Recently a friend of mine completed his MBA and his project management certification course. All excellent pieces in the puzzle of what his next career move should be. In a discussion, he listed out the top four options:
- project manager
- technical sales
- some sort of marketing
- general management / business development
All worthy options. The problem is the list consists of HOWs, not WHATs. Before you get to the HOW, you need to figure out the WHAT.
WHAT?
In order for the activity you professionally do, not to be just another job you complain at home about, it has to be something you actually get excited about. As Sy Sperling said, “I’m not only the Hair Club president, I’m also a client.” Sperling was damn passionate about regrowing hair. Figure out what problems you would like to solve, before narrowing down the role you’ll play solving those problems.
HOW?
Once you figure out what you’ll eagerly miss sleep over, the role you play becomes a trivial problem to solve. Looking at your personal strengths and weaknesses is a great place to start. If you’re an organized person, who’s proactive about keeping schedules and following up with others to get achieve results, then a project management role is a good fit. If you enjoy dealing with customers, can easily figure out people’s needs, and don’t stress over working on commission, sales is a good fit. If you enjoy strategic thinking at a high level, leadership, and coaching, then management and business development is a good fit.
I currently have an engineering role. However, when describing what I do, my genuine response is that I help brands discover and amplify what experts are saying about them.