About career decisions: What I've learned so far.

First as a psychology student, during my internships in several different areas, up to now more recently as recruiter, leader and overall HR professional. All my professional journey has been about discussing career (and life) decisions with people.

I’ve observed people guide their decisions based on several aspects, sometimes I can relate to them, and other I really don’t understand the reasoning, no matter how much they try to explain it to me.

Reflecting about this aspect of my experience, it got me thinking about what guided my career decisions, and what I’ve learned so far.

Hopefully these lessons can help you out there to design your own path.

1. Try different things, mostly to understand what you don’t like.

Still as a psychology student, I’ve changed my idea of career path many times. I decided to study psychology to work with criminal psychology - to my surprise, I hated the reality of it in my first internship, second semester. Then I tested about 5 other areas, and still at some point I said “organizational psychology is not for me”, before I had my first real experience in HR. Well, look at me now, over 5 years working as an organizational psychologist, in HR.

2. Mentoring is a powerful thing. Have as many mentors as you can.

I’ve had (and still have) several official and unofficial mentors, all of them were important in different times and for different purposes in my career. Besides increasing your network - and connections are everything in anyone’s careers, I’m sure you know that “referral” is the most relevant source of hiring for many huge companies like SAP, right? - it will also expand your mind and possibilities. Imagine having a different professor and advisor for any specific development need: communication skills, stakeholder management, trust building, specific technical skills, you name it.

Your mentors will also be your career sponsors. I should probably mention that my current role and international transfer to Portugal only happened due to a mentorship relationship.

3. Never settle for the comfort zone, growth is outside of it.

If I would stay “bored” for 2 days, that would be already too much. The only way to continue to grow is by challenging yourself. Personally, I took a look at my development plan, my goals and my current career challenges once a week and reflected on it. This is not about changing jobs and companies all the time, I was able to continue to challenge myself even staying in the same team inside SAP for almost 5 years, but always stretching my role and responsibilities.

4. Focus on your strengths (rather than your weaknesses).

As a perfectionist myself, it took me a while to accept that I won’t be great at everything. Above all, I won’t be great in any of my weaknesses. For instance, I’m not organized at all, nor great in planning. Can I be a pro organizer, one of those you hire to organize your closet? Never! Is it worth investing all my time and efforts to become the best in organizing? Nope.

However, I’m quite good in presentations and public speaking. I’m sure it’s a much better use of my time and I’ll be much more fulfilled if I make career decisions that take this strength under consideration.

5. Your career is a marathon, not a 100m run.

To me, this sentence has two meanings: decisions based on long-term goals and health / work-life balance.

On the first one: I’ve recently made a decision considering mostly the long-term impacts. Basically I could take one direction that would make me grow probably faster, but the ceiling was lower. The second possibility - the one I chose - could take longer to provide me the growth I expect, but there are unlimited opportunities that I can’t even start to measure and imagine. Always consider the long-term impacts of your career decisions, and remember that short-term rewards will only bring value to a certain point.

On the second one: this also has to due with long-term impact. Your health is the most important thing, and your work can heavily impact it. Consider how happy or unhappy that new opportunity can make you, and evaluate the pressure, stress, and every other aspect of how that role can impact your health (for the better and for the worst).

This is specially important when you go back to my lesson number 3. When you continue to push yourself outside of your comfort zone, it’s quite stressful. You’ll need to learn how to manage that, and make sure this is a top priority.

To close my thoughts, please know that there is no such thing as a linear career path. What makes sense to you, might not make sense to me, and that’s totally fine.

The one thing that is universal in my opinion:

Your career is your career. Your responsibility (not your manager’s or your company’s). Take ownership of your career, set goals to yourself, plan next steps (always being open to change directions), and take action.

If you are the driver of your career journey, I’m pretty sure you’ll be happy with the destinations :)