Why CareerWizards Exists

It's time for Complete Career Flexibility

By: Ryan

What is a Career?

When I was a boy, I loved playing with airplanes. I had an Uncle in England who would send me the airplane calendar pictures one month at a time. My bedroom wall had posters of airplanes all over it. I had Lego's to make helicopters that I'd also make aircraft with. I was meant to be a pilot! As I got older, I figured that being a commercial pilot would be boring, I discovered that Aerospace Engineering was the closest you could get to being creative with aircraft, so I applied to MIT and got accepted to the world's best Aerospace Engineering degree. OMG I will design aircraft! Alas, I never once worked in aerospace or aviation.

In my final year of college, my friend, Mike, invited me to a dinner that his new company was having for new hires and their friends. They wooed me, and I ended up applying and started to work for this large Wall Street Trading Firm. Finance was exciting, ever changing, and had great perks! I asked the boss one day what positive benefits the firm created in the world and he said "Oh we remove liquidity from the markets" 😐. I realized that I needed to be beneficial to society. I didn't last long there.

I decided then to work with a global strategy consulting firm to explore more of the world and careers. I did consulting work to help agencies improve their performance. Then that led to me studying and researching transportation systems, becoming a researcher for climate change solutions, becoming a speaker, and becoming a startup founder. I felt ill-equipped to do anything in a startup, but started anyway and have been enjoying that journey ever since.

Through all of these turns and twists of my career, there was no deliberate strategy. I was unhappy with something, so I switched and tried something else. You can think of this as more of an emergent strategy.

In contrast, I see many others get trapped in one career and hate it. It may be teachers who have grown to hate teaching, or a medical doctor who, after spending decades studying and is in much debt, feels their only hope is to work the job they now despise in medicine.

Harvard Business School suggests that emergent strategy for organizations works when there is greater uncertainty as we are in. And that innovative pivoting to take advantage of opportunities can be beneficial. I think that also applies to professionals and their careers.

Careers of the Future

Consider some facts about the world:

We live longer lives - passing 80 years on average in the rich world, and growing everywhere else. We are also taking longer to retire. Retirement ages are rising worldwide. Denmark recently increased its own to 74 years.
Everyone expects to work in more jobs during their working life, and many people change careers. Large portions of the workforce change careers and many more strongly consider it.
Remote work is now possible. Remote work opens access to a wider range of jobs to each person than before, making career switching easier. Companies also hire more often based on skills. The COVID-19 Pandemic accelerated all of this.
AI will shake everything up. The future of work is highly uncertain as AI is likely to replace some occupations fully, and dramatically alter some that were considered untouchable like software engineering.

So how should a career work in this new world?

The New Career should

Be exciting - you should have a strong "Why" for getting involved - it will be a significant commitment from you.
Be completely flexible - you should be able to decide that you want to do something differently and go do it
Be seen as a trial - you know that your interests and desires change. You should be willing to change your work.
Be accessible - Through training and networks you should be able to easily find information, certification, and people to help you make the switch.

How do you build a flexible career like this? You do this by:

Exploring your desires and interests -This would guide you into certain careers. Note that just because they seem exciting from the outside doesn't mean that you'd enjoy doing them. A good practice is to talk with people that are doing what you're considering about what they do.
Approaching a career as a trial - Being more of a mental step, keeping it in mind in the beginning is useful. Perhaps giving yourself up to 1 year to explore the career before mentally committing is useful.
Learning rapidly - Since new careers require new skills, you have to think of learning as a lifelong activity. New technologies, new ideas, and new applications appear all the time, and in a new career, this is an even steeper hill to climb. The good thing is that our brains are built for constant learning. But there are courses and books on how to learn fast.
Keeping friends across multiple industries - Knowing the ins and outs of other careers and getting access to their jobs requires networking. Maintaining those relationships over time is key, and it can be fun to connect with others.
Celebrating your unique contributions to the new career - You can bring a very unique perspective to a new career. If you have an uncommon background compared to others in that career, you may have an advantage that can be shared. Find it and highlight it on resumes, interviews, cover letters and profiles.
Being willing to end a specific career - Many people get to the point of wanting a change in their careers but feel stuck. This might be because the salary and comfort are nice, or they don't know what to do next. But life, despite being longer than in the past, is still too short to stay in unhappy situations. Commit to finding a way out if you're outgrown your current career.

Expertise is still important!

We are not suggesting that expertise is not valuable. Those that stay for many years in their careers are critical for sharing deep experience and expertise that can be very valuable across society. My sister has an image on her profile that says "Medicine is learnt at medical schools over a period of 10 years, and not on Google over 10 minutes". I couldn't agree more.

Be aware of the risks.

In a society where the education system, the corporate system, and all your family and friends expects you to decide on one career and become that until you die, be aware that you will likely find resistance to what you're doing. This is why you need to be able to retreat into yourself at times to consider what brings you happiness and how you want to live your life. If you don't have a practice of doing this, others will indirectly do it for you by your consumption of their ideas and expectations. These are often in the media, or in how they speak with you.

For those looking to change careers, CareerWizards is doing its part to provide a community and resources for those looking for career flexibility. We believe that this will only become more important in the future for the reasons defined above. We remain here to support and guide those looking for freedom to do what makes them feel most alive.

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