Life can sometimes throw the most unexpected curve balls. When I was a school kid (here, in Albury in fact), I can honestly say being a Career Development Practitioner was never my response to the question ‘what do you want to be when you grow up.’ It doesn’t seem to be the kind of career that a person aspires to as a child – it tends to be something we fall into along the path to other destinations.a
When I was in high school I wanted to be a palaeontologist – just like my 8yo son, I was fascinated with dinosaurs and loved learning about them, although to be fair, my 8yo would have put me to shame in a battle of knowledge of these prehistoric beasts! Then I wanted to be a sports journalist – I thought that travelling the world and being paid to watch sport was pretty much the best gig a person could imagine. Then I wanted to be a teacher. Given that both my parents were teachers, this is probably the most predictable outcome and off I went to university to study a Bachelor of Arts to be followed by a Diploma of Education.
But somewhere along the way I fell off the path well-planned and thought about post graduate studies and PhDs and the romance of studying in the UK so before I knew it, my Diploma of Education turned into an Honours year in History instead (studying witchcraft trials because there is such a calling for that sort of thing in the current labour market!) … and then I met a man in uniform. An Airforce uniform.
I ended up moving to Katherine in the NT for the most eye-opening, naiveté-stripping experience of my life at that point where my partner was stationed at Tindal before he got out of the ADF and we moved to Perth. I ended up working in the Public Sector and found my way into Recruitment where I discovered a passion for helping people find work.
And then I fell pregnant. Like many women, I felt that this meant my career was over, or at least my days where my career was so centrally placed in my life. Little did I know, that the birth of my son would also birth the opportunity to build the career I didn’t know I always wanted – the freedom to create my own path on a daily basis, limited only by my imagination (and capital!) and flexibility to allow me to attend my son’s school assemblies while also meeting my clients’ needs. They say when life gives you lemons, make lemonade, for me it was a case of when life closes a door, build another one.
This is an example of chaos, quite literally – the Chaos Theory of Career Development. My own experiences have taught me that it is important to have a plan, but it is even more important to be open to variations and tangents, opportunities and risks because our labour market is so changeable (and becoming more so) that we need to be able to adapt and change as the needs of the market evolve. With unemployment being so high in parts of Albury Wodonga, creativity and innovation in our approach to career development is vital to designing opportunities to build meaningful careers.
Self-employment might not be for all of us, but taking the approach that we are a company of one, that we are selling our brand to prospective employers creates a new perspective on the career experience that often makes us stand out from the crowd. Have you created a personal brand for yourself? What does it say about you? Do your social media profiles and career documents (such as your résumé and cover letter) reflect that brand?
We are in an era where innovation and entrepreneurialism is currency, but you don’t have to be an entrepreneur to innovate your career path. It’s all in the way we perceive ourselves and then portray our brand to those around us.
This article was first published in the Border Mail and is re-published here with permission.