Lessons for a Young Professional

A panel discussion at my alma mater Jacobs University in May 2024 led me to reflect upon my learnings from the early years of my professional career; upon lessons that I learned from observation of both successes and mistakes - my own and those of my peers. So I decided to summarise those thoughts and compiled them into this article that I eventually wrote in the style of an instructive manual addressed to a young professional individual.

Problem definition

Meaningful outcomes from your work will proliferate as you develop the fundamental craft of defining good problems. While at school, you would have already gained decent practice at solving complex problems. You will however soon realise that you would still need to work on the key skills of assessing a scenario thoroughly enough to determine the areas where improvement would be needed, defining a specific problem that guides you towards the desired improvement, and setting metrics that would enable you to evaluate the success of results. Empowered with these faculties, you will not always have to wait for the next project to be given to you top-down. Your stakeholders will willingly approve of allocation of resources towards discovery and implementation of the solution to those well-defined problems that would be elucidated by you. So this sense of initiative and curiosity driving you to define good problems will lead you to having projects of your own founding.

Versatility

Avoid having a disdain for seemingly mundane tasks. At times you may have to write a report that nobody will ever read, or you may have to attend meetings where your opinion would not matter much. However the apparent low impact of such tasks should not mean that a subpar job on such tasks can be acceptable. At the beginning of your career, you should take each task as another chance to train yourself in producing quality work. Working within teams and organisations means you will often have to do tasks that may not be related to your core skill set but they would be necessary to keep the team moving as a whole. You should discover the joy that exists in finishing even the most basic duties in a clean and organised fashion.

I would also encourage you to maintain an eagerness to learn about the operations within the different functions of your organisation. Not just would it help you to complete your understanding of your organisation and its business, but it would also help you to see the value of your own work fitting into the larger schemes of affairs, all while making new friends across different departments.

Goals

It is one thing to have an idea of where you want to be, it is another when you have a clearly determined trajectory that you would like to take in a given timeframe. While both have their pros and cons, the latter certainly is the more efficient approach. So setting a clear vision for yourself early on in your career would serve as a practical guidebook for future growth. As this vision crystallises specific goals for you, it will get simpler for you to plan on the skills that you must develop, the kinds of projects that you would work upon, and the network that you would build. On this journey, be open to having your plans verified with experienced mentors who will help you in understanding the dynamics and demands of specific fields.

Besides, my recommendation would be to use every opportunity to start taking a closer look at the inner workings of the next roles that you would be aiming for. Work in advance on developing a picture about the challenges that your target role would present. Explore the different strategies that would be pertinent to tackling the different scenarios arising in your target job. Remember that you might not always get the luxury of exploring many alternatives when you are actually faced with certain scenarios in your new role since the situation may stipulate you to make fast calls.

Learning and upskilling

This is eternally obvious of course, but not so much in the face of frequently emerging new fields that may be tangential to your own line of work. In such new fields lie major opportunities for making an impact. My advice would be not to keep your upskilling plan locked hard to a linear route over a long time horizon that may be generally set for the field where you started your first job. You have got to maintain a good degree of curiosity about the developments in areas that are linked to your field of work. You must proactively keep yourself up-to-date about the disruptive new concepts with potential to trigger new value creation in your ecosystem. And once you discover something that arouses your interest, you must be ready to learn all about it. Examples of computer networks experts who transitioned into cloud computing or distributed computing and cryptography experts who moved into blockchain should serve to demonstrate the utility of this openness to acquiring new knowledge in emerging fields that may only be adjacent to that of your own initial position.

Communication

Master this art. Your style of communication is a key element that determines your efficacy towards your milestones. You should learn to vary your communication style adequately to fit the necessities in various scenarios. For example if you succeed in achieving the goals for a certain project, your communication should be positive and upbeat when sharing the results with your team, so that your peers also get the chance to distil the good practices from your successful project. In case of a project where you fall short of attaining the desired outcomes, your communication must demonstrate introspection that conveys the lessons you obtained from such a project so that your team can learn specific approaches that need not be tried again.

So your choice of words and style of delivery should adapt for optimal effect. For instance, you should be able to attune yourself to settings in which your detailed perspectives would be helpful versus those where precise points get the job done. Similarly, you should learn when would it be appropriate to engage in challenging arguments and when would it be better to hold your criticism for a more conducive occasion.

Network

Within your professional networks lie some great levers for growth and wisdom. Learnings from connections in your network can save you from reinventing the wheel on numerous occasions. Your network, both within and outside of your organisation, lets you stay abreast about the latest developments in your sector. This will become important when deciding career moves. Your interactions within your network will illuminate new and lucrative career paths possibly branching out from your first job. They will help you to learn about the culture at different companies and may also provide you with insights into ongoing projects in companies that you would be interested in. Among your network, you will find individuals who would become your mentors offering useful advice in various circumstances, while others would become your mentees, helping you to reflect upon your own lessons in retrospect. Some of your connections will also inevitably become your good friends. As you put genuine efforts in nurturing your relations, with time you will get to appreciate how staying connected will propel you farther with disproportionately reduced investment from your part.

Imposter syndrome

You are not alone. Most smart people around you would also be going through phases of imposter syndrome from time to time. Such thoughts mean that you hold yourself up to high standards and that you are motivated by an aspiration to deliver results of high quality. It would always be good to be mindful of the value that you are bringing to your work - your organisation is investing in you for good reasons. Whenever in doubt, do not shy away from seeking feedback from your peers and supervisors using specific questions. However, remember to be selective about the feedback from which you want to extract actionable items and the feedback that should be filtered out for its lack of context. Most importantly take care of your health, give yourself a break, and know your limits - do not take more work than what you can efficiently handle. Learn to say no to work that is beyond your capacity. While this does not mean that you get too settled in your comfort zone, you must at all costs avoid hitting a burnout.

Team fit

As much as the potential for having fun together with your teammates is what you should take seriously :p, it is also important that your first colleagues and supervisors inculcate in you a high sense of integrity and excellence. Your work environment must encourage creativity and foster a culture in which constructive challenges to the status quo are embraced. Above all, you should work only for the organisations whose values align with your personal philosophy - ethical business practices, conscientious principles, and freedom from social biases prejudices discrimination must be non-negotiable.

To conclude, keep faith with consistent incremental improvements, and do your work in pursuit of happiness and inspiration.