and haven't really gotten anywhere at all.


I don't mean that you're starving or unhappy, I mean that you've stayed put. Different company perhaps and maybe even a different job title, but you've remained stale and the nagging feeling that something isn't right just won't go away. Sure, you're busy but you're not growing.


This is what differentiates having a job versus having a career. Most people are never able to bridge this gap - not because they're lazy or lack effort, but because nobody ever tells them the gap actually exists.

A job will fulfill you; a career will walk with you.

A job is simple: you go, you work, you get paid.

There's absolutely nothing inherently wrong with that.

A career is all of the things it takes years to build: your skill set grows and sharpens; your name starts to precede you and precedes your reputation; your network grows stronger and when a good opportunity arises, your name pops into people's heads immediately.

Each contribution builds upon the last.

You're already preparing for the role you'll hold three to four years from now, even if you don't know it.

This all, of course, requires active participation.

Many are not active.

They hop from job to job for a better paycheck or a more reasonable commute. A decade later, they end up with a resume full of unconnected positions, and the missing link only appears when it's too late.

The skills nobody teaches.

The first couple years of your job are focused on the nuts and bolts: how to do the tools; the tests; the processes. This stuff is all important as it's what will get you in the door.

Five years down the line, however, it's not the people who know the most that advance.

It's the people who have other skill sets: communicating complex ideas to laypeople; making decisions based on insufficient information; politely expressing disagreements to superiors; knowing what others have missed. None of these sounds overly impressive, but they are key indicators of leadership and upward mobility; technical skills hit a ceiling.

The role of your manager is not your career; it's yours.

This one can be a little hard to swallow, at first.

A good manager will support you, will advocate for you, and will even forge pathways for you.

That's what makes a truly great manager a rare asset.

Nevertheless, every manager, regardless of their goodness, is bogged down by their own pressures, goals and limitations. They do not have time for designing your personal long-term career path.

You do. People who are looking to be recognized and told they are ready or for professional development to occur naturally will find themselves waiting a long time - perhaps until retirement.

Those who truly excel have taken control of their career path.

Taking control doesn't necessarily mean the career path needs to be mapped out for the next ten years.

It does mean knowing, with some degree of certainty, where you want to be headed and willingness to discuss your career path prior to your annual review; a willingness to leave when a job no longer presents growth opportunities, even if your current role is comfortable and your colleagues and coffee are pleasant.

Comfort is nice, but being comfortable while going nowhere is a problem people rarely recognize until it's much too late.

Going sideways is underrated.

Most people think that a career path needs to go straight up. A higher paycheck, a better title, and then more of the same until you retire.

While there are definitely people whose paths follow this direction and that's totally fine for them, I've found so many fascinating careers that follow a completely different path.

Going sideways, whether in different industries, functions, smaller or larger companies, provides people who do so a value that nobody who only has a linear trajectory is going to have.

Knowing business from start-ups and large enterprises, is incredibly different from knowing business only in one system and will differentiate your understanding of business.

Although it's easy to feel like you're going backwards, this movement often opens doors for surprising opportunities.

Your reputation precedes you much more than your resume.

You will come to find that the really great projects, the right introductions, the roles you won't even see advertised - they're all coming about through your reputation, what other people say about you behind your back.

There's nothing that you can really do to affect this, other than continually to be a person who follows through, makes others' lives easier, over prepares, and generally helpful.

There's no need to be flashy and say that you are busy, just do it. It may sound boring but what works, what truly works is this: someone with ten years of consistent, reliable work under their belt is a much stronger candidate than someone who is great at managing their LinkedIn profile.

Ask yourself this brutally honest question:

If a colleague, manager, or any person you have closely worked with for any length of time - someone who has seen you during your worst and best moments - had to describe you to a potential hirer of a very senior person what would they say? Disregard what you want them to say.

Say the honest answer based on what they'd likely say.

If it's in line with what you want, keep doing what you're doing; if it's not, then that discrepancy is your career plan. Everything else is busyness.