Nonlinear Career Track: Runaway Train on a One Way Career Track
We hear it all the time. You won’t end up in the job you start in. You may not even use your degree. When we think about our career paths so far, how have we arrived at our current career destination?? We give our personal real life stories of non-linear career tracks in this excerpt from WISEcast’s episode: Taking the Right Steps on a Nonlinear Career Track.??
Amber: “It is usually pretty obvious that I’m non-traditional, but I definitely had a plan coming out of high school. My plan was to get a college degree in something science related, get my PhD, and become a college professor. In reality I majored in Biochemistry, only to find out I didn’t like biochemistry. Fast forward a bit, I received my PhD in Molecular Virology and Microbiology. Then I received a postdoctoral fellowship that provided mentored teaching time and time for research. As I was finishing my postdoc, I was thrown a curve ball and encouraged to apply for a STEM Success Center Coordinator Position, and me, always being up for a challenge, applied for and found out that I loved working to create a center, resources, and services to help STEM student be more successful in college. I then took a turn into another new job that I didn’t envision for myself as the flow cytometry scientist at Bethyl/Fortis Life sciences.”?
Richa: “I can relate. In college I? was at one point majoring in economics, math, English, biology, Spanish, and then landed on chemistry and Spanish. I started out as pre-med, but then decided to go for the Ph.D. in chemistry because my advisor thought it was a better fit and to quote him, “you’ll always have a job.” I then did a postdoc, which was a very heavy research position. I thought after completing my postdoc that I would work in industry. However, I burned out from research. The upside of this journey was that I fell in love and moved to Austin to be with my husband. I was unemployed (with a wedding planning side hustle) until I started teaching at a community college. I thought, I could like this. Years later, I’m still doing what I’m good at and what I like to do. Do I love it? I’m a firm believer in that we work to live not the other way around and that you can be fulfilled in many careers and that complete fulfillment is only possible when the other parts of your life are also in balance.”
Both of our stories provide examples of nonlinear career tracks, and we wanted to share some data throughout this blog to emphasize our points (plus you know Amber can’t help herself).? First, in researching how frequently people change jobs, we learned that while much of the data cites the Bureau of Labor Statistics, they do not actually collect data on how frequently people change jobs. Luckily some of the data they do collect can provide insight on career changes and other groups also collect data on the issue.?
Around 70% of all working-age people are actively looking for a job change (1).
But are the job changes out of necessity or design? We’ve discussed the Great Resignation, which led to the Great Promotion. This implies that at least some of the job changes are out of design. However, if you are changing your job because you can’t take your current work environment for a single minute longer, then maybe that is more out of necessity than design. A recent poll found that approximately half (52%) of American employees are considering making a career change this year. 44% are already planning to make the switch (1). Does this make nonlinear career tracks the new normal, or have they always been? Or is it because jobs are always evolving and there are so many new jobs today that didn't exist yesterday??
In case you were curious, Career Addict describes at least 15 jobs today that didn’t exist 10 years ago (3). Some of these jobs include:
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But nothing is ever black or white. There are likely multiple factors that contribute to creating the non-straight-line career trajectories. We decide what we want to be when we grow up at age 18 (or earlier) before we have actually had a chance to live and experience things. We make choices based on what we know, and every day we realize we don’t know that much. As we grow up our values and desires change. The world changes around us whether we want it to or not. For example, the current economy (hello inflation) and the pressure to have a two income family to achieve a certain standard of living. With the two body problem for most families, maybe we have to be more flexible.?
But does the increased flexibility lead to more stress? Or does the flexibility lead to more freedom? Is there a time when people stop exploring? Stop career jumping? Amber’s not sure she will ever stop exploring. She’s pretty sure that when she’s 90, she will continue to think, “Wow this would be fun, Let’s try this crazy adventure” or some young person will pitch her a new idea and she’ll be hooked. In a survey of older workers, 82% of respondents reported having successfully switched to a new career after the age of 45. Most older adults who made career changes later in life were successful in their new jobs (2). However, the data does show that as people get older they change less frequently, decreasing from 5.7 times between 18-24 years old to 1.9 times between 45-52 years old (1).
If you are thinking about what you want your career trajectory to look like, remember it might be fun to be on the runaway train finding a new career track because sometimes the straight line is not always the most fruitful. And we want to leave you with a few reminders:
Ready to learn more? Listen to our WISEcast episode: Taking the Right Steps on a Nonlinear Career Track, as we hear from Stephanie Wisner, cofounder of Centivax, author of Building Backwards to Biotech, and one of Forbes 30 under 30 about her exciting non-linear career path from a pre-med, chemistry major to a life sciences entrepreneur.?
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