What a multi-sector career has taught me

MAKING multiple career shifts is seen to be the new normal. But it wasn't that long ago when it was frowned upon.

My career has been a lattice of cross-connections, looking at times rather messy, sometimes even looking like a game of snakes and ladders.

My first job after graduation was enough to raise eyebrows. My senior informal mentor at the time had no idea how I could earn a living from a psychology degree.

What surprised him even more was my first venture into the world of banking and finance after graduating. I was accepted into the ANZ banking group graduate program.

While I had no formal training in economics or commerce, there was something about banking which appealed to me. But I couldn't quite get a handle on what it was.

Look for how to be curious in any job

My dear mentor told me to be curious. "Get into the mind of the customer," he would say to me. "Ask them why they want to take a holiday," he said. "And what is it that makes them want to bank here," he went on.

So now I got it. He was asking me to apply my interests in the mind and psychology to the day-to-day interactions with customers. Rather than wonder, in a negative sense, how I ended up in a suburban branch in the first place, he asked me to be more investigative. In essence, I was practicing consumer psychology at the coal face!

Seize opportunities

But I didn't quite see myself spending the rest of my life in this business. While I learnt heaps, it just wasn't sitting well with me. I saw the worry lines on the face of the branch manager, and when one day he fainted due to over-work, that was the last straw.

So I was called by a State government owned country rail organisation. I had put in an application some months back, and had forgot about it.

They asked me if I was interested in working in the employment department of the corporate HR division for a six-month contract role.

I immediately accepted, sat an aptitude test, and found myself working in their corporate headquarters with a nice view of the bay, and working on interesting projects with a senior psychologist looking at selection methods, and studying the morale of apprentices.

“Our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers.” — M. Scott Peck

Network internally and increase your skills

During that time, I went to meetings, worked on cross-functional projects, and quickly rose up the ranks. I effectively had worked across various HR functions in selection, management training and development, and organisational development.

Little did I know at the time, but the organisation I was an integral part of was about to undergo the wrath of the government's "transport reform agenda" - another way of saying that many thousands of staff were to be axed, and services drastically reduced.

I felt my skill set was highly valuable in the big outside world, so I embarked on taking those skills into a different sector.

Learn about the business as well as your specialist skills

So I ended up in a learning and development management role in News Corporation, more specifically, working in their newspaper division, with the team that produced Australia's highest circulating newspaper, the Herald Sun.

They had just opened a new $300 million dollar print-site with the latest in color printing technology, and wanted me to introduce a team-based approach to working.

This was a challenging role to say the least, even having me at times working the 8:00pm to 5:00am shift overnight to run workshops for the team leaders of the presses. It was an industrially sensitive place, as the team leaders and press operators were not allowed to be on the same workshops.

Then of course, technology, and on-line news, had significantly impacted the industry, so more staff losses and re-training of those remaining had me busy for some time.

I was running career transition workshops for affected staff, some took redundancy packages, and some took early retirement.

From private-sector to the not-for-profit sector

So my next transition was into a totally different sector, this one being the largest charity and humanitarian organisation in Australia, working in their people and culture function.

My role was to develop and implement the skills required to shift the organisation from a silo-driven one to a matrix driven one.

This was an extremely complex organisation, and culturally one that had attracted dedicated people who didn't just work for the money, but had a vested interest in the cause and values of eliminating world poverty.

The world of career transition consulting

As my interest in career development and transition grew, I found a role working in an international career transition firm offering one-on-one outplacement services to senior executives whose roles had been made redundant.

This was a fascinating and personally rewarding role, and I made numerous connections across major international and local enterprises, and learnt the inner workings of some of our biggest household name organisations.

All this experience prompted me to write my first book, Manage Your Own Career: Reinvent Your Job; Reinvent Yourself which lead to media spots, a weekly career column, and speaking engagements across the country.

Leveraging skills and experiences in the higher education sector

After that, I found a role in career consulting in a university which allowed me to bring all my past skills and experiences to help students enter the world of work, and to develop employability skills through experiential learning experiences.

That led me to another university, ranked No.1 in the country, where I was effectively interacting with medical, physiotherapy, optometry, oral health, and nursing final year students; as well as students and graduates from business, science, engineering, IT, arts, and a broad range of other disciplines.

So what has a multi-sector career taught me?

While such a career can at times be scary, and fraught with unknown dangers, it has:

• effectively broadened my network substantially;
• given me more confidence in dealing with a range of management styles and organisational cultures;
• enlightened my knowledge of a range of different organisations and the way they go about doing their business;
• helped me to identify transferable skills that are valuable across industry sectors;
• like Steve Jobs, made me reflect and connect the dots to find common threads which on looking back, has helped me to clarify my purpose, and to find roles that align with that;
• allowed me to coach others considering career changes, and to help them prepare job applications, and deal with interviews and selection procedures;
• taught me to take calculated risks where appropriate, and step into the unknown, hence becoming a little more courageous and daring.